aww i think thats wonderful. i understand and also understand the opposite to some degree, and i’ll explain why - the issue is belfs have been described as white folks and their whiteness has been made fun of and used as a point of derision.
in fact, when alliance players asked to play their high elven counterparts, they were accused of just wanting pale blonde elves, as if that were some terrible thing (personally my belfs are mostly the darker shades with black hair, so there’s a good deal of stereotyping going around. i’ve been promoting the idea of african and asian half elves for alliance. so far, no luck.).
anyway. i think there’s believable lore to support belfs with dark skin though the devs didnt need to explain it, since like you say, now people of other races can have a more immersive experience.
I don’t know if you’re trying to relate this to the topic, but what I’m getting from this is: A company can’t make a race unless it has every skin tone because people who play them may not have come across those different skin tones in real life?
That’s fine for real life, but trying to force that in video games is ridiculous…It’s a fantasy game, it can have those differences. People play games to get away from reality, not be forced to live it 24/7.
If this is the case going forward though, then every race needs to have darker skin tones, not just the human skin colored races.
I am now imagining that the Blood Elves, along with Gnomes and Humans(for some reason), made an expedition to some moon that orbits Azeroth (and is MUCH closer to the sun/whatever star heats Azeroth) and then remained there for thousands of years!
You’re just being absurd in your white sheet is showing.
What I’m saying is that if you’re playing in a virtual world where there is a variety of people and it’s treated like normal it will be perceived as normal.
Imagine feeling forced to live in a world of diversity having a problem with it. Yikes.
because blizzard decided not to add them, obviously. it’s not an issue of where they came from, or why we never heard of them before. nor is it an issue of forced inclusion. it’s just a customization option in the game.
you don’t wanna play as a toasted blood-elf? then don’t.
also, i would’nt go around throwing the word ‘immersion’ around when it comes to WoW. i’ve seen folks with some funny, FUNNY names on their toons.
Black gamers play WoW to get away from reality too…which is why it’s not fun to put up with the same crap in our gaming that we have to put up with in real life, like the passive racism of not being considered worthy of representation.
And then we have to hear about how white people don’t want reminders of our existence “forced” upon them because it ruins their immersion. Never mind how it ruins the immersion of black gamers to see few if any humanoid races that look like us, but plenty that look like white people.
i can explain. hehe
humans on planet earth, make video games and populate them with various races. when they populate them with humans, they end up with all manner of earth based racial appearances, because as far as we know, earth is the only place human races derive from. but, we can make fantasy planet, stick some humans on it, and its not even remotely unusual for them to be various human racial appearances.
now, this is reflected in other races with the human skin color palette because they are subjected to the same evolutionary process. gnomes should, by all accounts, have all the same skin color options as humans…who now come in african, asian and caucasian varieties.
There is no problem in having a tolkien-esque elf race that everyone is pale/white.
There is also no problem in blood elves/high elves having brown or dark skin colors available to them.
Also, someone pointed out, there is an example in lore already.
It really isn’t a big deal, we had an entire elven race created in one patch, why not add customizations to a pre-existing elven race in another and be like: “It always existed”.
dude… c’mon. do you need an explanation for everything? just chalk it up to enviromental for gnomes and dwarves, and sunwell proximity for blood-elves. it’s not important.
i mean… hell, this is a game with walking corpses, space-goat-demons, tail-less werewolves and talking cow-mem, and pandas that do kung-fu.