WoW as in literature

Unlike most games that have very simple storylines, WoW has lots of background, both coming from previous games and from literature that has been written by various authors. Now I can't claim to know too much of the lore behind the game, but from what I do know of it I can easily relate to other fantasy novels.

Anybody out there think reading fantasy is for geeks? Well if you play WoW you are pretty much playing a role in a fantasy, and that would make you a geek too right? And I'm not just talking about Lord of the Rings here, but pretty much any fantasy novel or series out there. The Warcraft storyline loves to follow the recipe that most of those books use.

A powerful evil being unlike anything the world has seen before calls upon an army of terrifying beings to kill off all that stand in their way. The good guys are comprised of multiple races who had their problems in the past, but to face this greater evil they must work together. Despite the overwhelming forces of evil the good guys find a way to defeat them, usually through some kind of magic. Sound familiar? Seems a lot like the Scourge or the Burning Legion to me.

I relate this to fantasy novels just so you can get a sense of what I'm talking about, but what is interesting is that most of the ideas for the fantasy books come mainly from Scandinavian mythology. Yes, even Tolkien didn't come up with all that stuff on his own, and now with the new expansion we see it more than ever in Northrend.

The world tree Idrassil on Mount Hyjal? Well the Scandinavian world tree is called Yggdrassil. Hmm. The new Vrykul race in Northrend seem a lot like Vikings to me, and Utgard Keep is named after Utgard, the place where the giants live. The Howling Fjord is one of the new zones, and as you many know, fjord is a word of Scandinavian origin. The dwarves in Scandinavian mythology are made by the gods from the earth, so it's no wonder they would live inside of a mountain in WoW. And guess who else has a hammer that can throw lightning. That would be Thor, son of Odin who is leader of the Scandinavian gods.

Obviously I can't say everything in the game comes from this Norse mythology, because it doesn't, but there are many similarities between the two. I'm sure many of the other important pieces of the Warcraft story come from various mythological stories of different cultures.

This isn't to say that the stories they have come up with aren't original, but I do think it's interesting to know where they draw their ideas from. Blizzard obviously either has some well read writers or they just really know how to use Wikipedia well.

On a side note, I read a review of the new Indiana Jones movie a little while ago, and the complaint was that it was too much like a videogame. After thinking about that, it occurred to me that he had it backwards. The movie wasn't like a videogame, it's just that videogames have become more like movies. Looking back at the first three Indiana Jones movies, I think if they had been released now he would have said the same thing about them too. We're just spoiled with games now that have great storylines, and WoW has one of the best so far.