A friend recently linked through as something funny a piece from The Onion I’m not questing with you untill you Admit you screwed up the Zul’Aman Raid published in June 2009 and I didn’t find it funny at all.
A lot of humour needs to be taken in context. I was going to avoid breaking down the piece line by line as to why I didn’t find it funny but I do want to mention some points –
Firstly the thing that annoys me ( amongst others) is game reviewers writing reviews about games that they haven’t played. Sure there are things in life you can wing. While this isn’t a review of WOW, it is a piece of humour about it. I haven’t quite worked out the intended audience for the piece. Certainly not Wow players as there is too many inconsistencys- which are enough in my opinion causes it to lose all of the potential humour because it doesn’t make sense – and distracts you from what could have been funny – had it been written by someone who actually played WOW
Maybe had this was written at the time ZA was out it would have been a tad more funny, but I’m not sure even that would have saved it.
The Onion humour is supposed to be dry and satirical, but I feel like the entire piece was put through a random phrase generator to pull out appropriate words to make every one but the people who actually play/have played Wow think they know enough about the game to laugh about it. It gets some of it right – but then puts it in the wrong place. It’s like a combination of a popular google search, and World of Warcraft and the Warcraft Pc games.
Eg complaints about the cost of flying to the Ghostlands – and quafing expensive potions.
Who uses pots when they are wiping in a raid. You should be using flasks – yes they are expensive, so the potential for relevant humour is there – just using the wrong terminology.
The time of publishing and the basis of the humour was just too late. What was anyone even doing looking at ZA in June of this year, and then he talks about Molten core – what was he doing in Molten core in March – thats a massive leap from MC content in Vanilla to BC content (ZA released in 2.3.0 November 2007) There are too many time inconsistencies when the article was published June 2009
Healing a dire troll by mistake – Paul ( a soldier) , the guy the writer is complaining about is supposed to be a hunter – how is he healing it?
Other stuff that annoys me
Ring of Calm ( a +7 spirit ring )
Patch on a friday night?
Not liking an attribute spread ( what is that ?)
Too much walking? – Mounts at 30 ( happened round June 2008)
Smacking round Knights of the Ebon Blade ( A Wrath Faction of renegade death knights)
Hunter Talents – BM – Need a Solid Marksman – (depends the the Raid requirements)
Zoo in Strathome? ( not in World of warcraft – my lore fails me – but it looks like it was in warcraft III )
Battle Skills before jumping into Burning Crusade ( indicates written pre bc) ( battle skills seem to refer to a couple of different PSP games)
Phatlewt for the Iphone ( an app) ( dates article) Iphones announced Jan 2007 and released in June 2007
Mentions Evony formerly Civony ( released May 6 2009)
Shadow weave mask ( a +10 Intellect 20 sp cloth head requiring a level 44 toon on a Tauren druid
It’s like telling a joke like this
So the guy walks into the bar. The Bartender says “Would you like a goat?” Guy Says A goat? You have goats?”
* Queue Laughter*
Did you find that funny? – how about these,
A giraffe walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Do you want a long neck?” The giraffe says, “Do I have a choice?”
A giraffe walks into a bar. “High balls are on me!”
The Giraffe jokes work for me ( as lame as they were) because I know what a Giraffe looks like. I can relate to the context because of that knowledge. What is so special about the goat – nothing. So it’s not funny. So phrases like these which we could have a good chuckle over if they were correct annoy me
“if you finished a mission every now and then, you could afford to fly”
“Waiting an hour for your antique collection to download and install the new patch is not a fun Friday night for any of us,”
“but could you at least invest in some serious battle skills before you jump into the Burning Crusade?”
“Hey, here comes Othgar, the tauren druid who leads lame expeditions that pick up a couple silver pieces for a night of work.”
Maybe I am being picky at their attempt at humour. Maybe it’s not supposed to make sence, maybe the thing I am really annoyed with is that people who know nothing about World of Warcraft or Warcraft will have read it , and pretended to laugh even though half of it isn’t true, even if as my writing teacher used to say ” Reads true”
*Giraffe jokes found here
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
Yeah, somethings are published for the sake of popculture, and not because of knowledge on the subject. I’m currently working on building a site that does poke fun at all the noobisms that gamers are subjected to seeing. I hope it doesn’t go the way of that article!
I read that Onion post at the time of ZA and didn’t find it that funny at all. But I didn’t think the South Park WoW episode was funny either. I was too confused by the incorrect fact (eg. you can’t level to max level by killing level 1s in Goldshire!).
We’re actually not teh intended audience. Our friends who hear us talk about it – they are.
BTW it was definitely first published before June this year, so I don’t know why the date says that. But even then the reference to MC didn’t make sense.
@Cassandri – I even less unsure why my friend is linking it through now I think it’s doing the rounds in a facebook group again. – I think I may have read it back closer to when it was published – must go back through some draft posts to see if was gonna moan about it then.
Allo!
This is my first time answering something like this so bear with me if I miss some kind of social etiquette that should be present. Additionally, typing on an iPhone is a pain and typos happen.
I think that the article written by the Onion on this occasion is quite funny! I have been a WoW player (albeit on and off) since Vanilla and I’ve also been a fan of the Onion for quite some time. In all fairness, I think that the point of the article, or at least what I perceive it to be, might have been lost on you. The purpose of this was not to illustrate the finer details of raid mechanics, nor was it to accurately list (for the Onion reader-base) the correct statistics of rings or whether Druids wear cloth or leather.
The whole point of this satire is to illustrate the lengths that MMOs can affect the real life opinions of people. Like anyone that avidly plays, I know two things that realistically can be considered as fact: one is that we as players of WoW like to pay attention to details, and two, well our attention to details are borderline obsessive (not to mention boring) to those that don’t play the game.
Things stop to be funny when you look too deeply. This isn’t an observation of this joke, it’s a note about all jokes.
Just my two cents,
D.
@D.McPhee – Borderline obsessive.. Never 😛 I know I am being picky, but It could have been funny ( for me ) if it had the write terminology used and was in the correct contexts.
Even Hey, here comes Othgar, the tauren druid who leads lame expeditions that pick up a couple silver pieces for a night of work.” replace Expeditions with Raids, and Work with Wipes on Flame Leviathon.. That’s funny ( or funnier) – because it’s a real wow fail situation..
and social etiquette for comments – well there aren’t any beyond, don’t be offensive, I don’t have a comment policy because I don’t have issues, and your allowed to disagree 🙂
Well, satire is typically excused from ‘fact checking’. I liked the tone of The Onion article. The details are distracting for me, but for the missus (who does not play) they are totally overlooked. As I was reading the article and noticed almost all the inaccuracies that you pointed out – almost as a reflex. But, as each point bothered me, I start to think, “Are they TRYING to provoke me?” I think so! I think THAT is the subtle humor of the article. Only real gamers would notice any of the problems, and those problems would freak most of us out a little bit. As i realized that they probably knew that, I realized that I was being teased on a deeper level, and I loved it!
Taking the wind out of the sails of people that take themselves a little bit seriously is marvelous. I think the article did this cleverly.
Anyway, just my two cents.
ps. I am a new reader of your blog, thanks for all your contributions!