Not even 40 years old. Anduin was born when Varian was 20-21-ish, and Anduin’s only 19-20-ish currently in Shadowlands. Anduin was 15 in MoP, putting Varian solidly in his mid-30s at the time of “A Little Patience,” and in his late 30s at the time of his death.
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I personally believe that the examples of “racism” raised are born out of the worst possible bad faith interpretations of the source material.
Can you see racism in the examples raised? Absolutely; but you can twist anything to fit a narrative. The question shouldn’t be “can you see racism in these examples” it ought to be “does it make sense to see racism in these examples”?
People seem to see an interpretation—positive or negative—and then run with it like it’s an absolute. We rarely stop, take a breath, and then assess via a common sense metric.
It’s not healthy; or constructive in the slightest.
Measure your interpretations.
What was the intent of the author (yes; intent matters)?
Where is the material you’re interpreting taking place? In a fictional setting, perhaps?
What is the goal of the source material? Is this a book that’s out to make a statement—directly or otherwise—on real world cultures and histories through its narrative creations, or is it not out to do that at all?
Is this book actually a soft dog whistle (yes; I have seen this argument), or does it make more sense that it’s not that at all?
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.
On a meta level, acknowledge that these fictional races are influenced by real world races and their cultures, but don’t then go on to turn them into eternal representatives because of that; not without good reason. Inspiration isn’t initiation—Gilneans don’t become representatives of the UK just because they are partly inspired by the UK.
We don’t have to be so serious all the time. We can all temper assessments in the spirit of good faith.
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And we’d all gotten so civil…
Thank you. I’m glad to know my opinion is “the worst possible bad faith interpretation”.
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Blizzard are in the process of making changes because they’re losing people.
I’m sorry, but I simply don’t believe that interpreting one’s work as racist—one of THE worst things possible—is being charitable to—and considerate of—the author’s intent and the spirit and cause of the material being analysed. Where is the good faith in that?
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I mean, you got to the end of the thread. Quite a few people pointed out the entire situation was probably unintentional (though still racist in depiction). A few pointed out that while the book might have racist connotations in parts, the blame is less on the author and more on the origins of the work itself as copied in parts wholly from real-life cultures, and poor presentation is inevitable and not a reflection on the author himself.
But I guess you could just skip all that, jump to the end and call it all “the worst possible bad faith interpretation”.
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Trolls are like beholders. Every tribe wants to wipe out every other tribe. Just look at Zandalar.
They may be in the process of making changes b because the entire RPG world is getting a rethinking along those lines. Goblins and Drow are no longer universally evil, especially in Paizo’s world of Golarion. Originally in Pathfinder an elf sufficiently evil would spontaneously become Drow. Flash forward a decade and more and now a good elf has been reincarnated as a Drow. And we now have goblin clerics of the goddess of redemption as martyrs for their faith.
Although apparently even Paizo had to get dragged there kicking and screaming by their freelancers from the sound of the recent mess (both figuratively and literally) that’s come out about them.
Why are you turning this into some witchhunt? The only people who seem to think people are going for the kill are the people who really don’t want other people to discuss it.
People are pointing out problems that were probably overlooked. The writer seems to have gone back to conventions common in some stories that has some problematic parts to it, probably didn’t think about that. So people are pointing it out so they can do better from now on.
And really, racism/prejudice isn’t in itself an unforgivable crime, it’s something that can come very naturally. You just have to be learn to be aware of it, and try your best not to step on any toes, and if you do, best to just apologize about it and don’t treat it as an attack on you.
People mess up, and many people have been in environments where we learn expressions that are bigoted even if you never realized it. Generally if you make a quick polite apology and work on dropping the use that goes a long way, but you’ll run into trouble if you start ranting about how unfair it is that someone else pointed that out.
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Pretty much no society in this game seems to have a public education system.
Humans do. Stalvan Mistmantle was the school teacher at the Moonbrook schoolhouse.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stalvan_Mistmantle?so=search
Plus Dalaran in particular seems likely to put a focus on general education, if only because a roundly well-educated population would be better able to live rationally alongside all that open magic use.
Seems like Silvermooon and Suramar would as well, though one might expect that to be in the form of families formally educating their children and hiring tutors rather than an institutionalized school system.
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Azeroth is basically an in-depth D&D homebrew setting Chris Metzen threw together and kept adding to. That’s about the level of cultural reverence you’re going to find throughout, too. Frankly, the entire science fiction/fantasy genre could not exist if it didn’t draw from history, folklore, myths, etc. Claiming that having references is suddenly out of bounds is a bizarre limitation to demand. Especially given how loudly people have demanded that Eurocentric fantasy yield the floor to other cultural history and myth of late.
Put a little more bluntly, purists need to go support the creators that are providing what they want instead of making unreasonable demands of creators who aren’t doing that.
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This is one of those fuzzy areas where they just don’t seem to have thought so far that it’s something they needed to get into, but at least in the way the world is visually made it seems to assume literacy.
I didn’t do a thorough tour of the world, but I logged in last night to check some stuff, human inns/taverns have two bookshelves right inside the entryway, and for children, the Orgrimmar orphanage has a couple shelves that have books on them among some other things. Odd things to add if they wanted a setting where reading was very limited as some people seem to think it is.
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I don’t see that. Dalaran has a two caste system. There are the mages with their own hierarchy and everyone else who pretty much exists to do the scutwork of life the mages don’t want to do. They generally don’t transfer into the mage caste, so there’s no need for particular education for them. Dalaran doesn’t have any schools for non-mages. it’s essentially a mobile shopping mall for the needs of the mages themselves. In it’s original location Dalaran had satellite villages like Ambermill that provided it’s basic food needs. The people that lived there were your standard farming bumpkins.
Boo. That is not the intended purpose of this book, and dont give blizzard an out by implying that these books written to show the state of the world, would be fine to have wrong lore facts.
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I hope not, waiting till March is already long enough.
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It’s the one book I’m actually excited to read
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Not surprising to me that this is the similarly-flawed legacy of “Horde bad, Alliance good” writing
I know you are a DK, but must you bring back the long dead?
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When it’s still a relevant discussion to today’s era, why not?
Besides, this is a special occasion; literally the ONLY times I post on an alt are with this one, and for this purpose