Thanks for the feedback!
Metzen wrote about his inspirations in interviews. Many of them were once-popular movies. In particular, he described Thrall’s quest in Warcraft Adventures as “Braveheart meets Spartacus meets Dances with Wolves”. The setup of Of Blood and Honor was inspired by the movie Enemy Mine.
(In case you’re wondering why I put some titles in italics but not others, my personal convention is that books and movies are italicized while games aren’t. This makes non-game media stand out in a blog that’s mostly about games.)
As for the specific obsession with honor? Who knows. Maybe he gorged himself on samurai movies? At some point I’ll probably need to do a separate post on the fuzzy concept of honor in Warcraft. Tirion, in his words and internal monologue, does reason about other virtues like compassion and justice (and the importance of separating justice from vengeance), but they get a lot less focus than honor.
Also, thanks for the thread, Shogganosh. I’ll reply there!
Yup. After two games very scarce on characterization, Warcraft is basically undergoing a process of reverse flanderization, with previously flat characters and cultures acquiring more nuance.
On an unrelated note, I’m wondering: how comfortable is the site to read, in terms of eye strain and legibility? I’m wondering if I should increase the contrast a bit and/or increase the font size so that individual lines of text are shorter.