https://twitter.com/Scarletleaf21/status/1468789572221882369
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I just want to publicly say that my husband’s book Exploring Azeroth: Kalimdor came out this week and reviews have been mixed. WoW hasn’t aged well, as we’ve all seen, and concerns about racial trope in the game and it’s lore have been noted and heard. I would like to say to
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anyone who doesn’t know how game books are written that there is a certain amount of misplaced vitriol here. Sean’s title at work now holds the responsibility of writing books where in previous years it did not. However, he still doesn’t create lore. He and and other writers
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work closely with producers and editors in their department as well as the game team leads and writers. Game teams are where worlds, races, and histories are created. Any writer from quest text to manga to books must work closely with these teams who have the final say in the
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project. To quote the amazing @ChristieGolden who has decades of experience: “Blizzard is very generous in allowing me to play in their sandbox, but it’s still their sandbox”. If you want to direct your criticism to someone who has the power to make changes, that might
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be a better use of your efforts. I sincerely would love to see positive changes made myself and while neither of us can speak for Blizzard I am confident that I can speak for Sean in saying that our worlds should depict any culture it “seems” to reference accurately.
I believe the official line is that no cultures are referenced in the creation of any races in any of the games and therefore no one should take offense. I think most of us would disagree and that’s my opinion as a player long before Blizz came into our lives. I appreciate the responses and I think discourse is important. I think alot of times companies choose silence over discourse and I hope that will change. I think transparency is ultimately what keeps the lights on, especially in the current climate. To those trying to infer things between the
Twitter and all its threads are confusing AF lol. I see alot of “in real life it doesn’t transfer well”. Blizzard has always taken a hard line that all it’s universes are fictional. Personally I agree similarities exist and it’s better be trod more carefully if/ when possible.
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So some lady with skin in the game has something to say. She is getting dough from this.
Kinda getting some weird vibes. Like the author had to send his mommy to say things he didn’t say.
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I saw this earlier. The book was accidentally racist, but her husband will try to do better. That’s wonderful.
Edit: It seems that this isn’t a good response.
They’ll probably retcon it like Chronicles is a while anyway. So whatever 
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Honestly it is funny how the book retcons stuff that we can and still experience in the game. Like Gazlowe having a complete 180 characterization change where he was meant to be a contrast to Gallywix… now he is Gallywix. There were no survivors from Camp Taurajo yet there is a whole new town made of them. That being Camp Una’fe.
Like wow. How can they screw up that much that they need to retcon things like this for no reason. It is crap like this that is part of the reasons why people are always disappointed with the story. There needs to be some level of consistency instead of just randomly retconning things because some braindead idiot in the writing room thinks it is “cool” to do so.
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It’s why I just can’t care enough about these books anymore.
Like, what’s the point?
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Exactly.
Then they will just try and brush it off as “perspective bias”. However that falls apart when you ask… why would Rexxar and Zappyboi say that Gazlowe is now another Gallywix? Rexxar and Gazlowe go back to the founding of Durotar. Meanwhile why would they say that no-one survived Camp Taurajo? To make propaganda towards the Alliance? Even though we know that there are survivors. We can interact and do quests for them in the game.
Honestly it just feels whoever gave Sean Copeland the footnotes version ignored everything that came beforehand. Which is a given since the current writers had to retcon stuff from 9.0 for 9.1. Like the Stonewright’s origins.
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I don’t think it’s necessarily conscious retconning
More likely just a lack of actual knowledge of the source material…somehow
At least, that’s what I’mma choose to believe because the alternative is somehow…worse
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It is alarming however when they forgot how they wrote a character from the expansion previously. Even more so when it was a patch ago.
Then they get all snappy and angry when people point out these errors. Trying to deflect the blame onto others.
Like why get invested in anything now when they will just change it on a whim because “we simply forgot that X, Y and Z happened” or “we think this is cool, deal with it”.
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I mean it not surprise me if it is in his contract he cannot himself directly criticize the company in such a direct manner. That isnt that unusual as it can impact stock prices and create very bad publicity.
One thing she said that I do agree with though, is that WoW has not aged very well. Its foundations are from an era when a lot of this stuff was ignored.
Addressing it is something they are going to have to do as a company, or these faux pas are going to not only keep happening but get worse each time.
I think they are reconning some stuff just because they can. or perhaps anything certian people who are now fired touched are being changed. It is hard to really understand the exact motives without them explaining it.
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Even if it’s not from the previous expac…it’s like, their story no?
Wouldn’t Blizz have better access to all of the source material than anybody else?
I’d expect that they’d have at least some body of resources that writers can draw upon
Then where does the issue lie? Do they not? Are writers just expected to essentially make stuff up with just an overarching map and no previously established details? Or do they have access to adequate resources by the writers hired are too lazy to do the research (a core tenet of good writing)?
I dunno, it all doesn’t make much sense
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Shadowlands feels a bit like it abruptly shifted course about midway through. It feels like after Afrasiabi got the Axe they tried to abandon anything he touched and suddenly veer from whatever script he had devised.
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I mean, maybe?
But if so was throwing the baby out with the bath water needed? Is it worth the jarring results?
If you personally were subjected to that kind of mistreatment by the people who got fired, perhaps it was. It is very hard to say unless you are in those shoes, I would suppose
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No doubt about it.
But, even then it has to be called out. It’s not good at all.
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Hmm, that’s fair
I wonder if there was a better approach that could have been made to dealing with it
For sure, it is a messy situation which never should of happened to begin with.
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Probably just moving on and never touching those plotpoints?
I’d even say with the obvious for Sylvanas. We know what this split soul thing was for. It would have been better to just kill her off, leave everything else behind untouched, focus purely on shadowlands lore WITHOUT touching already established lore and then after this expansion just focus on new stuff that has nothing to do with previous stuff.
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Survivors also made their home in Vendetta Point.
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I wonder if it was better to just wrap the expac up and then put out WoW 2
That way you could rebuild from the ground up, both internally and in game
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