curse-your-sudden-yet-inevitable-betrayal
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The sudden yet inevitable betrayal of gaming immersion
Warning: This post contains spoilers and Firefly references. There's this quest in Loch Modan. To make a long story short, the gnolls and murlocs seem to be making a peace treaty. In the very least, they're making some kind of deal to lay down some awfulness on the Alliance. They are the Axis of Awful, after all. When things get to this point, there's nothing else for an adventurer to do but dress up like a shrub, take a bottle of scent pheromones, and sneak out to sabotage the meeting. But that's not the exciting part. The exciting part is what the Mosshide gnoll screams when you lay the whammy on him. "AAAAAAGH!" the gnoll yells. "CURSE YOUR SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL!" Rumors have it that in beta, the murloc responded, "Mine is an evil mrglglglglglglglglglg. Now DIE!" Of course, this is a reference to the old Firefly series, which has many devoted followers among all kinds of geeks and gamers. On one hand, I totally love the reference. My wife and I giggled and laughed and loved the shout-out to one of our favorite television series. On the other side of the coin, I can see the argument that pop culture references like this can take a player "out of the game." It disrupts immersion and adds silliness to an escapist hobby that some people take very, very seriously. What about you? Where do you fall in that argument?
