Sunday, November 12, 2017

New Human Lands - Kul Tiras

I have a confession to make:

I like playing humans in RPGs.

My main character, who has held that position since Burning Crusade, is a Human Paladin, and while I think that, if I weren't attached to the character (with a whole backstory - he and my Undead Rogue are brothers with a kind of MCU Thor/Loki relationship going on,) I'd probably have changed him into a Draenei (my "vice main" is my Draenei DK,) I honestly feel pretty good playing a human character.

One of the odd things about WoW is that while humans are a very big part of the world - standing as the flagship race of the Alliance - we actually haven't gotten new human territory in a long time.

Human lands are almost exclusively on the Eastern Kingdoms, and that region was mostly put in the game at the outset. After vanilla, the only zones you could really describe as "Human" zones added to the game were Grizzly Hills in Wrath and Gilneas and Tol Barad in Cataclysm. Now, you could make the argument that Icecrown also counts (when it comes to the Scourge, the distinction between Undead and Human - as in the playable race - gets a little muddled.) And you could also argue for the inclusion of Vrykul zones, though I'd say that if you're going to group Vrykul and Humans together, you'd have to also group up Trolls, Night Elves, and Blood Elves.

But in Battle For Azeroth, we're going to be getting an entire continent (granted, one of two) that is all human territory. And I'm actually really excited about that.

Humans in WoW have the most classical fantasy settings - medieval towns and villages, typically in forests or grasslands with a European aesthetic. And while it is a bit problematic that in WoW, Humanity and Whiteness are kind of entwined (I'd love to see a long-lost continent of forgotten kingdoms with complex non-white humans at some point,) I also find that when we get human-themed zones, Blizzard really nails the tone.

See, the odd thing is that while Diablo's Tristram setting is 100% gothic European style, I find that WoW does it better. Maybe I just like the over-the-top nature of WoW's aesthetic. I love the Tim Burton-esque aesthetics of the Forsaken, but I also really like the classic Arthurian (or Robin Hood-ian) green forest of Elwynn. I think another big part of it is that, because WoW goes into such profoundly different kinds of settings, from the Sha-blasted Dread Wastes to the alien landscapes of Draenor, returning to the more traditional fantasy setting that we see in human lands feels, oddly, refreshing (especially because we know that our next stop could be anything from the inside of an enormous sea monster to an alien planet swarming with space demons.)

These zones were great for me to level up my Paladin way back in 2006, but the degree to which the game looks better now is pretty staggering. Much as I love Elwynn and Silverpine, they're not really up to the zone-design standards we have now.

And that makes me super-excited for Kul Tiras.

I mean, look at Drustvar: we're getting a zone that has evil witches using death magic! How did we go so long without having evil witches? Warcraft has built out really fascinating new lore to flesh out races that in most fantasy games would simply be monsters, and I never want them to stop doing that (though I appreciate getting a break from Orcs 24/7 - wouldn't mind seeing Goblins and Tauren fleshed out a bit more, but I'll take Trolls.) But I'm also really happy to see a bit more of the classic fantasy stuff - which feels less boring than it might in a game that is all classical fantasy stuff.

And I'm sure that whatever comes after Battle for Azeroth will be very different - if we don't kill N'zoth in this one, maybe we'll get an "Underdark but not called that because I'm assuming Wizards of the Coast has a copyright on that word" expansion, which would probably feel incredibly different from you standard haunted forest ripe for monster-hunters.

Call me lame for being into humans, but I'm actually really happy to see WoW doing more with that most common of fantasy races.

No comments:

Post a Comment