And yet, operated by humans as well.
We see them in the goblin starting zone and in Sholzar basin, off the top of my head. Used by humans.
Except for the use of more advanced weaponry like bombs and airships.
These aren’t things that only show up once. We see them across expansions, even as recent as BfA. You argue they must be rare, but the frequent use doesn’t just suggest otherwise; it demands otherwise.
Citing the technology on Azeroth isn’t really indicative of anything, considering a rocket to the face is treated as no more advanced and no stronger than doing the same thing with a large rock.
We’re still beating each other over the head with maces and swords; technology is basically a gimmick on Azeroth, rather than indicative of actual progress. Tanks and guns are made out to be little more than a cosmetic alternative to horses and bows. Gunships are readily knocked of of the sky by the same infernals that we smack to death with rocks and sticks. The world at large is frozen at a late medieval/early Renaissance level of tech (and historically Azeroth’s most advanced societies all top out around that level and remain so for thousands of years), with certain races bringing certain techy toys that don’t seem to connect organically to any wider growths in industry and scientific understanding.
That said, of all the societies on Azeroth, the non-Zandalari and non-Drakkari (whose collapse is actually a pretty recent thing) troll tribes are specifically meant to represent not some fundamental trollish primitivism, but rather a long decline from urbanized civilization to fragmented subsistence due to imperialism, mistrust of outsiders and warmongering ways that couldn’t be sustained - ways that the Zandalari and Drakkari incidentally didn’t pursue. So just logically speaking one has to wonder what any of those tribes are reading or writing on with regularity after having lived that way for so long. How would they have been producing or acquiring parchment/vellum/paper for general use when they’re basically hunter-gatherers garnering shelter from the ruins of what used to be cities? One can easily figure such things are/were being widely distributed/sold and used in Zandalar and until recently Zul’Drak, but in the wreckage of Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub? Probably not for centuries.
Trying to perfectly align our RL development cycle with Azeroth’s won’t work. Magic throws a wrench in the works there, and it is a bias on our part to assume there has to be a specific sequence to technological/cultural development.
Sometimes. More often than not, operated by Gnomes or Dwarves.
I don’t remember machine guns in the goblin starting zone, it has been years though. I also don’t remember any airship usage in Sholozar basin. I think there was a crashed one? I think? Haven’t quested there in years either.
And just because someone can operate something doesn’t necessarily mean they know how it works or how to build it. Most people can learn to drive a car but have next to no knowledge on how it actually works. That may or may not require some level of literacy, but again, I continue to say that I can see people being able to read and write relevant information but not to the same level a scholar would be able to.
Then why was the opening of BFA conducted like a traditional siege? I think you’re over emphasizing how much we see these things in questing and ignoring the precedence traditional melee combat takes over technological weapons.
Redridge Mountains; after completing the questline, the zone suffers a massive explosion, causing signficant damage to Render’s Valley, even cratering it.
Gilneas; Sylvanas’s use of chemical weapons destroys the region.
There are plenty of other examples showing technology is used and is capable of great destruction, almost on par with magic.
You end up using a plane with a machine gun to shoot down gyrocoptors also armed with machine guns. All Alliance tech, by the by.
From the central basin, you get a quest to scout the area the Scourge are in with a gyrocoptor. You’re shot at by other gyrocoptors, also with machine guns.
People in the modern world can’t read or write at scholarly levels. Nobody here is saying Azeroth is a world of scholars.
My argument is that the sheer volume of written texts, letters, missives and suchlike, coupled with the amount and advancement of technology makes this concept of medieval-level illiteracy nigh impossible.
No clue! But if you’ll recall, they were also throwing bombs around. The walls get hit by them, Sylvanas grabs some to drop in the seige tower.
I think I’m not.
I think I’m examining what Azeroth shows us about the world. You have sword weilding knights beside tank riding gnomes, and they’re both accepted as normal.
My argument has been both are present, both exist, and for the latter to exist, we must not be dealing with a medieval world.
That’s a fair point. I think the only alternative is maybe Azeroth just isn’t as literate as we think it is? Which is what you are contesting it seems.
I am not really sure myself. I am not well read on how literacy moves and develops from an illiterate society. I just don’t know what that looks like because I have never researched it.
I suspect culture certainly plays a role. In Stormwind, books and education is probably more accessible to the ruling and wealthy class, and less so to the peasantry, being an absolute monarchy and all.
The other explanation would be… is there any reason the Darkspear would resist literacy in their society. Unless Blizzard wants to say that Azeroth was too saturated in war to prioritize education… I am not really sure what excuse there would be.
I feel like this is one aspect of a bigger problem. Blizzard really just hasn’t done the world building footwork. If Zekhan is illiterate, why? Is that common for Trolls? Or is is Darkspear spesific? Or is Zekhan himself an outlier?
I would be willing to accept that, because the Darkspear have has to move around so much, that their culture has become reliant on oral traditions, and Zekhan just feel through the cracks of a still developing education system.
But we all kinda know that Blizzard didn’t put that much thought into it… and just decided that Zekhan was illiterate on a superficial level… And it is kind of weird that Lor’themar was chosen to be his tutor, yet… he wasn’t teaching Zekhan Thalassian or Common?
Yeah, that sums it up well.
I doubt the world of Azeroth is full of literary geniuses. I don’t expect them to start colonizing neighboring planets soon. But the level of advancement we see, whether it be technological, social or agricultural (I keep forgetting to bring that one up), suggests a level of civilization beyond the medieval.
It’s impossible to place how far beyond the medieval; Azeroth is simultaneously primitive and more advanced than our world in different ways. But it must be beyond the medieval for just the social advancements alone.
Honestly, I think the most satisfying answer that reflects what’s seen in-game is… Zekhan is illiterate. Darkspears as a whole are no less literate than other trolls. If I were writing, I’d’ve included reasons for Zekhan’s specific instance of illiteracy, but I didn’t write it and Sean (and others) hasn’t either.
It’s the closest to a satisfying conclusion that can really be reached.
Most Gurubashi trolls live in ruins. Same goes for all the Stranglethorn trolls. I see written tablets here and there, but I’m sure those are written by the leaders of the tribe i.e the Shamanic elders/priests. We don’t know how many trolls would know how to write in Zandali. I think people are being overly critical on the subject.
If I were to hazard a guess all Zandalari are able to read and write in their native tongue. Most upper echelons of the Amani, Ferraki, Gurubashi, and Drakkari were able to. I don’t think the peasantry would be familiar with writing let alone be well versed in writing. Like most human history it’s the scholars and leaders who were literate. Rarely do we see the peasantry being given an education let alone enough to be formalized in reading/writing in different languages.
I think you are right that the constant fighting for survival in Stranglethorn would result in less literacy among the Darkspear.
The kingdoms of the alliance take pride in their civlisation. Because unlike the Horde savages they built actual good cities instead of tents and huts or barracks with spikes. If there is one thing the Horde can and SHOULD learn from the alliance then it is how not to fail at the civilisation game. I know why the only races from the Horde that I love are elves and trolls.
We’ve had those discussions here too.
So it is an isolated incident. That’s why I’d say, that calling it “racism” is a bit too much. In my opinion “racist” or “racism”, much like “[Nationalsozialist]”, are words that are used far too often in online discussions, thereby robbing these words of their historical weight and implication. Like “Grammar N***i” for example. Or people who tell you that it’s “Digital Blackfacing” when you are using a meme that uses a reaction of a PoC.
When you call something or someone racist, it’s important to be critical, but also pay attention to the context of the matter.
Regarding Zekhan: He’s a young troll. Maybe the constant warfare intervened with his education. Maybe it’s a language barrier thing - as a Blood Elf, Lor’themar probably lived a few hundred years longer and had a better education, especially since Blood Elves are painted as “noble and arrogant”. “Erosion” is also a scientific term, so… maybe, the Elemental stuff was always more a spiritual thing for Trolls and not a form of science that needed to be that precise. Also there could be a language barrier. Unfortunately, WoW-Lore has always been problematic with that- sometimes there was a language barrier, sometimes there wasn’t.
But:
All these guesses are almost baseless and pure speculation. I agree 100% that it’s weird that Blizzard / the writer didn’t explain where the Illiteracy comes from or if it’s widespreaded among Trolls. Regarding the racism thing, I would agree with you if they claimed that more trolls are illiterate and needed to be taught by Blood Elves. But in this isolated case… the term seems a bit forced to me - but that’s just my personal opinion.
What I absolutely don’t see is the Goblin thing. I mean, even IF Zekhan hated Goblins - would that be such a big problem? Even good characters can have flaws and overcome them on their journeys. There’s a similar story in Star Trek with Captain Kirk and the Klingons. He straight out hated all Klingons and treated them with disrespect and contempt - and he had reasons for it. But there was a story behind it.
If it’s not the case that it was intentional, just think about it for a moment
Honestly, what seems more plausible to you?
or…
When the Night Elves attacked the Orcs in WC3, they did it, because they were distrustful and they saw how the Orcs felled their trees. It’s not quite the same, but even back then, it was a reason for hostility that was not rooted in racism.
The question should be: “Is everything, that someone can willfully interpret as racism, actually racism and needs to be changed, if there are other story implications that would offer a far more plausible explanation?”
Also, what if this is intentional and only the beginning of Zekhans story to discover that there a also “good goblins”? It is written from a POV, isn’t it?
That I can agree with! I admit, I would really like the World of Warcraft to be more realistic or nuanced in some of these regards. Not with the gender thing though - ironically, despite all these sexism charges, the women in WoW are amazing characters in my opinion and work very well.
But I mean, it still is World of Warcraft, so you need controversial or flawed characters, even among the “good guys”. Even our “heroes” could have edges - how boring would it be if they were all perfect with a “modern” mindset?
I don’t think the majority of WoW’s playerbase consists of teenagers anymore, so I would totally be happy if Blizzard moved it into a more realistic or “darker” tone. I mean, it’s about Warcraft. You can’t have two councils of politically correct leaders with social modern justice values and then let them fight each other like animals. I know, this is an exxageration, but I hope I found the right words to explain what I mean. I think, storytelling is a form of Art. And art can do things, even break taboos that are not done or allowed in RL.
There’s a lot of criticism directed at Blizzard that I would support and totally agree with.
But in this case, I can’t move beyond the impression that people are now actually searching and nitpicking to paint targets on ABK. 
And that is perfectly fine. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to see it. That was never where our views came into conflict. The conflict arose when you said this:
Because the implication is that people… Shouldn’t complain about racism and stereotypes in a fantasy game. I’ve tried getting an explanation on this, but so far the people espousing this idea haven’t really given one beyond “well, because it’s fantasy”.
Sexism is fine to complain about. But… Not racism? Why? Why does racism bring out such an unusual “it’s fantasy” defense, but not treating women as objects?
You talk about art, and breaking taboos. I agree that art can do that. Seeing humans mistreat gnomes? Cool, give me a story there. Garrosh has had, imo, one of the best villain arcs, and he was absolutely showing racist beliefs about most non-orc races.
But, once again, nobody has been making a big issue about characters portrayed as racist towards other characters. Yet this defense keeps coming up to deflect the real arguments people have made.
If I point out the way Jaina was portrayed in ICC after the airship battle, when she’s weeping and calling Varian “her king”, ignoring that she was a ruler in her own right with no ties to the kingdom of Stormwind, and I point out the “weeping for joy girl figure, just proud that her man showed growth” is a standard sexist trope (not the best example, I know, but my mind is too fuzzy to think of a better one), will that get as vehement a defense as discussing racist tropes get? Unlikely, because we all seem to accept that fantasy sexism is still sexism.
So, once again. Why is racism treated so differently, just because fantasy?
Thank you for articulating a bit more than you have before, now there is some meat on the bone to discuss.
I feel like a lot of this mess comes down to presentation, pure and simple. With just a small bit of rephrasing a lot of this would look a 1000% better. Instead of the Regent Lord teaching him, which ignoring the racist optics is just weird on a lore level, have someone else who makes more sense. Zandalar has an entire area called the Hall of Chroniclers full of people whose whole job it is to read and write. Why not have Talanji order them to improve his education? It is the least she can do after all he did for her and her kingdom.
Simple stuff like that.
I think you’re severely underestimating the impact of magic-based weaponry and technology on Azeroth. There’s less of a motivation to develop advanced firearms when arcane missiles exist. In fact, this is exactly the reason given in-game for why the Shal’dorei don’t make or use bows, even though they had that knowledge prior to the War of the Ancients: they fell out of favor in comparison to offensive spell-casting thanks to the high level of magical knowledge in Suramar.
As for still using plate armor: the only reason plate fell out of favor in the real world is because lighter-weight alternatives were developed, many out of synthetic materials. Azeroth does not seem to have any large-scale synthetic materials industry comparable with the real world; crude petroleum exists, but it’s primarily used for fuel, not making plastics. This makes sense considering that magical knowledge and enchantments can cover a lot of the uses that synthetics are made for IRL. Instead we get heavy melee fighters still wearing plate armor, because between magic and having access to all sorts of different ores that we don’t have equivalents to on Earth, there isn’t as much motivation to develop something like Kevlar.
This is why Blizzard should be employing sensitivity readers or consultants, because that would help catch things like this before they get anywhere near being published. There’s absolutely no excuse for Blizzard to not use them.
I also wouldn’t have any problem with sexism in the story of WoW, as long as it’s explored with nuance and part of a character’s story. I believe, in the beginning (the early WC3?) they painted the Night Elves as kind of a matriachry. Could have lead to an interesting clash of cultures in the Alliance, but unfortunately, until Varian’s death, Blizzard always painted the Alliance as “the friendly, harmonic family”.
In my opinion, Blizzard has watered down the different races in WoW too much. They’ve become too interchangeable in my opinion, they lack “profile”. They took the “no arcane magic”-trait from the Night Elves, even made them welcoming to mages and strangers. They took the tribe mentality and code of honor from the Orcs. I remember, when they showed us that WoD Trailer back then, I was hyped. It looked like they would show us the different cultures of the Orcish Clans and their different mindsets. In the end, they are were basically the same and all incompetent. I wouldn’t mind to see more Stereotypes that evolve over time in the story.
Don’t get me started on Varian. In my opinion, he was the very embodiment of a Gary-Stu-Snowflake character and a male power fantasy. I’m a sucker for a good story and I see Varian as a black hole for any story potencial. While Jaina at least opposed him at times and tried to “fight back”, I still remember that horrible scenario with Tyrande in Pandaria.
When the 40 years old (?) best gladiator king ever taught the Hight-Priestess of Elune, who fought in the War of the Ancients severeal thousand years ago, the meaning of “Patience” and turned her into a blushing fangirl.
That was just… 
I was so relieved when they finally killed him off.
To summarize it: Sexism, racism, greed… imho, all that can have a place in modern fantasy. The question is, how you deal with it. When the author doesn’t make it intentional, I believe it’s important to look at the context before passing judgement. When I read these quotes of Zekhan, first of all, I see a Shaman who is hostile to a race that is known for pollution and ruthlessness. That might change when I get my hands on the whole book though, as I said, I don’t have the full picture yet.
This. It’s basically the “Sylvanas-Syndrome” again. Let a character act weird and don’t really explain why he does so. It proves again that the races of WoW need more “fleshing out”, especially in the cultural area. I’d love a book with just… “interesting-yet-irrelevant-for-the-overall-story RP stuff”. Like the quest in MoP when we learned that Pandaren want to embrace earth when they die and we should flip all bodies who lie on their backs.
It would really help to sort things like this out.
Edit: Thanks@everyone for the constructive discussion! 
I think I have a curious question.
Clearly, there is a problem with portraying stereotypes within an already coded fantasy race. But what about portraying stereotypes in a fantasy race that is otherwise not coded at all?
Let’s say Gnomes create a robot that is completely sentient, and these robots declare their autonomy and independance and set out to be their own people, but they have not been around long enough to have their own culture or traditions.
They are not coded to be reminiscent of any IRL ethnic group. They are a completely blank slate. But maybe the way they are constructed gives them certain features that resemble racist caricatures. Or perhaps the same in their manner of speech. Such as… Maybe the answer inquires with inquiries… In a “Who/what is” Jeopardy sort of way… Something to do with how they are programmed. (Which is an old anti-sematic trope of jews always answering questions with questions).
Something that is seemingly innocent, but under the microscope, or given a certain context, has a bit of a checkered history?
Because there has to be a line, right? It would be a bit absurd if writers and world builders had to tip toe around every stereotype to ever exist as if they were landmines. But on the other hand, we don’t want to just turn a blind eye to obvious racist caricatures.
But it kind of seems like everyone has a different idea as to what should and what shouldn’t be tolerated in works of fiction. And the reason for that is seems to be because people have different ideas as to what qualifies as offensive or not.
The writers should have the freedom to do whatever they want.
Is it the consumers that have to decide if they’re going to be offended by it, and if they are they can avoid it.
The consumers shouldn’t be forcing their beliefs onto the writers who weren’t offended, and onto the other consumers that also weren’t offended.
IMO, the line should be pretty easy to draw.
If you wholesale lift a real world race’s culture, dialect and beliefs? Tred carefully. Don’t make those dialects, cultures and beliefs an object of mockery. Don’t rely on well established racial tropes.
If it’s a race like gnomes, where any real world connections are difficult to point to, then go for it. So long as you can show a degree of nuance, then have a ball.
Alternatively, you can also just not lift a real world race’s culture, dialect and beliefs for your fantasy race, but we’re too late for that in WoW.
Physical resemblences to real world races in a fantasy setting shouldn’t be an issue. It’s fantasy, after all. Beyond humans looking generally Euro-centric and some commonalities between goblins and Jewish racist stereotypes that frankly can be missed, WoW does a good job having the various races not look physically like any race. Aesthetically sure, but trolls look very distinctly troll-like and not related to any real world peoples. So on and so forth across the races.
Honestly? WoW’s biggest problem with all of this is relying on a few real world cultures for a few of their races, and then never really developing those races into their own thing (except with trolls, where that development was just doubling down on the culture they used). Some world building could have spared them a lot of controversy.
How hard is it to understand? In game racism is fine as long as it feel like it is really set in a fantasy context and doesn’t feel like a real life dev feeling being put in the game.
White occidental people thinking that indigenous first nation being too ‘‘savage’’ and not being ‘‘civilised’’ enough was and is still a real thing so it isn’t hard to see why some people see a white ‘‘civilised’’ npc teaching and schooled a npc race that is 100% based on in real life indegenous first nation as something bad…
Once again, in game racism is ok as long as it doesn’t seem like a irl dev belief…
Its isn’t even just a few and they aren’t just doing it a bit. Not only do they take the architecture of a real life group of people, but they also try to copy the religion/belief of those people based on prejudices.
Tauren not only use some north american tipi, but they also use the principle of shamanism or the concept of communicating with ancestor along with the totem concept.
Human are just medieval europe and not even try to hide it.
Panderan, oh god where do i start. Starting from the panda who live in asia, using old traditional asian cloth, kung fu, chi, and even the great wall of chin… of panderia…
And than you have troll who were already on a thin ice. They are the azthec/mayan people which for a reason have a jamaican accent, probably because of carabbean i guess. But then come the zandalary, who are the same race and also use azthec/mayan. But instead of having a jamaican accent, they have a accent that come from africa… While we may guess that it is because of wakanda, its still sound racism that you just decided that the same race would have 2 different accent that is speak by two completely different black community… Like just why did you do that.
And now for helping, they decided that the first npc which we know that is illiterate is from that race…