Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThe sudden yet inevitable betrayal of gaming immersion
by Michael Gray 
Jan 7th 2011 at 7:00PM
There's this quest in Loch Modan. To make a long story short, the gnolls and murlocs seem to be making a peace treaty. In the very least, they're making some kind of deal to lay down some awfulness on the Alliance. They are the Axis of Awful, after all.
When things get to this point, there's nothing else for an adventurer to do but dress up like a shrub, take a bottle of scent pheromones, and sneak out to sabotage the meeting. But that's not the exciting part. The exciting part is what the Mosshide gnoll screams when you lay the whammy on him.
"AAAAAAGH!" the gnoll yells. "CURSE YOUR SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL!"
Rumors have it that in beta, the murloc responded, "Mine is an evil mrglglglglglglglglglg. Now DIE!"
Of course, this is a reference to the old Firefly series, which has many devoted followers among all kinds of geeks and gamers. On one hand, I totally love the reference. My wife and I giggled and laughed and loved the shout-out to one of our favorite television series.
On the other side of the coin, I can see the argument that pop culture references like this can take a player "out of the game." It disrupts immersion and adds silliness to an escapist hobby that some people take very, very seriously.
What about you? Where do you fall in that argument?
Filed under: Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 7)
xenite46383 Jan 7th 2011 7:10PM
Well Uldum was the best new zone in the game, girlfriend thinks so as well.
But to each their own, however quotes from fiction based in fiction though taking you out of the fiction.... ridiculous. :)
Ice Jan 7th 2011 8:28PM
SPOILEERS of uldums start!
Loved uldum so far. I'm just starting to do it. Oddly I always skipped it in favor of twilight highlands because I was busy busy.
The part of harrison jones' start. Accidental setting of explosives then going hiding inside chest. Flying inside chest at power of explosion, hitting pygmy with it and dusting off going "happens to me all the time kid". You know what movie I'm talking about. Hilarious reference and I ended up laughing about it for next minutes.
But when he asked me to go inside this cave tunnel and said "watch your step" I just blindly jumped down... and fell to my death. While not reference in-game, I just popped "Its a trap!" to my head while running back.
John Jan 7th 2011 7:10PM
On an RP server... Yeah, maybe... But I love this stuff. This one could only be better if it was actually cited by some random dinosaur and a devilsaur... That would have been awesome!
Nonette Jan 7th 2011 8:30PM
On an RP serer, the pop culture references aren't the immersion killers. I can totally immerse myself in a world constructed out of pop-culture references and cliches, since at least that provides a sort of consistency to proceedings. It's the rigid story of every questline and instance that breaks immersion.
Nearly every single time I do something ingame that has Blizzard's storytelling involved, I have to ignore the possibility that my character witnessed it from the perspective I played through. My character could have witnessed it, sure, but as a background character, a bystander. The only exception that leaps to mind is the battle for Undercity, since you're playing the part of just one of many soldiers, with no special role in proceedings, in other words the story says you're a background character anyway. Of course, that's gone now, and all the quests leading up to it, which are still ingame, can't have been my character doing them.
The reason why is pretty simple. Forget how implausible it is for one character to kill so many over their career. Forget how preposterous it is for thousands of characters per server to have killed more mobs than the entire population of hundreds of Azeroths. That can be handwaved and ignored. The idea that my character did certain things that only happened once, could only have happened once, that thousands of other characters per server also did, and in some cases (instances) do them over and over again, now THAT is immersion killing.
Though, really some of the killing is massively immersion breaking. Look at the Gnomebliteration quest in Udum. The gnomish population is extremely low. Sure, a few extra survivours have been getting extracted from Gnomeregan of late, but at best they're going to make up for the attrition logically suffered since WoW launched. So, there's probably about 5000 at the start of Cataclysm. Gnomebliteration requires killing 1000 gnomes, who were perfectly fine and NOT leper gnomes until they arrived in Uldum. You're killing one fifth of the Gnomeregan Exiles population because a computer, which doesn't have the capacity to physically investigate a cure nor at any point indicates you should try, tells you to. The only alternative is to do nothing, which the computer is quite clear that it would be disastrous.
I don't know about you, but Garrosh told me (or told -someone-, and I happened to play through a sequence in their perspective but as my character) that slaughtering at best a couple hundred elves (who have a much stronger population than gnomes) who were helpless to stop it was a serious war crime. The Katamari Damacy reference? I snickered a little. Rolling that ball over all those gnomes and thinking about the canonical implications? I was horrified. That completely threw me out of the game more than anything I've experienced in WoW, and I'm still so shaken that I'm not sure I want to keep playing.
Mr. Tastix Jan 7th 2011 10:59PM
@Nonette: The game's story in relevance to the player is written so that you, the player, are the hero. When you go to the Borean Tundra they've already heard of your exploits in Outland, the same holds true for many Cataclysm quests in that they've heard of your actions done in Northrend.
As a roleplayer you have to take that into account and run with it. Roleplaying on MMOs is difficult when the game tries to make you look like a hero. You can roleplay that hero, but so can the thousands of other roleplayers, and then it becomes cliché.
In regards to quests such as Gnomebliteration, it does specifically state they're -crazed- gnomes. You also have to then realise it's a multiplayer video game and that immersion is much harder compared to, let's say, BioWare's games. The "kill X" and "go to Y" quests are designed for gameplay, not immersion. They're designed to get you from level A to level B.
As a roleplayer myself, I believe the immersion is created by the players and the environment, not the quests they do. The environment lends itself to allow players to create convincing storylines in the setting they've given. The quests are there merely for gameplay purposes.
Kaz Jan 8th 2011 12:01AM
I don't officially RP, but when I'm questing I do a small amount in my own mind. Basically my character is an "adventurer" one of the thousands of powerful mercenaries that the Horde and Alliance have. The NPCs I help are helped in that specific way by me, but others are helping other NPCs or the same ones for different things (the fact that quests are the same for everyone is handwaved as a constraint of game design).
My character took part in the defeating of Hakkar, Rragnaros, Illidan, C'thun, Arthas, Kil'jaden, Yogg-Saron, etc. However each time he was one man in a huge army usually made up of both Alliance and Horde members (the raid sizes and faction exclusiveness again being handwaved as a constraint of gameplay, and the re-running of raids is just going back and reviewing the battles that happened).
So, my character is a hero, he did all those things, however there are also others around that are just as powerful doing similar things. See it can all fit together with a little imagination.
Hob Jan 8th 2011 1:14AM
@Nonette
I remember reading a similar argument decades ago regarding superheroes. Something along the lines of, "Is there a stable ratio between the population of normal humans and superhumans? And if so, shouldn't China and India have several times more superheroes and supervillains than the US and Canada?" In Azerothian terms, a small guild can be seen as the Fantastic Four, a medium guild something like the X-Men, and a large guild could be like the Avengers. (No disrespect to DC fans, please assign your own examples...)
Personally, I like to think of Azeroth as a part of Michael Moorcock's multiverse. Every hero - Alliance and Horde - is actually a part of the Eternal Champion. This explains why Illidan is still a threat in Outland after the death of Arthas, and why Arthas is still a threat in Northrend after Deathwing has shattered Azeroth. It explains why my night elf druid feels no remorse when slaying the Horde, and why my undead rogue feels no remorse in slaying the Alliance. It's what the Eternal Champion does. (It also explains why heroes can be raised from the dead by a level 14 priest, yet faction leaders cannot - there must always be an Eternal Champion.)
CaptainCorny82 Jan 7th 2011 7:11PM
If pop culture references were added in 4.0.3 for the first time to the game, I would have a problem, but these types of references have been in game since launch. I expect them at this point and would feel loss of immursion if they were absent.
Cadrian Jan 7th 2011 7:11PM
Pop culture references ruin immersion? Not the ever-present UI overlay, the ability to get hit in the face by a gronn without flinching, not having to sleep or go to the bathroom, or the numbers that pop out of monsters' heads when we stab/shoot/fireball them in the back?
Tuhljin Jan 7th 2011 8:04PM
C'mon, now. That's unfair. There are plenty of games with clunky UIs and equally-clunky RPG mechanics that take immersion seriously and do very well. The UI-free cinematic helps immersion, but it is not a requirement. People get immersed in all-text environments, after all. It's the content, not the presentation, that builds immersion. WoW's pop culture references are content and they *do* "break" some of the immersion. However, *this is OK*.
WoW simply is not a game that is to be taken seriously all the time. It is what it is. There are solemn moments and in-depth stories that bring the world to life... and there are lighter moments. You can have both, and I think it works for WoW, but I wouldn't want *every* game to be this way. Who would? Variety is a good thing. If you want to play something without those references, there are other games out there that do an excellent job of this.
RogueJedi86 Jan 7th 2011 11:42PM
Cadrian, you can't cite numbers over people's heads as immersion breaking. That argument reminds me of one of the guys at Lucasfilm decrying nerds getting science from SW by asking about the physics of giant columns of text floating into space. It's a fallacy, everyone knows the UI and numbers are all out of universe. Immersion is in the game itself, with things npcs say, like these random pop culture references.
Uriah Jan 7th 2011 7:12PM
"If anyone gets nosy, just...you know... shoot 'em. "
Kay Jan 7th 2011 8:46PM
"....politely."
Kurtis Jan 8th 2011 7:24AM
"Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killin'?"
"Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps."
elvendude Jan 7th 2011 7:14PM
I, for one, love the references. I have screen shots of my character next to the Sam Vimes stand-in.
Colin Jan 7th 2011 7:15PM
I can never understand the complainers. WoW has been a total pop-culture pastiche from day one. It's one of the big things that makes it fun and wacky and separates it from "high-fantasy" like Everquest and D&D.
DAY ONE. If you don't like pop culture references in your WoW, it's just because you haven't been paying attention.
cartmensfoe Jan 7th 2011 7:15PM
Using referances now and then is fine, and even in full out scenarios (I'm looking at you, Uldum), it can be awesome. I honestly can't think of any zone i loved more than uldum because A) it's egypt and B) it's indiana jones references in almost every quest. If you are playing for the immersion factor, just pretend that you're character is hearing these for the first time and thinks these would make an awesome idea for a line or something in a piece of entertainment on a futuristic device.
hillbillyrod Jan 7th 2011 7:17PM
I don't mind them,because most of us are nerds(don't deny it). But the indiana jones quests were over the top. A few was nice but about halfway through I was just wanting them to end, and when more i didn't enjoy them
Alleluid Jan 7th 2011 7:17PM
When I did that quest on my new dwarf shammy i forgot where it was from but it was hilarious. However, on the bad side whenever I hear the word "inevitable" I think of this moment. Besides, how do we know it was a reference? Maybe that gnoll knew that the murlocs were going to turn on him?
food for thought.
JT Jan 8th 2011 1:00AM
...it's a Firefly reference. Trust me.