I wouldn’t call it racist but they’re just painting the Horde in a bad light.
We don’t need another internal conflict…make the Alliance be mistrustful of one another for a change.
Hello, I see you replied to the thread. Uhhhh, what? And here I thought Elves were educated.
Thanks for your post and have a wonderful day!
I want to see the civil war that happens when Turalyon won’t leave the throne and the Velfs and Paladins go head to head!
The influences are laughably superficial in most cases. I feel like the positive response to that sort of representation is to have people well versed in their respective fields (especially regarding folklore and myth surrounding real world cultures being borrowed from) help guide the creation process into a reasonable approximation instead of just second or third generation authors playing with Chris Metzen’s homebrew D&D campaign approach to world building.
Those really are the pertinent questions. Whenever people create fantasy settings the question of inspiration is always going to be there. I feel like Blizzard has been trying to distance themselves from the idea that their fantasy races are representative of any specific real life groups. They don’t really tell historical analog type stories with warcraft, there doesn’t seem to be any intent.
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I think it’s dumb Zekhan is now a prominent Horde character just because people rallied around Zappy Boy as a meme. That should also serve as a stark reminder of how decimated the Horde (especially Darkspear) cast is.
People cant discern that “Animal Farm” is the story of a human plight told in a whimsical manner, and Fantasy Universe, which is a story told from the view of that Universe.
But there is one thing wrong with how Warcraft Universe does that. It is from the flawed understanding of the “source material” they are ripping off.
For example, the immortal or eternal races, which are different from the mortals and from each other, have a diverse set of motivations in the “source material” and in WoW, all of them are depicted as behaving like they were all mortals. That might confuse some heads.
Ask yourself this: Compare the original Elves and their incarnations in other stories, and how they are depicted in WoW. Would really a race that is or was immortal have such agencies and dreams that would only suit a human lifespan bearing race ?
They purposefully tried to “humanize” Elves, thinking that the inhuman nature of Elves in other productions is a flaw, but what they dont understand is that Elves are not human, and therefore are by definition “inhuman”. As with Orcs, Undead, and others. You might make the case that Tauren, or Goblins might be a more “human like” species, however, if you take into consideration what would be of a species of human grade sentience and consciousness that instead live for 200 years per generation already largely different. Would not make it different even if some humans had that lifespan, many aspects changed if in as few as 3 or 4 generations ? Imagine you being able to have lived from the 1900, and being the offspring of a couple that might have lived since the 1750s, how your view of the world would change.
The problem is not only “the people reading the story”, but the people “writing it” too.
You could replace thier king with a president, and their nobles with a king, and nothing would change. The medieval appearance is merely an appearance.
Except the Alliance would actually be evil.
Westfall has a newspaper. There is no lore evidence that most people aren’t literate.
I personally thought the author was reaching for dramatic impact. Some of the stuff was silly. The Zekhan thing for example relative to shamanism: what has a knowledge of weather and climactic forces on the movement of soil got to do with being a shaman? They deal in elemental magic, about the closest they come to anything like that is causing magical earthquakes. I doubt they sit around contemplating the natural causes of earthquakes and plate techtonics.
While I might joke about not liking goblins, the fact is that the lore has always shown them to be greedy and money hungry. What they may or may not be based on I dont know but to liken it to any real world race in the way that was done comes across as rather tasteless. How about we just consider them as a fantasy race who love collecting bling and leave it at that.
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Some people might have been watching one too many episodes of ancient Aliens, and bought the premise that “If we cant read what they wrote, they didnt”.
I am specially fond of this one, because being Brazilian, born in a place that had its own language historically, after it had been invaded by another peoples, before it was invaded by the Portuguese and other Europeans, my “people” actually had seen one of those places and relics the “famous scholars” say were just “religious symbols” and “mystic inscriptions” that mean anything, and know it was actually mundane texts.
It is funny when you see so “distinguished specialists” speaking that much crap and being taken seriously.
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Doesn’t help that a big chunk behind the whole Ancient Aliens mess is “No way could those obvious primitive people do this thing!” just based on biased assumptions of those societies.
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The newbie quests in vanilla all had letters from the class trainer of your class, so at least the class trainers and player characters are literate. I’m pretty sure most NPCs are literate based on that. Maybe some of the less educated peons wouldn’t be, or peasants, but who really knows.
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It’s Wowhead half of their stuff is just clickbait like this.
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You keep talking about real world stereotypes… what else are people going to use? All that we know is reality to pull examples from.
Go out to some tribe in the wilderness somewhere, plop Harry Potter in front of them, and see if they know to read it and not just use it for starting fires with. Just because you are drawing a distinction between certain groups, doesnt mean anything other than you see race everywhere when its not needed.
If someone is isolated you would have to teach them how to read your language. In fact in 9.2 we are all going to be taught to read a language that we have been isolated from.
And yes, Dwarves are being taught to read, everyone is taught to read. Everyone is illiterate until they are taught to read.
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Trolls are not isolated. No Horde race is isolated and all have a history of literacy and industry and education.
Presuming that Zekhan is illiterate, and not for example any non-Noble Human character like Flynn Fairwind, is the epitome of drawing a distinction.
Stop defending the indefensible.
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But why use that for Trolls? Why not go more with the proud members of a declining empire who hold on to the learning and culture of their people even as their power diminishes?
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I know this thread’s a fire but a big issue is people forgetting that a few hundred years ago a lot less people read, go back a hundred more and you’ll find even less until eventually only the monks/priests/royalty can read and write.
You can’t just apply todays standards to the past, never felt like WoW took place in 2021.
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Azeroth isn’t Earth, and without any sort of word of god to go by we just have what we see in game, and it doesn’t really push this idea that no one can read.
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