WTF?!, a Flash-based World of Warcraft parody

Over on Play This Thing, game designer/writer Greg Costikyan has word of a sweet and funny World of Warcraft parody:

It's a World of Warcraft screenshot, right? Well, no -- it's a screenshot from WTF?!, a Flash-based sidescroller parodying WoW. And it's note-perfect, too -- every interface element and the backgrounds and characters look like they're ripped straight from Azeroth.
The gameplay is pretty similar, too, for all that this is a sidescroller -- the same tedious level-grind, based on the same sort of tedious quests ("go kill seven sheep"). But the satirical way it treats that level-grind is priceless, a telling commentary on the common tropes of the MMO. The quests get increasingly weird -- your newbie quest giver asks you to go cast a spell on sheep that have been transformed by the evil mage Karl Marx into communist brain-slaves to restore them to their rightful ovine form, and then tells you to go kill Marx himself. But Marx shows you that your previous quest-giver is simply a tool of capitalist oppression, and becomes your new quest giver. Sigmund Freud also makes an appearance.

Link to Play This Thing review, Link to WTF?

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The Mockingbird

This is awesome. Hours of gameplay to find all the secrets and such. I’ve beaten Mary Daly, Einstein, Spirit of Herr Freud, Mr. Marx and Mario….I also have the ultimate weapon: The Broom of Destiny. It causes 60,000,000 Damage per second and gives you + 1000 strength, +1000 stamina, and negates all damage taken by enemies…I’m level 20(Max level) on Lumpen, haven’t tried Phallicity yet, but all in all, this is a MUST-SEE game. I LOVE it.
OM

…Moon Patrol! Holy frack, I’d *LONG* forgotten that one ever existed, and I spent a lot of quarters on it when it came out! I knew those spinning doo-dads in the sky looked familiar, but now it all makes sense!

…I didn’t play it for all that long, but I’m wondering if there’s a Defender homage somewhere :-)
ariadneallan

Being a non-player with a husband who does play, this is funny. I wonder if he’ll turn his nose up at it?
Comedian

@#3:Mantari

“GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A”

Sounds like my last travel job.
The Mockingbird

Oh, and the map that is supposedly empty…It’s not. Spirit of Sigmund Freud spawns there, you just have to wait a bit.
Agent 86

Any way to hack my stats?
noen

Oddly, I’ve never played WoW. I must be weird.
Stefan Jones

I stay away from games like that so I have time to write them!
Mantari

I’ve never played WoW either, but I have played MUDs. And I thought a text based multiplayer role playing game could be tedious!

GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
GO TO B -> COMPLETE SIMPLE TASK -> RETURN TO A
Anonyman

The mouse didn’t work at all for me, it seemed to have a mind of its own.
(gentoo/firefox)
Anonymous

Does anyone knwo how to unlock “L80 reward” thats sits in bottom of the login screen ???
- Astragali
  
  To those of you wanting to get to the “L-80 Reward”… it does state on the website:
  
  “In this first installment…”
  
  It probably hasn’t been implemented yet. But I’ll admit I’m guessing.
punctiliouspig

Worked fairly well for me on Safari. I never played WoW and tried this. Now I see why I don’t play WoW..tedious! It seems you can choose an extreme patriarchal journey or extreme feminist journey..I chose the latter and ended up having to castrate a few dozen wifebeaters. That’s all I could take.
Agent 86

I’ve never been tempted, if only because those that play have trouble not thinking about it. When I find a friend that manages to put a happy 2 hours a week into a MMO, I’ll pick up a copy.
Anonymous

Haha, if you kill Mario before you kill marx, you get a bunch of awesome shit like superstars and mushrooms. That’s how I beat marx (:. BTW, does anyone know how to unlock the level 80 thing? The max level is 20…
Talia

Love this. Lets see how long it lasts when WoW’s legal team gets wind of it though.
Adam Price

I beat it – I think. There seems to be one quest that doesn’t work (einstein) and it gets very silly at the end (When you enter supermario world and get all of marios implements, you become so powerful that you can’t be stopped by anybody except marx, who is still WAY WAY too powerful to be defeated. One of the “worlds” is entirely empty – a desert are with crappy graphics from “Moon Blasters” overlaid. Not worth the time.
Anonyman

Congratulations, #6!, you just described WoW!
mgabrysSF

re: ADAM

Close – those graphics were from Irem/William’s Moon Patrol:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8747
Stanium

It’s not about the setting, the guy just took a famous one. But he storyline, quest and, as I suspect, dialogues must be just fabulous. The mentioned two, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, are a very good sign of that.
umbilicaleyeball

t’s ct tht cn ply Wrld f Wrcrft wth ll f th grphcs trnd ll th wy p, bt my cmptr bcms hrrbly nrspnsv whn try t ply ths…
holtt

They’ve made the SDK they used to create this available for download at http://www.aoedipus.net/sdk.html
Anonymous

im stuck in items in SDK. Why can’t i paste or edit text in the item list? and how do i open with notepad? it always opens on the internet on any setting.