This doesn’t read like a one-sided argument or anything…
You don’t even know what you’re talking about, do you?
This genuinely feels like you’re just hopping on the “Baal is dumb” bandwagon because it’s trending.
They are.
I will admit that I am not familiar enough with the religion of Islam to comment on whether the orcs are an accurate representation.
I will say, however, that the original artwork/models for orcs in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans as well as in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne portrayed them rather similarly to, say, the Huns/Mongols:
Horned helmets
Honor/warfare culture
compact huts/buildings, with spikes being the most prominent feature
with a touch of Japanese samurai culture, as well: in addition to the honor code, the “Blademaster” Hero (represented in-game by Grom Hellscream and Samuro) clearly bears a samurai-esque banner on his back.
If someone who identifies as Muslim sees aspects of their own culture in World of Warcraft’s orcs, then yes: they deserve to have their opinion on the orcs’ portrayal and treatment known, and more importantly, respected.
Just going to point out that the Orcs have more elements from Mongolian, Turkic, and Hungarian themes and myths (as well as a few elements otherwise, such as the Blademaster = Samurai bits, and Thrall being similar to Nat Turner, and Go’el being a Hebrew word that means Redeemer)
Hell, Mag’har is almost identical to Mag’yar in pronunciation, 7 Clans of the Iron Horde = 7 Clans of the Mag’yar
Are you going to argue the things that the Horde has done are good or are we going to play the What aboutism game?
Baal literally compared the internment camps of Orcs to the muslim travel ban. When I said that is a messed up way to compare two things that are literally nothing alike in practice or context he just told me Democrats and Republicans say worse.
Like… what?
As a person that falls into that category I say otherwise. I only concede marginal and surface/visual level inspiration.
When I see an Orc I don’t see a middle eastern muslim person. I see an Orc.
Apply that same logic to every other race.
Given the fact that I know what it is like to be a brown muslim guy from that corner of the World I do not feel that Orcs or the Horde have remotely anything that I can describe Islamic or middle eastern.
If you want to debate otherwise I welcome you to try.
I agree. But when I see Baal speak of these matters I get pissed off that he is reducing my problems, stereotypes and unfair comparison I see in RL and I see some caricature of the same comparisons regarding a game that is not even remotely close in setting or context to make such comparisons.
If Baal was just another dumb racist idiot I can ignore him. Instead he comes off as this holier than thou guy exposing other people’s racism when he is no better.
Maybe I need a break because the more I think about this topic the more I am fuming.
Please do not reduce these real world issues for some cheap points on a nerd debate.
Edit:
To sum up if the Alliance soldiers and characters having prejudice thoughts and opinions is not wrong and should not be used as the only reason to villanize the Alliance character in question.
The Horde and its leaders (who are still in power) have done enough harm to the Alliance to be hated.
If you want an Evil alliance let them do something evil. Because some character from South Shore hating the Horde for what they did is perfectly reasonable and not evil.
I’m not denying that acts of genocide—yes, like the Burning of Teldrassil—are evil, but this just goes back into how:
A) Only the Horde is portrayed as acting in such a villainous manner
B) When the Alliance does commit atrocities, they get off scot-free because the standard for “evil” has already been established with something like Teldrassil, so everything else is “fair game.”
We’ve had this conversation before.
Normally, I’d rather not drag RL politics into this, but I would actually suggest that a better comparison to the orc internment camps is…well, the actual internment camps into which Japanese-American civilians were forced after the attack on Pearl Harbor, back in the 1940s.
Nope; I’ve already admitted that I’m not familiar enough with the religion of Islam to conjecture on what aspects—if any—there are in Orcish culture.
That being said—and here I am speaking as a Caucasian—I am able to see aspects of distinctively non-white culture in other WoW races, such as Tauren (Native American) and Trolls (Haitian Voodoo, South American/African tribes, etc.).
There was even a rather interesting conversation between myself and Baal where he pointed out many aspects of Ottoman Turkish culture in Blood Elven culture, such as:
hookahs
harems
spire-centric architecture
So there is an argument to be made that many specifically Horde-aligned races were based on non-Anglo-European (read: non-white European) RL cultures.
I’m not sure how Baal addressing the need to accurately represent RL cultures in-game equates to “reducing” those problems, especially given that he’s gone on record as saying that these “caricatures,” as you rightly call them, do carry the obligation of portraying said cultures in a non-derogatory light.
It’s the same thing as, say, old 20th-century cartoon and TV caricatures—sure, they’re not “real,” but they’re still a representative image of a certain group of human beings.
I have to disagree with you on this, as it’s certainly not the impression I’ve gotten from him.
That depends on how far this character from South Shore goes in expressing their hatred.
Sorry if this offends you, but if you honestly think what Daelin Proudmoore did back in “The Founding of Durotar” is “perfectly reasonable and not evil,” then I have to question your understanding of the lore.
His hatred of the orcs was understandable, but that doesn’t make it any less prejudiced.
As I said these are just surface level visual inspirations.
If someone wanted to be racist they could just depict muslims as orcs but give them mongol hats and say “see they are huns! Look at their hats! Its TOTALLY different!”
Nevermind that we are reducing an entire culture to just some aesthetic similarities.
Do you know which race also has similarities with Mongols? The Centaur and their leaders are called Khans and Blizzard made them half horse barbarians with animated flies that swarm around their heads.
Blizzard races are a mixture of different inspirations from cultures and historical events. They are not a one to one comparison.
This is a slippery slope that we go on when we start comparing them like this.
I ask everyone to please stop it. There are a thousand other things to talk about. This is not by far the top 20 things worth mentioning about the problems of wow.
Even if I agree what does that mean for the story?
Orcs can’t commit war crimes because thats a racist depiction and Alliance can’t do it either because of LONG list of historical events that europeans have on their resume when they meet local natives?
When does history stop and fiction begin?
@Velth. Thats a good post. Let me get back home and I can properly respond lol.
I find your insistence on including and highlighting Calia (and I know why from our previous discussions there) to be completely inconsistent with your other sometimes quite good takes in this thread.
The thing I warned would happen when Blizzard went ahead with the War of Thorns and the Horde Council, that the council itself would be relegated to narrative irrelevance and the Horde would cease to be a major mover in the story has inevitably happened. Blizzard is far too unfocused in their storytelling to provide any kind of believable narrative here.
It’s the same for the Forsaken under a “kinder, gentler” leadership which is really just a way of saying “boring.” Calia would forever just be there to agree with Thrall and Baine about everything and the Forsaken would cease to have any major role in the story. Same story for Goblins, the only role Gazlowe will have from this day forward is to officially agree with Thrall and Baine on behalf of all Goblin-dom.
These kinds of threads are fun, but they are also very depressing because it highlights just how disconnected C-Dev is from where the players are.
And from what I understand one of the biggest problems here is that C-Dev are not allowed to read fan fiction, which almost certainly means RP forums, and in all likelihood means a somewhat unofficial ban on reading the story forums. I truly believe the only time C-Dev gets meaningful feedback on story decisions is when it blows up enough to become a “thing” on Reddit or GD, like that god-awful Forsaken racial description a few months ago.
yes, this is entirely problematic, it kind of sets the tone that the Forsaken only deserve inclusion if they go along with what the majority of the Horde want, we did that in Cata and Garrosh almost wiped out the Forsaken.
I don’t like the implication that Calia should replace Sylvanas. Sylvanas was combatative and unyeilding and effective without her the Forsaken wouldn’t exist (arguements about whether or not the Forsaken should continue to exist aside) I don’t believe that Calia should be the only Forsaken voice at the table. I think you need someone like Calia to play devil’s advocate to someone like Sylvanas, but not replace her outright. Thinking that Calia is going to be an easy fix for the Forsaken dilemma because she’s amenable does send the message that in order to belong in the Horde you have to be okay with passivity.
(I say that with hopes that Sylvanas comes back to the Forsaken and the Horde, but I know not everyone agrees with that opinion.)
Because I do not have any hope Calia is a red herring, as I’ve said before. She will be the Forsaken leader and Blizzard being unclear on the matter is part and parcel with the laundry list of lies and misdirections.
I would rather Calia be captured by Zovaal and turned into a Mad Queen that is both Love and Light Porcelain Doll and Hate and Shadow Banshee
Or, as I’ve suggested before, make her a Galadriel but slightly darker.
Idk there’s a lot of possible options that are reasonable given her inevitable Arthas questline in the next two years.
Agreeing is only half the problem, the other half is how could blizzard possibly justify it without strange retcons or extreme unprecedented plot twists in the next two years.
Steve Daunser said she wouldn’t be though, explicitly, on his twitter.
Calia’s role in the narrative is more as a plot device for Arthas to either make a return or for her making ammends for the wrongdoing’s Arthas caused. I would imagine her narrative is actually to unily the people of Lordearon, both living and undead, without taking a role in the Forsaken.
She’s eventially going to have to deal with the Scarlet Crusade’s blasphamous insinuations that she has a true born heir with Deathwing and he’s the legitimate (imposter) heir of Lorderon. Either that or she was lying about having a daughter and she was in love with Deathwing and had his child and all this “good-ness” she projects is all is just an act.
Since playing through the priest Order Hall in Legion on my undead priest, I think her long term goal is actually to become the leader of the new Scarlet Onslaught and to take up a permanent position as a bulwark against the Scourge with Light’s Wrath as her intended weapon. But I have absolutely no way to prove this last bit it’s just my personal speculation based on a hunch.
They also pinky promised Teldrassil would surprise us and wasn’t what we thought, and that the Alliance would have serious internal conflict, and Horde would feel proud and heroic at the end of BfA.
Forsaken have been pretty vocal about not liking Calia as Forsaken leader.
She’s not “Forsaken” our entire culture is based on being post Scourge, forsaken by the Living and by the Light, forsakened by the Alliance. A Lightforged leader who has never experienced being ‘forsaken’ has no legitimate claim to be leader of the Forsaken.
The only reason she’s even entertained as a potential leader is the fact that the majority of the Forsaken haven’t truly divested themselves of the identity of being Lordearon citizens, but Lordaeron as a state, even as a country doesn’t exist anymore.
This becomes even more disturbing the more you consider what it really means.
If this is true, it means that we are talking about a company that literally bans/prohibits its Creative Development team…from drawing inspiration for future creative material from the absolute best source of creativity and imagination possible.
Its already-loyal/devoted (for the most part) playerbase of paying customers,millions of whom quite literally invest hours to years of time and effort in providing free advertising by way of fanfiction, fan art, cosplay outfits, and online videos.
I don’t think any other gaming provider has demonstrated that much effort to so completely sabotage itself.
The entirety of the EK alliance kingdoms exist on land they won by genociding the inhabitants. The Trolls had every right to defend their lands but Alliance stans refuse to admit that it was incredibly evil to massacre them, and even worse to continue doing so in the modern day.
There’s an entire other thread on this topic for people who think the Alliance are perfect boring angels who never do anything wrong and should never ever be put in a bad light. Feel free to stay in that thread.
I mean yes the players don’t want her, that’s apparent, which is of course fine. What do the Forsaken character NPCs think? Do they mention her at all? Either way it could indicate what the writers have planned.
There is a way to get there though, if out of order.
Whether blizzard will or not, or shove Calia as is down our throats, is another matter.
What’s funny is the one time a class dev openly (well, behind closed doors) asked for input from the class community (Xelnath, warlock dev), he was sacked partly for that reason (and partly because he apparently yelled at Ion in a meeting)
