No Warcraft without Christianity

People are, on the whole, missing the point of this thread.

A certain brand of roleplayer, attached to the cultural accidents of Christianity and the West, might say that “Warcraft is becoming less Christian” in that the franchise is daring to explore other cultural milieux (such as, in the case of Pandaria, Chinese civilisation) - but this is not what Queteron is saying! Mists of Pandaria was as Christian an expansion as any of its predecessors, because it left the moral core of Warcraft intact.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, the developers imported a certain worldview into the game, possibly because their American culture implicitly acknowledges this worldview. This worldview, in the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, is that the world “is good, despite all the evil in it and despite all the sorrow, and it is good to live in it.” The Christian cosmos is a good one, under the supreme power of a God who is good, despite the evil which (for the time being) dwells in it.

The Warcraft cosmos, although not naming a monistic principle such as the Christian God, shared this worldview. The Light, Elune, the powers of life — all of these were simply, unambiguously good, and it was good to advance their interests in the world. The heroes, even when they tapped on darker forces (cf. warlocks and death knights), were working towards a world in which goodness would prevail over evil. The story, moreover, portrayed this fight as a winning one: the free races of the world, over the course of games and expansions, were becoming conscious of the need to band together against evil, and were scoring magnificent victories against it.

Somewhere in the mix of Warlords of Draenor and Legion, consummated by the Chronicle book, this worldview was upturned. Now the Light and Shadow, Life and Death, etc. are morally equivalent; now the monism has become a dualism; now the victory of Light and Shadow is not only no longer inevitable, it would be evil. The Light is not a principle of good whose victory would represent the freedom of all souls from domination. Instead, it now represents, at its apex, the eradication of freedom.

A few narrative points make this clear:

  • The Naaru were once depicted as great powers of good, in whose presence one could feel ultimate safety. Notably, they gave Crusader Bridenbrad the rest he deserved, something none of the other characters could achieve. Now, they are a sinister force, masterminding genocide and trying to bend souls to their will.

  • The moral and eschatological privilege of the forces of good (Light, life, Elune etc.) is gone. Now, they are morally equivalent to the erstwhile forces of evil (shadow, undeath, the fel) and any final eschatological victory for either side would eradicate a good original balance between them.

  • Significantly, people’s souls are now grist in the conflict which drives the franchise — now, player characters cross the Shadowlands quest zones killing immortal souls and reducing them to raw energy, and this is presented as good. (This is counter to the Warcraft universe’s prior implicit acknowledgement of the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul.) Furthermore, the eternal rest promised to Bridenbrad and Ysera now seems to have been forgotten.

What does this mean for Warcraft’s success as a narrative enterprise and a roleplaying setting? (After all, one might say that the setting has simply matured.) But it means everything — the ultimate draw of fantasy is that it actualises a world free of the pains and cares of our present world. What people often idealise as ‘morally complex’ writing is often just the abandonment of the hope of morality. In well-written fantasy, good can triumph over evil, and we (as players) can score these triumphs on its behalf.

Now, the Warcraft cosmos is cold and nihilistic, and (for players of faith) seems even nastier than the world we live in.

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