Technology in Fantasy

This is a huge bugbear of mine.  Many Fantasy settings do the whole mechanical / technological thing.  Two notable examples being WoW's goblin mechanics and again in Rift we see the whole of the Defiant nation's prowess, hinged upon technology.

It just always strikes me as incongruous, how a world filled with magick, where so many feats can be achieved from the mundane to the marvelous, through spells, why would serious technology even exist?  Okay, I can see the humble villager requiring a cart.  Simple technologies, blacksmithing, cartwrighting and so on, these are reasonable developments one would expect in any pseudo-medieval setting.  But engines which power great striding machines and technologies which head toward robotics in their application and intricacy seems extremely unlikely when the wielders of magick can do the job, probably more easily.

Moreover, I'd say that it is reasonable to presume that in a world that exhibits magick and a nation that producers sorcerers, a magicracy is bound to arise sooner rather than later, and that mages will attempt to maintain their power by quashing any serious displays of technology as ultimately only technology is a true threat to magick, and those who wield it.

This is why in my P&P game world, by the 3rd Age, sorcerers have seized control of the state (after a brief and violent uprising against the nobility) and fairly shortly thereafter, with mages in control, the world becomes a better place.... Well, the closer to the centre's of mage-influence you are, the better, with their weather controlling, disease-stifling, crop-rearing capabilities.  The average peasant's life is made significantly easier under the aegis of the sorcerers.

I even see a magically influenced pseudo-technological advancement.  With mages warping stone to quickly raise secure structures.  And warping animals to perform their tasks more ably.

In my P&P game-world, travel between major cities, and in some cases by private individuals is performed by giant insects, warped by magick, and large enough to carry a small basket beneath for half a dozen passengers or so.  It is essentially a living airship created by magick and tended to by commonfolk.  And something that can actually breed.  Thus we see a highly specialised form of magick which becomes a useful, self-propagating tool.

It is the uses of magick considered in this way I'd like to see in a AAA MMO.  Not the same old, hackneyed, over-used and ultimately incongruous notion of sophisticated technology in a magickal-fantasy setting.

There, I said it!  :-)