Thursday, September 30, 2010

Time Off for Azeroth

Honestly, if you think about everything that’s happened, it would really suck to live on Azeroth.

For the three people out there who haven’t heard, Blizzard is releasing the third World of Warcraft expansion: Cataclysm.



To sum up: things are trying to kill you. Again.

Let’s recap the last few decades of Azeroth’s history:
• Orcs invade
• Orcs invade again
• Arthas, perhaps the greatest twit in history, tries to kill everyone. Everyone fights back and Arthas runs away.
• Much like recess in the 4th grade, sides are picked and the Alliance and the Horde declare open season on each other
• A portal opens and everyone decides it would be nice to go to through and fight in a place where you can literally fall off the world
• Someone notices that there’s an entire continent full of giants, undead, and other vicious critters just to the north. Oh, and Arthas lives there. 10 million people immediately rush there to kill things and take their stuff.

And now, Deathwing, a rather pissed-off dragon who was supposed to be dead (I think), basically blows up the ocean and rips apart the continents (though honestly, the Barrens needed a bit of a touch up).

Personally, I think Azeroth needs a break. Seriously. Just a year or two where no new ultimate evil shows up, it stops raining fire, and everyone can just, y’know, chill.

The Horde and the Alliance could get together and maybe have a barbecue, listen to the Azerothian equivalent of Jimmy Buffet, knock back some margaritas, and just not be in dire peril. And rather than slaughtering giant mutated three-headed boars for their livers, the various races could just spend some time in the garden or reading a nice book. Something relaxing.

Seriously. I work a 40-hour week at a computer and I desperately need my weekends. Spending years fighting demonic invaders who want to rip your heart out with a corkscrew and a Barney hand-puppet should get you at least a fortnight off.

NOTE: A fortnight is two weeks and comes from the Old English phrase ‘fēowertēne niht’ which means ‘cow bladder.’

And frankly, the denizens of Azeroth should really take a break while they can, because once everyone gets tired of killing Deathwing, something even worse will happen.

Oh, and I might just have to roll a Tauren Paladin. That would rock :)

Cheers,
-Jason

3 comments:

Lurklen said...

I've been thinking about that too, how the hell is anybody still alive on that planet? How do those civilisations sustain themselves? Theres no way anything could get done, everyones constantly at war or in dire peril. When the hell are they gonna find time to grow crops or rebuild the stuff that got destroyed last time the world nearly ended?

So yeah unless you were a hero(crazy person who kills millions for gold only to buy bigger weapons so they can kill even more things)Life in Azeroth would suck. If things made sense, life in Azeroth would look more like Fallout.

Ed said...

Well, y'all will be happy to know that for about two years now, I've been doing my part to help pacify Azeroth.

That's right, I've stopped giving Blizzard money. If enough people chip in, they'll go broke, and won't be able to keep persecuting the place.

Note: it doesn't matter how much time they have to grow crops. They don't have enough land. Specifically, the lands around Stormwind are possibly enough to be self-sufficient - but feeding Stormwind or exporting any food elsewhere's basically right out. The same could be said for most other cities in the game - except that most of them don't even have fields. I understand that the Undercity could export the vast majority of the food from the lands around it, as undead don't need to eat that stuff. However, it's nowhere near sufficient. In fact, it's actually about the right amount of land to support the alliance encroachment on the area.

Probably Menethil Harbor has it best - since most of the wetlands is "uninhabited" swamp, and it has ready access to ocean, it *could* be a main exporter of food. However, they have no fishing boats, so they'd probably just be self-sufficient as a zone. Silithus probably comes next - while it doesn't itself have a sustainable ecology, it's right next door to Ungoru Crater, which is teeming with life (admittedly, in excess of the natural balance, so hunting there would need to be done fairly quickly or the larger game animals would exhaust their food supply and starve in fairly short order), and does not really have an established base worth noting.

Of course, since I left before the second expansion, things have changed. However, since ecological balance has never been Blizzard's strong suite, I'm sure they haven't corrected this.

Note: I am aware that there is quite a bit of ocean. Due to exploratory limits, we don't really know exactly how much here. However, given the distinct lack of hurricanes/typhoons, I'm certain that the oceans are not sufficiently large to make up for the huge population relative to the available arable land.

Jason Janicki said...

Yeah, Lurklen, that's always bothered me too. That's one of the things I've always enjoyed about the Fallout series. The world is rife with danger and it looks like it.

Well, Ed, if they tried to do something with the oceans, Blizzard would just create sea-monsters (if they haven't already).