Sep 1
The Bloody Villains of WAR
The Problem With Evil
So, I’m reading through a novel set in Warhammer Online sent to me by the folks at Mythic Entertainment. I’m sure I’m going to review it for Massively, but it’s really made me think about my choice … my assumption, rather … that I’d be playing on the side of Destruction. For a long time I’ve registered my appreciation for the Goblin Shaman class, but the number of people planning to play that class has made me thing I might want to play a female Zealot. I like the class, and I have a feeling women are going to be fairly sparse on the ground in the Chaos faction.
The problem is that this book is turning my stomach when it comes to the Destruction races. As you might imagine, it’s set on the side of Order. Just as the vast majority of MMO players play humans, so here have they made humans, dwarves, and elves the protagonists to ensure there’s identification between the reader and the characters. The forces of Destruction are portrayed as a rampaging horde of killers, murderers, and freaks - as they should be.
The stomach-turning comes in when you realize that there’s no ambiguity here. Mythic, the Warhammer IP, and Games Workshop haven’t given us any of the ‘wiggle-room’ that Warcraft does. In WoW, the Horde isn’t evil … just different. The Orcs, Blood Elves, and Trolls are essentially trying to overcome racial problems and poor decisions, while the Tauren are genuinely a benevolent and spiritual race. The Forsaken are the only group that could be really maligned as evil - they’re a deeply embittered people and by their very nature are somewhat corrupt.
Compare that with the races in Warhammer. The Orcs are mindless, furious rage. They’re a horde in the purest sense, a band of mindless villains whose only thought is to destroy and pillage. They’re the antithesis of civilization, a weapon pointed at the heart of the Dwarven culture. The Dark Elves, on the other hand, are pure hatred. They torture, enslave, and twist the realm of the High Elves because they hate what they see and want it destroyed. There’s no grand plan to build their own realm atop the ashes of the old, either. While Malaketh has a plan, it’s simply to ruin and burn - not to build.
Chaos is the most disturbing by far. Unlike the other races, Chaos is a perversion and twisting of the human race. They force themselves into the human realms, grasping and changing with ichor, chemicals, and tentacles. And again, their only goal is to burn and end. There’s no way to pretty it up, no way to claim they’re just fighting back against aggressors. Certainly the Order races are far from perfect - the Humans are racists, the Dwarves are xenophobic, and the Elves are overweeningly proud.
The bottom line, though, is that they don’t deserve the fate that the Destruction races want for them. The forces of Destruction want nothing more than to see every elf, dwarf, and human dead. It’s a shallow, cold, cruel basis for a civilization and to be honest it’s really offputting. Just because of my reconnection with the world the IP dictates, I’m seriously considering playing an Order character.
Probably a Warrior Priest. Hammer to the FACE! We’ll see. Do you consider the fictive implications of a character before you make it?
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No, because 99% of the time it doesn’t matter. Will the forces of Destruction ever be able to accomplish their goal in Warhammer? No, because that would make it a very short game.
The only consideration I ever give is, “What are my friends doing?” I played Midgard on DAOC because that’s the team my friends picked. I played Alliance on WoW becaues that’s what my friends played. Which team would I play in Warhammer? Whichever my friends played.
The only interesting bit for Warhammer is that the classes are so different. If I want to play a pet class, I’d had to play a Squid Herder as far as I understand. So, that might change how the dynamics work in Warhammer.
P.S., am I the only one that rolls my eyes at the “WAR” acronym? WoW at least had the relative subtlety not to use the acronym in heavy-handed marketing. Acronyms are developed by the community; therefore, I think we should start calling it the “Warhammer Online Experience”, or WOE for short. :P
The WoW counterparts to the Dark Elves, Chaos and raw Orcs are the Naga, Burning Legion and carebearified-for-the-mmo Orcs. WoW used the carebear wand to make the Horde playable races. All WAR did was make the coolest races playable.
Does anyone ever worry that these games are teaching the younger generation racism? The game literally programs the player to hate another race right from the get go. I guess it’s comparable to violence in video games so… meh
I think the limitations of the MMO experience prevent players from ever seriously internalizing the ethos of the characters they play. And I think developers will always subvert true evil into something more tame and defensible — if only to keep them from being crucified in the press. So you have the Orcs suffering prejudice and internment camps in WoW and the funny-talking slapstick evil Greenskins in WAR. By the time it comes to character creation, moral values are so trivialized that they’re probably on a par with hairstyle in many player’s decision-making and actual gameplay.
Personally, I do tend to fall on the side of the “good” races. I’ve read a lot of places that the more casual, less experieced players tend to favor good. Maybe so. All I know is I have no bottled rage I need release, no virtual puppies I’ve been hankering to kick.
One thing that will be interesting to see is how well the public will receivie WAR’s approach where character classes are faction, race and even sometimes sex-specific. I understand it from the lore perspective, but it’s an approach that diverges a bit from its biggest competitor, WoW, where you always choose the sex of your character regardless of race or class, and where classes are mostly mirrored across the two sides (you can have an undead or a gnome magea and they work the exact same).
Mostly I’ve just found the writing to be the stomach turning part of the novel….
Psychochild: Definitely agree about the friends thing, but most of my MMO chums seem to be very grumpy about Warhammer and are skipping it. So I’ve been thinking about things more generally.
Brent: Have you ever read any of the other Warhammer novels? I actually think this one isn’t too bad, comparatively. I do love how the elf always does things that are “impossibly” difficult. I do not think that word means what you think it means …
Well, from the perspective of the Destruction side, it’s not quite so black and white.
The Orcs love nothing better than a good fight. In fact, they thrive on it. The more an orc fights, and the stronger his enemies, the bigger and stronger he becomes. For an orc, its not about good and evil. Its all about finding the next fight.
The Dark Elves are descendants of the people of the northern-most regions of Ulthuan, who lived on the frontline of the eternal war against Chaos. The constant war left them bitter at their cousins, who they felt they shielded with their blood, but who looked down on them as uncultured barbarians. It seems that while elves are more resistant than humans to the physical mutations that come with exposure to Chaos, they can still be spiritually corrupted - and Chaos exploited that resentment to splinter the Elven race.
The Norse have it even worse. Their homelands are right at the edge of the Chaos Wastes… sometimes… sometimes the Wastes roll in like a tide and then roll out, leaving madness and mutation. To survive, the Norse pledged themselves to the Ruinous Powers in exchange for protection from the daemons of the Wastes.
Nothing is black and white in the Warhammer World.
I’d honestly suggest that even if you have no interest in the tabletop game, picking up the Warhammer Fantasy Battles army books for the various races in WAR would be a good idea. They’re packed full of tasty fluff that’s been cultivated over the last quarter century.
I haven’t seen this Warhammer Online novel yet… but here are a few old-school Warhammer novels I’d suggest:
The Konrad series: Konrad, Shadowbreed, Warblade
The Orfeo series: Zaragoz, Plague Daemon, Storm Warriors
The Genevieve series: Drachenfels, Genevieve Undead (and two others I can’t think of off the top of my head)
The first three Felix and Gotrek books: Trollslayer, Skavenslayer, Daemonslayer (I like the others too, but the first three are my favorites)
Actually, reading some of the novels inclined me towards Order too. The first three Felix and Gotrek novels in particular, and I gotta say, playing in Empire lands after reading those books was amazing. It was like being there.
(Silly, I know!)
Also, I can’t stand dark elves. I like the classes and how they look, but having played through the starting zone I just found them to be so nasty and petty that I couldn’t handle any more of it.
pfft.
I knew a guy who ruthlessly killed anyone who got in his way. Who beat people to death with his own two hands. Who womanized constantly and almost raped the one female who treated him as a human being. Who killed his own cousin to avoid having to deal with the consequences of his actions.
And millions adored him for it every week. Of course I mean Tony Soprano. The difference between a ‘good guy’ with a few problems and a mustache twirling villain is the amount of time you spend with them.
One thing I always loved about the Warhammer(and 40k) worlds is they pulled no punches about either side. Witchhunters would crucify a whole village to make sure they killed one heretic(a heretic being anyone who believes differently than them, not just chaos). If dwarves could snap their fingers and wipe out all the greenskins in a bloody genocide they wouldn’t lose a nights sleep over it. There are no good guys.
threadjack
Have you ever read the original ‘V for Vendetta’? The comic book was brilliant because it was about choosing between anarchy and fascism. It really reflected whatever your personal leanings were, whether you thought V was a terrorist or not. The movie sucked because it became about choosing between democracy and fascism. Gee, I wonder which way I should go there.
And that’s how I look at WAR. It’s not peaceful farmers vs. hordes of evil mutants. It’s jackboots vs. nihilistic hopeless sociopaths. They both kind of suck.
/threadjack
Also if you go shammy let me know what server you’re going to be on. I’m rolling Witch Elf and I’m not afraid to cut a mother fucker for ya’ ;)
On Warhammer: the original short story collections - Ignorant Armies, etc - are still my favourite. Creepy, dark, with big borders and black and white plates. Gosh, that was a long time ago. They were also remarkably well-written, hardly surprising given the list of authors they managed to rope into the project. And, of course, Jack Yeovil == Kim Newman, who’s simply top.
40k’s fluff, of course, strips away the comedy-mediaevalism from WFB’s background, gives you a full-on galaxy-smothering human fascist theocracy, and then justifies it. Oh, the horror.
For my first Eve Online character, abandoned after a few months play several years back, I chose the Gallente race, since their fluff was the least unpleasant.
Second time around, and I have three Amarr mains. Someday I’ll actually roleplay, someday.
“Do you consider the fictive implications of a character before you make it?”
Not really.
There’s always the “Jessica Rabbit Factor” to consider. Just because a given race is considered “evil” by a particular author in a setting doesn’t mean all members of that race are evil, or that the entire race is actually “evil”. If the novel you read was about a Witch Hunters pursuit of Chaos in a village/city where he has killed women and children (as WH are wont to do) I think you’d have a different perception of the Empire perhaps?
Not all characters are actually evil, sometimes there just drawn that way.
And the Greenskins actually require combat to continue living (something to do with a chemical in there fungal based brain). If no one else is around, they’ll quite happily kill each other to survive. As such I consider them more like “sharks” of the WAR universe, and not actually “evil” per se.
For any _good_ fantasy RPG/novel, the moral view is totally dependant on the particular “outlook hill” the author/protagonist stands on, otherwise the story will be crap :)
And considering how the novel in question made you think about things, I don’t think it was all bad…
I’m not familiar with the Warhammer lore, but Barnett is and has stated a few times that Order vs Destruction is not Good vs Evil. All of the races want one or more of the others completely wiped out. But they each envision the ideal world in a different way.
In that sense, it’s a typical fantasy setting. Races in fantasy worlds usually act as symbols. Their characters and actions shouldn’t be taken completely literally (so fantasy stories generally don’t tout racism or genocide). Such stories are not really about peoples fighting; they’re about cultures struggling for domination. The destruction of a fantasy race isn’t genocide; it’s a victory of ideas.
Most fantasy settings state or imply that certain values are superior. Warhammer apparently doesn’t, and that’s what makes it unique.
Perhaps the game, as opposed to the books and tabletop, makes the races of Order seem good. I haven’t enough time with them in the game to know.
Anyway, yes, I consider the fiction when deciding which character will be my main. But to what extent depends on how vital the lore is to the game and how well that lore is communicated. In most MMOs, gameplay largely ignores lore. For example, races that supposedly hate each other are commonly found grouping. So far, I’ve found the WAR quests to be generally well-written. Mythic has done a great job of giving each race a unique tone and style of speech. And the lore is integrated well into gameplay.
From the article: “The forces of Destruction want nothing more than to see every elf, dwarf, and human dead. [...] I’m seriously considering playing an Order character. Probably a Warrior Priest. Hammer to the FACE!”
There’s certainly something to be said for a “Hammer to the FACE!”, but… do you think that every Warrior Priest of Sigmar doesn’t want to see every Dark Elf, Ork and Chaos-Corrupted, dead?
The conflict is Order versus Chaos, not Good vs. Evil. (And really as far as Warhammer lore goes it’s usually everybody versus everybody except for the current “big crisis”.)
I’m really on agreement with Zenke on this one. I’ve been part of a pre-release Destruction guild for the past two years.
When I started playing I found the stories behind Chaos and the DE starting areas to be so bleak and depressing.
Then I rolled a Dorf and joined The Older Gamers on the Order side and had an absolute blast bashing on the ugliness of Destruction!
I’m now completely torn between joining my pre-release guild on Dest or TOG on Order… OH THE GUILD DRAMA!!!!
I specifically chose Horde in WoW to be able to try out some thought experiments about the nature of evil. For example, my main is a slightly unhinged troll mage. She’s manipulative, scheming, violent, homicidal and even outright sadistic. She’s the kind of person that makes her allies shudder and be glad that they’re not on the receiving end of her spells. But she also chooses her prey carefully. She’s either in the frontlines fighting the next Big Bad, knee-deep in the dead. Or she’s at the sidelines, sweet-talking various factions to join the fight (for their own good, she says). But is she evil? She doesn’t think so, but her methods may cause more harm in the form of collateral damage than good.
Oh, and before anyone asks, I created her long before I heard about Dexter. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
People seem to forget the rp in mmorpg.
I don’t mean everyone should speak with “thee”’s and “thou”’s but simply that it is perfectly ok to play a character completely opposed to your set of values.
You can be a christian and play a devourer of infants, you can be left-winged liberal and play a fascist knight. Heck, my religious beliefs can be defined as pagan and i often play a cleric or a paladin. It’s ok.
You’re not gradually turn into the “dark side”. Do whatever you want with your software as long as you do the right thing with your fleshware. ;)