Hear me out.
Some of the most interesting things I read in novels and sometimes games was racism in fantasy settings.
Blizzard tries sometimes by making Alliance call Horde monsters or sometimes an orc comment about delicate elves.
Or Saurfang/Baine calling goblins rats.
But these are mostly based on action rather than what they are.
But I mean to take this further.
More than just poor language.
Witcher series had an interesting concept where non-humans were discriminated against which led to a rebellion.
A brutal one at that which you saw the blood shed on both sides.
At one point you could not tell who were the bad or the good guys.
I know game narrative could be limiting but in a world with so many races on each side and the neutral ones I think WoW is missing some real good opportunity here.
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Considering the current quality of the narrative. I’m going to say that I don’t trust this game to take on a topic like racism.
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Won’t happen. This would require Alliance races to have a vice.
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And horde to have some sorta virtue :[
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I don’t think you want to encourage players to treat each other that way, regardless of how interesting it would or would not be narratively.
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we need both sides to have vices imo.
Even in a book setting.
I mean the Horde has literal undead on its side. How could there not be a smidge of racism there?
Alliance has purple elves and space goats walking around a medieval human city where I doubt normal peasants have ever seen such strange beings.
Maybe they should act afraid or throw stones or try to scare them off with pitchforks.
That would be fun to see.
There was a tiny bit of that during Suramar with the BE and NE armies taking jabs at each other. I don’t know why it isn’t more common though, especially on Alliance side. Some human calling an orc a monster is about the extent of it as I’ve seen though.
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Why would anyone want real world issues that greatly affect a large swath of the American population want to face the same kinds of ignorance in the game? How is that remotely interesting? I won’t make assumptions (like assuming you aren’t of color), but I don’t like the sound of this at all.
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Because ignoring a problem wont make it go away.
Sometimes when seeing racism from the victims perspective goes a long way in teaching people especially the young that it isnt right.
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For real.
We’d probably end up with some situation where the Alliance is racist against the Horde, and then the Horde turns around and justifies that racism in full spades.
Boy, wouldn’t that be an awkward situation to be in?
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Has focusing on that particular issue, especially over the last 2.5 years had any real positive impact on the issue? It hasn’t in case you missed it. I am all for great stories and interesting cultural exploration through gaming… but racism is one of the real world issues I’d like to avoid seeing in this game. Living in this climate, with this administration, and their belief that being brown means you’re sub human is something I personally don’t need to explore in the game.
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As a fellow who is part of minority that has had problems with idiotic comments based on my race and background I disagree.
Btw racism didnt start 2.5 years ago with trump. It has been around a long time.
Especially after 2001 where everyone different went from a curiosity to an unwelcomed guest.
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LOL do you think I am unaware that racism has been around since the dawn of man? My point is that racism has been front and center in media for the last 2.5 years that David Dukes drunk uncle has assumed the highest office in the US.
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If you think exploring racism in a fantasy setting in games, comic books and etc is like news coverage of the latest incident on cable news or twitter goes to show that perhaps you have never read or experienced how the subject of racism can be explored in media like games or books in a fantasy setting.
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The issue is the fact racism and prejudice are complicated issues. Rarely it will be as simple as “This person is racist because their a bad person”. Racism is evil, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a skeletor like evil for the sake of evil, evil, but an evil that has to be bred into a society to truly take root, generally done when a civilization achieves major successes and tries to justify what it did to get there, or a major change to the local status quo happens.
The poor treatment of blacks was done as a result of the slave trade, were people began to justify themselves enslaving other humans by saying they were less then them. While i wouldn’t say that black people were treated particularly well during the middle ages, they tended to be treated a lot better. Racism doesn’t just form for no reason, it tends to be the result of either a history of conflict or a means for some people to justify themselves in doing horrible things to another people (often for the goal of increased wealth and power), or maybe even scapegoatism, a way to blame a persons problems on something else.
I don’t trust blizzard to tackle such a sensitive issue, because they seem incapable of actually coming up with reasons for villains to do things other then “Their Crazy”.
I don’t racism, but i do understand it develops for reasons other then hate.
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This would require writers to be able to write something other than white and black (which is, in short, the current narrative in general). They are not showing the “gray” nuances of the good and bad things of each race … no, that would require a mature writing and not this game of thrones project that just wants to impress and scare the players.
I only saw plot with racism being presented consistently in the narrative when immersed in morally gray, and in practice I just saw this happen well in TES.
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I only like racism in my video game stories when I’m allowed to smash it repeatedly with a hammer. Whether they mean to or not, WoW just likes to justify it whenever it rears its ugly head and a good chunk of the playerbase laps it up.
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Plenty of racism alliance-side, but sadly nothing that has an actual affect on the story. I love to hate Turalyon.
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That’s politics. Not racism.
Racism is where the Alliance imprisons a female and male troll, cause they are trolls. Only to chase them down when they escape and end up initiating a war with said trolls, that they later use as justification to wipe them out.
Racism is Alliance taking Orcs and imprisoning them in interment camps. Even new born Orcs (Thrall- which means Slave), while beating them, starving them and forcing them to fight for human amusement.
Racism is Alliance profiling (as every example) in the Purge of Dalaran and killing unaffiliated elves. Shop keepers, common citizens.
I can keep editing this and giving examples but I won’t. It’s pretty evident that the Alliance functions based on ignorance.
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Yeah, if only they were trying to wipe them out. Not a fan of the Alliance, ask anyone. Having said that…
Zul was there, and Zul had orchestrated a coordinated attack of various troll tribes against multiple Alliance holdings. Now we don’t know exactly why Talanji and Zul were arrested, we can assume it’s an extension of the Alliance’s almost universal animosity with Trolls, we can assume it’s because the Alliance discovered a potential alliance forming between Horde and Zandalari and moved to stop it, but we can also assume Zul was arrested specifically and Talanji happened to be there. This isn’t for certain a racial thing.
Regarding wiping the Zandalari out, they’re not really trying to do that, at least as far as I’m aware. Their goal was to force the Zandalari to surrender.