This is the way the world ends…

Having just finished reading the Silmarillion for the first time it strikes me how vast an imagination Tolkien really had. I mean, i suppose we could all come up with something like a complete mythology given sufficient time and resources, but Tolkien created (ok, subcreated) a world with its own people, languages, gods, and Creator. Maybe others of you that are more into fantasy can fight me on this, but I can’t imagine any other author has approached Tolkien’s epic scope. Part of the Silmarillion describes the breaking and remaking of the world no less than three times.

An interesting article by Clive Thompson asks “What does it feel like at the end of the universe?” using massive-multiplayer online worlds as a reference point. He calls it “the emergence of eschatology as a design challenge.” As online worlds age and die, their creators are realizing that the end need not be a whimper. And the poor virtual souls that have inhabited those worlds do not just have to blink out of existence. Revelation and apocalypse seem to be the answer for games like The Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa. It’s as good a shot at closure as you’re going to get.

When World of Warcraft finally comes to an end (and it will), thousands of lost souls will have to incorporate reality again. On the creepy scale i think it’s somewhere between finishing a good book (or series of books) and a dead person’s still-active social network account. Tricky thing though, to emulate apocalypse. The god in the machine can only go so far, even with a real world physics engine.

Tolkien did end his world. We don’t know exactly how it will play out, but we know in the end all the chaos of life is made harmonious. As has been noted elsewhere about existence: “it can’t be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire.”