Bits of Ogres, Bytes of Orcs: Is Azeroth Metaphysically Real (and What in the World is Metaphysics)?
Philosophers have some strange conversations. I mean really strange. The kind of conversations that would cause the average person to question how we’ve managed to survive this long. You get a couple of philosophers playing World of Warcraft and you can rest assured that both the intelligibility and practicality of their discussion will taper off dramatically. But as you’re reading this book you’ve probably done your share of face melting and gold farming so I’m going to assume you’re okay with that.
I got involved in just such an obtuse conversation once after killing an orc outside the badlands. “I’ve slain an orc!” I proudly proclaimed to a colleague. “No”, he replied, “you initiated a computer program that displayed an animation of an ‘orc’ ‘dying’.” Yes, those scare quote gestures were included.
“Orcs aren’t real”, he declared. In true philosophical form I responded with a question; “what does ‘real’ mean?’” That question is the heart of the field of metaphysics. What in the world is metaphysics? Metaphysics is what’s in the world!
Specifically what are the key components of the universe? The ancients came up with the idea of dividing the world into four categories: earth, air, fire, and water. Modern scientists will say the universe is composed of atoms and not-quite-understood subatomic particles. But the term atom, in fact, was coined 2500 years ago by a Greek philosopher named Democritus to describe the smallest building block of the universe. Can the entire universe be described as complex interactions between basic physical particles?
Perhaps, but chances are if someone tells you that Warcraft is just a complicated computer program you’ll disagree. There is more to the world than what our five senses tell us, just as there is more to WoW than pressing keys to produce elaborate animations. What about consciousness and emotion? Are they real? Few would deny that they exist in some way, but if you ask whether they are completely separate from the other building blocks of the universe, well, then you’re thinking like a metaphysician. Ask the same question about Azeroth and you’re thinking like a philosopher who loves WoW.
Back to that dead orc. Or rather, ‘dead’ ‘orc’. Is it real? To be more technical I might say that what I did was execute a series of computer commands that interacted with a program stored on a centralized server, made changes to that program, then broadcast those changes to any other computer in the world that happened to be paying attention at the time. More physically speaking I might say I created a pre-defined pattern of electrical currents racing through a circuit board, a pattern that is recognized and replicated by other computers in the world.
How would my colleague, the Azerothian non-realist, describe an orc? He would say an orc is a pre-defined identifiable pattern of atoms - patterns that we recognize as biological and would include, among other things, green skin and large teeth. However there have never been examples of such patterns of atoms existing so orcs aren’t real - and certainly can’t be slain!
But now we’re arguing over semantics. To put things a bit more simply he might say the orc doesn’t really exist because it’s just a computer crunching numbers. But that leads us to the granddaddy of metaphysical questions: are numbers real?
By now this may all sound like I’m beating a dead orc. Philosophers have been arguing over this stuff for millennia and now we’ve got Azeroth and other persistent virtual worlds to add fuel to the debate. Actually, we’ve got 200+ Azeroths to add to it because each server hosts a different Azeroth, a different possible world. What happens on Uther stays on Uther - unless you transfer your toon to Kalecgos.
So even if Azeroth is real, which is the real Azeroth? Well, now you’re beginning to see how much fun metaphysics can be. . .
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Post-Script: The abstract has been accepted!
