Character archetypes wow is currently lacking

Lore Story Forum
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I think we all know that we are in a weird point of wow’s history where we are kind of drowning in girlbosses without much personality going on or opportunities to do anything throught provoking. Let me preface this with the fact that I like cool women characters and I don’t particularly love it when mmos turn into boys clubs but the fact of the matter is that the boys in the story have left the club.

We have a few types of guys in the current story:

THE DUTIFUL CONCUMBINE: This is the character who just really loves his wife. He is a wife guy. He is the preevolution of the wholesome dad. He is a wholesome dad in training. These are your Malfurians and your Thralls and your Turelians and now Lorethemar. Nathanos fits here too.

THE NOBLE BOOMER Let’s be honest this is a character specifically for the playerbase. He is old but he is crafty. Crafty like a fox. Those arrogant young people don’t take him seriously, but it’s their loss. So what if he has to use depends? He’s going to outlive you. If this character is a woman, she’s still a cool mom, right. Telemancer Occuleth is this. Eitrigg is this. Saurfang was this. Thrall is pretty much this now.

THE WHOLESOME DAD: These are your Darius Crowleys and your Genns and your Bolvars. They LOVE THEIR CHILDREN and they LIVE FOR THEIR CHILDREN. They have so many pictures of their kids, have you seen this one of lorna at the marimba recital? She really is something special huh.

THE PROPHETIC OLD MAN WHO WE KEEP MOSTLY IN A BOX: Your Velens. Your khadgars. They don’t exist here as people most of the time, they are deus ex machinas in a box. Occasionally they get to be damsels. But they are here to distribute wisdom and then go back inside of their cans.

We have three kinds of ladies:

THE GIRLBOSS: You know who she is. She is wise but naive. She is strong but she is emotionally growing. Her sidecut can destroy armies and her makeup can reflect mana bombs. She is weighed down by burdens (and why wouldn’t she be? Everything is about her, obviously) but she is strong enough to carry on and also warp the laws of physics. She always serves, but she never serves you. These are your Jainas. Your Sylvanas’. Your Tyrandes. Your Talanjis. Your Faerans. Your Azsharas. Your Thalyssras. Your Geya’rahs. Your Nishas. Your Allerias. Your Xalataths. Your callias. Oh god, there are so many of these.

SHE’S QUIRKY: This is a girl who is here to be wacky. She is different from the other girls. She’s just so different, and so fun, she escapes being able to participate in the story every time. Chromie is the biggest offender here. This is also Meera. This is also almost Margaeux except Margaex got to have a meaningful if brief story (rest in peace I will miss you forever Margaeux).

NASTY LADY: Ewwww! She’s so mean and so ugly! She is basically a disney villain. Everybody knows that morality is a reflection of your exterior beauty but at least she owns land and has henchmen so she’s definitely more successful than you. This is Lady Ashvane, this is Magatha, this is Lady Waycrest, this is every rough and tumble cult leader mini boss.

Last but not least we have:

THE DUTIFUL UNDERLING: This is your general cross gender npc. They are moral and dependable but they are often screwed over for these qualities. If they don’t die, you will never hear from them again after their questline. They are the majority of quest npcs.

So… what’s missing? What did wow used to have that people liked?

THE IMPULSIVE BUT DASTARDLY MACHO MAN This is Arthas and Garrosh. Kael and Illidan are also this even if Kael isn’t exactly macho. These are your man’s men. They make decisions! Usually bad ones! But the decisions are always interesting to watch! They are both loved and hated! They have some nuance! The thing they have in common is that they all will get done dirty.

THE EMOTIONAL NARCICIST WITH TOO MUCH POWER Everything is personal with this guy, which is why his motivations as a villain are understandable. He was betrayed in some way because he had different values from a former friend. He paves the road to hell even when he doesn’t have good intentions. He’s not hiding his motives but he’s still everybody’s problem. This is Killjaedan, this is Gul’dan, this is I Guess Pretty Much Every Titan Now.

Things I think WoW needs more of:

HIMBOS: Where are my wonderful, stupid, beefy men who get to do things in the story? They are not here. This is a travesty. Baine does not count because Baine is miserable.

COMPETENT MEN WITH POSITIVE MASCULINITY: Please give men who are good with their minds and their bodies. If I don’t get to have himbos you could at least give me a Rambo. Shaw is this but Shaw is the driest character. He is dryer than december thanksgiving turkey. If they make new men like this (and they should) I think they should make him an orc to make up for what they didn’t do with Garrosh.

GIRL FAILURES WHO ARE PLOT RELEVANT BUT DON’T EAT THE WHOLE PLOT: Let the ladies be bad at things sometimes but also don’t always put them in positions of absolute power. Let them make mistakes and grow as characters but please cut it out with the girl bosses. I so rarely get to see women in these stories be wrong unless they are NASTY LADIES and I am a little annoyed about that. GREAT EXAMPLES: The orc and forsaken soldiers in Pandaria questing. Bring them BACK.

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Sounds like you have something to ask Santa for when you sit on his lap

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Are you santa?

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Nothing of this is Warcraft, mate.

There’s a lot of dad stuff, though. For.. reasons, I guess.

WoW currently lacks the classic fantasy archetypes.

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Maximillian of Northshire says hello! He’s a bi-king and a himbo. I loved his quest in Cataclysm.

The Alliance had that in the form of Admiral Taylor, until Blizzard decided him to kill him off in a really idiotic quest in WoD because something something faction parity (even though his counterpart was resurrected in Legion and Taylor’s forgotten about)

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Why do we think this is the case? Let’s unpack this.

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I don’t think they know the difference between Masculinity and Toxic Masculinity, so I wouldn’t expect much to change on that front.

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That’s my vibe as well, which I feel is strange. Because I feel like the writing in wrath didn’t have enough a woman’s perspective on this kind of thing, but now it feels like we don’t have enough of a male perspective? If that makes sense?

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Out of curiosity - if you were a writer who could make an example of positive masculinity, what attributes or traits would that character embody?

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As a writer, I think this is generally the exact wrong way to go about it, tbh, as is I think this entire thread.

It’s something I saw a lot in workshops in my MFA - too many young writers have what I would kind of call ‘fanfiction / dynamic / tumblr’ brain, and write their stories primarily to meet various quotas for character archetypes / qualities / etc. Crucially, they often create these characters first, independent of the stories they’re a part of, which leads to those subsequent stories kind of feeling… disconnected and rambly and infinite. Like a million coffee shop AUs. if you’ve ever seen, like, a twitter artist who has a lot of ‘OCs’, and those OCs never do anything but exist in specific hypothetical disconnected moments or scenarios, you know what I am talking about.

I would not set down to make a character that represents ‘positive masculinity.’ I would think about characters that are interesting, that have interesting perspectives on the world, that could tell interesting stories. Some of them would have traits that might be called ‘positive masculinity’, but representation of such or fulfilling of any tropes or dynamics should rarely be the intention in storytelling. It just tends to go bad.

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Yeah, writing everything around an ideal is not going to produce compelling characters. Roping off negative traits leads to the same stagnation. My impression is that they wanted to put some distance between the game and the male power fantasy that had dominated it (understandably) but have overcorrected to the point that it is starting to feel detached from Warcraft.

The heavy metal vibes are just gone, and the game is not richer for it, imo.

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So, fun fact. I am a paid writer as well.

I’m not trying to flex about that or anything but I feel like this is an extremely strange thing to say to me when I’m causally analyzing a pop media game which is definitely utilizing tropes and archetypes which have been around since Commedia dell’arte. We’re talking about WoW here, not the next Elizabeth Gilbert book where she overshares about her life and is somehow still not in prison.

I think a key takeaway is a man who can get along with other men in particular (be that a gay or straight dynamic) and encourages his guy friends to be better human beings-- stronger, smarter, more responsible. My favorite example is probably either Reigan or the Body Improvement Club, both of which are from Mob Psycho 500.

The Garrosh and Arthas type are not positive masculinity examples but they are interesting masculinity examples, which I think we’re missing from the story right now in particular.

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I mean, I don’t really feel the need to have a professional appendage measuring contest about it, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to discuss what sort of archetypes extant characters fall into and how certain of those archetypes have come more or less into favor as time has gone on, (for what it’s worth, my post was mostly a response to the Detrik post right above it, a detail that seems have been annihilated by blizzard’s eternally glitchy forums), but from the perspective of fixing the wow universe’s storytelling problems I just don’t think that questions like ‘should we copy/paste four to six more himbo-type-characters into this story’ is a particularly useful line of inquiry. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, or maybe we just have very, very different professional perspectives.

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My approach is “popular archetypes in pop media is fine but if you have a really noticeable disproportionate amount of one kind you probably need to shake things up.”

I’m not saying himbos will fix things lol (some people hate himbos) but I just feel like there is a certain kind of character people in the wow community are drawn to and they are not exactly getting that in the story at the moment.

Everything always comes down to execution as well.

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We can probably agree on that, at least insofar as I think that it shows a severe degree of stagnation on the part of the creative team. The kind of writing I described in my original response is exactly the kind of writing that got us where we are, I just don’t necessarily agree that you fix it by doing the same thing the other way.

This is like… basically correct, I think. I would add that I think it’s trend-chasing the general state of the fantasy genre (‘cosification’ is a hell of a thing, hell, the arcantina is shaking up to be basically legends and lattes), and I would feel the need to also add that warcraft’s most iconic and popular storyline (arthas) was kind of a deconstruction of male power fantasy, but… yeah, this is pretty much what happened.

I think that cutting back on some of the mean nihilism was definitely needed (the oppressive negativity of BFA and Shadowlands was exhausting), but we’ve certainly gone a little too far. Dragonflight was… embarassing.

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I feel like this is Liadrin. She made a whole big deal about feeling bad for what she did to Muru, and she repents to Velen and A’dal. While she has a pivotal role, it isn’t all about her. And she never has absolute power. Liadrin is under the command of Silvermoon’s leadership, unlike Jaina or Sylvanas or Azshara, who do as they will.

Liadrin I think filled this role, but she can’t just keep being wrong about everything for ever.

The problem I see with this is… how many times can this “wrong girl” of yours keep being wrong? Is she to be perpetually wrong about everything for the sake of being wrong? It seems like a role that would need to constantly be refreshed/refilled as the characters own up to their mistakes and learn.

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At this point for any masculinity, i’ll take some giant orc, darenei anything. just a bloke big and bulky being a bloke, facing off against the void in a dungeon scenario and doing a leeroy jenkins and get instantly ripped apart, Alleria can come save the day and all and be the big hero, don’t really care. Just because it would be funny and make alot people laugh.

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To me, it’s not about like… a check box of ‘this is a positive male thing.’ It’s hard to put into words, and I don’t think ‘positive male’ itself even works as an ‘archetype’ for reasons others are saying. It’s more about… just not being stupid pointlessly stupid? lol.

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Turaylon always seemed like a positive masculine male leader, but now they seemed determined to make him the violent father archetype which is sad.

They are just beating that same dead horse the already did with Anduin and Varian just this time with Turaylon and Arator.

Does feel like a trope an angry single mother would write.

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It’s better as a starting point than a perpetual state of being. I also agree that Liadrin fits it because she grows into a more heroic role by legion.

I feel it in part is kind of a check box but a character can’t merely just be the check box to be successful lol. It’s a multistep thing but think of it as like the starting point for the idea of a character we don’t see much of right now.