The Fake Warcraft Thesis: A Call for Papers

Friday morning, I received an unexpected email in my inbox.

It was from an academic at the University of Leeds, where I earned my MA in Medieval Studies back in 2005. He was putting together a panel on Medievalism, New Media and Video Games, and apparently my name had been bandied about  as a possible presenter at the panel.

My mind was blown. I’d left the ivory tower behind professionally over three years ago, so to have someone from my alma mater contact me out of the blue about presenting at one of the most well-known conferences in my discipline ABOUT MY HOBBY just did not compute.

It still doesn’t, really. How did this happen?

I’m still not sure.

Let’s talk about hashtags instead.

I’d promised the panel organizer that I’d have a title for my presentation by Monday at noon, and of course, Monday morning rolled around and I still had no title to send. I had a topic I was excited about (truthfully, I had about FIVE), but I was having trouble crystallizing it into something snappy.

When in doubt, procrastinate on Twitter. Enter the Fake Warcraft Thesis. I started coming up with a few joke titles. Then, a few hours later, my friends started to play.

(I thought about posting a list of my favorites here, but there are just too damn many. Search #fakewarcraftthesis and #fakewarcrafthesis [with 1 or 2 t's], because I promise you won’t regret it.) 

And then the internet exploded, and it went blue.

Why am I posting this? The phenomenon may have originated out of my last-minute desperation, but the Fake Warcraft Thesis isn’t about that, or me. What I saw yesterday was equal parts clever and fascinating. There are a lot of Really Smart People who have gone to Azeroth to die.

What really struck me, however (despite the fact that we invented most of these #fakewarcraftthesis titles out of humor) was that the one comment recurring as it trended throughout the day was people saying “um, I’d actually read that” or #IKindOfWantToWriteThisOne.

Why can’t we read them, my fellow denizens of Azeroth? Why can’t we write them?

There is no good reason why we can’t. I think academia is at a crossroads right now, but that’s another post entirely. The nature of collaboration, of scholarship, of research itself is changing. When I got that email from Leeds, I was actually far more excited over the fact that the panel had passed muster for the IMC than the fact that I’d been asked to participate it. In about ten months, a gaggle of scholars is going to be discussing the cultural ramifications of internet dragons with deadly srsfaceness. And they decided to do that before they ever asked me to be a part of it.

That is undeniably cool.

With that in mind I suppose I’d like to end this post with an exhortation to you all. Go forth, fellow nerds, and write. Write those Fake Warcraft Theses, and make them real. Write the articles you want to read. If you want to write and don’t have a platform, contact us and we would be thrilled to guest host here at Flavor Text. We’re at the start of something, I think - World of Warcraft is gaining legitimacy as a subject for analysis in the greater academic sphere, but a movement needs momentum in order to sustain itself. It’s in its infancy right now.

Let’s take on the Ivory Tower. This boss isn’t going to go down easily.

(Yeah, this post was a little starry eyed. You know what? I don’t even care. What’s a life without passion?)

The Narrative of the Player Character: Lore, RP, and You

Please welcome Shizukera, author of Flavor Text’s first guest post! We’re super excited to have her, and she’s written a great post about how roleplaying characters fits in to the player’s narrative experience in WoW. You can find Shizu on her own RP blog, Confessions of an Altaholic. Enjoy the post!

As a roleplayer, one of the biggest challenges I face is how to fit each character’s individual story into the world of Warcraft.  When I first began roleplaying, this mainly involved scouring established lore to make sure my characters fit into the story that had already been established and to avoid making any blunders – and that, as it turns out, is the easy part!  Things really get interesting when that shiny new character goes out and begins interacting with the world, and that’s what I’m going to address today:  how to reconcile your character’s individual story and personality with actual in-game progression such as leveling, quests, instances, and even raiding.  I’ll also talk about server lore – how roleplayers on individual servers can develop their own substories that fit into or alongside the official story but stand separate from it.

I.  PvE, RP, and You

When cross-server LFG was first introduced, I saw a forum post in which someone actually asked, “I wonder what it’ll be like to run with people from RP servers?”  My initial wiseguy response was that it’s really no different than running with anyone else, but the question actually is an interesting one.  Do RPers really walk everywhere and never break character?  Do we quest in character, or do we just ignore it?  And what happens when you get to those quests?

That’s right, those quests.  You know the ones.  Nesingwary and his endless thirst for animal parts.  The Kirin Tor torture quest.   All those quests that for whatever reason, your – or your character – cannot abide, so you skip them.  Or you have to do them because you want the Loremaster achievement, or because Cataclysm-style questing won’t let you skip them, but your stomach churns because you hate them that much, or your character’s stomach churns because there’s no way he or she would ever do it.

It’s really easy to feel like the story’s got you written into a corner, especially when you’re going through zones that make heavy use of phasing, but your character’s RP story is ultimately what you make it and if a quest is really problematic, it can be worked around.  You might have smacked down all those animals to get the Nagrand Slam achievement, but who’s to say your character didn’t smack that guy and walk away?  Personally, I want my characters to really be affected by what’s going around them, so I like to leave in as much of the questing experience as possible and see how the character reacts to what they’re required to do and how his or her worldview is affected as a result of those actions.  This can even vary from character to character, and I do have at least one who’d say “hell no” to certain quests and walk away.  But I would also say that if you as an RPer wish to treat questing as out-of-character, or you do one and say “Yeeeeah, there’s no way she’d have done this,” go for it!  Just as no two people go through the world the exact same way in real life, no two characters in WoW will travel the same path, and your character’s story and experiences are ultimately what you make them.

As for instances and raids, they’re actually a lot easier to handle than you might expect!  Look at it this way:  Could an enemy as powerful as Kil’jaeden or Kel’thuzad or (soon™) Deathwing really be brought down by just 10 or 25 people?  I mean, we aren’t just talking about the Big Bads themselves.  Remember, we wouldn’t be just walking  through the front door and finding these guys sitting nekkid on the sofa.  They’re ready for us.  They’re prepared.  They may even be baiting us and awaiting our arrival (hi Arthas).  They know we’re coming for them, and they’re going to pull out all the stops to make sure we don’t get to them and kill them.  Obviously you can’t claim to have killed said Big Bad all by yourself in single combat, but 10 and 25 are in-game numbers – there’s nothing at all to say your character couldn’t have been part of the battle to take those guys down!

And no, we don’t usually run things in character.  Not unless it’s planned that way.  The gear we pick up is the shizz though!

II.  Server Lore:  What Does It Mean??

As roleplayers and guilds become established on their servers, substories develop.  RP guilds often have storylines they play out, sometimes they interact with other guilds on the server, and over time those stories can even become part of the server’s collective memory, at least among the players who’ve been there for a while.  (For me, the paedus comes to mind.)  This is what I call server lore – the substories and relationships that develop on a server when RPers interact with each other.  These stories can be as simple as being the folks who run the local tavern or being part of the city guard, or they can be long-term storylines open to any RPer on the server.

In addition, guilds and roleplayers who’ve been on the server long enough sometimes gain a certain recognition on their servers.  For example, when I first moved to Earthen Ring, I put Shizu, who was working toward becoming a demon hunter, in a guild called Netherbane.  They’re a small guild with a very specific theme:  it’s a school for demon hunters and their allies, led by Tharion Greyseer.  I was impressed, not only with the guild and its members, but also by the fact that they seemed to be recognized as the demon hunter guild on the server.  Anyone who had questions about demon hunters and how to become one knew to find Tharion or someone else from the Netherbane.  Then I realized people from off server, like me, seemed to be directed toward the Netherbane too.  I found out about them through a thread on the RP forums, and I know several others who came from other servers too.

It takes a lot of work to make this sort of thing happen.  If you want your guild to run the Pig and Whistle, your members need to be there to run things during busy RP times.  If you’re looking to establish a Stormwind Guard guild, be sure your members are present, patrolling and doing the things city guards would be doing.  Even if you just want to be known as a guild with good RPers in it, be sure you and your members are familiar with the lore behind what you’re RPing, and be sure to read your quest text and be aware of what’s going on in the game world.  Remember, RP is what you make of it, but that larger story is going to have an impact on the world and the characters with whom you RP.

Have fun with it!

Twitter Fic Month / 2011 Writing Contest Community

So the Blizzard 2011 Writing Competition was announced late Monday evening. Participants have roughly a month to submit a 2500-7500 short story set in a Blizzard universe. For official information, read here.

I hate competitions. But I love writing. Competitions remind me of playing classical piano in front of a room of judges, lots of quiet hours practicing in a windowless room.

For various reasons, I can’t discuss my fic publicly. But I’ve had some really fruitful conversations in private about my ideas. Competitions have negative connotations to me, and even though I write fics throughout the years, I feel a bit dirty saying that I’m writing a fic–but it’s going to be submitted to a contest–it’s as if I’m selling out or something. But when I have a good email chain with a friend it helps put it in perspective.

A lot of people were talking about fic writing, insecurities, and ideas on twitter, and I posted this:

I like viewing the contest as ‘twitter fic month’ instead of ‘contest.’ Feels a lot warmer and cozier that way, not isolated.

Then I got the following idea, after getting some feedback–why not make a directory of players interested in being involved in the writing process, either as a writer or beta reader? If you’re writing a fic, maybe you’ll find someone willing to beta. (If you want to write for fun, but don’t want to submit, join too!) If you want to both beta and write, that’s awesome. If you don’t want to beta, but instead would be happy to offer facts and backgrounds about a particular topic, that’s cool too. And sometimes, a reader unfamiliar with a swath of lore can be the best critic because gaps in the narrative will be even more apparent. (I understand putting personal writing out there can be nerve-wracking. If this paragraph has made you uneasy and you just want to bookmark it, or write a fic without poking others, that’s cool too. It’s just nice to know that there’s a community of writers out there, that you’re not alone.)

I’m hoping the following list and comments will help people find others for good lore discussions and helpful criticism. Sometimes writing is lonely, especially if others have concerns about publicly sharing ideas.

Perhaps it can be a way for people to get to know each other better–sometimes twitter can be like high school, due to the brevity, where players are known by a handful of characteristics. You may learn something new! You may also find a new community of people to help you write fics and discuss ideas in the future–long after the contest is gone.

Here’s the template, using me as the example.

Contact info: @perculia (DM for email)

Writing a fic: Yes

Beta Reader: Sure

Favorite topics: night elves, alternative histories, material culture, artsy things. Should have a good sense from the archaeology series right here at Flavor Text. Also happy to read most everything for tone/form.

Anyway, fill out the form, or add other categories that you like, and I’ll add you to the list. Happy writing!

Character Identity and Collecting–A Response to Cyn

There are two very different viewpoints being expressed here. On the one side there’s uniqueness, even if expressed via commonly-accessible items. A character is a character, this is who they are, they aren’t all things to all people.
On the other side, there’s the character as a representation of ourselves, of our sum accomplishments in game. Tension happens when we invest ourselves in a character like this, but also great things can happen with deep investment.
…
But it leaves me wondering about all the titles I’ve collected on Cynwise, and who she is, really.

Cynwise closes On Titles, Character Uniqueness, and the Collecting Instinct, a case study on his level 70 warrior twink’s affinity for the Argent Crusade, with this puzzle. Something about questing in the Plaguelands, narrative-driven zones, resonated with Ashwalker, even though such heavy-handed zones can alienate other characters, as I touched upon in the previous post. He compares his single-mindedly focused twink with the expansive collecting habits of some of his other toons, trying to fuse these polar opposites together.
I can relate to Cyn: my alts collect a very narrow perimeter of items, some unique, some not, while my main has an impressively bloated collection of pretty much everything. I’ve written about some of my collecting habits, most recently in my profession guide at Wowhead: it’s an intricate puzzle to find items nobody but yourself can see. I’ve also been rereading many of Margaret Atwood’s works this weekend; the theme of remembering the past and the fickleness of memory, especially after a cultural upheaval, has always appealed to me.

And as such, I made another unholy alliance of Fine Literature and WoW, using some quotes by pensive characters to illustrate these perspectives.

The nutcracker shaped like an alligator, the lone mother-of pearl cuff link, the tortoiseshell comb with missing teeth. The broken silver lighter, the saucerless cup, the cruet stand minus the vinegar. The scattered bones of home, the rags, the relics. Shards washed ashore after shipwreck. The Blind Assassin

Hang on to the words,” he tells himself. The odd words, the old words, the rare ones. Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’re gone out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been. Oryx and Crake

One narrator clings to a handful of broken familiar mementos to illuminate a forgotten story, the other is determined to remember everything out of fear of extinction. Both angles illustrate the motivations of of my collecting characters.

Worldbuilding: Harry Potter and WoW

A few weeks ago, I attended a Harry Potter themed party, in which the town square was transformed into Hogwarts with costumes, theme food, music, and Quidditch matches. As I navigated crowds of Death Eaters and Hufflepuffs, my visiting boyfriend made confused remarks about the crowd. His imaginary world favors the Illuminati over Hogwarts wizards, so for a brief moment I thought I’d have to explain the entire series to him. I grew up without a TV or much outside media, so he’s patiently had to explain basic pop-culture concepts to me before.

My description ran like this: there was a popular book series turned into a film, the last film just came out, hence the reason for a party. Takes place at a school for wizards, where kids are divided up into schools, kind of like Alliance and Horde, but end up working together for a greater goal—sometimes.

At this point, he stopped me and said he was simply confused about some of the wrock lyrics. Yes, of course he knew the series, wizards and stuff, too much Quidditch.

Then we found a restaurant and the conversation ended, but I kept mulling over why I made that connection to WoW.

In-Game Harassment: Ignorance, Silencing, and The Mary Sue

Today I’m going to interrupt my archaeology series to talk about a more urgent topic: in-game harassment I’ve faced this past week. In between opening GM tickets and screenshotting offensive tells, it got me thinking about player ignorance, stereotypes, and the continued gender disparity in WoW. By coincidence, the new feminist blog The Mary Sue published an article recently on women and harassment in-game; I couldn’t disagree more with its advice.

I’m going to share a few pointed examples of player harassment and ignorance, link the screenshots instead of sugarcoating things, and then dissect why a recent article over at The Mary Sue bothers me so much. (Warning: NSFW language in the screenshots.)

Thrall’s Flaws: Leadership Problems in Elemental Bonds and Orc Archaeology

The Orcs are a race of action, not remembrance. As one of the more dominant races in Warcraft, it’s sensible to include Orcish artifacts, but how does one quantify a race that does not value objects? With so many years of fel corruption and lack of control, the past is something best forgotten. The artifacts are practical objects with straightforward and terse descriptions. In this case, actions speak louder than words; the relics are a shadow of the battle.

The in-game artifacts cover early Orcish life as well as provide a cautionary tale on Orcish politics—pertinent to the recent power shift in Cataclysm from Thrall to Garrosh as Warchief. Since artifacts pale in comparison to the epic events they record, it’s fortuitous timing that with 4.2, the new questline about Thrall (now Go’el) and his inner turmoil is available to players. Stuck in the Elemental Plateau, it soon becomes clear to players that if Thrall will successfully function back in the living realm, he needs to make peace with his repressed worries and anger. While the questline has been derided by some as glorifying Thrall as a perfect hero without much character development, the questline is intended to show that Thrall takes a large step in turning his back on the traditional Orc cycle of hatred, rage, glory, and death, starting first with changing his name to Go’el. As the questline ends there, it’s hard to believe though that everything is solved by a name change. Also, what happened to the thwarted ceremony in Nordrassil? Ignoring unfinished business doesn’t seem like a solution to balance and better living.

The artifacts and epic questline are incomplete on their own; there are still questions remaining when analyzed comparatively, but a fuller sense of the political and current cultural climate emerges in fusing stationary objects with an epic questline. This doesn’t mean that there are tidy endings, though. Thrall unleashing his repressed memories could lead to political turmoil, not peace.

The Narrative of the Player Character: From the Many to the Few

(Click here and here for the first and second posts in this series, respectively.)

WoW has come a long way since its release in 2005. There are any number of angles to take in examining the ways it’s evolved and developed, but, this being my series on player characters vs. narrative, what I want to explore is how the role of the player character has changed over the course of the last six and a half years. In looking back, what strikes me the most is the declining emphasis on collective efforts as necessary for in-game accomplishment, and by extension, experiencing the game’s story. Perculia commented in this post how Cataclysm strongly focuses on the player-as-hero, and while that framing has always been somewhat true in World of Warcraft, in this latest expansion it seems to have grown even further in importance. What’s changed? What’s the path that has led us here?

I believe this shift is one of the interesting cases where mechanical game design ultimately affects how the story is perceived and experienced. A medium shapes the way a story is told, and every medium has its own limitations. In World of Warcraft’s case, the primary limitation at work here is accessibility for the single player.

Bloody Laughter: Troll Culture through Artifacts (…mon)

Trolls show up every expansion with a spotlight on their lore—Zul’Gurub, Zul’Aman, Zul’Drak, Rise of the Zandalari. Their patch signifies the calm before a storm, a patch that’s a breather before the next major instance. In spite of the major plotarcs of an expansion, players can count on Troll lore, seemingly unrelated to the rest of Azeroth, to provide them with some levity and escapism. While Troll lore isn’t as much of a visual disconnect as Uldum or Howling Fjord, it does appear removed—a Disneyfied version of island life. Zul’Drak, the place of the most recent troll tragedy, was underdeveloped in Wrath; the other zones feature dancing trolls and tidy happy endings.

Well, many Troll artifacts are gruesome. Others emphasize Zul’Drak, while still others talk about relations with other races. And they memoralize the past—abandoned gods in Zul’Gurub and Sunken Temple, zones that underwent simplification in Cataclysm. The jaunty demeanor of the trolls hides years of defeat and isolation; while they seem laid-back enjoying island life, they’re also bloodthirsty.  If you don’t play a Troll, the subtleties of their dark humor may be lost on you. There’s dark parts of troll lore that aren’t emphasized in Archaeology such as gender relations and canniballism—not to mention meta-commentary on racial and cultural appropriation—but the existing artifacts subvert the common perception of the trolls as a diverting, happy-go-lucky race.

Still from Olibith's Never Stay Tuned series

Flavor Text Comment Policy

Just a quick one today everyone!

We’re pretty tickled about Norm’s pony post getting linked by WoWInsider. (Thanks WoWInsider!) Our page hits positively skyrocketed and, while nothing much has changed around here as a result of the linking, it got us thinking that it’s probably a good idea to put in a comments policy. It’s pretty minimal at least for now, with the caveat that of course it may be revised and updated as time progresses. In addition to being linked above you can find it on the sidebar under the “About” heading. Thanks so much for all of you who have been reading and commenting–comments are the sweet, sweet icing on the Tasty Cupcake of WoW blogging, and they do indeed make us happy.