April Copeland's reponse to the new Kalimdor book

??? Okay. Carry on.

I think there are a lot of jumping to conclusions in this thread after wading through it.

1.) Not every person of color is going to read this book and think its racist. My wife went through the whole thing the day we got it and enjoyed it. Granted the lore errors like the Dark Portal/Well of Eternity didn’t stand out to her like it did to me, but she didn’t put the book down and say “Damn, this is racist, I’m grossly offended.” Almost half of the guild I am in consists of people of color, we’re mostly lore nerds since we are roleplayers, and none of them have said anything about it offending them. Only the lore errors were even mentioned.

2.) Complaining that the lore team is only white people as some holy grail excuse for the bad writing is just a poor take. Even a multi cultural writing team could make mistakes that might offend someone in this day and age. It’s an incredibly racist take to speak as if minorities are all some monolithic group that don’t have their own internal issues they debate amongst themselves. Indians grapple with the skin color debate everyday. Try living in a country where you can only get skin care products that include whitening agents, it’s eye opening. There is a raging debate within the Latinos/Latinx community as to if the phrase “Latinx” is actually a racist term conjured by elitist white people to rob them of their cultural identity. The list could go on.

I feel for people that are genuinely offended. It’s a hard line to toe in this day and age to see every possible offense in a game that lore wise is centered around what is really a race war between orcs and humans that expanded out over several games and then expansions. Blizzard was very liberal with its appropriation of cultures from around the world when creating races for World of Warcraft, which has only made this more problematic as we progress forward in these times.

I don’t know what to tell people, this is the world Blizzard created for us to play in and we’ve played in it since the first Warcraft. I don’t think you can solve this issue of perceived racial issues in the game. You would essentially have to wipe out a lot of the races and wars that have been fought to achieve this goal of resetting to a better place. This is a world that has been wrecked by race wars for a couple generations, you can’t just magically write that away. WoW 2? Would probably be the best answer, but I don’t know if Blizzard has the requisite courage to try making a sequel game that took us to a better place. Maybe future games that eat into WoW’s player base further will prompt this?

I think people need to take a breath. Getting carried away and chasing the author’s wife into privatizing her twitter is borderline cringe behavior. It reminds me of the harassment Golden got for the Sylvanas plot she didn’t even direct or for writing out Flynn’s love for Taelia in order to make Shaw his interest. It just needs to stop.

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Lmao enough

She wasn’t chased away.

She chose to defend her husband, claimed he wanted to be held accountable, then did a 180 and tried to spin the book, then did another 180 and said actually the racist stuff and grammar wasn’t done by him, wasn’t in his first manuscript, did not see the final manuscript, and does not even have a copy of the book right now, agreed with my affirmation there is a Mysterious Racist Grey Eminence in Blizzard (liked my tweet) and then proceeded to deflect and say she is super anti racism because her distant ancestor was Lenape.

Then after all that, all the flipping and flopping, the step forward and two steps back, she locked.

At one point WE were begging her to stop replying and walk away lmao

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I read through a lot of your twitter as well as a couple of others. I probably missed some of it as I’ve never been a fan of the way twitter now injects suggestions and other posts into a story I am trying to follow… that said… I don’t think it was a shining moment. Getting a woman trying to defend her husband from a tsunami of accusations all twisted up and out of sorts isn’t an accomplishment. Most people aren’t clear headed in moments of chaos, especially when defending family. I doubt she was sitting there cool as cucumber calculating what every word or phrase that came out of her mouth was going to be taken. You also got yourself so worked up you were mislabeling people on assumed (by you) gender pronouns. To quote Saurfang, there was no honor in this.

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After catching up on things…as a white dude…some of y’all seriously need help and make me wonder why I bother to post here at times.

Can, we please, just once, stop defending racist stuff in game? When someone notices and points out a negative stereotype based on their culture, just TRY for once to understand why said person is upset over it.

There’s plenty of negative stereotypes based on every culture in WoW. (I can’t tell you how many I’ve many times blizz got Western European/Irish Mythology just…outright WRONG). Like Alysna, I just sigh and move on. People often think negative stereotypes is a POC only problem, but it’s not, they’re just more likely to call out the BS that affects their race.

Rant/whatever you wanna call it is now over :wolf:

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She was neither twisted up nor out of sorts and you are projecting.

Yup.

Hell, imagine if Nesignwary was a raging alcoholic that abused his son.

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Are you sure you are using projecting correctly or is it something you just like to say when someone doesn’t agree with you? Projecting would require me to be talking about things I think about myself, which I am far from doing. I’m actually a pretty calm person in chaos and measure my words, it’s part of what I get paid for. Being able to identify that most humans don’t react that way isn’t projecting, it’s being aware enough to know that most people are not me and they react a much different way in a crisis.

You can have the last word as I am sure you will want to. I said what I thought of the situation and that is all I have to say.

April literally agreed with me before locking and recognize error and the need for accountability

You are imagining something that didn’t happen

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Guys, guys, false alarm!! His wife says it’s not racist, so it must not be!! False alarm, go back to business as normal!!

I repeat: His wife says it’s not racist, false alarm!!

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It’s totally manufactured! No! Don’t look at the blatant racist stuff in the book! It’s not there! JUST STOP COMPLAINING!

Did…did we miss anything Alysna? :wolf:

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Yes, in the future we shall wait until all wives read these books and return with their findings before rushing to judgment. We missed that.

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I’m assuming we must wait until only white suburban wives pass judgement right? They clearly know something the rest of us don’t.

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It’s pretty racist to remove the agency of my wife to determine what she feels offends her and what doesn’t. I clearly stated not everyone is going to find the same thing offensive, and that some will, and that I feel for people that are offended.

I didn’t say it was manufactured, I said that not everyone is going to see it as the same thing. My wife read the book, she enjoyed it, she wasn’t offended by it. Not sure why you think this is an appropriate reaction to my post? Are only people that agree with allowed to have agency in their feelings?

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We’ve had multiple people now deny the racist stuff in the book. It’s tiresome dealing with it and being told we’re all crazy.

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My wife isn’t white, please take your toxicity somewhere else.

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Then I suppose this issues has multiple layers to it.

Inconsistencies, stereotypes, blaming other people.

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I wasn’t talking about you, don’t assume you know anything about me

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You’re replying to a thread off a person that replied to me saying my wife didn’t have issue with the book.

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I was joking with my dear friend Alysna. Take your fragile ego elsewhere

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It’s pretty racist to assume your wife is the sole authority on what is and is not racist depictions in media. I never removed your wife’s agency. You, however, by deciding if she didn’t see it then it must be blown out of proportion, removed the agency of every other POC posting here who did.

So yeah, thanks for that.

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