Make Love, Not Warcraft

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"Make Love, Not Warcraft" is episode 147 of Comedy Central's animated series South Park which first aired on October 4, 2006. This episode takes a satirical look at the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, and on videogamers. The episode was announced by Comedy Central on September 30, 2006 and was advertised as the tenth season second half premiere. This name is also a name of an achievement in the game, given to the player once they have hugged a dead enemy which has not released to ghost form. ^[1]

In 2007 the episode won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).^[2]

[edit] Plot

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A griefer named Jenkins (in reference to Leeroy Jenkins)^[3] repeatedly kills the South Park boys' characters in the online game, World of Warcraft. The griefer, a silent, obsessive, overweight adult player "who has absolutely no life," is said to have been playing nearly every hour of every day for a year and a half since the game came out, and has reached a level that was previously thought unreachable, allowing him to disobey Blizzard Entertainment's rules and kill players, Game Masters and Administrators at will, something the game's developers did not anticipate. Stan's father, Randy, becomes interested in the game, but does not survive long before being killed by Jenkins.

Cartman gathers all the boys of South Park to plan a retaliatory attack on the griefer, planning to all log in at once and attack him. However, once the battle begins, the griefer summons scorpions and easily dispatches the boys' characters. Afterwards, the defeated players give up and find other interests. The executives at Blizzard come to realize that many players will soon become too frustrated from being killed every time they log on, and will stop playing altogether, which would very well cause "the end of the World ... of Warcraft". However, Cartman isn't ready to give up, and convinces Stan, Kyle, and Kenny to keep playing. For the next two months, they play the game for twenty-one hours a day, killing low-level boars in the game's forests to gain experience points (in a montage set to Paul Stanley's Live to Win)^[4], and hiding from Jenkins. In the process, the boys become lazy, long-haired, and overweight. Cartman refuses to leave the game to the extent that his mother has to hold out a bedpan when he needs to use the bathroom. They also become acne-ridden and eat mainly Hot Pockets and Rockstar energy drinks during this period. In addition, the boys develop large Internet vocabularies, using terms such as "über" and "pwned" and "r-tard" in daily conversation. The boys' characters grow so quickly that the Blizzard executives take notice, realizing that the boys have no personal lives at all. They see this as a chance to stop the griefer since he will end Warcraft's popularity if he isn't stopped. However, they calculate that even with the amazing rise in their levels, the boys still have a 90% chance of failure.

Determined to help the boys slay the evil griefer, the executives decide to give the boys the Sword of a Thousand Truths, a weapon so powerful that it was removed from the game and stored on a 1 GB USB flash drive. However, "Salzman from Accounting" foretold that it would eventually be put to use. Unaware of the plan, however, the boys have already initiated what becomes a seventeen-hour battle against the griefer, which the executives predict to be unsuccessful without the aid of the powerful sword. The executives arrive at Stan's house with the flash drive, unaware that the boys are actually at Cartman's house. Randy tells the executives that although he is a "noob", he can log in with the sword and give it to the boys' characters online. The executives then eventually, though reluctantly, give Randy the sword, initially stating that, "We can't trust the Sword of a Thousand Truths to a noob!" Eventually logging onto a Warcraft demo at a Best Buy, Randy gives Stan the weapon, but Randy's character is mortally wounded by the griefer in the process. Angered, Stan attacks the griefer with the sword, completely draining his mana and leaving him unable to use his shields. Taking advantage of Jenkins' weakness, Kenny shoots him with his bow followed by Kyle hitting him with a fire spell. He falls to the ground, where Cartman smashes his head in with his hammer, finally killing the griefer. Stan rushes to Randy's side, and the two share a father/son moment before Randy's character finally dies.

Several World of Warcraft players come out of hiding and celebrate the griefer's demise, praising the boys as heroes. Stan asks what they'll do, now that they've stopped the griefer, prompting Cartman to respond "What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game".

[edit] Production

Machinima was used extensively in "Make Love, Not Warcraft", albeit in a manner inconsistent with the gameplay of World of Warcraft. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny's characters are shown in the foreground.

The episode uses machinima in many of its scenes to create a better emulation of the game.^[5] It was originally scheduled to air as episode #145, but was later delayed because of difficulties in creating the machinima.^[6]

[edit] Collaboration

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone collaborated with Blizzard Entertainment to craft the machinima used in the episode. They stated in their commentary for the episode they were completely shocked that the company was on board to help them out. The machinima scenes were created using shots of the in-game footage, and re-creation of the characters in Maya, with Blizzard Entertainment providing their own character models and computers to test with.^[6] Blizzard also gave the producers permission to use the alpha server of the expansion pack World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade to shoot the scenes on.^[6] Michael Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, issued a statement over the collaboration:

We were excited to hear that the creators of 'South Park' were interested in featuring World of Warcraft in the opening of their new season, and we really enjoyed collaborating with them to make this happen. We're looking forward to sharing the experience with our employees and our players as well when the season debuts this week.^[7]

However, the animation in the episode is modified from the gameplay of World of Warcraft, and contains elements that do not exist in the game: controlled NPCs, Humans in the Hunter character class^[8], the ability for a player to kill another without restrictions (which is commented on in the plot), increased gore, and the exclusion of the Horde (Butters states that there are "only four races" in the game).^[9][10]

As a reference to the episode, certain South Park Season 10 DVDs include a 14-day free trial for the World of Warcraft. This will not affect the UK release of this season in 2009 ^[11]

Since the airing of the episode, the fictitious Sword of a Thousand Truths was featured in the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade beta test as a reward to the games arena system, although it did not have the same capabilities as in the show. The in-game caption read "Finely crafted to Salzman's specification".^[12] The sword was renamed to Gladiator's Slicer and the in-game graphic changed prior to the launch of the Burning Crusade. The visual used for the Sword of a Thousand Truths in the episode was the same as the already existing in-game sword The Hungering Cold. More recently, the sword has reappeared in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion as the Slayer of the Lifeless, an entry-level raid drop that possesses the flavor text "Foretold by Salzman".

[edit] Production length

Although the planning of the episode and data-collecting began on September 1, 2006, the actual production of the machinima was done in five "shooting" days, the first being September 20, 2006, which lasted about 3–5 hours, and the last being October 3, 2006.^[6] The regular South Park animation was created simultaneously, with all the other non-machinima episodes of the series routinely finishing within 12 hours of their airing as well.^[6][13]

[edit] Reciprocation

In patch 3.0.2, preceding the release of the World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard included a "Make Love, Not Warcraft" PvP achievement; gained by using the "hug" emote on a dead enemy before they release their corpse.^[14]

The fictitious video game played by Butters, "Hello Kitty: Island Adventure", was referenced in an 2008 April Fools Day joke by the actual MMORPG Hello Kitty Online, announcing an "Island Adventure" expansion for the game, boasting a reduction of content rather than an "expansion", leaving players stranded on a tropical island.^[15]

[edit] Reception

The episode received generally high review ratings. IGN, a multimedia news and reviews website, reviewed the episode and gave it an overall rating of 9.3, labeling it as "one of the funniest episodes ever produced".^[16]

The original television airing of the episode drew 3.4 million viewers, most between the ages of 18 and 49.^[17] This popularity made the episode Comedy Central's highest-rated midseason premiere since the year 2000.^[17] However, the highest ratings for the tenth season belong to the season's premiere, "The Return of Chef", which drew more than 3.5 million viewers.^[18]

In 2007 this episode obtained the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Make Love, Not Warcraft

• www.southparkstudios.com - Episode 1008 (Original Air Date: 2006-10-04)
• [1] - Full Episode (With advertising)