lucidfox

I get a distinct “trainwreck” vibe from the beta, and I really don’t see it changing. I strongly suspect that just like the kindergarten heroic tale known as Wings of Liberty apparently wasn’t written by the creators of the original Starcraft, so, it seems, the faction leaders of WoW are being written by the same 15-year-old boys who are the game’s primary target audience.

Imagine if, during an anti-terrorist operation in the Caucasus, FSB operatives discover Stalin’s secret grandson, who grew up there in the mountains under the influence of radio and TV programmes asserting that Stalin was a bloody dictator, and thus grew ashamed of his heritage. Then suddenly he is taken to the Kremlin, where Medvedev assures him that Stalin was in fact a national hero who single-handedly earned the Soviet Union a victory over the Germans in WWII. Stalin’s grandson—let’s call him Joseph Jr.—naturally grows proud, and starts participating in Russian political life despite having no qualifications or prior history of leadership.

In the meantime, Sarah Palin, who went missing two years ago on a diplomatic voyage to the UK, suddenly appears on the streets of Moscow, amnesiac and without possessions. Naturally, nobody there recognizes her either. At first she’s kept as a slave by a Moscow crimelord, but when she makes a daring escape with her two newfound friends (a Japanese martial arts master and a Serbian assassin), the crimelord realizes the error of his ways and approaches the Russian government, where he’s promptly appointed the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Palin and her companions hijack the crimelord’s personal plane and fly to England, where seeing Queen Elizabeth II restores her memory.

Palin flies back to America, where Barack Obama immediately proclaims her the rightful ruler of America and shyly steps down. She calls for a NATO summit and promptly drafts a new foreign policy centered around eradicating Russia, and nobody says a word, because, you know, Russians are evil and every honest American is totally cool with eradicating them. Then she goes back to England and, together with the Queen and David Cameron, meets Medvedev (accompanied by the crimelord-turned-minister and Joseph Jr. but strangely not Putin), and they start discussing the Russian-Japanese dispute over the Kuril Islands without any Japanese representatives being present. However, Muslim terrorists bomb the Buckhingam Palace and Palin, naturally, blames it on those pesky Russians. Joseph Jr., in turn, suggests nuking America to smithereens.

For now, however, the differences are put aside. You see, back in 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, one of Hitler’s generals was building up a Nazi state in the Arctic, and just now, having built up an army of brainwashed Wermacht soldiers, he suddenly decides to conquer the world! Russia and NATO both invade New Naziland, with Joseph Jr. commanding the Russian army and Putin patiently dissuading him from attacking American ports. Meanwhile, a rogue general from Ukraine, who was previously funding bioweapon research with Yanukovych’s secret approval, unleashes a deadly virus on the allied army, halting the assault and letting the Nazis capture Obama, who was for some inexplicable reason present on the frontlines.

When they do finally make it to the Nazi general’s citadel, the Secretary-General of the UN, who is overseeing the joint operation, suggests hosting the Winter Olympics right there in the Arctic, and let the winners infiltrate the general’s chambers. They do so and kill him, and find Obama kept prisoner there, so they leave Obama to rule New Naziland to give orders to the Nazi soldiers and prevent them from nuking everything on their own accord. And so it seems that, at last peace is achieved…

But then Medvedev is called to a summit about the world ecological crisis in… let’s say the Philippines, and thus resigns in favor of his new Prime Minister, Joseph Jr.—who is then promptly elected President of Russia because, you know, Stalin’s axe-crazy grandson was the only logical choice. (*) Meanwhile, a secret Nazi nuclear silo that has been lying on the bottom of the Pacific since the early 1940s suddenly surfaces, and the ICBMs fly all over the world, nuking such disjoint places as Yokohama, the Hoover Dam, and a random patch of pine forest in Canada.

Joseph Jr. kicks all non-Russians out of Moscow and then declares war against NATO. He tells the Ukrainians to invade Romania without using the virus (which they then promptly use anyway, because Yanukovych suddenly decides to turn into a cackling evil overlord), and launches an invasion fleet against Japan despite it not even being a member of NATO, taking all the Kurils and Hokkaido but losing southern Sakhalin. Putin watches Joseph Jr., facepalms, but does absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, one of the nukes falls over the Alps, causing some disturbances in the crust or something like that, and makes a new volcano erupt, flooding Switzerland with lava—but not before one of the bank owners evacuates the entire population on his personal passenger plane. (Apparently it had space compression technology or something.) The plane then flies into a fight between Russian and American jet fighters, and an American pilot shoots it down just for being there. The plane falls onto a no-name island in the Pacific, and it coincidentally turns out that the Americans were holding Medvedev (who was en route to the Philippines) as a prisoner on a ship around there. The Swiss rescue him, then the bank owner arrives and announces that they are his slaves. Naturally, they fight back against the bank owner’s personal little army, culminating in a battle between two giant robots, and when the jerkass bank owner is defeated, Medvedev installs him as the leader of Switzerland-in-exile, conscripts them into an alliance with Russia, and refers them to Joseph Jr., who gives then the newly-claimed Hokkaido to settle on. The Swiss use uber-experimental terraforming technology to reshape the island into a giant two-headed eagle.

If this summary sounds like everyone on Earth suddenly regressed to the mental age of 15 and got high on hallucinogens, I wholly agree. Then why is this essentially the plot of the recent two WoW expansions?

(*) It is rumored outside Russia that his opponents in the election were a convicted mass murderer, the ghost of Hitler, and a basic campfire. The campfire almost had it, too.