I say, is that a bandwagon?

Well, I guess I might take a tilt at ToC since everyone else is (d’you see what I did there? Take a tilt? Gettit? Uh, yeah).

I suppose it barely needs stating but I’ll state it anyway: I very much dislike this instance. I’ve run it exactly once and, provided I can keep epic-hunger at bay since it seems to be THE place for phat lewts, I hope to never run it again. Okay, this is embarrassing, I’ve now run it twice because it turns out I couldn’t keep epic-hunger at bay.

I don’t expect all my instances to be sprawling zone-sized dungeons. I appreciate a bit of variety. Despite the fact it repeatedly violated us in uncomfortable places with its infinite draongkin, I even kind of like Black Morass. It’s a change of pace, a change of scenery, a change of style. But the ToC is lazy, tedious, punishingly hard to healers and piss easy for everyone else, forces you to play a cumbersome mini-game before you’re actually allowed to do it, but worst of all, the fail cherry on the fail cake: it doesn’t make any narrative or moral sense for you be participating in it.

I’ve read several spurious attempts to defend the Argent Tournament’s presence in Northrend. Something about uniting the Horde and the Alliance blah blah and doing something to, like, blah blah, morale, blah blah, concentrated strike force against the Lich King, blah, blah … oh look an epic.

Okay, now I’m the first to admit the closest I’ve ever come to the military is, well, I read Shogun once? But if I was the General of a tired and dispirited army, facing overwhelming odds, and ground down by constant skirmishes with untiring, unending undead foes I maybe wouldn’t make my soldiers fight each other to the death in their free time for shits and giggles? Listen up soldiers! In order to help you recover from all the fighting you’re having to do out here, we’re going to do more fighting! Yay! Like. No. Unless Tirion has actually quietly gone batshit and nobody has noticed, I don’t think there’s anything Blizzard can do to stop me thinking the Argent Tournament is made of pure distilled stupid.

Quite frankly the less said about the of notion of sending a elite strike force of excellent JOUSTERS to take down the Lich King the better, and if there were serious concerns about the army’s morale I have a feeling there are more practical things player characters could undertake to bolster it. The Argent Brothel, perhaps, for the lonely, frustrated front-liners. Hmmm, that would give a whole new undertone to grinding dailies.

The fact is, now that I’ve hit endgame, I’m starting to enjoy Northrend again. I think there’s a genuine sense of grim desperation to it. I like the fact that there isn’t unity in the war effort – it makes you feel as though you’ve got a bit of a choice in how you interact with it, and it makes grinding dailies seem vaguely purposeful. Personally I’m all about the Ebon Blade. Putting aside for the moment the distracting hotitude of Baron Silver (oh those cheekbones, you could cut yourself!), I like the “we’ll do whatever it takes, even if it’s totally fucked up, to turn the tide of battle” attitude they’ve got going. I think it’s morally ambiguous in the best possible way, and by prioritising Ebon Blade dailies over other things I could be doing, it feels as though I’m lending them, and their dubious methodology, my support. Of course it’s all a bit pointless for me and actually I should be cosying up with the Wyrmrest Accord but, dammit, they are sadly inferior in the cheek-bone department.

The problem with the Argent Tournament is that, unlike all the other groups fighting for survival and a few precious victories, they come equipped with what feels like a Blizzard official sanction behind them. They’ve got Tirion Fordring for god’s sake, which only highlights the absurdity of the whole business. He’s a fucking paladin of the order of the Silver Hand and this is the best plan he could manage? The joust-em-up? Come on. If the Argent Tournament were the equivalent of Nesingwary, a bunch of clueless nutters camped out Northrend insisting that we take down Arthas with chivalry, my good Sirs, with chivalry, then I’m pretty sure I’d think they were incredibly cool. A little levity to lighten the darkness of Northrend. But, as it is, it seems as though Blizzard wants us to take them seriously.

It doesn’t help that the jousting mini-game is infuriating. I play WoW because I like playing WoW. If I wanted to play a fucking jousting simulator I’d play Tom Clancy’s Xtreme Lance Soldier 3D. Gah!

This does not make well-disposed towards ToC, especially not since it kicks off with, joy of joys, jousting. My favourite bit, although, admittedly, probably favourite for the wrong reasons, is when the Black Knight shows up, decapitates the commentator (thank you!) and is all: “this is all totally stupid, I think I’ll kill you now.” It’s enough to make you want to swap sides. I bet Arthas isn’t making his zombies joust with each other. Where do I sign up? What’s the dental plan like?

Also coliseum-style quest-lines are genuinely narratively problematic. The Argent Tournament is badly thought through in general and can’t seem to decide from one second to the next whether we’re killing each for realz or not, but ultimately you have to accept that jousting has kind of fallen out of flavour as a popular diversion (along with gladiatorial arenas and public executions) because massive social enthusiasm for potentially fatal bloodsports involving your fellow human beings is not the mark of a civilised society.

Obviously you tend to get quite a lot of arena-style quests in roleplaying computer games because they’re set in imaginary, pseudo-historical kingdoms and, hey, real life ethical repugnance aside, they’re a whole bundle of fun. But you’re usually given a moral get-out clause. Arenas tend to be situated in Hives Of Scum and Villainy TM. Maybe you’re desperate and need the money (to save your childhood friend, naturally). Maybe it’s the only way to get to a certain place or meet a certain character. Maybe you’ve been captured and forced into it by a bunch of warrior-code obsessed psychos. There are several arenas in WoW and they all make a decent amount of contextual sense. There’s the goblin-run one in Nagrand, in which case it’s sheer commercialism. And there’s the one in Dragon Blight, but that’s run by Conquerer Krenna who is clearly rampantly evil. In either case you’ve got a reasonable motivation to muck in and get your hands bloody.

Unlike Tirion “I once thought you were great, you know” Fordring, you’re not in it for the lulz. Also given that both Thrall and Varian Wrynn have both done a stint of enslaved gladiatoring, isn’t he being just a wee bit insensitive? I’m just sayin. But, the point is that participating in to-the-death combat for nothing more than sport makes you a very specific kind of character, even if you’re not necessarily into the roleplaying aspects of the game. I mean, not counting shady characters like this, I can’t imagine why a Tauren, or a nelf, would want to participant in Tirion Fordring’s Bloody Stupid Pit. Taurens, of course, have a strong martial tradition but it’s of the noble hunter, respect-for-the-prey ilk. They wouldn’t want to dogpile a captured mammoth with 24 of their heavily armed mates. Even Nesingwary wouldn’t stoop to that.

And don’t get me started on how fucked up the whole Beasts of Northrend raid is. I mean, Gormok the Impaler is a person! A likely cannibalistic person, but the Magnataur are intelligent, and have rudimentary social structurel. They’re not very nice, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. And, although I have no absolutely no qualm in slaughtering them en masse in the wild, there’s a massive massive difference between killing for survival, or even to facilitate the collection of internal organs some dude wants you get for him, and using that slaughter for entertainment. I could use extremely contentious analogies here but let me put it like this: it’s the functional equivalent of the Romans throwing a bunch of captured Britons into a gladiator pit with the 29th legion.

Which begs the question: What is Trion Fordring on? What is Blizzard on?

I know basically what you do in WoW is you go out and kill stuff. But I think there’s a genuine and profound psychological difference between “going out and killing stuff” and “having stuff brought to you so you can kill it in public for laffs.” If nothing else, it’s just a bit rude. No longer are we crusading against evil, we are ordering evil takeaway.

And a further thought occurs: who on earth captured Gormok the Impaler? Why aren’t we sending him into the battle against the Lich King? Boris the Magnataur Capturer is literally stronger than 25 dudes in Ulduar gear. Seriously. This war is done. We can all go home. Boris the Magnataur Capturer has the situation in hand.