What Does Your Capital Look Like?
By Bricu | June 3, 2010
For the Wildfire Riders, and their allies/foils, Stormwind has more to offer than what the game client shows us. On the canal side of the Cathedral district, a gnome chef opened a high end restaurant called Galahad. It caters to the rich, the powerful and the noble. The Executive Chef, Noy “Gears” Rom may, or may not, be based on Gordon Ramsey. He’s foul mouthed, unapologetically carnivorous and, rumor has it, pretty damn good with a knife. In the Mage District, a collection of buildings have been turned into Stormwind University. The school, run by Professor Arrens Caltrains, is completely above board. They teach classes on history, demonology, magic and a few mundane topics. They even have a head of security, just to make sure over-zealous students don’t get themselves into too much trouble. Old town has a Burlesque parlor–the Silver Feather–owned and operated by one Lady Genise Crownsilver.
These player-made additions are typically discussed in Fic. While we play WoW, we cannot hold an event in Galahad or the Feather. Classes for Stormwind University can occur out of the classroom, but the Headmaster can’t meet with an unruly student in his office, nor can he remove someone from the dorms. Yet these additions add to the feel of the game. They allow for players to say, “My character left his or her mark” with destroying established lore.
Have your characters added to their city? Do you feel it is in appropriate for players to add to the established geography of a particular city? Fill us in!
2 Comments
Itanya Blade on June 3, 2010 at 2:07 pm.
The Prophecy of Light has its chapter house in the Bazaar of Silvermoon. We usually refer to it as a building in the corner that PCs cannot enter.
There has also been writings about members going on bar crawls through the Murder Row, though the only bar there also opens onto the Royal Bazaar.
And let’s not get started on how many floors we have all added to the Legerdmain or adding rooms and floors onto the Filthy Animal.
I think that it is almost essential that these places be added. There is just not enough real space in the game to cover all the things of daily life that our characters inhabit.
Kyraine on June 5, 2010 at 10:57 am.
I’m guilty of adding a floor onto one of the buildings in Stormwind’s park. My druids and hunter keep a rented apartment there for when they’re in town, because rent split three ways is cheaper than the inns. My squid pally has a room somewhere in the Aldor terrace in Shattrath, because I figured that there would be some places for troops to be housed in the city. I also invented a second inn in Redridge while I was writing Kyraine’s backstory, a quieter place for people who didn’t want to go to the main inn that caters to adventurers.
I do think it’s appropriate for us to make changes, with some limits. It adds flavor to the game, and doesn’t require anyone else to buy into the changes unless they want to. Positives all around, IMO. The cities and Azeroth itself are a lot bigger than what we see in game. Blizzard can’t make them to scale, or we would never get around, right? So in some sense, it’s necessary to make changes and to invent buildings and businesses that your characters either own or shop in. I think it adds to the flavor of the game. And in some sense, Blizz encourages it by giving us some empty buildings to play with. If they ever do bring out player housing though, I’ll be one happy person.