So first, let me start off properly. Hi GD bestie!!
That said, I already addressed this above, in that I do believe Smalls was trying to explain it similar to how you have here, and it’s not necessarily wrong.
BUT!! A few issues.
In WoW, there isn’t lore seperate for brown orcs, black orcs, grey orcs, etc. beyond “usually belongs to X/Y/Z clan”. There’s no seperate special lore explaining why different colored orcs have different lore; orc lore is for all orcs, regardless of skin color.
We also see night elves with some broad variations in skin color. Blue, purple, pink, light or dark are present and have been since Vanilla. Those variations do not need seperate lore to explain them. Why are there blue night elves? Where the pinkish ones cursed? Questions we never bother asking, because night elves are night elves.
Those are only two races I could point to where these questions have never been brought up, but let’s also talk about brown humans.
Because since Vanilla, we’ve had some brown human skin tones. They were very light brown compared to the much darker tones of today, but they existed. While a few dog whistlers would make a fuss about them, we’ve all largely accepted they exist and they don’t need seperate lore to exist. Teir lore is the same as all other humans’ lore.
But now it’s “white human lore” and “white high elf lore”, in spite of seventeen years of accepting on Azeroth, skin tones vary because they just do, and seperate lore doesn’t need to exist to explain blue night elves and pink-ish night elves in the “purple night elf lore”.
Additionally, establishing a whole lore explanation for why we’re allowed to play brown blood elves means we have to wait longer than the fifteen years we’ve already waited. The Sylvanas book has been in development for over a year. Are you comfortable saying that minority players should have to wait another year to play their brown skinned blood elves because Golden needs time to write the novel? Or another year for the expansion to come out and explain why they exist?
And then where I convince you. Thallia, I’m gonna totally win you over with this one. Are you ready?
Do you want the same writers and developers who developed Shadowlands to give their shot at writing a nuanced explanation for why black people exist on Azeroth? Do you trust them with that? Can you look at the writing lately and confidently say that giving them a chance to “justify the existence of black elves in the narrative” is better than just saying “well, sometimes elves have brown skin, like sometimes they have brown hair, or like how some night elves are blue.”
