evil-characters
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Breakfast Topic: Which playable race is most evil?
I love to argue about the most evil race in WoW. My devotion to the Dark Lady has nothing to do with it (mostly). You see, I don't think the Forsaken are evil. They aren't responsible for what happened to them. They didn't choose to be undead. They were perfectly happy to remain living humans. Sylvanas didn't seek out her bansheeness. And all other races shun or just tolerate them. So the Forsaken culture is built around the condition forced upon them. Yes, Sylvanas has now taken to, uh, recruiting new members of her race, which most consider very Lich King-like. But how else is she going to expand her ever-decreasing population? Because the Forsaken are no longer living in the way that all other races are, they cannot value life in the same way. I believe this makes them amoral instead of immoral. They do what they can to survive and even flourish in the hostile world of Azeroth. Of course there are individuals who do despicable things, but you can't judge an entire race on the activities of a few bad eggs.
Behind the Mask: It feels so good to be bad
Playing bad guys in an MMO is one of those features mostly unique to the superhero genre. In other games, there are factions and these factions are vaguely good or bad, but it's kind of rare to see players clamor about playing an evil faction as much as they do in superhero games. One of the reasons behind the lack of true villain factions in most games is that the hero factions in other MMOs are a touch more grey than the good guy factions in a superhero game. In World of Warcraft, both the Alliance and the Horde have their faults; the Alliance are stuck-up bigots and the Horde are ruthless and somewhat bloodthirsty. In Aion, the light and dark factions tread equally on the thin blue line that separates good and evil (although it's somewhat less obvious as an Elyos). One of my biggest grievances with getting into Champions Online was the lack of playable villain content at launch. I was unwilling to test drive City of Heroes at all until villains were playable, and over half of the characters I've made in Champions are bad guys. Even my non-villains aren't heroes (at least not in character). I have a certain infatuation with being a bad guy.
