Just replaying various expansions and I’ve noticed that almost every species in the game has had types that were referred to as such in the setting. Fel orcs, lightforged draenei, iron dwarves, a half dozen elf types, etc. Playable or otherwise I don’t remember this ever applying to humans. Forsaken, worgen, and kul tirans are just called those names exclusively and I can’t think of any human NPC group that has that naming pattern.
My question is has there ever been a point in the lore where a subset of humans was referred to in-game as “type humans” like the other races frequently are?
It’s an interesting thought. I can’t think of any examples.
The lack of “Kul’tiran Humans” is a little odd. It’s clearly related to the presumption that humans are the “Default,” of course, but it’s still odd. Would a new player who has no idea what “Kul’tiras” is be alienated by that? Would they be if Night Elves were called “Kal’dorei?”
It’s worth pointing out that most of the time, the species names are omitted when speaking inside the relevant culture. Dwarves mostly call their fiery brethren “The Dark Irons” or “The Dark Iron Clan,” not “The Dark Iron Dwarves.” Similarly, “Sin’dorei” means “Children/People of the Blood.” They don’t actually call themselves Elves in their own language. The word “Elf” doesn’t even have a Thalassian translation, as far as I can tell, suggesting it may even be an exonym.
Honestly, the only character in-game I can think of who frequently used the word human was… Garithos. He sure got a lot of mileage out of it.
Hmm…
Human. Human. Huuuman. It’s not really a great word, is it? There’s a reason Tolkien talked about the Realms of Men. Gender-specificity aside, “Men” just sounds better.
A lot of scifi also desperately ditches the word in favor of Terran. Though, that’s also because the technical alternative to Terran is “Earthling.” God, Earthling!? What an awful word. Who the hell wants to be called anything-ling? That’s a diminutive! It makes us sound like babies!
FWIW the elvish term for elf and the one for child is probably the same (i.e. dorei - the idea of quel’dorei predates the fall of the empire but in the empire it was a social class, not a cultural divide)
A lot of scifi also desperately ditches the word in favor of Terran. Though, that’s also because the technical alternative to Terran is “Earthling.” God, Earthling!? What an awful word. Who the hell wants to be called anything-ling? That’s a diminutive! It makes us sound like babies!
The guardians of the galaxy game from 2021 has Rocket made comments about that. “You terrans call themselves earthlings, imagine being named after dirt”.
A lot of Sci-Fi I read makes humans out to be the “new kid on the block”, so to speak, in terms of the galactic community… so, in that context being a “-ling” seems kind of fitting from an alien’s perspective.
Personally, I prefer WH40K’s more diverse way of labeling the human race - Orks call us “Hoomiez”, Elder call us “mon’keigh” (just a fancy way to say monkey), the Tau call us “gue’vesa” (or “human helper”), and I can’t remember what the Necrons call us. Probably just something similar to monkeys like the Elder.
Melris Malagan is but Blizzard was lazy about it. Back in Legion he betrays Stormwind as part of the Veiled Hand quests and becomes corrupted with fel. Now his character model is just wearing some armor but it’s supposed to be fel corruption during the sequence he transforms, they just didn’t bother giving him a unique model since it only happens in the quest.
There are Arathi human/elf hybrids. Then there are Drust/human hybrids aka Kul’tiran humans, and then there are regular humans offspring of the Vrykul who the Drust were part of… So yeah, that’s the 3 types of humans.
There never had been “type of humans” in the lore.
I even saw some people say that Kul tirans are overall more bulky than “strowmind humans” because they had drust blood in their veins, but that thing was never really said in the lore.
The lore says that they mixed with drust, but it was never brought up as an explaination as to their size because well…they not all are like this, look at jaina or lord stormsong for example.
The “bulky” humans kul tirans playable allied race is, was just a “body type” for humans IN GENERAL and must be taken as such.
Proof is, look at the Arathi, they use both models.
I think their size varies depending on admixture. Just like in real life there are humans who are taller or shorter than average. Kul’Tirans simply have varying admixture of human/Drust ancestry.
Well actually Drust are simply Vrykul and the Arathi, the original Arathi, were closer to the Vrykul in terms of ancestry. Meaning the original Arathi would have been taller and stronger than humans who would branch off over time. I would suspect that an Arathi from the Arathi Empire would presumably also have similar admixture to Kul’tirans by virtue of their common origins.
Kul’tirans being re-infused with titanic ancestry from their Drust ancestors and Arathi from being closer to the original stock of humans who were themselves directly from the first Vrykul children or perhaps a similar outcome from mating may have occurred over the thousand plus years with other Vrykul groups. We don’t know, but we do know humans from Kul’tiras and from the Arathi Empire can produce people who are almost as tall as a Vrykul and nearly as strong if not equal. That makes them very unique.
Maybe Arathi are hybrids elf/human/vrykul ancestry. Talk about unique ancestry! They’re bigly strong either way.
Thats never said, and you should forget about this “theory” because, you are indirectly implying that, the ones being less tall and less “big” are more pure blood humans, and i dont like the way this is going.
And then again, “in lore” it was enevr brought up as a reason for their size.
Also, you seem to forget how Trollbane during the 2nd war was huge, and he had no link with Drust.
He’s a Stromgardian and wouldn’t he have more or less a strong blood connection to the Arathi the first humans? I think the admixture for humans allows for diversity of height and strength. Some humans simply are taller than others, wield strength that rival their primordial Vrykul ancestors. From Kul’tiras lore we know that some of the Drust joined the fledgling Kul’tiras nation and their children would hear the call of the wilds.
The implication is Kul’tirans are at least in part Drust sharing the traits of their giant ancestors, but to be fair, all humans are Vrykul descended people. The difference is how many generations and how that admixture expresses itself among humanity.
The Arathi we meet are directly descended from the Arathi Empire and more so, from their elven admixture making them half human/elf people, but perhaps this admixture includes the tallness and strength we see in Kul’tiras. Who knows? Until we actually go to the Arathi Empire. We won’t know.