| Azeroth | |
| First: | (1994) |
| Creator: | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Last: | (2024) |
| Type: | Terrestrial planet |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
Azeroth is a fictional planet that is the primary setting of the Warcraft franchise of fantasy video games and other media. While introduced as an overarching setting in 1994 with , its physical presence was more heavily developed in the 2004 MMORPG spin-off, World of Warcraft, which introduced players to microcosms of numerous locations on the planet. Azeroth is a terrestrial planet populated by numerous intelligent races, both humanoid and non-humanoid, of varying origins. In Warcraft
Events in reveal that Azeroth also contains a female World Soul, or nascent Titan, at its core. Unable to defend herself, she relies on the inhabitants of Azeroth for protection, as many outside threats, including the malevolent Titan Sargeras, tried and failed to corrupt or kill her.[2]
The world of Azeroth was praised for its expansive backstory and memorable locations and races, although its depiction in World of Warcraft drew criticism for its small size and theme park-like simplified design that is optimized for player fun at the expense of immersion in storytelling. The fact that players are forced into heroic roles and pitted against each other in opposing factions has been called indicative of a lack of player freedom, especially as the factions have ceased to have obvious distinctions in their roles.
The world of Azeroth is divided into three main continents; Northrend, Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. In the center is the Maelstrom, a magic whirlpool created during the Sundering.[3]
In Digital Culture, Play, and Identity, Espen Aarseth describes Azeroth in World of Warcraft as "small, static, and quite phony" compared to the real world and even other massively-multiplayer games like Ultima Online, saying that the population of any one server "realm" is only in the thousands, and describing its "sharply distinguished zones" as more resembling a "quilt" than a realistic world. Other aspects were noted as undermining Azeroth's realism for the sake of gameplay, such as ingame chat, electronic auction houses, "mechanically accurate" beast mounts, and respawning enemies and NPCs. However, he also noted that these cartoonish aspects were part of the game's broad intercultural appeal. Characterizing Azeroth's design as "all about playability", he compares the ideal design for such places to real-world theme parks such as Disney World and Universal Studios, describing it as merely a virtual theme park version of the more in-depth and ever-changing mythos described in Warcraft I-III and the franchise's novels. Other aspects, such as the inclusion of meeting places for players, more resemble "planned urban spaces" than a living, breathing natural world.[4]
In Battlefields of Negotiation, Rene Glas describes Azeroth in a similar fashion, saying its depiction in World of Warcraft was far removed from Azeroth as depicted in lore. As a model of the "real" Azeroth, it can be simplified and stylized with play in mind. One element of this simplification is forcing players to choose a player who is a heroic warrior and lacks physical defects, with non-heroic characters being limited to NPCs. While the quest system is rigid, with quests having only one story outcome, the order of quests performed can still create individualized stories for characters. They describe the faction division between Alliance and Horde as one of the most impactful simplifications of the lore, noting that while the game is clearly designed for inter-faction struggle between "good" and "evil" sides, the two sides have become increasingly equal in their actions over time to the point that neither has moral superiority, with the Alliance being seen as warmongering colonizers, while the Horde lives in harmony with nature. Responding to Aarseth's statement about the world resembling a theme park, he argues that the "real" Azeroth is as large as the world of Tolkien, but the Azeroth portrayed ingame is only a simplification by design. Glas criticizes the lack of player impact on the world as creating "situations that affect fictional coherency".[5]