World of Warcraft Analysis pt. 3, or: Examining Death Rituals in WoW

(This entry was written for SNHU's GAM-205 class in the Fall 2017 semester.)

    Before we start, I would like to bring up the return of Bubsy, of all things. For reasons unknown, the company behind the revival of the Giana sisters decided to bring the Bubster back in a $30 purchase. As a fan of Arcade Pit (Sundays at 8PM EST,) I naturally had to watch as Smight and TieTuesday, two streamers from Something Awful, played through it on Halloween. They both got through the game in just under an hour, and they both wound up returning it. It's kind of sad that they'd bring Bubsy back in a game that feels so generic and short, but at least that Space Funeral-inspired 'Bubsy' RPG (based off of this blog) has a decent shot at being better than the new Bubsy. Yes, the concept for the character and game is...unusual, but somehow, a transgender not-Bubsy makes more sense to me than Sexy Shelob, and those are both characters I never thought I'd encounter. Crazy world, huh?

    And now for the main article

    Today, I'm talking about death.

A topic that Nethack players know way too much about.

    This isn't about dying in video games, however. I won't talk about how player characters tend to be on a revolving door policy with death while 99% of NPCs have only one live. Or how the plot of Final Fantasy 7 could have been derailed if Cloud had thought to use a Phoenix Down on Aeris. No, this is about how people mourn real-life deaths through video games. A topic WoW with which WoW has some experience.

    I actually have some experience with one way Blizzard honored the deceased. Back when I was still playing a tauren shaman, I remember hearing on a TV show on G4, a channel which was then focused on video games, about the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior, an in-game memorial to Michael Koiter, It was located in the Barrens and honored a Blizzard employee who had died during the production of WoW. The shrine featured a poem from his wife, Michael's character laid to rest on the shrine, and a spirit healer named Koiter. Having never played any other Warcraft games or engaged in any other Warcraft media, I only felt a little bit of melancholy about his death. Still, I remember taking the time to visit the shrine and pay my respects. I also heard of a few others that have been added while I was away, including two to Robin Williams.

Michael Koiter's character on the Shrine.

    I personally don't have much experience with funerals or anything similar in online games. As I mentioned last time, I never really became good friends with anyone on a solely online basis. Still, I suppose that it's natural that mourning and memorials would be a part of the online world. We have books and TV shows that honor the deceased, so it feels natural that various cultural rituals about life milestones would spread to MMORPGs.

    What I can do, however, is mention an interesting game that focuses on the topic of death. A Mortician's Tale is a recently released game on Steam that has you playing as a death-positive woman who works at a family owned funeral company. While the reviews on Steam are mixed right now, I've heard pretty good things about how it looks at how we see death as a society. Apparently it was inspired by the works of mortician and author Caitlin Doughty.

    Since this is the last week of me playing World of Warcraft, here's a quick summary of the highlights of my time as a goblin rogue:

• Electrocuted some Jamaicans trolls enslaved to mine some sort of ore used in a Coca-cola expy.
• Drove around for like ten minutes because I didn't realize the quest marker was pointing to one of the people I was supposed to pick up and not the quest giver.
• Nearly lost some sort of American football-like game due to a combination of sudden gameplay change and a bit of "How I shot cannon?"
• Scored a field goal, and watched as Deathwing visited the island and caused a Pompei-esque volcanic eruption, as is tradition for every goblin player. Citizens still seemed horrified despite the fact that their island has been destroyed over a million times.
• Got enslaved by some goblin who's supposed to be a trade king or something.
• Nearly drowned when the trade king's slave ship was blasted by some human ship's cannonballs. Given that this happens for every goblin player, I can only imagine the conversation on board:

               "Captain! Another goblin ship approaches!"

               "AGAIN!? I'm so glad we bought these cannonballs in bulk."

• Was revived by makeshift defibrillator. Unable to inform savior that death meant nothing to me except for my clothing getting a bit torn. And possibly feeling like crap for a while, depending on how impatient I am.
• Saved some friends in escape pods, including trade king. Minutes after saying "No hard feelings, right?" he starts blaming everything on me. Game refused to let me stab him. Don't you hate when someone is obviously evil or simply a dick and you can't kill them?
• Fed some bomb-throwing monkeys some explosive bananas. PETA, I'll stop being cruel to the monkeys if you put the boxing kangaroo back in the American version of the new Tekken, okay?
• Did some stuff for some orcs. In this game, I speak my own unique language. It's the same as regular English, except instead of "Hello," I say "What do you want, who do I kill, and what will you give me?"
• See my suspicions be confirmed as trade king guy runs off vowing revenge on me. I don't remember doing anything to him, though. Whatever.