So as we all know the Humans in WoW can vary in skin tone quite greatly despite all of them seemingly living in the same area. I have heard some say that Humans with extremely dark skin tones are from Stranglethorn but with Kul Tirans that doesn’t seem to add up as they’re all on their island yet their skin tones are so vastly different between individuals.
Are WoW Humans just multicoloured despite environmental factors? Can two dark skinned Humans create a child of completely different complexion?
I get it’s a meme but I don’t see how this is a controversial question, I’m simply wondering if the Warcraft canon, being fantasy, has made it so their version of Humans are just randomly coloured rather than environment playing a part.
I’m sure there’s no real lore explanation and the variety of skin colors is just there for the benefit of player customization.
It’s certainly never been established anything like “Black humans are from Arathi, Asian humans came from Alterac” etc.
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My working assumption that human skin color is in Warcraft is similar to eye or hair color. It has a genetic component, but in practice it’s almost impossible to precisely to tell where a human came from based on skin color alone.
That’s why you end up in situations where Kul Tiras, despite being one of the more isolated human kingdoms, is also the most diverse in terms of skin color.
But I don’t think they have ever explicitly spelled out how human skin colors work in Warcraft lore, nor are they likely to ever do so.
I just figure it’s the same for Humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes. Fleshy hues of the earthtones of the original earth, stone, and metals used to make the Vrykul, Earthen, and Mechagnomes.
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They could have done with humans like they did with Trolls. Have the Humans change in minor ways depending on environment. Ice Trolls weren’t a thing when King Dazar founded Dazar’alor after all.
I doubt they’ll ever give it that much attention though.
I sorta have it as a head canon that humans skin color would depend on whether they’re descendants from vanir or aesir giants, i think the aesir/vanir grouping of titans and giants might’ve been retconned though, I’m not sure.
let’s assume kul-tirans is just game mechanic. They’re pretty much just humans.
People of all colors exist because shut up.
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Kul Tirans don’t need to be different than any other human nation in terms of diversity. If you’ll recall, it was only around a thousand years ago that all of humanity was one kingdom and were free to travel and breed as they liked within it. Unless we’re to assume there were ethnic cleansings (based on clan ancestry from over a thousand years before even that) that we just haven’t heard about, then there’s no reason a wide range of appearances shouldn’t be represented in all human kingdoms.
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This may have been mentioned already but the humans of WoW are descendants from Titans and Old Gods (angels and demons…cursed nephilim theme…). Thus, the real-world concepts of skin tone are most likely completely irrelevant in their iteration of “the human genome.”
You are romanticizing things waaaaaaaay to much. They weren’t fruit of some kind of relation or feeling. They were constructs, machines per say, that were CURSED with the CURSE of Flesh. A cursed nephilin theme is way more poetical than a literal corruption with world domination intentions.
And about human phenotypes in WoW I couldn’t care less. Humans are the most boring race in every game and I never play them because there’s little to no flavour. You are a dude…that does…dude things…cuz you are a dude. And that’s it.
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I don’t agree that I’m romanticizing it but I can definitely see how I vastly over simplified it!
And one humans curse may be another’s blessing. Ask my man Ray in the Twilight’s Hammer. He is pretty much convinced that the curse of flesh was a good thing.
And yes, the nephilim are definitely a love child thing. Though I still posit that Blizzard made like “nature” and found a way to do a rather similar creation story for the humans. They didn’t evolve from anything. They were an amalgamation of titanic power and old god taint.
I found the Eth in the Rift game to be interesting. But, yeah, humans are pretty much stock: though I find that good depending on the type of character and their backstory I want to play.
Well depends on the point of view. In one side Azeroth has humans, dwarfs and…urgh gnomes. In the other hand the Old Gods managed to weaken the keepers. Actually nevermind there are no good sides with the curse of flesh.
Well, of course backstory and developing makes a great character, but that applies to any race or color. I’m a bit too biased to talk about humans in general because as I said, I find them boring and bleak in comparison to anything else that has any kind of flavour
Edit: But I get the point of what you say
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Good points regarding backstory. I guess I just meant that I see humans and their straight, no-chaser or “blandness” like a slightly better blank canvas for me.
And I like reading your perspective. It helps me either redefine mine or, in learning new things, abandon my initial mindset.
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A notable darker-skinned human from the Traveler series, Makasa Flintwell, grew up in Stranglethorn, but when asked where her family came from, the lore devs responded with, “Arathi”.
Arathor is cradle of humanity as we know it, so any type of human can come from there, interspersed throughout all other kingdoms.
Yes.
Doubt it.
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For the first part of your question…
Humans are the result of the Curse of Flesh, which is definitely a shadow-based chaotic effect. So it probalby created multiple strains of random skin colors.
As to the latter part of your question, no evidence is given for that in lore or game.
instead of fat humans i wish we got asian or arab humans or something
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Fairly simple. WoW is rooted in D&D, which means it is designed in the perspective of an expressly European fantasy fiction, specifically British. Gilneas is/was Victorian era Britain in aestetic, And Kul Tiras is it’s colonial era counterpart. Stormwind is its ‘American’ counterpart going by accent and penchant to think they rule their respective coalition (<.<;).
…even their Vrykul ancestors are European in design, based after the Anglo-Saxons. In theory, everyone should be (and typically is) white. it is the glaring flaw of Eurocentric writing; cultures outside that sphere tend to not be made of humans but ‘monsters’, like the Zandalari are trolls and fill the aesthetic role of the Aztec/Mayan or the Tol’vir the Egyptian one…
With that said skin color shown is generally just there for customization on the player’s part. There is not a lot of real world logic behind it, given we have no idea what the genetics of a magical stone robot made flesh by magic would even remotely look like.