So, this is something that I have been stirring around in my head for the better part of month, something that i’v been trying to grasp onto but not been able to put into words. For people who have posted with me for a long period of time you’ve probably caught into some keys things about me when I talk. I am occasionally hyperbolic, I tend to have some very strong views on various subjects both in BfA and real life, i’m really into my cultural heritage both in and out of game, i’v also only been on the forums for a couple months.
The last one is kind of true, i’v actually been here since TBC and I even visited the story forum sometimes way back in the distant past. Yet even in Cata I could not remember the forums ever, EVER, being so saturated with conflicting explosive opinions, often tearing apart any sense of reasonable discourse. I’v tried to pinpoint why exactly this is, why now more then any time in WoW’s long history has lore become so single mindedly focused and difficult to talk about in a reasonable manner?
At first I thought about how dark the expansion was, how fundamentally an event like Darnassus could do nothing but stir up endless controversy and infighting. Yet when I leaned back and thought about it, that couldn’t possibly be the case. I mean YES, people do argue about it destroying the Horde narrative, and who suffered more from a story standpoint for it’s inclusion, but to most people they framed it in the lens of a narrative problem. That is to say: Unless someone was memeing really hard, it was universally considered to be at least a little evil, whether Horde or Alliance.
So you know, if it’s not really how dark the events are, what could it be? What could possibly be making me so irritated in conversations that I actually have gotten visibly heated more then once in the last couple months? I considered this for a long moment, and then it kind of struck me in the back of the head while talking to someone.
I thought someone in the Alliance was basically dog whistling.
Now first off if you’re confused, congratulations on not being exposed to the nightmare of politics that some people choose to immersive themselves in what could only be the result of masochism. The short explanation for what dog whistling is, is it’s basically an act where someone who appears not be biased or to not feel a certain thing is basically signalling to other people they do believe that thing through coded language because it’d be reprehensible, thus rallying supporters with no backlash.
I.E: I don’t believe that all the orcs should of been murdered outright, but if every orc on Azeroth got killed it’s not like we couldn’t replace them with people who could do their jobs as good if not better.
The implication of this is, of course, that if we had killed all the orcs on Azeroth it would of been a net gain for the planet. But you can’t say the person who said that thinks that because you can’t prove what a person believes, those are things only held in your heart and in your head. It’s a tactic often used by fascists and racists, to be clear I do not think the Alliance are fascists or racists, nor do I think they do it but the Horde doesn’t(Far from it.) rather it’s something I noticed and it made me pause.
It made me pause because it made me realize that our discourse had broken down to such a point in the sea of heated argument and trolling that I was basically using political nomenclature to describe a conversation between two people talking about lore in a fantasy video game in the most tribalistic way possible. That comes with it’s own baggage, because it means i’m arguing with people about a video game the same way I would defensively argue about myself and my own identity in real life.
I was arguing with a Night Warrior Night Elf like they were freaking Barry Goldwater, and it is almost tragically beautiful in the sheer amount of stupidity in that.
So how did we get here? why did we get here? why would I think of things in euphemistic language, dog whistling, and looking at every edgy meme/joke/etc like people are shrouding ideas they weren’t really ready to own yet in a cloud of irony just to make things sound less bad. The reason is kind of painfully simple when I think about it, it’s because BfA kind of set the game up to view Alliance and Horde almost like a political party.
See, discourse between Horde and Alliance has always been bad in some places for various reasons. People tend to attach to races in games and factions because in some way they personally identify with that side, in a two faction game it’s natural that people would argue about both what faction is better, and what faction is right because in a way they are defending themselves. Now I know this might sound like the obvious, but I cannot emphasize this aspect of what is going on right now enough: People often choose factions because they relate to them, I would not play a Forsaken if I didn’t see merit in their culture, so when you insult the faction you are often indirectly insulting them.
This aspect of the discussion did hit a fever pitch during Cataclysm, when the factions seemed more at odds then ever, but the greater threat of Deathwing still didn’t make things quite as bad they could be. Mists of Pandaria was focused on the faction war, but even that was diluted since pretty much from the start of that expansion we know Garrosh would be evil. We had die hard Horde supporters of course, my significant other actually lead an orc clan on Ravenholdt who got a WoW insider piece about how Blizzards narrative was eating away at the Horde identity(They weren’t wrong, in my eyes.) but for the most part we braced and many didn’t even try to defend. So whats different now?
Simple: Blizzard engineered BfA to make us hate one another.
I know that sounds extremely hyperbolic, but it’s the truth of whats happening on the forums. People are defending red and blue like political parties because Blizzard has built this expansion in such a way to make each other go at one anothers throat, either by design or incompetence. Everything: BfA’s trailer, it’s promotional material, the edgelord Sylvanas hoodies, EVERYTHING is meant to make you feel whatever side you picked is right and whatever side your enemies picked is wrong.
I can’t help but think in these terms because even though someones attacking my fictional identity, in many ways they are also attacking my real identity, and we don’t like to think of ourselves in that light. That the characters we attach to could have some sort of in real life reflection or consequence, WoW is after all escapism, but I can’t help but think the reason BfA is failing from a narrative point of view is the fact that more then ever it’s pulling us into the real world.
The discourse here, is not that different from the charged political discourse of real life, with all the uncomfortable sensations that go with it. I don’t know how to fix that even, I don’t think we CAN fix that, but as long as BfA keeps going the way it’s going lore discussion is often going to feel painful and unpleasant yet nevertheless something we’re compelled to defend because it’s part of us.
What do you guys think?