Tuesday 8 March 2016

Sad treasures of Draenor



When you're looking for Dreanor treasures in WoW, which is a fairly fast way to complete last few levels, you run into some pretty sad fucking stories… Or not even stories, just … well, I suppose if you don’t know what the story is, it’s called a mystery. That word makes a whole lot of sense suddenly. Missed story. Damn.
Any hoo. Am listening to some seventies music, some Stones, Jimmy Hendrix, some kind of a Vietnam inspired mixtape, while flying around and picking up the pieces of a time past, of strangers whom nobody buried. For example, you find a locked chest, surrounded by a chain from which a collar with the skeleton of somebody is let behind in the water. There is no story to say who this person was and why was it murdered. Or you find remains of a climber, his pickaxe, in the ice of some mountain. Or you find only slight hints of a remote camp and something like a medal saying: For extended watch post duty or some such. Or remains of a soldier left far behind and only his father’s letter, saying how proud he is the boy got into the army. Or a confused man, unable to remember where he is or why, because he only remembers reading a book by a tree and outside of the village you saw remains, a skeleton of someone killed while he was reading a book under a tree… Frozen corpses with love letters promising a future together. Or half written love letters, never delivered. Things washed ashore. Tiny houses in solitude, with only bones in beds. There are A LOT of these. I actually really love them. Not because I enjoy macabre, but because they feel very real. Corpse of a refugee with his possessions spilled into the river, while he tried to hide under a bridge. Poorly thought-out bandit hideaways. An old coin in a well, or a ring in the lake…. There is so much lore in this stupid game. I watched a villain try to manipulate his lieutenant, the would be antagonist, into servitude by bringing up his dead son – the son who, before over the years we’ve been playing getting messed up as well, turned the course of history and saved his father…  It gives you such a rush, rooting for the characters you’ve known for almost a decade… and knowing that sometimes they were responsible for the nameless, helpless victims you encounter while doing archaeology, or they tried to help and failed. It is the perfect non-reality to be in late at night, when all of the other realities have been dealt with :)

Grommash, Garrosh's hardcore dad at the moment when he begins to defy Gul'Dan...

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