Project Lore

The High Inquisitor is a regular column at Project Lore that seeks answers to the greatest mysteries of Azeroth. Each installment, the inquisitor will attack a previously unanswered question and attempt to explain the unknown. But she won’t rest until all plausible explanations are explored. The best, most probable comment(s) will be highlighted with the next edition’s inquisition. Welcome, dear readers, to another installment of the High Inquisitor. This time, I want to take a look at the spirit healer's role in our adventures. But first, let's take a look back at some of your submitted answers to the last question, when I asked where all the kids are in Azeroth. We got a nice range of answers, from pointing out that there are kids running around, they're just sometimes hard to find, to the thought that Azerothians have stopped having kids during wartime. The idea that I like best, however, is that our toons, before we start playing them, are the kids of the world. I thought Phanttas described it best:

I think that over time the children of Azeroth evolved to become safe from all those gigantic spiders, raging elementals and opposing faction members by turning invisible. The children stay like this while they train to become adventurers themselves, but do it in a safe way, because the creatures they are trying to take [enlarged spleen]s from can’t see them. Some of the children realise that they aren’t going to every be good enough to be an adventurer and stop being invisible to live their life running round Stormwind free of the perils of adventuring. The other children however, once they have been training for several years, suddenly get a calling to run to a certain place to start their true lives, where they become visible at last: the starting zones. If you hang around them for long enough you can see this miraculous act happening.

Now moving on, let's explore this week's question a bit. I'm sure you're all familiar with Spirit Healers, those celestial beings who await adventurers who enter the astral realm between life and death, ready to guide them back to the land of the living. While I appreciate the life that my toons can continue living, I also am aware that these spirit healers also must be the reason for respawning foes in areas that we so painstakingly clear out while questing. So here's the question: How can any side ever truly win? Be they members of the Scarlet Crusade, tribal leaders atop Darkcloud Pinnacle, hostile centaurs or quirky murlocs, our enemies will simply run back to their corpses and respawn a few minutes after their defeat. How can any group ever claim victory when neither side's numbers wane? In the case of PvP, we at least have an objective that will determine the winner; Capture the flag, defend the keep, gain the most resources. In the rest of the world, our objectives are outlined in quest form: Kill 10 of these and 20 of those; gather 8 shiny items scattered throughout the enemy village. But the world is static, and so the outcome of our endeavors is less defined. After we leave, the world goes back to the way it was before we ever came. Generations later, our alts can perform the same quests. Once again, game mechanics come into play. This is an essential aspect of MMO gameplay, and the only way around it that I've seen is through phased events. But phasing the whole world would be quite a task, and wouldn't necessarily give us anything better. Regardless, I'm interested in how we can use the lore to explain the situation. I say we need to appeal to the enemy spirit healers themselves, and convince them they're on the wrong side. Then, we'd get somewhere. How do you think we can get past this dead heat?