"For the Horde!"
I jumped as I read the line this morning in Svenska Dagbladet, the second biggest national morning newspaper in Sweden, which I've always thought had an audience consisting of elderly conservatives, me being an exception due to heritage and habit.
The triumphant sentence concluded a full page article, more or less openly celebrating Blizzard and Azeroth, due to the five year anniversary of today. The article was published on the department for arts, where they normally cover literature, theater and design of the more narrow kind .
In the article (rough translation to English here, thank's Elnia!), the writer discusses in a rather serious manner things like the success factors for WoW, how the online worlds offer new ways for people to interact and what impact it has on the lives of millions of people. He touches the problems with keeping the balance to real life, and he succeeds in keeping it rather neutral manner, neither denying that those exist, nor making a huge sensation, over-criticizing it.
What makes his article different to similar articles where someone is trying to explain what's so special about WoW to non-gamers, is that it's written by someone who has firsthand experience from it. It isn't a journalist just referring to things that he has heard. He's obviously a dedicated WoW player himself.
And we're not talking about some 20-year old new recruit to an obscure never-heard of institution at some random university who wrote it. In fact the author is the 38 year old vice president of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Nicklas Lundblad.
While he's flirting a bit with the cultural elite, referring to sociological terms that most of us never have heard of, such as "Gesellschaft" , it shines through that he actually loves to play his dear sneaky undead rogue Gorthaq.
It's a new world, isn't it? At the age of five, WoW is embraced by the cultural elite of Sweden.
Such a pity though that the guy was horde. There's only one way to respond to an essay like his:
"For the Alliance!"
I jumped as I read the line this morning in Svenska Dagbladet, the second biggest national morning newspaper in Sweden, which I've always thought had an audience consisting of elderly conservatives, me being an exception due to heritage and habit.
The triumphant sentence concluded a full page article, more or less openly celebrating Blizzard and Azeroth, due to the five year anniversary of today. The article was published on the department for arts, where they normally cover literature, theater and design of the more narrow kind .
In the article (rough translation to English here, thank's Elnia!), the writer discusses in a rather serious manner things like the success factors for WoW, how the online worlds offer new ways for people to interact and what impact it has on the lives of millions of people. He touches the problems with keeping the balance to real life, and he succeeds in keeping it rather neutral manner, neither denying that those exist, nor making a huge sensation, over-criticizing it.
What makes his article different to similar articles where someone is trying to explain what's so special about WoW to non-gamers, is that it's written by someone who has firsthand experience from it. It isn't a journalist just referring to things that he has heard. He's obviously a dedicated WoW player himself.
And we're not talking about some 20-year old new recruit to an obscure never-heard of institution at some random university who wrote it. In fact the author is the 38 year old vice president of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Nicklas Lundblad.
While he's flirting a bit with the cultural elite, referring to sociological terms that most of us never have heard of, such as "Gesellschaft" , it shines through that he actually loves to play his dear sneaky undead rogue Gorthaq.
It's a new world, isn't it? At the age of five, WoW is embraced by the cultural elite of Sweden.
Such a pity though that the guy was horde. There's only one way to respond to an essay like his:
"For the Alliance!"
14 comments:
You folks need to come up with a better battlecry than a ripoff of your arch-enemies. "Remember Lordaeron!" "Glory to the Alliance!" "The Light guide us!" or even "Remember to loot the quest item!" But the current version lacks creativity and rhythm, and I just can't take my enemies seriously if they don't have a good battlecry.
Re: main point of the article - That's actually pretty cool. I wish there were an English translation available. I'm always afraid that I come off as a fanboi when I try to describe Wow to non-gamers.
To Juzaba's point above:
Larisa, you're a Gnome! Your battlecry should default to "For Gnomeregan!"
The article is long so I will not post it here but if you wish to read it in English you can use Google Translate.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.svd.se%2Fkulturnoje%2Funderstrecket%2Fartikel_3834205.svd&sl=sv&tl=en
"FOR PONY!"
Richard the Warlock is my outstanding heroe, all hail warlocks.
Juzaba- does that scare you :D?
And awesome , nice to see the "elite"(lol) dabble into WoW.
The only proper alliance battlecry is "don't tase me bro". And their hymn is "I surrender" by Rainbow.
I have to agree with Daniel - besides, Horde is world famous for their inspiring battlecries.
"For The Horde!" "Blood and Thunder!"
- Aenur of Hydraxis
This is further evidence of just how wide-spread wow is. It's just amazing how many people play this game. Blizzard practically prints money with the amount of subscribtions they have.
I like alot of the greetings and goodbyes in wow, and I must say that's the thing I miss the most.
@Juzaba: you're right! I guess I was just sloppy, using the Achievement battlecry. There surely are better ones out there, used by the PvP enthusiasts.
@Josh: oh yeah, ofc! For Gnomeregan!
@Elnia: added to article, thanks.
@Kromus: nice addition!
@Daniel: hm... should I take it as an insult?
Just an ordinary faction teasing :)
No harm was intended and was expecting few horde bashing one liners in return.
It's definitely "Grab your sword and fight the Horde!"
If ya be a Troll mon, ya can ahways use ma favorite:
Tazdingo!
There's only one thing I can say that would make any sense. Alliance members just don't have good battlecries.
But to sum all this up, this is the best response...
FOR THE HORDE!
It's a good thing to see positive articles by smart, educated people.
When I see the topic of gaming on tv it's usually in a bad way. Two weeks ago I saw a documentary about game addiction in China. Mmorpgs = evil seemed to be the message. And two months ago I saw a documentary that followed three game addicts. One showing a student who didn't do much else then play WoW >10 hours a day. Studying didn't enter his mind. And last week, at the launch of Call of Duty they interviewed a 10 year old just to hear him say how fun it is to shoot people. The fact that the game is 18+ didn't seem to bother anyone.
I really hope to see more main media defending gaming. As it is now, they make you feel like you should be ashamed if you play a "violent" video game.
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