Tasty bits: Spicing up World of Warcraft's lore with flavor text
A brief look at how Blizzard uses flavor text for world building.
I’ve never been much of an MMORPG guy. Apart from very brief stints in MU Online (remember that?) and Guild Wars, the grindy and endless nature of these games meant that I had little interest in anything the genre had to offer. The notable exception is World of Warcraft, which I’ve had a soft spot for ever since it released back in 2004. Fortunately I was never sucked into the life-destroying vortex of a WoW addiction, mostly because I never cared about running the same dungeons over and over again and PvP was absolutely foreign to me. I received the base game and the Burning Crusade expansion as a gift for my 18th birthday and I was happy enough raising a few characters to level 60 (yes, 60, I never even made it to the expansion) and then dropping it as soon as it began feeling repetitive. Unlike my dad, who spent months on his Human Rogue in a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to complete every quest on the map.
Fast forward to the autumn of 2021 and I get this sudden urge to play WoW again, enticed by rose-tinted memories of questing around Durotar as a low level Orc Warrior, happily slaying boars and scorpions, collecting garbage and acquiring a garish ensemble of mismatched armor pieces. Because this is what I actually enjoy about this game. Not running dungeons and clearing epic 25-man raids, but mundane activities like reading item descriptions, fishing in a cozy spot or putting together stupid outfits for my character.
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And while fashion and fishing in World of Warcraft each deserve a post of their own, right now I want to take a closer look at how World of Warcraft uses flavor text to build lore and add humor, personality and depth into the game world.
Flavor text, of course, refers to those bits of yellow text that accompany many items in World of Warcraft and which, while not serving any particular gameplay purpose, help to provide additional information about that item or to flesh out the world and story.
Flavor text in World of Warcraft can take many forms, ranging from short, humorous quips to longer descriptions that provide insights into the game's lore or backstory. Often, this text is not necessary for gameplay, but serves to enhance the player's immersion in the world of Azeroth and add to the overall experience of playing the game. Of course, the item’s artwork is also an important part and works in tandem with the flavor text.
I’ve always enjoyed reading flavor text in World of Warcraft and it’s one of the reasons why it’s always fun to loot the corpses of your many enemies: you never know when you’ll come across some useless junk item with a description that will make you cackle like the skinwalker outside my window (no I will not follow you into the woods!).
For this inaugural post, I’ve combed through several hundred items in World of Warcraft in order to give you a glimpse into the rich tapestry of flavor text the game has to offer. I’ve managed to break them up into several categories:
Basic: I don’t know what else to call it but it’s just flavor text with no particular… flavor. It’s just there. You read it and you’re like… okay.
Lore & worldbuilding: These descriptions contribute in some way to the lore or reveal additional information about places, characters or past events.
Meta references: Sort of related to the previous category, this type of flavor text reveals information about in-game events, NPCs or the player characters themselves.
Pop culture references: Gotta have these.
Food & drinks: Azerothian cuisine is broad and varied and dishes usually come with a nice sprinkle of flavor text.
Funny and/or absurd: My favorite category, ranging from puns to various lore tidbits and everything in between.
So let me to open my big sack of snippets from Wowhead and see what we got.
Basic
A lot of junk items and not particularly interesting quest items can fit into this category. They’re mostly useless items like broken weapons, empty bottles or scraps of cloth, but sometimes the flavor text makes picking up garbage worth it. The measly 11 copper you get when selling this item is a nice bonus, I guess.
Lore & worldbuilding
This type of flavor text is usually reserved for legendary weapons, exceptional armor and powerful artifacts. Much like the flavor text on Magic: The Gathering cards, it allows players to further understand the game world and the events that took place in Azeroth’s history and to put things into context, increasing immersion and adding an extra layer of enjoyment. A particularly intriguing flavor text might even prompt a curious player to delve deeper into the lore and do their own research on the internet or maybe even pick up one of the tie-in novels, thereby allowing them to take their enjoyment out into the real world.
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Meta-references
I was hesitant to add these as a separate category because most of them could also fit in lore & worldbuilding, but I thought it was interesting how the writers chose to include some references to the game itself.
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Pop culture references
What’s the point in being a writer for the most popular online game in the world if you don’t sneak in some clever real life pop culture references? Here are a few of my favorites:
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Food & drinks
Smashing food and chugging bevs is an integral part of World of Warcraft. In addition to healing and restoring mana, many food items provide valuable bonuses to player characters and it is common to start each long raid with an epic feast that boosts everyone’s stats so they can withstand the punishment dished out by the enemies. Cooking is an entire profession in the game, as well, with elaborate quest chains, unique rewards and hundreds of goofy recipes to learn and cook so you can impress your orcky friends. From the delicious to the despicable and the outright bizarre, here are a few choice cuts.
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Funny & absurd
Finally, let’s end on an even lighter note and check out a random selection of the most outlandish and air-coming-out-fast-of-your-nostrils-inducing flavor text. I audibly PFFFTTTCCHHHTTT’d more than once while compiling this list. This is where the writers clearly let loose and had a lot of fun with it.
Maybe the real quest reward is the friends we made along the way.
That’s it! I hope you enjoyed this little look at the many pieces of flavor text World of Warcraft has to offer. Reading these silly quips is truly one of my favorite things about this game and I’m always happy to discover another nugget of particularly tasty flavor text in my travels across Azeroth. And who knows, maybe I’ve inspired you to pay closer attention to item descriptions in the games you play — there’s always a tiny piece of written brilliance waiting to be uncovered.