World of Warcraft Hit Hard by Economic Downturn

HOWLING FJORD - High above the Great Sea, once the site of fierce battles, Valgarde settlement now sits empty. Stung by plummeting real estate prices, Alliance and Horde forces have returned to Kalimdor, leaving behind foreclosure signs and broken dreams. All across Northrend such depressing sights abound. In Dragonblight, Wyrmrest Temple is boarded up, its five dragon shrines covered in graffiti. "Malygos sucks" and other obscenities have been scrawled across the walls by unemployed furbolgs.

And at Icecrown Citadel, once the objective of a massive invasion, empty Pabst bottles and cigarette butts littered the floor around the Frozen Throne. The rune blade Frostmourne was now used to open cans of chili. And the most powerful entity in all Warcraft picked up a canvas sack full of fliers and shuffled off to work.

"Go where the money is," chuckled the Lich King ruefully. Passing through Angrathar the Wrath Gate, he stepped over used condoms and 9mm shells, plodding southwest toward the fortress of Warsong Hold. "Warsong is the only game left in Northrend," sighed the Lich King, shifting the strap of his canvas sack. The fliers he would pass out were for a goblin real estate firm, specializing in short sales. "Old Hellscream knew how to build a fortress but the goblins had all the brains. They buried their money in the ground and put rocks over it. It used to crack me up. Now I wish I'd done the same."

Crossing the bleak Borean Tundra, the Lich King pondered the recent past. "It all started when they handed out mortgages to the Scourge. I remember saying, 'WTF, they're undead. They don't care if they live in an outhouse over in Naxxramas.' Anywho, when the sub-prime bubble burst, I got burned in a margin call. Next thing you know, the bottom's fallen out of the war and conquest market. I'm lucky I paid down my Citadel. Otherwise, I'd be renting a shack from some lard-ass tuskrr."

Warsong loomed in the distance, drying laundry fluttering from the battlements like ancient flags. The Lich King shook his head. "All you can do is hang on and hope for another war, undead trolls, a plague." He smiled fondly. "You know, the good old days."