Because we went from this to that. https://pm1.narvii.com/6088/11df172db84beef001a2604b4d63d3ccc128d5b6_hq.jpg
The old wow models barely resembled actual humans.
So tokenism.
Not sure what you mean by IRL continents but every continent in wow has its own story and it does use a variety of races who possess different IRL cultures.
Wrong again. As I have said Dwarves have a proper explanation, the only ones that don’t are the humans. Which could easily be remedied but for some inexplicable reason you resist.
If I’m not mistaken, I think Smallioz is basically just saying they could insert human migrations following the Curse of Flesh to certain climates that give rise to distinct human cultures in modern Azeroth. Even that gets a little wonky given this planet doesn’t follow the same rules that Earth does. None of that is even mentioning that entire other races have subsumed those distinct cultures, so it would turn into retreads at best.
I think this would need to have been established much earlier to work. Or someone needs to just come out and admit the continents as we know them are not all there is, that there is another side of the planet we’ve been prevented from interacting with.
All I am saying is this, humans are boring in WoW because they are homogenized and ignored… as a race, not talking about certain characters.
They could make Stormwind exactly like Kultiras with 3 different houses ruling 3 different zones.
Darker skinned humans are from Westfall… House of Fall
Asian humans are from Darkshire… House of Shire
White humans are from Elwynn… House of Wrynn.
Whatever, anything. Literally anything. Anything more than the bare minimum.
Thats all i am asking for here lol…
I don’t think this is too much or requires that much work besides a few NPCs, flags and certain NPC reskins which Blizzard did already.
That sounds like just more tokenizing though. You’re taking a place people are already familiar with and just swapping color palettes. I think people are mostly looking for something less superficial than color swaps, which is likely why the community reaction to the diversity tool has been one of frustrated dismay. Introducing some variation to human cultures on Azeroth would be a welcome development as a concept (at least, I think it would be) if it is done thoughtfully. Island Expeditions have already demonstrated there are places beyond what we are shown on the map, even if running with the Other Side of Azeroth thread never happens.
On the other hand, I think people expecting to find a robust representation of real world cultural mythos in WoW are setting unrealistic expectations. I think the best you can hope for in terms of authenticity is going to be similar to misspelled Norse pantheon automatons. That D&D world-building energy is all this setting has ever been. There’s certainly room for improvement, and fleshing out those corners of the world would enrich the setting for sure, but it’s never going to be a 1:1 retelling.
Far less tokenizing than the current state of affairs, Stormwind and its many territories can be a great mix of people since they are now united and move around. And the first war probably made a lot of people move around and migrate even further.
The only thing this will be doing is adding even more detail and depth to existing Stormwind and humans as a whole. And its not really tokenism when you got ample world building to back it up. Its no longer just a symbolic gesture but an actual gesture.
I don’t think the goal is to really represent an actual human culture using wow humans is or should be the goal. If these more diverse humans (and elves) are added to wow without some minimum amount of world building then they will stick out like a sore thumb.
I don’t think its a crazy idea to say if you are adding something new then do all the steps to explain its presence, otherwise the new thing won’t really belong with the rest.
Anyway my little idea was basically the bare minimum of what could be a solution. Its not perfect and it can be far better but thats idea and the goal i had.
So… just because it’s an Asian character it needs to have all the Asian cultural look too.
Essentially it changing the conversation.
“Why are there brown high elves?”
Rather than answering “why not?” we answer with literally anything…
They are more intune with magic, they stood too close to the sunwell.
Whatever.
I referenced TES because from square one they actually had multiple distinct human civilizations. So does Warhammer. Warcraft simply does not.
The 7 kingdoms exist foremost to justify different RTS colors. Because the gameplay has always come first with WoW. This is why they all have identical architecture and exactly one hat to wear.
Theyve had some luck retroactively expanding on places like Kul Tiras. But asking them to invent fantasy versions of say the Ghana Empire, Ayutthaya Kingdom, and Incan Empire to explain why there’s IRL human ethnicities would be a gigantic retcon. It’d be a tall order even if Blizz hadn’t handed out that stuff to races like Pandarens and Trolls already.
Blizz just going with the curse of flesh was honestly the smart choice. Much like it was a smart choice to just declare anti LGBT sentiment just isn’t a thing on Azeroth. Is it kinda lazy? Yeah. But we’ve seen how they handle sensitive subject matter before. So just having humans be a rainbow coalition of vaguely European dudes is the smart choice. At least for their skill level.
Three distinct cultures that had nothing to do with geography. All three clans developed and lived in the same area until they had their war and split up.
I’m not disagreeing that ample worldbuilding would satisfy a new convention in character options and NPC appearances, but arbitrarily deciding Westfall will be Asian people 20 years later is tokenizing. I would rather see them finally flesh out Tel’Abim, or introduce an actual Japanese-centric location instead of just doling out katanas occasionally at random. Basically, people are a product of their habitat over long periods of time. I don’t see a compelling reason not to reflect that in game, so long as it doesn’t take a jackhammer to the world as we know it.
Stormwind being a melting pot doesn’t really need a lot of justification given it is a port metropolis and power center for the Alliance at large, but I do think acknowledging where the range of ethnicities are coming from wouldn’t be a terrible idea.
Elves are a whole different story. Going from Trolls to Purple Elves to Euro Elves is already bonkers enough that I’m not going to bat an eye at the notion that some of them will have caramel skin tones.
Is it any less tokenized than just making a random assortment of NPCs look asian and not explain why or how? When it comes to existing IPs it is really, really tricky to pull this off.
But what I am proposing here is much less tokenization because they are assigning an entire portion of the lore to them. And we know so little about actual wow humans that just giving Westfall to the asian looking humans would literally have no effect.
Again you don’t need to actually give a Jian to an asian human in stormwind, its a eurocentric race and it should stay that way but if there are multiple ethnically different humans in this same eurocentric race then give them unique identifiers like clan names, flags or anything that could flesh out their place within the existing lore. They don’t even need to be from a specific geographical location.
Sure but why ask for less when you can have more?
Nice dodge.
Dark Irons lived at lowest bowels of Ironforged the Hill Dwarves, well thats pretty self-explanatory and the Bronzebeards who remained in IF.
My mom found stranded baby ducks and raised them in our back yard until they were big enough to take off. I helped her feed them and clean their little pen.
I feel like I know this duck mothering magic well.
My surly grumpy mean cat beat up every cat in the neighborhood, but he didnt harm the baby ducks, which showed what a good kitty he was.
They’ve always been there, though, even if the low poly design was underwhelming. I get that not explaining it at all is less appealing than having the world reflect there are different peoples, but it is absolutely more insulting to just change existing places into a whole new ethnicity and call it representation. It’s an easier pill to swallow when it’s random NPCs showing up in a metropolis than it is when it’s a prairie/bread basket region for Fantasy Paris. You’re steamrolling existing lore in favor of palette swaps at that point.
Put another way, there should be places they originated from, but Stormwind has been an important place for so long that no one should question why they’re there. They’ve been there for generations at this point.
It absolutely is not.
Its much insulting to just introduce a token character out of nowhere. What exactly is being steamrolled if Westfall was home to a noble house and historically there was asian/darker skinned house there? Absolutely nothing.
We are already doing a palette swap but we are putting more effort into it.
Why are there black elves in Amazon’s new show? Who knows. Why do they look different? Who knows. Its just there.
Nothing is lost by adding new clan/family names associated with these additions.
At this point we are just advocating for a token character implementation and praising it.
That’s exactly what this tool was designed for.
You want token insertions? Here it is.
Great but Dwarves also have multiple clans to accompany these differences.
You don’t see a Bronzebeard looking dwarf being called a Darkiron, they are uniquely identifiable with names, fantasy culture and background.
I see a difference and a detail being overlooked in this back and forth.
This Diversity tool seems to be about Characters in the stories of various franchises, both playable and npc. That has ramifications on the story in a very consequential way, and it debases alot of the story telling, since Characters are a big part of the Story.
That is different than Playable Races who are not specifically actually canon. Giving them customizations without a lot of lore is fine by me.
The person who defeated the Jailor is not canonically a Male Dwarf in a Platekini, or a dark skinned blonde haired Blood Elf. The Player Customizations are not as consequential to the story as Characters that are actually canon drivers of the story.
