World of Warcraft role-players throw medieval tournament for a good cause

polygon.com:

The big tournament with high stakes is a critical trope in fantasy books, movies, and games. Grim, realistic medieval worlds and high-concept fantasy worlds with magic and dragons both tend to have tournaments with banners, jousting, and giant turkey legs. It’s a comforting staple of the fantasy genre, and it’s one that World of Warcraft players recreated in June to fundraise for those affected by the Turkey-Syria earthquake in February.

Role-players created the Northeron Games in Epsilon, a creative server where players create their own scenes with existing World of Warcraft assets. These games gave role-players an opportunity to bring the Horde and Alliance closer after years of conflict and war — and allowed them to reach out to other players over platforms like Twitter and Discord to raise both awareness and more than $2,000 in funds for Doctors Without Borders to aid those affected by the earthquake and its aftermath.

Belethe and Gwetha are two members of the World of Warcraft role-play community. “Gwetha and I grew close to a community member of Epsilon who was affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and whose family had been affected by its destruction,” Belethe told Polygon. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck in February and impacted more than 15 million people. In order to raise funds and honor a new friend, Belethe and Gwetha reached out to other players and began organizing the Northeron Games.

The Northeron Games is a fan-created collaboration, run by the role-play guilds Fence Macabre and the Honeyhearth Clan. The idea was simple: What if World of Warcraft heroes skipped delving through dungeons and slaying bosses, and attended a three-day tournament in the vein of the Scottish Highlands Games? The