Will Save World For Gold

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Rating Summary

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Background
Citizens of the BWW, we have us a textbook example of Wish-fullfillment ruining a comic. Most of you are familiar with the term "Mary-Sue." The term is used to denote a character who is everything the character's maker wishes to be, but cannot be, so they project their wishes onto a character. Frequently, this means that a character can act like a psychopath and do whatever the hell he wishes to do with few or no consequences. That is exactly what ruins this comic; a psychopathic elf for whom the laws of reality, morality, and common sense do not apply.

And YES, the character is technically a kind of weird elf from the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons called an "Eladrin." Not that that makes the situation an ounce better.

The short of it is this: Will Save World For Gold tries to rip off the same kind of "Order of the Stick" style of humor and drawing (simple art, funny dialogue and events), but fails miserably at it. It is unfunny, the "art" is poor next to the stick figures in the former comic, and horrendous compared to almost anything else, and everything revolves around an unfunny asshole of an elf.

Downfall
The comic started out well enough. At first, Ardon the jerkass elf and the other characters balanced each other out, and there were implied consequences for the elf's actions. When those consequences failed to materialize, the comic fell into a hole. From that point on, Ardon could get away with ever more extreme actions without so much as a single negative consequence. Throw a retarded party member at some traps? No problem! Abuse the trust of some farmers? It's cool. Burn down a village? Forgotten by the next page.

When a character is immune to reality around him, it is a clear sign of wish-fulfillment. If any other character but Ardon did the tenth part of what he did, everyone else would be up in arms about it. There is never any clear reason in the comic why Ardon can get away with so many psychopathic crimes, although the real reason is more clear. It is a fair deduction that when a character can get away with anything, that character is acting out the author's fantasies, doing what he or she cannot do in reality. The effect of this is only magnified when a webcomic gets a cult following and showers the author with praises, leading to an ego-trip, which in turn leads to more and more extravagant actions by the jerkass character which the comic increasingly revolves around.

Story and Plot
It might as well be called "The sociopathic adventures of Ardon the great, and how he's always right!" Seriously, that's what this is about. Everyone just acts in accordance with his wishes, and somehow suffers when they don't. It's pretty clear that the author thinks that he's right and that everyone else who thinks he is wrong about anything really needs him, and needs him to the point that when he is absent, they wish he was back again, because he's just that "awesome." Yes, we all need the author, who is showing himself as an elf, an elf that he might even roleplay as in a dungeons and dragons game, an elf that he may very well use to play out his fantasies of being an ass to everyone and yet still somehow be important and necessary to the point that people are asking themselves how they would ever get along without him if he were to leave. Seriously.

In the Order of the Stick (another Dungeons and Dragons-based comic, which is FAR superior in every way), there is a halfling character that acts like a jerkass to others. This has predictable consequences for him, not because the author is trying to "force morality down people's throats", but because other characters get upset when he murders, steals, and assaults others. This is predictable and normal. Here, other characters regularly put up with the antisocial activities, even going so far as to claim to "need" the insane evil elf. There is no good reason for this. None.

Art review
I don't think the comic has art at all. I would call it "graphics". Specifically, pixelated graphics that look like something out of the original "King's Quest I." If you can call that mess "art", it is among the very worst on this wiki, and that's saying something pretty bold. Things like details, textures, shading, and more than one color per surface are rare or in some cases nonexistent. The only quasi-good thing I am willing to say about this is that it is quick to make, and while it is not good to look at, it is less misshapen than some manga-style art seen in comics featured on this wiki, if only due to lack of details.

In addition to the cheap pixels and lack of detail in the characters, the "art" very rarely conveys motion well, partly due to the limitations of the medium, and in part due to lack of skill.

Writing review
When the story revolves around a single character, that places a serious hamper on everything else. Few of the characters are written well, as they usually have a single dominant personality trait, and little else to them. Even Ardon is badly-written, being nothing but a jerkass in everything he says or does, and not a convincing one at that. Instead of being clever, we have Ardon saying something like "I'm gonna do something horribly cruel!" and the others replying "oh, you're suck a jerk!" and they rarely bother to DO anything about it.

The other characters are underdeveloped and although they have some backstory, there is literally, as of this writing, less information about the other main characters combined than there is about Ardon. You probably saw that one coming. Considering that one of those other four is a mute and mentally-retarded kobold, and another is a Warforged (a robot, really) who should have pounded Ardon into the dirt early on, it just goes to show what kind of unbalanced story this is. Ardon vs. Not-Ardon. Everything else to say about this comic is icing on the cake.

Links

 * [url spacebar title for link] plus anything else you want to add dangling behind like this.
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 * [url spacebar linkster-poo] seriously add something here I'm running out of inane shit to say