The Queue: Azeroth’s pending climate disaster, the end and the beginning

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. This was the first time Katie and I had the pleasure and honor of spending it with Max, our newborn. He came five weeks early and had some initial problems, and I thought the happiest day of my life would be when he was discharged from the NICU. I was mistaken though — it was the day after Christmas (when his grandparents got him an actual dragon mount), and we sat and listened to Puff the Magic Dragon. He calmed, the cat jumped up to snuggle with us, and as I had done 35-years ago, we were transported to the land of Honalee.

Music, imagination, fantasy, and storytelling are such a huge part of our lives for those of us reading these words, I couldn’t help but become awash in emotion as I realized we never really grew up — that we’re all Jackie Paper still keeping Puff’s might roar alive.

Let’s work to keep it that way.

This is interesting. In some ways this story has been told already, in others it’s been hinted at, and in others yet it’s part of the distant history. Let’s take a look at these.

Distant History — The Sundering

The largest climate disaster to strike Azeroth was The Sundering that happened 10,000 years ago during the war of the ancients. It saw land masses literally split apart and entire areas get wiped out. Species undoubtedly became extinct, and for all intents and purposes, it should be considered the end of the world.

Seriously, think about it for a minute — the entire planet changed; nothing that was pre-sundering was the same as it was post-sundering. Granted major power survived, but they all had adapted to the new reality. Some grew, others faded, and new ones completely popped up. While one might argue that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, you’d certainly have to call it an epoch, and given that it makes for an interesting study, one that a Queue answer doesn’t do justice.

But give me the benefit of the doubt for a moment that this did represent the end of the world — that means that all of Azeroth is currently living in a post-apocalyptic era. In some ways this makes sense too; the climate itself is unstable and changes at the whim of outsides forces (hello Legion invasions darkening the sky), and the very life on Azeroth has never been as stable as it was pre-sundering. Areas that were once fertile and lush forests have become deserts, forested areas became frozen tundras, and entire cities have been swept under the sea. From what we know about climate change in real life, this is exactly what would happen.

Finally, insert an entire article on what the Emerald Dream means to this here. I could go on forever…

The Story in the Now — Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria

In Cata we were told the story of how Deathwing’s destruction brought about massive and incredibly deadly changes to the environment. There are literal scars on the planet now. We’ve seen how the factions respond to this; burning down forests and consuming the earth for all its worth, leaving a barren wasteland in its wake. Magical energy was exploited at the cost of the environment and we intruded into the depths of Azeroth in search of answers to combat Deathwing; giving relatively little heed to the costs it would have. Doing so angered the elementals, and Evil Earth came back to bite us square in the butt.

In Mists we had a group of people that tried to stay away from the disaster they foresaw between nature and Azeroth’s civilizations. They lived in harmony with the earth (for the most part); when we came we attempted, at least, to live by their rules, however there was much failure.

Climate change and ecological crises are numerous in the storylines during these two expansions. Azshara and Ashenvale come to mind in particular. While these can still be placed in the context of the first point I made about already being in a post-climate disaster Azeroth, alone they tell a good storry.

Things to Come

Consider where several of us think we’re headed eventually — to a time where we’re fighting back the Black Empire and a resurgence of the Old Gods. This is not a war that is going to be fought with just swords and staves. The previous inhabitends of Azeroth manipulated the very earth itself, and if we’re going to win … I’ll bet a paycheck that we’ll be facing a story of another major ecological epoch and climate disaster.

At this point in my life I’m not really sure I’m ever going to give up the game. Joe and I talked about this a few months ago — we’re so invested into the story, our characters, the community, etc, that with the exception of Blizzard literally shutting off the severs for good, neither of us think we’ll ever stop.

Part of this is that I’ve invested over ten years of my professional life in this, but the other part is that it’s a Tolkien-level engagement for me. The works of Tolkien are never going to be distant in my mind, and neither will WoW (nor the Forgotten Realms, please god give me a solid MMO or Skyrim-like game one day). It’s this commitment to an unfolding and enveloping story that won’t ever let me walk away from this.

Along these same lines, I had a realization a few years ago: I know parts of Azeroth’s history better than my own. This isn’t to say that I don’t know the general outlay of human history, major players and powers, events, etc… but can I list off the dynamics of 1800’s America as well as I can Azeroth 10,000 years ago? Nope, I couldn’t. This sent me down a personal path of historical growth where I’ve been reading a ton more history books and engaging in discussions at a deeper level than I have been. I’m now getting into local history — again I know the history of Westfall pretty damn well, but not my own state.

But returning the the original question and answering in TLDR: it’ll never end for me.

For me it was a choice at the time between EverQuest 2 and WoW. I have to say that in 2004 I was much more into EQ2 than WoW, and I initially thought that the game would far surpass what Blizzard was working on.

The difference between the two was the complexity of the game; EQ2 was much more complex and it presented an economic and gameplay system that related to the hardcore fanbase a lot better than WoW did (at the time). Keep in mind too that at this point the hardcore fanbase was the target audience of these games.

What I didn’t see coming, what no one did, was that WoW would be a success because it allowed entry into a genre of video games that was previously inaccessible to the majority of people; either due to time commitment or because of the overly complex nature of the systems (both game and social).

Slowly I started to find WoW’s story also much more compelling than EQ2 — I think that was the thing that got me to flip sides officially. EQ2 always felt it was about the systems first, whereas WoW I felt the story and escapism was put ahead of everything else. In 2004ish I need that escapism, and that’s how I got hooked.