Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories

World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft

Bibliographic Data

ID2409354
AuthorsTanya Krzywinska (0000-0002-0744-4144, Brunel University of London, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume1
Issue4
Pages383-396
Publication date2006-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGames and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1555-4120 • E-ISSN: 1555-4139
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1555412006292618
OpenAlexW2077184006
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited2

One of the pleasures of playing in the "World" of Warcraft is becoming part of its pervasive mythology. This article argues that to understand the game's formal, aesthetic, and structural specificity, its pleasures and potential meanings, it is essential to investigate how the mythic functions. The author shows that the mythic plays a primary role in making a consistent fantasy world in terms of game play, morality, culture, time, and environment. It provides a rationale for players' actions, as well as the logic that under- pins the stylistic profile of the game, its objects, tasks, and characters. In terms of the "cultural" environments of the game, the presence of a coherent and extensive myth scheme is core to the way differences and conflicts between races are organized. And, as a form of intertextual resonance, its mythology furnishes the game with a "thickness" of meaning that promotes, for players, a sense of mythological being as well as encouraging an in-depth textual engagement

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Fantasy · Literature · Meaning (existential · Morality · Mythology · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence in Games · Digital Games and Media · Philosophy · Themes in Literature Analysis