Battle.net – As a Lore Guide?

The problem with lore as it is with WarCraft, or even StarCraft, is we’re dealing with a franchise.  With every new title the lore grows deeper, more robust, more confusing.  There’s simply more to keep track of, and if the guy in charge of it all can’t even remember who’s still alive, then how can we?

So consider this.  A central database, linked across current and future games.  A tool that does one simple thing… it tells you the lore.  And what would power it?  What would be its engine?  That’s easy.  Battle.net.

Imagine this… you ride into Stormwind.  There are those statues.  Who the heck are those guys?  It’s a question even non-lore dorks are bound to ask.  Sure, the statues have plaques.  But really, who the heck are these guys?  What did they do?  Were they in a previous WarCraft game?  Now imagine if all you had to do was Alt+Right Click on any statue and up popped a window giving you every detail you could possibly want about that character.

Here’s the genius of it though.  Because the lore database would be stored on Battle.net, that means the lore wouldn’t have to be rehashed or copy/pasted into every new title in the franchise.  Heck, if Blizzard were crazy brave enough, they could even go back and apply this to older titles.  Blizzard could flag any person, place, or thing in the game world and then we as players could alt+right click to learn more about it.

I especially like this, because it keeps the lore out of the way for the people who don’t care while at the same time being readily accessible to people like us who want to “read more about it”.  Blizzard already has a team of “historians” on staff who’s primary job is to keep track of the lore.  A robust internal lore library at Blizzard already exists.  Now imagine if they were to hyperlink that library in game.  I know I’m repeating myself, but let’s take this idea even further.  Imagine if Blizzard were to make this library available not only in game, but also on the web.  Blizzard’s own WoWpedia.  Good stuff.

As for WoWpedia itself, I doubt it would go anywhere.  And frankly, I’d love to see who was better at keeping track of the lore… Blizzard’s in-house historians, or its hordes (alliances?) of ravenous fans. We should all contact Blizzard and tell them to get right on it. 😉