Y’all keep falling back to these fantasy-medieval tropes of wide spread illiteracy, but we see no evidence of it. To the contrary, we’re finding people of all walks of life writing letters, carrying missives, owning books, so on and so forth. We’re not seeing mention of illiteracy beyond a few exceptional instances, if any beyond Zekhan.
And Azeroth itself is not depicted as a medieval world beyond aesthetics. Flying machines, a train system, fully or semi automatic firearms, bombs, flying fortresses, robotics, cyborgs and more all exist in this world. Beyond even the technology, we’re seeing unheard of levels of multiculturalism spread across the world. Orcs mingling with trolls and tauren and goblins and blood elves, with this level of comingling treated as the norm rather than the exception. Benevolent monarchies, religious tolerance, world travel and again more social constructs that go against the fantasy-medieval trope, these are also treated as normal in Azeroth.
It’s astounding that we all can accept that level of sophistication by the various cultures depicted in the game.
But wide-spread literacy, as the in-game world suggests? Too far, my friends. Too far.
EDIT: To be clear, this isn’t really aimed at you specifically Radomir. Just say that line and wanted to go off for a bit.
The Darkspears officially gave it up, and SOME practice it in secret. Not to mention, practicing cannibalism does not make the entire culture uncivilized. This is just ugly.
Darkspear. Are. Not. Gurubashi. They. Do. Not. Have. A city.
Is that too hard to understand?
They are a isolated tribe from an backwater island. Zekhan not being able to write or read does NOT break with the lore. Stop shaming Blizzard for something that does not have any backup.
Tai’tasi in Sen’jin Village sells trade goods, including Light Parchment. Also, Lar Prowltusk knows what that Northwatch has invasion plans written on scrolls.
Well, I have talked about this a bit yesterday. The Darkspear have had not the easiest time, historically. Every other Tribe in Stranglethorn wanted to wipe them out. The fled to an Island where they were nearly wiped out again by the Naga. By the time on WoW, Sen’jinn village was only like 5 years old and the Echo Isles were essentially in civil war with Zalazane… Which were only retaken in Cata because Garrosh banished the Darkspear from Ogrimmar.
Idk, I just think it is entirely reasonable that the Darkspear had other things to worry about.
Because most people wouldn’t know how to read or write without a school system to teach them. Pretty much no society in this game seems to have a public education system. I don’t think it’s a trope for most medieval societies to not have reading and writing, more that it’s considered more accurate. I think a lot of people take for granted literacy and underestimate what a huge technological boost it is to have the majority of your population able to read and write. It jettisons technological progress exponentially.
The technological things we see I think are more rare than we see as players. We’re using machine guns and crazy war machines and fighting them regularly, but I don’t think the average person has access to those things. The setting is still very much in this late medieval period before the enlightenment and the industrial revolution where plate armor and melee weapons are still used in warfare.
Even if people in this setting know how to read and write, I expect it to be a rare skill, and only used in the handful of times that it is relevant information for them to have. I only see this being an exception in High/Blood/Void elves, Draenei, Gnomes, and perhaps Goblins and to a lesser extent Dwarves.
For sure. The idea of trolls as primitive, culturally backwards cannibals hearkens back to one of the uglier stereotypes the West threw at indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas to justify “civilizing” them (I.E. taking all their resources and destroying cultural practices) during the colonialism period.
It really isn’t something Blizzard should be throwing around as a justification for anything.
But the thing is, for ongoing rampant illiteracy to work here, the Darkspears wouldn’t to have just been isolated in the past; they would need to be currently rejecting literacy as well. Because for the last (ambiguous number of years that certainly add up to over a decade), they have been an active part of a multinational entity in the form of the Horde. They’ve even spent a significant amount of that time as refugees in orcish settlements. At this point, I’d be willing to wager (based mostly on Anduin’s age) they have spent nearly as much time with the Horde as they spent in isolation.
So an ongoing issue of rampant illiteracy among the Darkspear would need to be a willing effort made, and we just don’t see that. While the two specific islands you mention might not have any “deliver letters quests”, we do have those in other troll villages we get sent to, such as Shadowprey Village and with the Reventusk, who have arguably had just as hard of a time of things as the Darkspear.
But that’s the thing; that huge technological boost is actually the only way to explain Azeroth’s level of technology.
You can argue the rarity of that technology, but you’ll have to willfully ignore the number of tanks lined up at the Stormwind Harbor. You’d have to ignore the massive tanks deployed both at the Battle of Lordaeron and in Arathi. You’d have to ignore that the entire Pandaria campaign hinges on flying fortresses, as does Icecrown. And I can go on.
We see nothing but evidence to suggest literacy is common. The only evidence of illiteracy that we see (that I can think of, at least) is one troll. Where is the in-game background pointing to illiteracy-as-norm?
And just to be clear in all of this; I’m not arguing whether or not Zekhan should or shouldn’t be illiterate. I’m tired of that fight.
I’m just questioning these assumptions of wide-spread illiteracy in Azeroth, when everything points to a higher level of general knowledge and social development than that.
One of the great ironies of WoW is that the Zandalari very much tie back to the Incans with their mountainous temple cities, yet the Incan empire did not have a traditional written language system; they encoded things in knots of specially color coded string called quipu. That is something Blizzard had actually used, because it is such a fascinating system—We still do not really understand more than the basics of how it worked.
Those tanks are built and designed only by Gnomes and Dwarves, which I made exception to. And even the tanks were designed by Gnomes initially while the Dwarves just read the blueprints and translated them, and were surprised by just how advanced the Gnomes were upon first meeting them. That’s probably changed somewhat, but not much.
I can argue pretty readily about the level of technological advancement because we have yet to see the Vietnam level machine gun airships that we saw in Pandaria very often, that’s usually pretty rare. Which implies it is not widespread, which means WoW civilizations have not reached that level where literacy is common. People are still conducting warfare as if it is the 1300s or earlier. We saw some gun usage in the cinematic opening for BFA, but those seemed to be line gunnery, which would be like, Napoleonic level.
None of what you said points to majority literacy. The only reason we don’t see this expanded on in the game is because Blizzard does next to no actual worldbuilding outside of “We’re suffering a pig butt shortage in Elwynn recently ever since the great Northrend war that happened a decade ago. Collect 10 pig butts for me”.