anti-hero
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The Soapbox: Nobody's hero
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. We're not heroes, at least in the ubiquitous Hollywood sense. We're teachers and janitors and businessmen, and we may occasionally be heroic in the eyes of our kids or our colleagues, but rarely are we celebrated beyond a tiny circle of family and friends. Games can meet this emotional need, at least temporarily, and that's a major reason they've become such a booming business over the last couple of decades. We get to be Kratos for a couple of hours, or fem-Shepard or a thousand other pixelized pariahs -- until we set foot in an MMORPG, that is. Software companies sell pre-packaged heroism in ways that book publishers and filmmakers can only dream of, and it doesn't really matter that it's fake heroism or impersonal heroism crafted on an assembly line and shipped out to millions of consumers. Shouldn't it matter, though, when it comes to MMORPGs?
New TCG wallpaper featuring Human Paladin
You guys already know how I feel about Paladins, but if all Pallys looked this badass, I might have to change my opinion. This is Graccus, the anti-hero Paladin featured in the latest TCG wallpaper released officially by Blizzard.See, most Paladins are just shiny golden boys, wandering around the land trying to do good and "win for the Light" or whatever. But this Graccus guy looks like he's seen a lot of dark in his day, and he's spent way too long slaying undead rather than prancing around on his little Pally pony. This guy doesn't bubble, he breaks out the Righteous Fury. This is the kind of Paladin I might really like -- he's not holier-than-thou, he's just a holy warrior willing to get his hands dirty.
