Maybe you should roll Alliance.
Hech no.
I would rather burn the Horde to the ground and salt Thrall’s nasty grave than roll Alliance.
But that’s just me. And I do have an Alliance Druid (Night Elf*) alt because I love irony that much.
*sweats nervously in Venthyr Covenant Campaign and Ember Court *
Hello (Zombie) Kitty it is
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The Horde was conceived as a narrative entity that sought to force change onto the world which brought it into conflict with the Alliance that sought to stop that change (I call the Horde a “revisionist entity” in this sense while the Alliance is the “status-quo” entity.) This was able to sustain the faction dynamic through Warcraft 1 and 2. But then Warcraft 3 happened and introduced a bunch of other factions that also sought to force change onto the world (Burning Legion, Scourge, some hints of Old God stuff, etc) and the Horde ended up getting crowded out as a narrative force.
In fact it might actually have ended up worse for the Horde post-WC3 because the change it wanted to impose on the world largely took the form of trying to reinforce and sustain the changes inflicted by others (Burning Legion and Scourge in particular.)
Part of the difficulty in what players are suggesting as a remedy for the Horde’s problems is that the status-quo that the Alliance wants to restore (namely the pre-Warcraft 1 world) is generally portrayed as not being all that bad, and in fact vastly preferable to the changes that revisionist entities have imposed on the world since Warcraft 1. It’s hard to portray people trying to restore that as villainous on the basis of their intent.
Maybe if the pre-Warcraft 1 world was lousy in a lot of its own ways and there have been objective improvements to the state of the world due to changes imposed by revisionist entities like the Horde to counterbalance all of the regressions, there would be something for the Horde to work with. But as it stands the only groups that are objectively better off now compared to where they were prior to the Horde’s arrival are the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, and in both cases that’s because they were getting bullied by groups that aren’t Alliance (other trolls and Centaur respectively)
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Beyond making the Alliance the agressors for once, driven by past transgressions? I have no idea. And I sure don’t want the Alliance to become super racist just because.
Mind you that being the aggressors in a given conflict doesn’t necessarily make you the villain. The player factions have been the aggressors in a bunch of conflicts since WoW began but I don’t think that anyone would say we’re villains for invading Northrend or Argus, because that aggression was clearly justified.
Northrend and Argus attacked first, so we can take them out.
You know, I think people seize on this not just because of Garithos and Daelin, but because humans have a lot of trouble treating each other with respect in the real world over differences in skin color. I can’t imagine humans being particularly tolerant of werewolves, goat people, and seven foot purple tree elves.
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Clearly they haven’t had any problem with that until this point, and it’s not exactly the most fun of retcons.
Also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a race, that gameplay wise has the perk “diplomat” and lorewise were pretty good at forming alliances with other races to be super racist. It goes against their established nature.
This isn’t the Witcher universe, where humans are super xenophobic. In the wow universe, they are some of the best at making friends. Call it a difference of opinion from Blizzard.
Also, I don’t think Baalsamael only wants the humans top be racist. Instead, he wants all Alliance races to be racist, especially against Horde races, no matter how little sense it makes.
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Racism in Warcraft doesn’t really work because the ‘races’ are actually different species and a lot of the typical things that would be used in discrimination are literally… facts or physical traits that are rooted in what they are.
The worst insults we’ve seen thrown around are things like blackblood and blueblood, for Orc and Draenei respectively. But they actually do have black and blue blood. The dislike a lot of the races have for each other is rooted in decades or even centuries of killing each other, not in something like racism.
A Draenei who dislikes Orcs and doesn’t want to associate with them isn’t a racist by any logical definition because Orcs made a road from the bones of their people a little over three decades earlier. Now, are they wrong to generalize that to perhaps one particular Orc who likes kitties (aka my favourite NPC is all of Ashran)? Sure, but that doesn’t make them racist, any more than a Frostwolf Orc that doesn’t like Ogres due to the whole enslaving/gladiator fights/attempted genocide thing.
That said, I could see interactions with the Horde becoming an internal issue for Stormwind, bring back the House of Nobles and have them cause trouble by saying Anduin’s making peace with their sworn enemies, etc. Or build back up some of the old kingdoms and have them butt heads with Horde groups that are now in what were their ancestral lands, and Stormwind scrambling to keep things working. That would allow for conflict with decent stakes without resorting to an outright villainous flaw like racism.
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Hard to add anything that hasn’t been said already, but I’ve got a few things to contribute.
First, fantasy racism/prejudice isn’t inherently bad. Second, the Alliance should absolutely be more racist/prejudiced against the Horde (and, frankly, vice versa - they should hate each other, IMO). Third, I think the big personalities in this thread seem to really want to make the Alliance racist for the purpose of making them the bad guys, instead of to actually create a more nuanced faction struggle.
Idk man. There’s a lot of projection going on in this thread.
That’s demonstrably false. As much as I agree with your assertion that the ‘diplomat’ race probably should have more a stunning track record of dealing with other peoples within the Warcraft universe, we’ve had examples across the board of human prejudices. However, they’re not alone in that regard. There are plenty of examples of other Warcraft races having those selfsame kinds of faults.
If I’m being honest, though, I debated as to whether it was worth coming up with examples. No matter how thorough the point, I’m well aware that there are going to be people who will handwave it as justified when it comes to their pet race/faction. Oh well, here we go anyway.
Blue Team Boogaloo
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Obligatory Garithos and Daelin. These two have been discussed to death. I don’t feel like I need to add more.
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In the Arthas novel, we get a very clear picture of how humanity views orcs as savage monsters who lack depth. This is told from Arthas’s point of view.
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Vincent Godfrey chose to throw himself off a cliff rather than submit to a worgen king. His deep distaste for worgen carries through in undeath.
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Night elves were aggressively xenophobic before joining the Alliance and breaking out of their isolation. IIRC, not even the devs have a good explanation for that.
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Night elves were also incredibly xenophobic during the War of the Ancients. Ravencrest had to be cajoled into accepting non-night elven help, and Stareye was even worse.
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Draenei are deeply prejudiced against the Broken. You can miss this one, as you need to dig into some flavor text with Nobundo in the Exodar.
https://imgur.com/JPbU1yx
https://imgur.com/1w4tTtZ -
If you’ve ever quested in Borean Tundra Alliance side, then I’m sure that you’ve done the questline wherein the draenei are being prevented from lending their aid because they’re ‘too exotic’ for some troops.
https://imgur.com/31pZda8
Red Team Roundup
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Garrosh Hellscream literally divided Orgrimmar into racial sections, kicking the Darkspear into the slums or out of the city entirely.
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The Grimtotem tauren are tauren supremacists.
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Blood elves fell into a similar isolationist viewpoint to the night elves before they joined the Horde. Another weird lore stretch.
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Goblins create and enslave hobgoblins, which is some pretty awful stuff.
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Before joining the Horde, the Zandalari viewed anyone else as a ‘lesser race.’
The Conclusion
Racism exists in WoW. No retcons needed. I’m sure that there’s so much more that I haven’t covered here, but honestly, I’ve run out of steam.
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What kind of weird situation is this where hatred of other races in totality is not actually racism?
Racism doesn’t suddenly become not-Racism because someone has legitimate grievances against specific groups or people within the race.
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It was Amani land. The humans could live for a long time there without being butchered, not one mention of that before the Troll Wars. So…
Yep the humans are in the wrong.
Yes.
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Wait, really?
Walk a bit around Darnassus, you’ll get a lot of Japanese vibes from their architecture. It goes off the rails when you then see like Romanesque ruins everywhere to mark their fallen empire.
One of the many examples of how early Blizzard just kinda took real world elements and mashed them into their fantasy setting for flavor.
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Barely. If you analyse something with a particular lens, you’ll usually find it.
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I do think some of what you’re saying here is inherently true and acknowledged. The part I would disagree with is “the” bad guys.
The issue is that current writing has basically portrayed the Alliance as the bastion of morality and virtue. They are basically always in the right and justified and until they are given some level of “badness” the Horde will always fail in the narrative.
I don’t want the Alliance to have to spend a decade of expansions that basically just tell you “you picked the wrong faction!” - that’s awful. Plus if they did that for real then the Night Elf folks would go berserk because the last decade has been pretty good for them compared to other races (pre-BfA) and some of them feel they’ve been victims since … well however long they’ve been alive. But I do think the Alliance has to have some elements introduced in some way that allow them to be imperfect.
Some of these attempts may be heavy handed and it’s partly because there’s a lot to reverse. I think there is a decent amount of debate as to whether it’s better (or even reasonable) to have the Alliance just jump full evil - torturing Vulpera babies, whatever - or have a more prolonged lesser “evil.”
I can’t speak for everyone here but the end result I do want is that both factions (in general) try to be heroic - but they will disagree on what the best choices are. There may still be some bad actors but they won’t be what defines the factions.
I believe in another thread there was a reference to “Wolverine vs Captain America” or something as a goal Blizzard had promoted. The Horde would be more likely to view the ends justify the means, willing to kill their own people if it meant the death of - pick a colossal supervillain - because that would save more lives down the road. The Alliance might not be willing to do that. Assuming the Culling of Stratholme was successful - it would be something the Horde would advocate, while the Alliance might want to try to separate folks and see who develops symptoms etc. I think there are plenty of ways both sides can face the same problem and take actions their players at least can see a justification for. The problem is the current iteration of the Alliance has no room for that - they are portrayed as the bastion of morality and virtue while the Horde are generally shown as savages who would do well to learn from the alliance. If that doesn’t change entirely, then the Horde will always fail in storylines.
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There’s some Korean in there too…they eat Kimchi.
https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/651454-to-the-hills.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/ItsukushimaTorii7379.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AZJWZ8Y.jpg
https://www.japan-guide.com/thumb/XYZeXYZe3923_375.jpg
Yeah in particular the use of Doric Columns with Eastern Christian Church styles is always interesting to me.
The image of Zin’Azshari after the Well imploded with white domed structure with blue colored domes but white base are just straight up Greek Christian.
Moonwells and the “Lodge” style housing are literally default architectural elements of Night Elves.
Doing the ethnographic genealogy of WoW’s in-game races and their cultures (food, architecture, depicted cultures, etc) is important and something Blizzard themselves likely do internally when thinking about what real-world cultures to assign to new in-game races (whether gameplay like the Vulpera or secondary like the Jinyu).
Correct! Lots of other East Asian Otherwise elements.
Majority of Horde’s villain batting has been “became or followed through with violent racism”.
Golden literally said Garrosh was a Hitler-derivative, a literal Orc Supremacist.
Sylvanas’s whole thing for a while was “Death To The Living”; for a certain group of the Forsaken, all the living are essentially one race they wish to end.
Correct. It just has been disproportionately assigned to the Horde for the past ten years.
The word islamophobia actually came to be during the very start of the “Reconquest” period between Christian Iberia and Muslim Iberia, and then was used during the Crusades.
The modern theme of western anti-muslim sentiment came, at its root, from (self-perceived) Christian vs Muslim centuries of conflict.
The Anti-Irish sentiment by the English during the Troubles was rooted in (mostly imagined) long histories of “Actually The Irish Deserve This”.
In fact, to justify racism theologically in the English-speaking world, Protestants decided that Black people descended from the “bad son” of Moses, and that the Egyptians (Africans) had enslaved the Jews and since Christ was Jewish, and so invented a history that Africans deserved their treatment.
Racism is always justified to the racist with a historical narrative; societal/cultural justifications for ethnic, racial, and religious prejudice are always justified with a historical narrative.
Yuuup
I can’t think of the last time Horde was heroic, as a whole, tbh
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