Tuesday, January 27, 2009

There's Probably No Elune: Now stop Worrying and Enjoy Azeroth

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I play World of Warcraft. This is hardly a unique phenomena, and most estimates show around 10 million people play the game. That is a pretty damn large slice of humanity.

Each one of those 10 million subscribers is effectively a deity for a very small number of followers, namely the amount of player characters or "toons" that person has created. Each of these beings are under the direct control of a very specialized supreme being.

My main player character is a level 80 Shadow Priest named Miach, and all in all he leads a rather quiet life. He whiles away most of his day happily chipping away at veins of titanium between flights on his huge green proto drake.

Unfortunately, his god has other plans for him. Miach's god wants him to obtain a new robe to show the other gods and their followers how well his god can provide for him.

Obtaining this robe, however, will require the slaughter of a variety of living, or at least undead, beings. These conflicts are initiated mostly to obtain relics, clothing, or weaponry which allow the bearer the power to be more effective at said relic hunting.

This circle of conflict is powered by deities who are obsessed with the sartorial status of their subjects, and will put them through endless cycles of death and rebirth. Callously inflicting death without a thought on the horror their followers are experiencing.

Miach receives no thanks for his service to his deity, just a small reprieve until his next cycle of slaughter, death, and rebirth.

This account is certainly not an attack on WoW, as I love the game dearly. But if you put the mechanics of a video game "player" and a "real world" deity together the similarities are very similar.

I think that there is probably no god, but if there was he would make a crappy raid leader.

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