…Good? I’m honestly pretty conflicted about this, for reasons which I suspect have more to do with me than the property. Firstly, I just don’t have the only game play gene. God knows I tried. Seriously. I was one of the first few intakes on Galactica Online and LOVED it. Flying around in a raptor, hearing the music, watching missile trails shoot off my pylons as I engaged toasters dropping on me out of the starlight. My favourite memory of that game was launching and flying through the fleet, to the Zephyr (The big, old fashioned ship with the gravity wheel), parking on top of it and just watching as the ragtag fugitive fleet passed underneath me. It felt real. I’ve never forgotten it.
Unfortunately I’ve also never forgotten logging into the game a couple of weeks later, finding literally everybody else had bought capital ships rather than levelling up to them and being blown apart over and over and over and over. I never went back, but I did try again with Guns of Icarus, a steampunk airship combat game that I helped Kickstarter. It’s a really fun game, beautifully designed, very intuitive. I joined my first multiplayer, and the first thing that came over my speakers was another player whispering ‘I am raping your children.’
So yeah, online multiplayer games, not so much for me. Or rather the games, yes, the people for the most part? Get the hell away from me.
So I can’t get excited about this as a fan because I’m not one. I have a lot of friends who play, and love, World of Warcraft and I can see it’s a rich, varied, interesting world (Also truthfully the Pandarians look so ridiculously cool I nearly signed up just to play one) with a lot of stories to tell in it. I hope, and for the most part, trust the team involved to pick a good one. Let’s face it they’re going to have to, because if they get this wrong in any way? The storm of nerdrage that will break across them will make Who fandom on its very worst day look like a small mouse being mildly surly to a waiter.
The second reason this doesn’t thrill me is because I want Mute, the Moon sequel/epilogue that was a movie, then a graphic novel, then maybe a movie again, then nothing. I’m frankly mystified by how Jones is treated by the studios, given that Moon was such an astonishing debut. Why he wasn’t trusted with the follow up, which wouldn’t exactly have broken the bank, is beyond me. Also, I am one of the four people on this planet that didn’t dig Source Code. Top marks to them for hanging a lantern on the massive Quantum Leap analogies the way they did but for me it’s a fantastically talented director and cast doing their best to lift an overfamiliar premise.
So, World of Warcraft helmed by Duncan Jones? I’m absolutely there. I’m sure it’ll be a great introduction to the universe, a good movie in its own right and will hopefully get him the critical cache he needs to get something similar to Moon made again. I can’t in good conscience say it’s something I’m excited about, but I am, at least curious. And that’s a good start.
