Drakonid/Dragonspawn Are Hilariously Problematic, and It Didn't Have To Be This Way

Lore Story Forum
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I could be misremembering old lore, but that wasn’t that always the case with the dragonkin?

They were either created directly by the dragonflights to serve and/or were humans who mutated into dragonkin after long exposure to I don’t know dragon radiation. I don’t recall it ever being concrete in game and I think only the RPG gave it some sort of explanation, which was the aforementioned dragon mutants.

I think the only thing they actively retconned was the “slave race” part. Which to me is like…ok then.

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42

I mentioned this in the OP <3

In the long run it’s a subtle distinction, but one that when changed affects A LOT. It’s the exact kind of thing a careless writer ignores when trying to evolve a pre-existing setting.

Dragonspawn are supposed to be a bit problematic. This was back when dragons were much more eldritch. Good guys, but not very concerned with individual mortal lives. The whole thing was meant to be a bit creepy and weird, because dragons were creepy and weird. It was done intentionally and as part of the worldbuilding.

But even then, the species in question had agency in the process. Like I said, dragonspawn are descended from willing cultists and the mutations happened very gradually over generations.

It wasn’t wasn’t some dragons forcefully changing intelligent reptiles into strong and loyal slaves (oh dear, the implications here).

Now that dragons are just humans with horns, the idea of them doing science experiments on another race of people to turn them into a slave-race is even DARKER than the original concept ever was.

So it’s ironic, that Blizzard is actively trying to avoid controversy by making everything super centrist, but they still fall into these narrative traps through their own hubris!

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Honestly I’d call it less hubris, and more trying to fix a problem they didn’t create but feel like they should fix now that it’s in their hands.

Which you may very well call hubris. But again, this is the story they have to work with, and it’s always been very problematic.

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44

I don’t see what the problem was they were trying to fix, though. If you’re trying to make them less like slaves, then this was a comedically bad way of doing it!

I honestly think it was yet another example of WoW’s newer writers not caring about what came before and looking down on it. They just had their own idea, didn’t think it through, and then when fans called them on it they rushed to “address” it.

This is entirely an unforced error, and it’s hilarious. None of this had to happen if they just left well enough alone.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even bother looking up the original origin of dragonspawn. Btw, it’s not just something from the RPGs (written in part by Metzhan), it’s something devs were tweeting about as recently as 5 or 6 years ago. The writers, and their corporate management, just gives zero ****s about this setting, and they just want to blindly march forward and make it into their own thing.

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45

I know this board loves to bag on the current writers while jerkin Metzen off. But I’d argue the concept of a slave races is in and of itself, very problematic lol.

But carry on.

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Yeah. We agree on that. My issue isn’t having a problematic thing in the game. My issue is the context and purpose behind it, if there is one.

Also, don’t get it twisted. I genuinely love Metzhan’s work on the setting, but even he had some unintentional problematic stuff in his writings (cough cough, the way trolls were portrayed in the RPG)

Everyone’s ignorant sometimes, and people can grow. That isn’t my problem with this.

My problem is that it’s bad writing XD

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47

Or WoW’s story has never tried and will never try to be more then comic book level at best. WoW will always be a game first and a story second. Suffice to say the gameplay needed more enemies and a draconid rebellion just so happened to be a convenient excuse to use said draconid models as enemies.

I’d rather go with sometime we all do think too much about the story. Yes, debating about its various falling is fun but at the time same time, we know the devs only care so much or more likely can only control so much about the story before other important thing need to take precedence, like actually delivering content.

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48

Thing is as I’ve said I think WoW owes it’s due diligence when we’re talking about factions styled after IRL cultures.

Like I’ve repeatedly said I think it’s really cool how they made a major playable faction based off Afro-Carribean cultures. That’s really cool and still extremely unprecedented decades later.

Just uh, don’t make them stinky illiterate savages. They can still be bad guys just don’t make them ya know, that.

But with dragons? … Who cares? Nothing about them resembles any IRL culture. And if we’re going to zero in on how problematic every aspect of the fantasy action genre is then we’re getting nowhere fast.

Yeah sorry I’d rather just zap bandits with thunderbolts than address the socioeconomic factors that lead them to a life a crime. Because I’m trying to live vicariously through a world of sword and sorcery here.

Likewise, not every single faction in WoW needs to be viewed through the anthropological complexities and vagueries of IRL social structures.

An impossible fairytale creature that exists simply to garden can just be that. Its not that big of a deal.

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I’m just gonna leave this here since I’m seeing more hidden replies:

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50

So we’re in agreement. My counter point remains;

Truth is, it’s always been bad writing.

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51

This line of thinking also perplexes me, as if superhero comic books have never tried to do political commentary.

One of Marvel’s most popular franchises is literally the X-men. One of their most beloved stories is “God Loves, Man Kills”.

Justice League: Unlimited, one of the most beloved animated series of the early 2000s, had an entire arc very blatantly making commentary on Bush’s Patriot Act.

Sorry, you are wrong. Fiction has always been an instrument to transmit ideas. Target demographic, tone or genre is widely irrelevant. The idea that writers are able to enter a pure disassociative state devoid of any underlining ideology is a myth that has been debunked so many times throughout history.

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52

:kill_dargons:
/10chars

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Never said they didnt. Having said that, the vast majority of said work does not do political commentary and maybe more importantly it avoids certain ones as well/only does it on a very surface level.

Afterall, for most of batman we never talk about Bruce’s obscene wealth and how that might have been better use then making himself a one man army or how he effectively made a child army for himself of orphans(usually).

And Warcraft has the Purge and Sthratholme. Both events of moral complexity and in the Purge’s case, the justification/moral issues of using police powers to deal with terroristic threats(which just so happened to have been added during the while the world was preoccupied with the war on terror)

Warcraft and comic books dabble in politics but usually very surface level and infrequent compared to all their villian of the week stories/character focused stories or just general goofy storylines.

No one says they fully disassociate with it. Having said that political commentaries in Warcraft as in comics are at best second fiddle to the action at worse controversy generators to pull their audience.

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Which doesn’t really detract from the fact they inherently exist and thus we are able to discuss them.

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There is no moral complexity in stratholme. Arthas killed the uninfected with the infected and just turned them into undead faster.nby the end of it, malganis was the only thing he cared about.

The act was so evil that Stratholme became a domain of dread whose fires never stop burning.

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And it doesnt detract that for the most part the devs/writers will usually brush it aside and most people do not care about it aside from the most hardcore fans.

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Cool. But we are not in the gameplay forums. We are in the Story Forums. And thus, like I said, we are going to discuss them.

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59

Not trying to get in the middle of this, but I think that’s new(er) lore?

I’m playing through Warcraft 3, and it sure as hell seemed like purging the city was the only option, and no one in Arthas’s crew could even suggest a better idea. Jaina isn’t totally against it (she later says Arthas is just doing what he thinks is right), she just couldn’t watch him do it.

In the game, If you fail to purge the city in time, you end up overrun and get a game over. It really gave me the impression that, if Arthas didn’t purge the city, things would have ended up even worse.

It really ties into the experience of playing the game, and I think it was intentional. Playing Warcraft 3 feels like going from an innocent fairytale world to a gritty cosmic horror story. I thought the whole point was that Arthas was being forced to make decisions that the people of Azeroth are wholly unprepared to make, but he’s convinced are fully necessary. At first, he’s correct, but he slowly keeps pushing the envelope further and further until he can’t tell right from wrong anymore.

Azeroth is a planet where right and wrong are normally simple. The whole point of Warcraft 3 was to upend that, and make the simple people of this high fantasy world deal with serious and complicated issues. Arthas is what happens when the King Arthur archetype is forced to deal with things like biological terrorism and alien invaders.

He has main character syndrome. Everything he’s ever done has been the right decision up until the third war. He starts adapting to this changing world, and has no way of realizing his perspective has gotten out of whack. After all, he’s the hero, right?

Until the moment he betrays his mercenaries, lies to his men, and chooses to watch Muradin die while he picks up the sword that steals his soul.

In your version of the story though, I totally agree. Screw Arthas. :stuck_out_tongue:

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60

Mal’ganis would have had an army that might have just ravage and destroyed all of Lordeaeron if not the entire Eastern Kingdoms.

Like it or not, Arthas did slow the Scourge. Even if it was ultimately a futile effort.

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61

I’m referencing the ashbringer comic.
:dracthyr_shrug:

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