Entertaining, sure, but hardly one of the greatest stories ever written.

Not to sound like too much of a prick, but the story of Warcraft really just can't stand up to highest literary standards.

For example, how can you compare the writing of Warcraf to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness? They're just in completely different leagues altogether.

Some writers create worlds to escape our own, others create worlds to explore our own. The latter, I think, it one of the markers of great fiction.

He said stories, not literary masterpieces.

The fact that you're here, playing this game, reading blogs about it, etc... is an indication that the story and game have captivated you as well for all your denials.

Stories are stories. Whether they explore the world we all live in, or a world made up from wholecloth, the purposes is the same: to tell us about ourselves and discuss what makes us who we are as individuals, as families, as clans, as peoples. The nice thing about fantasy -- like The Lord of the Rings -- is that we're given the opportunity to lay bare concepts like 'good' and 'evil' without it feeling silly or being heavy handed. In a "real world" story, for it to be believable, these concepts are shrouded in nuance.

Warcraft actually pulls the high-fantasy genre back toward the real world by making everything nuanced. We get illegal logging and world-polluting multinationals.*

I'm sure THE GRAPES OF WRATH is a fine book, if you happen to like it. It is, however, less valuable -- to me -- and less important -- again, to me -- than THE LORD OF THE RINGS, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, THE WHEEL OF TIME, or even the sublime HYPERION CANTOS.






* I'm sure there's an example of Alliance forces invading Horde lands, but I wouldn't know them. My Horde alts never made it much past level 20.

To answer your question, all land is Horde land, thus all Alliance settlements are vile incursions.

That's honestly something I never understood about the difference between "stories" and "literature".

A story's value can only be attained by what YOU as the reader put into it. I'm a Lit major, so I'm not just speaking out of my ass here, but I find most of what literary snobs call "true literature" to be boring and dry. I see the literary value in the story, and I understand the meaning behind it, but I still find the Warcraft story much more interesting and entertaining and thus, to me personally, it holds much more value.

For merely a "video game story", the Warcraft universe is vibrant and detailed, and full of characters just as memorable as some of the best characters from literary history. It probably won't stand the test of time alongside Homer and Shakespeare, but that doesn't make it any less valuable.