It's been over a month of traveling over the beginner to mid-level areas of the World of Warcraft and the experience is wonderful. This World is a distillation of many things that I see in the real world or through my boob-tube window of the real world (television). In it, I see the true Native American culture that I've read about in many books and on National Geographic and Discovery Channel. Now I see it as a native of that culture, sort of.
That makes it so disconcerting to see the homebase of the Forsaken, an ally of the Tauren, albeit loosely, through the eyes of a Tauren. That part of the World is dreary, full of abandoned or worse haunted buildings and ruins. The color scheme is full of dark tones: deep purple, dark blue, dark green and dark brown, all colors are almost black. Since I play only at night, the night colorings make the area depressing at best, sinister at worse. And that is just the surrounding forest of Silverpine and Tirisfal Glades.
Undercity is a stage-set that is a mix of many horror film cliches placed into one large city. Pools of green slime (ectoplasm?) flow throughout the city. There are a few Frankenstein laboratories somewhere there along with requisite non-FDA approved human testing. The sound of caged women sobbing is particularly disturbing to me.
And then there are the NPCs (non-player characters). Since the Forsaken are undead, most of the NPCs in Undercity are undead. In World of Warcraft, there are the enemy of all living things undead and there are the enemy of all living things except for their Horde allies undead. From the way they talk, you sometimes wonder if the Forsaken NPCs have a hidden plan to feast on your living brains.
If you like horror and/or suspense movies, television shows, books and graphic novels, Undercity and its surroundings is for you. Neither Dracula nor the lords of Ravenloft would be out of place there. Neither will Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley. Shades of House of the Dead and Silent Hill and Resident Evil and all the zombie horror movies are all there.
After the sun-baked desert of the Barrens, I was hoping to find a home in a cool forested zone minus the Night Elves of Ashenvale. Too bad Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine cannot be that home. I recommend it for its horrific beauty and atmosphere to all to come and visit. And if you are the type who likes that kind of atmosphere, to stay.
Labels: Azeroth Diary, the fatman sees
