In The World Of Warcraft, The Working Class Keep Working

This poor little peon is always being "picked" on.

But even the peons, who work tirelessly around the clock, are saying "hey, enough is enough." Although what we really hear from them sounds closer to "zaiboo", which doesn't sound quite so much like a protest as it does a motivational rally cheer.

To be quite honest, the peons are upset with their living Gods, and with good reason it seems. They are the ones that are doing all of the "grunt" work, at least when the grunts are off fighting battles in an enemy land.

It's not as if the peons have much of a choice. They're not a unionized labour force, and really, their existence is only at the whim of their onmipotent masters. They do what they're told, when they're told. If the god so chose, he could send his entire team of peons off to war...but then who would fix the watch towers, the burrows, and the town centres?

Peons aren't in much of a position to demand fairer work conditions, because they're basically slaves. But even so, the peons are tired of their low-end, go-nowhere jobs that offer little or no opportunity for advancement. It seems that their position in life is to do all the simple tasks, the laborious, tedious jobs that most others would find beneath them.

"Zug zug," said one Orc peon, on the condition of anonymity, a condition easily guaranteed in his world because he is not assigned a name. Although his words were simple, when translated, they conveyed the complex emotions he felt about his life, existence, and working conditions.

"It's not fair," said another peon through a translator. "We're the ones that are doing all the building. And it's non-stop! There's no time to appreciate the job well done, because when the barracks are built, we're immediately sent off to start some new project."

"The only time we ever get a rest, is when there's an oversight by our god, and He hasn't assigned us a task," the peon continued. "It's not enough for us to be designated with relentless, mundane chores to be repeated over and over again. But where are the production bonuses? What are our incentives? Overtime? I know that there is an important need to defend the village against enemy invasions, but at the end of the day I just want relax in my hut, knowing that I made a difference in this virtual world."