There Solidkieron was. Just minding her own business. Flogging some random mob for a “kill 10 rats” quest while scanning the horizon for sparklies in the same area. The staff-wielding cleric had decimated the area of both when she spun around to find a disheveled house nearby. A little nameplate behind an innocent mound of dirt/roof refuse/barn debris. It’s crimson color
denoted an enemy, one that the damage-dealing healer needed to complete her mission. Off she trundled to ring another skull, to add another notch to her belt when that innocent mound came in to focus. And snapped her conscious mind to reality.
“You’re in a god-damned war. A war with death, decay and destruction. And it’s not only the deserving horrors of the Death Plane, heroes of the Defiant or oppressors of the Guardian that fall. The innocent bleed like any other. You’re looking at the proof.” Her mind lectured.
Visibly shaken, Solidkieron defended herself against the aggressor behind the “innocent” mound. She scurried around the corner after its defeat. Leaving the un-pilfered body to retch at the base of a tree.
War. War never changes. And you’re at war in Rift.
Strutting across the lush green lands of Freemarch, the steeds of the almighty power rose from the depths. In response to the war torn land of death and destruction, the minions of Regulos and Ascendants of great power themselves cowered in fear. They blew the horn of in mighty triumph, dual wielding there hammers in hand. They doth proclaimed:
“This War, Is Over!!”
In an instant, they laid down there weapons in mighty triumph, as all life vanished from the land, not with a bang, but with a wimper. All that was left was the few soldiers proudly standing under there banners with there insignia:
“ESRB”
:P
O M G there’s another post about RIFT online, the WoW fanbois heads are going to explode! watchout! you might get some grey matter on you there….yeah right there….here (licks the corner of a napkin)
While I’m what you might call a “WoW fanboi” (good LORD when and where did that spelling become popular?!), I like the gist of this post and yes, it’s the one big thing that WoW is missing: reminders of the WAR between the Horde and Alliance and how it effects ‘the masses’.
Sad part is most MMO players are just going to shrug. “Oh, a pile of corpses, okay.” and keep questing. Gamers as a whole, by and large are inured to the amount of digital violence present in games. We’ve been busy dismembering and slaughtering countless of adversaries for the past twenty years, what’s a pile of bodies but merely a high-res textured obstacle? A better way to show violence inherent in war is a sense of loss. To remove what was familiar to the player. Killing off family NPCs or folk you took quests for now lying there unmoving upon the ground. (An example of this would be in WoW where *SPOILERS* you do all the Andorhal quests for your faction and then go back to see the vendors and the like all dead)