Breakfast Topic: I miss murlocs

More accurately, I miss fighting murlocs. My favorite thing to do in WoW is fight stuff. I don’t care what the end goal is — point me toward something and I’ll fight it. As a result, I also spend a lot of time thinking about what it is I’m fighting. Lately, I find I miss the junk creatures of old. I miss murlocs, gnolls, and kobolds. I miss bandits, cutthroats, and rogue wizards. I miss whelplings and drakes. It isn’t the dragons with epic voice acting I miss, no — it’s the younger ones, the ones that once littered the landscape. I miss elementals that are just a mess of floating rocks or balls of fire without bizarre armor or special flair.

I don’t know if it’s nostalgia speaking. It might be just that: A longing for simpler times. However, I think those lesser creatures added something to the world — the world was alive outside of whatever it was the next endboss on the horizon might have been doing. The gnolls never appeared in a raid. Murlocs did — but as trash mobs. They stood as an example that creatures outside of the player characters existed in the world, doing whatever it was they did. Bandits and cutthroats in low level human questing zones were examples of the ground level problems in Stormwind and its territories — a part of Onyxia’s story, yes, but also stood on their own. Stormwind has been weakened. Times are hard. There are bandits.

Nowadays, things need to be much more epic. No, there can’t be draenei bandits. They need to sign on with the Burning Legion — they need to be Sargerei! Elementals on Draenor? Okay, yes, Draenor has always been heavy on the elements and thus the elementals having some epic clash there makes sense, but elementals have become a little too fashionable for my taste. Water crowns? Rock elementals are some kind of gorilla thing now? What happened to air elementals being formless whirlwinds? Why are they people-shaped? Is the wind people? I admit I’m getting a little grumpy old man here, but sometimes I still get a taste for the timeless basics of fantasy: bandits, dragons, evil sorcerers, skeletons, and giant spiders. I miss them.

I just want to kill a murloc. Please? Just one?

Am I the only one that misses murlocs?