Posts with tag literature

While the world of academia has not infrequently pried back the edges of World of Warcraft to peer through its lens into fields including psychology, sociology and anthropology, and economics, we don't often hear reports from the intersection of WoW and literature. With a lore and canon of their own making, WoW and the Warcraft world don't fit alongside such developments as Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative, a course from Vanderbilt University available via free online educational provider Coursera that leans heavily on the riches of narrative theory, intermediality, and game theory in Lord of the Rings Online.

But there's no denying the omnipresence of WoW's influence -- and yes, that includes within the ivory-tooled tower of literature, as well. "I'm a literature professor," states Dr. Jay Clayton, one of the Coursera class's instructors. "I'm fascinated by what games can teach us about the operations of storytelling." Dr. Clayton says he's hoping to attract WoW players and their own WoW-tinged perspectives to his class this summer in order to help build a more complete picture of what WoW is itself as media, not only as a lens through which we can view other disciplines.

I'm a big fan of McSweeney's, the web home of Dave Eggers' McSweeney's publishing house (and whenever I can, I try to help out 826 CHI, the Chicago chapter of their writing center) -- they offer up quick little humor pieces every weekday in addition to various events and shows around the country. And the other day, as a few readers have kindly informed us, they focused their literary light on World of Warcraft -- writer Tyler Curry has a fun piece about how he was forced to choose between the game and the woman he loved.

It is very funny to hear WoW locales and situations stuck in between the usual patter of a couple in a relationship, and though this is, we presume, a fictional account of something that Dr. Phil claims happens all the time, it's well-written. Plus, the dig at "role-players" made us chuckle, too.

But we do have one nit to pick, one issue in here that we just can't ignore and/or laugh casually at as we're obviously meant to. Seriously, with the leveling changes since 2.3, why would anyone run Gnomeregan anymore? If he doesn't know that there are much easier and more profitable ways to level through that range, maybe he deserves to be dumped anyway.

Here's two bits of literary fun for your Saturday afternoon.

First, earlier this week, I saw this nice little piece of fan fiction over on WoW Livejournal. I'm not usually a fan of fan fiction, but this one just explains so much. And I really do hate those things, too.

And then yesterday, swampers put together this terrific little Shakespearean parody in the World of Warcraft style. "To quit, perchance to /afk" -- that's great. "Out out, brief arena match -- life's but a walking Shadow Priest, a poor player, who struts and QQs while the tank goes down, and then runs OOM."

Great stuff. Literary humor is always fun, and mixing it in with WoW makes it even better. Laugh and enjoy.