Ghouls In Gaming

Just as ghouls have become a popular antagonist, –sometimes even protagonists, –in literature and film media, they’ve also become popular game monsters as well, perhaps even especially in the MMORPG world. Ghouls are featured in World of Warcraft, Tibia, Final Fantasy XI, RuneScape, City of Heroes and Ragnarok Online, as well as some of the expansions. Usually the ghouls are in the undead enemy class, and one of the NPC enemies, as for example, in World of Warcraft. In the game they can be captured, then exorcised by the “Forsaken” in order to restore the personality and health to the person the ghoul used to be. In Warhammer, ghouls are more like mutated cannibals; not exactly the undead, but they roam around eating people and being gross, so it’s a pretty close comparison. In Warcraft 3, the ghoul is the lowest class of the Scourge of the Undead; they’re in charge of gathering wood. This is pretty much the same system that World of Warcraft has. In the Castlevania series of games, there’s almost no difference between ghouls and zombies, aside from that zombies are green, and have less strength and resistance.

The brilliant minds behind the Kingdom of Loathing put enemies called “Ghuols”, in their game in then gave them their own special little area, in the Misspelled Cemetary. The “ghuols” are a charming parody of traditional monsters. The ghouls in the game “Shadowrun” have been called a “sympathetic portrait” of classic ghouls, since they’re actually victims of a mutating virus that transforms them into cannibals. Later on, ghouls begin appearing in activist groups protesting for their civil rights; other ghouls such as the Delta Green supplement for Call of Cthulhu, which features a ghoul character being exploited for his amazing forensic abilities. In the game Fallout, ghouls are portrayed as victims of radiation from a third World War, with deteriorating biological features, but much extended lifespans. Many of them are considered to be monsters by the rest of the non-radiated community, but they’re actually just senile old people.