Breakfast Topic: Is WoW science fiction?
by David Bowers 
Jul 16th 2007 at 8:01AM
One poster to the forums linked to this screenshot and said, "When did this turn into a friggin space game... Draenei, Exodar... hell this battleground feels more like UT Facing Worlds map than an RPG..."
Drysc replied: "I believe you may be creating your own idea of what Warcraft is and has been, while it's been anything but a traditional medieval fantasy setting. The lore and history is full of interstellar travel and themes one may consider 'sci-fi'. There are warp gates that link various worlds together, planets blowing up, space traveling demons who enslave entire planets, inter dimensional ships, time travel, etc.
"You say '[this] feels more like UT Facing Worlds map than an RPG... ', when RPG simply stands for Roleplaying Game. Warcraft has and always will be beyond a singular tolkienesque world, and I think those who know and understand the lore and history are more apt to recognize and accept how the story is progressing as 'clearly Warcraft'."
What do you think? Are the "sci-fi" elements minimal enough that WoW still doesn't count as "science fiction" or even "science fantasy?" Or do World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade launch the lore off the Tolkienenque fantasy homeworld and into the anomalous nebulae of Stargate, Alien, or even Transformers?
Personally, I think WoW gets the balance right -- I'm happy to see some creative mixing of different themes that breaks the traditional fantasy molds. I'd like to see more sci-fi elements in future expansions too, though I doubt that's likely. WTB more WoW Lightsabers!
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Humor, Lore
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Argent Jul 16th 2007 8:17AM
the screencap made me chuckle.
i think if people actually bothered to play WC 1-3 a bit they'd kinda understand that the warcraft universe was always a bit removed from your classical high fantasy setting.
you have dwarves with guns and tanks, flying contraptions of various stripes and steamships all floating around in those various games. if anything, warcraft kinda resembles the warhammer universe (ah, the irony.)
so you have a universe where science and magic co-exist and even kinda complement each other. in such an environment, i don't think more traditionally sci-fi like concepts are terribly out of place (and for that matter, if people don't have problems with engineering matter transportation devices, then inter-dimensional starships aren't THAT big of a reach. :)
Keya Jul 16th 2007 8:39AM
Ever played one of the later Wizardry games? Now that was some idea of RPG. Gosh when will our lovily fire mages get nuclear blasts?
Satryghen Jul 16th 2007 8:43AM
To me warcraft resembles a swords and sorcery steampunk universe, with all the weird and bizarre outcomes that go along with that setting. From the steampowered tanks and gyrocopter things, all the way to the dimension hoping and space travel. I mean just take five minutes and try and come up with ways you could pull off today tech with magic. It won't take you long to come up with scrying cell phones and interstate highways of flying carpets. Mixing outlandish magic with outlandish steampunk tech allows for some crazy stuff to happen.
Even AD&D had the Starjammer setting which involved magic space boats wrapped in magic protective bubbles traveling between planets. Maybe TSR went to greater extremes to "prove" how this is magical and not technological than Blizzard did, but it's really the same sort of thing.
Outside of that I always thought that blizzards willingness to go outside of the overly serious fantasy setting is what makes it accessible. With all the pop culture references and deviations from the fantasy norms.
Dan Jul 16th 2007 8:55AM
"The lore and history is full of interstellar travel and themes one may consider 'sci-fi'."
Or maybe that's Drysc hinting that Blizz ran out of ideas and Warcraft and Starcraft are going to be merged? :)
Nick S Jul 16th 2007 8:59AM
I got kind of upset about the whole spaceships and Naaru and Blood Elves (oh my!) business, since it all seemed a bit contrived for the sake of avoiding deeper storytelling or perhaps work on the game world.
But, then, I remembered that I don't play this game for the lore. The real story in WoW is not about the Naaru or the crazy spaceships full of irritating blue shamans. The real story is about what people make happen in the game - your guild, your friends, your local naked bank dancer... that's what I care about. As long as the lore doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the multiplayer aspects of the game, I don't care.
So sorry Jul 16th 2007 9:13AM
Sounds like Blizzard has finally gotten full enough of themselves to conveniently forget that all of thier ideas (even from the very first warcraft) were/are ripped off of both tolkien and warhammer.
Keep telling yourself you're original and you're a 'balance' of sci-fi/fantasy. Those that know will still consider you the reader's digest hack version of fantasy.
Though they were always direct rip offs of other fantasy/sci franchises at least they took thier own world seriously. But anymore they just make up lore based on whatever gameplay mechanic they need at the time.... Lore about gameplay rather than gameplay about lore. Shame.
daniel Jul 16th 2007 9:15AM
the only lore i care about is what bosses drop what and how pretty it would make my belf look :D
Loneslayer Jul 16th 2007 9:20AM
#%, I think you have it a little bass ackwards. I don't play wow to watch an animated female Blood Elf dance scantily clad on a mailbox. I don't play the game to level up to a certain point with the intent of having the best gear that no player at that level should ever even have access to just so they can bash the other teams' brains in. That's not fun to many people. If you want that, go play UT or Quake or, heck, bust out old school style with a Doom or Heretic frag session.
Yes, PVP is nice, and without it the game would feel like it's missing something. But the same goes for the lore. I understand if you have a few lvl 70's sitting around twiddling their thumbs if you want to create low lvls to run around like idiots in a BG, but that should be separated from those of us who prefer to enjoy a BG WHILE leveling.
But to me, BG's kinda go against the whole lore of the game. You'd be better off getting a raid together to attack cities or towns, as that's really what Warcraft is about. Granted we have that now, but not as much as there should be.
I really don't like the BC races in the game, but that's part of the lore. Warcraft has always been about encompassing almost everything to a point in the sci-fi/mythology worlds.
I'd rather see them do away with BG's entirely and instead give "RAIDS" more focus on the game. Not some stupid instance. Yeah, those are fun, but what about getting a raid group together and raiding Stormwind, or UC, or Booty Bay and getting honor for that instead of a stupid BG where all you're proving is you can knock the snot out of a player who doesn't want to twink and is only trying to have fun.
Better yet, keep the BG's, but add the city/town raids on top of that. You should get honor if you can get a raid party big enough to wipe out Xroads or Booty Bay, or Theramoore. If you can get a 40-man raid together to run an instance, why can't you get one together to raid a city (like the original WC games were) and get some kind of recognition for it.
Maybe i'm just unique. Everyone has, and is entitled, to their own opinions, but that's the way I think the game should evolve around the lore.
onetrueping Jul 16th 2007 9:23AM
Actually, there's very little of "science fiction" involved in the Warcraft universe. Science Fiction is a subset of fantasy that depends entirely on extending current scientific knowledge to a plausible conclusion. Instead, the elements you speak of are what is known as "science fantasy."
That diatribe aside, whoever said that high fantasy and science fantasy were unmixable? Have a look at the Warhammer Fantasy setting, which is actually set on a single world in the Warhammer 40K universe. Sanctioned rules exist to have a campaign where the two genres collide.
Anyway, maybe the whiners will stop crying about "it are not Warcraft" just because a few things showed up that they aren't comfortable dealing with. If Blizzard put it in there, then it most assuredly IS Warcraft.
Loneslayer Jul 16th 2007 9:21AM
that should read #5...geez...why can't you edit your comments? lol
slayerboy Jul 16th 2007 9:22AM
that should read #5 all the way at the beginning...geez...why can't you edit your comments? lol
Oh...and that toon made me ROFL a little too much
CVJ Jul 16th 2007 9:24AM
#8 "But to me, BG's kinda go against the whole lore of the game. You'd be better off getting a raid together to attack cities or towns, as that's really what Warcraft is about."
BG's and your idea of raiding a town go totally against the lore anyhow unless we retcon and write out WC3 since that sillly little "orcs and humans" banding together to fight a greater evil and signing a truce to avoid future conflict thing.
PVP is just something to make the game interesting but it is really a "lets pretend it did not happen" lore wise.
Michel Jul 16th 2007 9:49AM
warcraft is fantasy (all is possible)
there are some steampunk elements, some classical heroic fantasy and some space fantasy.
for the whole part, the "sf" part is simple steampunk.
Warhammer had some beginnings of "steampunk" (warhammer rpg was mostly Fantasy Renaissance, not medieval D&D )
I think it helps to create the specific settings and personality of Warcraft : Fantasy.
Pyrohh Jul 16th 2007 10:09AM
Might and Magic series, always had the same elements mixing sci-fi with fantasy. TBH when as I have been leveling up in WoW, I have had that feeling of playing the old M&M games. Wonder how much the developers of this game played Might and Magic in the 90's. I would bet quite a lot.
styopa Jul 16th 2007 10:14AM
"Though they were always direct rip offs of other fantasy/sci franchises at least they took thier own world seriously. But anymore they just make up lore based on whatever gameplay mechanic they need at the time..."
I'd have to say I agree. It's ironic to hear a Blizzie defending their "lore" since it has always been such an obvious hash of Tolkien and any other fantasy source that the authors thought was cool at the time, frequently and heavily retconned whenever some new game mechanic needed to fit. This doesn't detract from the game tremendously, because the pleasure's in the gameplay.
But please stop, before someone starts comparing the 'epic' history of Azeroth favorably to (for example) Tolkien. That would just be absurd.
[I'm not even a Tolkien FAN, but that was at least a structured and self-consistent universe.]
WoW (and the Warcraft Universe) is a game, not a story. The 'lore' is about as meaningful as the backstory you invented as a kid to explain why GI Joe was hanging out with He-Man, the Transformers, and a bunch of Lego people.
Gabriella Jul 16th 2007 10:25AM
When will people learn the meaning of the term STEAMPUNK. XD
RJ Jul 16th 2007 10:30AM
I love how people have no problem at all with portals between two worlds, and mages/warlocks being able to teleport people around the world, but when someone uses magic to move a whole building around (since thats all the Exodar really is), it's spaceships and lasers and everyone has a problem. The word ship was used once, I believe it was used incorrectly too, and it gets blown totally out of proportion.
panzerkin Jul 16th 2007 11:00AM
It's important to pick a genre to safely branch out beyond your core/cult (sizable in this case, of course) following. Even Dungeons and Dragons occasionally went SciFi -- I think I recall a module that overlapped a little with Gamma Wars (?) -- but it was still pretty obvious where its bread and butter was.
I liked my first two years' of WoW b/c it was a fantasy MMORPG. I'm liking the expansion less in part because it sidesteps this comfortable genre. I'm still a bit in denial about the spaceships (or whatever you want to call whatever crashed in the Draenei starting zone.
If I were to make a suggestion to Blizzard, it'd be to concentrate on remaking the Old World in an upcoming expansion, and expand on what originally made the game a hit.
Theadrick Jul 16th 2007 11:06AM
I think it is more of a Steampunk/Fantasy setting. The tech level for most of the races seems to be somewhere around the early 16th century if you were to compare it to Earth history. In otherwords, most folks still use swords and wear armor, but guns, cannon, etc are starting to appear on the battlefield as well.
As for the draenei and all of inter-dimensional stuff, to me this is very much Spelljammer-esque (for those who played Dungeons and Dragons). It is not pure sci-fi (even the draenei primarily still use melee weapons and wear armor), nor is it "traditional" fantasy, but draws from many different elements.
Theadrick Jul 16th 2007 11:37AM
@16
If I'm using the term Steampunk incorrectly, please enlighten me! I think that many elements of WoW certainly fit the definition (as I understand it), particularly the dwarven steam tanks, the gnomish subway, etc.