Common IC viewpoints you just don't get

Wyrmrest Accord
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Are there any commonly held viewpoints you’ve encountered in RP that you just don’t get the reasoning behind, or that you disagree with?

My biggest one is probably this common idea that the attack on Dazar’alor, and the subsequent assassination of King Rastakhan, were some sort of big Alliance injustice against the innocent (and at the time officially neutral) Zandalari.

Like sure, at the time the Zandalari had not officially joined the Horde. They had however been hostile towards the Alliance since Cataclysm, and during BFA the port of Dazar’alor was not only sheltering Horde forces but actively allowing them to use their port as a rallying/launch point for the warfronts of Arathi and Darkshore. Literal armies gathered there to ship out to the war.

Then when the Alliance retaliates to this major strategic Horde position, the Zandalari get a shocked pikachu face and consider it a monumental war crime.

Like… Idk they kinda brought it upon themselves by sheltering one major world power over another during wartime.

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Here’s one I don’t and will absolutely never understand: the idea of being suspicious or wary or outright terrified of a Demon Hunter, a Death Knight or a Warlock or other “dark” characters.

Stormwind is home to a race of ancient vengeful genocided people who now walk around with creepy dark god eyes, gnomes in regular and cyborg variety, dwarves and the dwarves the dwarves used to fight, elves who are literally infused with the void, two varieties of space alien, werewolves and werebears. And that’s just playable characters–let’s not forget that there is literally a shop full of travelers from beyond time and space that can warp reality a stone’s throw away from where everyone goes to church.

If you exist anywhere near a city, you have seen some crazy stuff. If you’re in the Horde, it’s even weirder–you used to kick the crap out of half your allies. There is literally no way you can be fazed by a weirdo in a hood and a shirtless yahoo wearing a blindfold.

A blue dragon’s ghost visits your city with recurring frequency.

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The idea that there must be a Warchief, or that the Horde is weak without a Warchief, or just in general that the new method of leadership isn’t as good as the old one.

The last Warchief was almost completely unopposed in their office, with the only objection coming from someone who was immediately branded a traitor and had several attempts on their life. The other Horde leaders had to work in the shadows to subvert the Warchief’s bloodlust and organize a rebellion, rather than openly discuss their grievances. And it’s not the first time.

Somehow, this is not a bad thing, and dictatorships are totally cool. We just have to hope for the right dictator.

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The tendency to respond to every slight with immediate threats of lethal violence.

Not even a verbal exchange that escalates to posturing, pushing, and maybe a punch. I’m talking about whipping out your pistol/blade/explosions at the drop of a hat.

Also, the noble that rejects everything about being a noble… but still insists on being a noble. The ones that show utter disdain or ignorance of decorum. They complain any time a situation calls for them dress up, exercise actual leadership, enjoy a fancy meal, fraternize with other nobles or do anything one would expect a noble to do. They’d rather live their lives performing manual labor, wear commoners’ clothes and spend their evenings in dive bars drinking cheap swill. The only friends they need are their trusty wolf, sword arm and maybe a down-to-earth guy/gal next door. It goes beyond merely occasionally slumming it. They’d honestly be happier as a mountain hermit or sharecropper.

…Up until the point people start to actually treat them like they’re one of the common folk. At that point, they’re quick to remind others how sophisticated rich, kitted out and well connected they really are.

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admittedly due to RL experiences i get this one. i don’t agree with it and i think it’s a stupid viewpoint but i see why some people hold it lmao. also i think holding it makes your character an inherently bad person but you know.

honestly i get most IC perspectives but what I don’t get are the people who act like their pro-horde viewpoints are justified at all by the narrative of world of warcraft. Yes we can write characters we fundamentally don’t agree with sometimes, for the sake of plot and conflict. It’s one thing to play a Zandalari mouthbreather who doesn’t understand basic cause and effect, or a sylvanas loyalist that thinks she’s got the right idea. It’s another thing to tell me OOC that your character is right, actually, and has brain cells lmao.

Anyway while I do play blood elves that think that what Jaina did in Dalaran was wrong, OOCly I don’t… think Jaina was wrong to do what she did? And I have a hard time buying that Jaina Proudmoore is evil for responding to terrorism and genocide with violence :/.

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That the ‘old ways’ of the Horde are best.

My Orc, the ‘old ways’ got us corrupted by the Demons, used as an expendable army of fodder troops three times, cracked a world in half, nearly resulted in the extinction of all life on a cosmic scale, are responsible for attempted genocide four times in a row, have seen the Orcish people, and by dint of association everyone who has ever been even remotely connected to them, demonized by an entire planet and has driven the people of the Horde into debt, misery and civil war countless times.

No. Go kill Quillboar or Centaur, go til some fields, go fishing, go build something meaningful and worthwhile. Your need to prove yourself a ‘worthy warrior’ does not overshadow the needs of your people. There’s a dozen other threats that need to be dealt with before you even look at the Alliance, or one of their member nations.

And kindly remember that the reason they’re so gung-ho about killing us is we provoked them in the first place.

You are the reason the Horde is suffering and will continue to suffer long into the future with your mindless aggression and need for self-glorification, regardless of the cost to the people around you.

Drops mic, walks out.

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That the undead hate the living. Sure it sucks always being the designated driver because you can’t get drunk and you’re surrounded by drunks and damn it I hate the living.

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The idea that peace can exist while both factions remain. Or that merging the factions would bring peace. Not in my unlifetime, baby.

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Yeah this is a thing I don’t get either tbh - how attached people get to skewed RP viewpoints OOC.

Like, Sarestha used to see Sylvanas not as just a monarch, but as a messiah who saved the Forsaken from the Scourge, and reconquered much of the Kingdom of Lordaeron from invaders. She got over that one, but still emphatically believes in Absolute Monarchy (Lordaeron is a Kingdom and the word republic might as well be a swear word to her) and only likes the Council because it gives her sovereign nation an equal seat at the table. She believes that the blighting of Southshore was justified as an execution of justice, due to the fact that Lordaeronians from Southshore were using their town as a launching point for invasion of the “True Lordaeronian remnants” (The Forsaken). For this reason she also believes the Alliance have tacitly renounced all claim to the nation, meaning Lordaeron should be a Forsaken-only land. So like, even as a “good-aligned” forsaken in many ways who truly believes in peace and wants to make the world a better place, she’s got some wildly skewed views.

But my gosh I don’t share them.

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Let me bless you with deep Forsaken lore, my friend.

There’s a liquor called “Undercity Skull-Shocker” made specifically to replicate the effects of intoxication in the Forsaken. You can buy it at the zeppelin tower in Orgrimmar. :stuck_out_tongue:

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So, I’m actually going to drop one here.

That the Kaldorei and Zandalari are primitive boom

So, I read Fey’s post in another forum, and then ended up thinking on it since, if it’s added up, there are exceedingly few primitives on Azeroth.

It all boils down to the tools that the various societies in WoW have. Draenei sure as heck aren’t primitive, but I also don’t see them deciding to rebuild their technological glory. Stands to reason that given their societies are mega old, Kaldorei and Zandalari are probably significantly more educated than groups like humans and orcs in various fields. Just because their practicing a form of worshipping wild gods doesn’t change this.

People also tend to forget the Zandalari put magic cannons on their dinosaurs, which also leads me to believe Zul actually had minimal support of the Zandalari outside of “Have some boats and gtfo.” since those sure as heck weren’t in Cata or MoP.

This isn’t even getting into the fact we don’t once hear about the Zandalari or Kaldorei having issues feeding their own people pans over to Orgrimmar having famine in lore and Westfall

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actually gonna take this a step further

“the darkspear are primitive!”

i like to headcanon that the darkspear are actually quite versed in arcane magic and agriculture. their issues come less from a lack of technology and more of location and circumstance, but people forget that cultures invent out of necessity. the darkspear didn’t really need space crystals or travel, they probably just came up with cool irrigation and fresh water tactics.

i like to think that the darkspear could have maybe invented a way for turning seawater into drinkable water due to the location of the echo isles and the fact that they don’t seem like they have a massive water source. probably a way using wild god magic, or arcane.

“the tauren are primitive!”

they have windmills, my dude. that means they have a reliable source of natural kinetic energy for milling. the tauren have proficiency with guns, as a racial, in Classic. engineering is not foreign to tauren. they probably just prefer more natural, green resources to the usual goblin and gnome engineering.

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We went through an expansion where we fought actual cave-people, I don’t think anyone’s ready to go throwing stones about primitiveness.

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I actually said this to a friend of mine when I was an idiot early highschooler with dumb viewpoints and he was like (I’m paraphrasing a little because this was over a decade ago) “wtf - the Tauren have survived decades of warfare, domesticated pretty much every animal in Kalimdor, and seamlessly transitioned from a nomadic to a city life in a matter of months, already developing high speed elevators and defensive structures so that they can safely occupy a mesa while still engaging in trade both overland and via sky with their Horde allies. They also respect the earth and look after it which is more than modern civilisation on earth can do. F*** off.”

And my gosh that right then and there taught me a lot about making assumptions about civilisations, in fantasy and reality.

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I’ve talked about this on these forums before (at length) but it’s always really baffled me how people basically lose all understanding of social justice and like, empathy, when it comes time to apply those values to hypothetical people.

This leads to a lot of characters who are intended to be decent, well-adjusted people holding really bizarre opinions that are very obviously just their players’ hot lore takes, which leads to characters saying stuff like:

  • “The draenei deserved everything they got for not telling the orcs about the Legion” (literally untrue)
  • “The Horde are an oppressed minority, and the Alliance are its colonizers” (pound for pound, the opposite is true)
  • Soldiers can’t be punished for following morally reprehensible orders (humanity has been over this already)

If a real-life person said anything like that in any seriousness about anything, they’d be considered a wingnut, but it’s weirdly common for Ezekiel Goodman the Merciful, Designated Moral Backbone of the Silver Hand to say stuff like that without blinking.

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Human Exceptionalism on Azeroth.

Yep. I’m just going to say it. I’ve seen this one -a lot- in the Aliance RP community? Army of the Blackmoon? No, not really. Dark Iron misbehavior? Nope. Worgen struggling with their humanity? Probably most human characters. Draenei? No, just stop.

I’ve seen a lot of people in the Alliance community who act like it’s groundbreaking and revolutionary for their characters to get pushback on anything. To credit this, this isn’t to say that it’s universal. Tons of human characters on WrA are aren’t this dense and go “Yeah… that was a mistake…” when presented.

The issue? Enough of human RPers genuinely act shocked when their character is met with pushback. The most recent, i kid you not, was some acting like the Kaldorei were ‘Lazy good for-nothing bums’ because they were refugees in SW and that humanity ‘owes them nothing’. Some act like there should be no pushback for the time Varian literally forced Ironforge to reorganize it’s government as sword point.

Just not even going to expand it past that since doing so is an even bigger pandora’s box with how many excuses they pull from their butts since humanity on Azeroth just has never done anything wrong, clearly.

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A lot of what I get from this is that there’s a certain level of narrative dissonance within the game itself.

There are things the game says are important or meaningful narrative things, but at the same time, if you even briefly analyze the overall story, it doesn’t have any kind of logical consistency. I think it’s also a matter of “well, that’s how they were first depicted” and, honestly, first impressions are tough to break - especially when the game’s story can flip flop on it too.

Things like fearing or being wary of Death Knights, Demon Hunters, or Warlocks is partly because that was how Blizz modeled you should react to them. And yeah, at times they decide to shift gears and say, “Ah yea, they’re just sorta accepted now,” but then pull a 180 back in the other direction.

DKs are a good example: presented as monsters in Wrath, then sometimes show up as just regular Alliance commanders or soldiers, but then in Legion they’re slaughtering Red Dragons and attacking Light’s Hope Chapel, and now in Shadowlands seemingly almost good guys again. So… is it right to keep them at arm’s length or shake the hand of the next DK keeping a portal to Shadowlands open for you? Well, who knows, depends on what narrative point Blizz needs you to accept at that time.

The Warchief thing is partly because a major selling point of the Horde as a faction theme was the idea of a Warchief. It’s part of why Alliance made rabble over the High King concept as a “Blue Warchief” - it felt like a lame version of the Horde’s themes, rather than reinforcing the Alliance’s. I’ll be honest, the idea of a Warchief is just kinda cool - and as a game that distinctly relies on the Rule of Cool as a narrative tool, the idea of folks still being a-okay with a Warchief, IC or OOC, makes perfect sense.

And sometimes you’re just drawn to one particular storybeat and have a Strong Opinion about it. For example, I prefer TBC blood elves immensely more than what’s come after. For me, giving a Naaru the succ and spitting in the face of the Light is forever cool just as such a unique theme of Paladins. So I would most certainly play a Blood Knight much, much closer to the TBC era mindset than the modern one. Is that necessarily wrong? I don’t think so, it’s not like cultures are monolithic. Would that make me a bad roleplayer? Probably to some folks. Granted, this is all just an example of a niche situation, but for some races like orcs, old tropes die hard.

Anyway, long and short of it is that because people have different embedded concepts of what makes a “thing” that thing. You’re also sometimes counter-acting older tropes, strong first impressions, and so on that can be really hard to pull the community away from even if its not consistent with current lore. Doubly so if Blizz tends to waffle a lot in the presentation.

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i udnerstand these ones because i feel like BLIZZARD THEMSELVES hold these views, and the narrative portrays them as good (or at least neutral). so it makes sense why players would hold them to, if they didn’t stop to think about it.

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It’s partly because the Alliance are sort of written like an empire. There’s a lot of contradictions in how both factions are written, and a longtime issue of “What Blizzard says is lore, and what they actually do in the story” (without even touching on the times when they blatantly lied in interviews regarding subjects like Garrosh or Sylvanas).

A TL;DR of longer discussions like this one is that the subfactions of the Alliance are labeled as a collection of races coming together, but then effectively act as vassal states of Stormwind’s empire.

I personally think they’re playing into that old generic fantasy style where the humans are the leaders of everything, and then the humans have a bunch of servants/guards who are non-humans, but the only leaders are humans. It’s a trope a lot of fantasy settings tended to get mired down in, though it comes across as dated to me now.
What’s weird to me though, is that most franchises become self-aware over time, and move away from this trope. Star Wars, for instance, introduced a bunch of aliens to the Rebel Alliance in Return of the Jedi and made the Mon Calamari both intentionally ugly and prominent to show kids that “ugly people can be heroes”. You would think the franchise who cashed in big on the realization that “people want to play as good guy monsters” would recognize this by now. Granted, it sort of felt like they became self aware for a while, but then the story keeps going back to ‘Anduin/Jaina’s adventures with human form Genn, featuring sidekick race of the patch’.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-inconsistencies-of-high-king-and-why-the-title-damages-the-alliance-identity-and-narrative/186019

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The idea that trolls are furry.

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