Why Gnomes Have No City
Architecture in World of Warcraft
Have you ever wandered around Azeroth in World of Warcaft and wondered why the Gnomes lost their city? After all they once lived in splendour in Gnomeregan. I know there’s a detailed back-story about why it all happened but I can’t help thinking that there is another reason. Wherever you find a gnome there is always some weird gnomish machine in the background. I get the feeling that gnomes just aren’t interested in architecture and are just as happy appropriating whatever building is around, thereby leaving more time for technological tinkering. Even Blizzard seems to back this theory up - “But Gnomeregan fell, probably thanks as much to the Gnomes' own actions as to those of their enemies - they likely blew themselves up with whatever failsafe devices they used to defeat the threat.” - From Insider Interview — with Chris Metzen: Gnomes and Trolls as Playable Races from the Blizzard Insider. http://www.wowwiki.com/Gnome
This leads me on to think about the six capital cities that dominate World of Warcraft.
Three cities for the Alliance: Stormwind the city of Men, Ironforge built by the Dwarves and the Night Elf city of Darnassus. Three cities for the Horde: Orgimmar for the Orcs, The Undercity of the Undead and Tauren capitol of Thunder Bluff. I guess the trolls miss out just for balance. Each city looks distinctive and it can be quite enjoyable thinking about how the designers have built in (hah!) a host of differences.
Examining the simulated building materials that each race favours we see that Men build in stone and add medieval dwellings of wood, Night Elves build in stone and add living structures based on trees while Dwarves just build in stone. Compared to the Horde cities of Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff, which take on the appearance of less permanent materials like wood and fabric, that’s a lot of stonework. As always the Undead stands out from the rest of the Horde, their architecture looks like a decayed version of man’s buildings.
The Alliance is medieval and classical, the Horde more primeval and naturalistic. The plan of the cities reflects this division with the Alliance favouring more geometric structured plans while the Horde prefer looser more organic layouts based on existing natural features (again except for the Undead). Next look at how they integrate into the landscape. Dwarves like to build inside the land, men build on top of the land and elves build with the land, integrating their cities into the landscape. Most of the Horde works with natural features, building their cities into canyons or on top of giant pinnacles of rock. The Orc’s build between the landforms, the Taurens on top of landforms, while the Undead build beneath the land.
On, in, with, between, on top of, and under, Six ways of sitting cities in WoW.
Beyond providing us with some excellent eye candy the building types define each race within its coalition, this is architecture as differentiation. It’s a simple and effective way of separating out different divisions and is used a lot in videogames. It helps to simplify things and after a while you know where to find things just like a real city. But of course none of these places really are cities. After all no one lives there. Do we call them cities because they are bigger than the other simulated buildings? Or because they are the capital centers for their respective races? Or because they are transport hubs? Or because in spite of looking like defensively orientated fortresses they are really just giant shopping centers with a concentration of quests, banks, shops inns and training centers? Real cities of course don’t have Gryphon stop points or quests or even banks that don’t charge. But by collecting a large number of player activities in one place and calling it a city simplifies a complex system. This is an architecture that mimics how we use buildings as containers for activity and urban systems as organizers.
Ultimately the architecture of each race is meant to represent the qualities of that race. The World of Warcraft site describes the Gnomes as “one of the most peculiar races of the world” who are obsessed with technology and engineering marvels. A quick run through Gnomeregan proves that.
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