They do have the same worldbuilding that others get. The literal same. Phylogenetics in Warcraft is basically not the random successful adaptation to climate and natural conditions the way our real world evolution is. It’s all supernatural in Warcraft. Elves of all varieties came about from exposure to supernatural forces. Life in general on Azeroth was catalyzed by the open wound of Titan blood magically kept fresh as the Well of Eternity. Wild Gods promote the development of life as part of its cycle with death. And metal, stone, and crystalline constructs were discombobulated into genetic matter by Old Gods in service to the Void by the Curse of Flesh. As much as some people don’t like it, even Trolls were probably originally Titan constructs affected by the Curse of Flesh, given Uldir and Taloc.
As Alynsa pointed out, Azeroth has a variety of skin tones just because it does. The lore is simply that Warcraft has far larger occurrences of transcriptional mutagenesis than happens in the real world, and that’s considered normal in the setting.
Asian Humans have now always existed among Humans, not for being from Pandaria, but coming from the same metal vikings as the rest of Humans came from. Darker skin toned Elves have now always been, from the same origins as coming from Night Elves or Dark Trolls before them. Just as there were no Trolls in Warcraft I, and there were no Night Elves in Warcraft II, and there were none of the playable Forsaken in Warcraft III, and the Draenei were a retcon in Burning Crusade, these now lore wise have simply always been.
Alynsa was also correct in pointing out because of this the various skin tone options do not present new cultural contexts to the races they’ve been added to. People from Stormwind are still from Stormwind. People from Quel’Thalas are still from Quel’Thalas.
Skin tones are just for appearance representation, but not cultural ones. As also as Alynsa pointed out the appearance representation options are still rather limited with Warcraft’s engine. Despite all the new appearances given to Humans none of them look anything like what I do. Ironically a Night Elf model looks closer to what I do now that they have black hair options than any Human model does. And regardless either way there’s no cultural representation for me, given I am Mexican, but despite the architectural designs in Zandalar, the cultures there are of an African inspiration (and of course there are modern African cultures present in Mexico who in turn are represented, but obviously that is not inclusive of all Mexicans).
But nonetheless the worldbuilding already exists and is established for where races came from in Warcraft, and there being a larger diversity of skin tones than previously presented is not out of fitting with Warcraft’s lore and how it is handled.
This is precisely my main issue. You stated it better than I could.
Will Blizzard say light skinned Dwarves came from precious gemstones, and Dark Skinned Dwarves came from coal? Is that the kind of “world building” people want? But it makes dark-skinned dwarves an “other”.
These attempts at “world building” only serve to create “others”.
Tauren have white fur, brown fur and black fur - I haven’t seen a clamor for that to be explained.
I don’t know if what you describe is entitlement. I haven’t bothered with 5e Ravenloft (2e for life over here, because I did too much to customize my setting and ruleset), but when a publishing company suddenly thinks the solution to diversity is to take pre-existing characters from an ongoing setting and say “actually, he’s now a latinx woman and maybe bisexual” it gets a sneer from me. It’s just too forced.
Oddly, casting non-white actors into adaptations to play characters traditionally white? Doesn’t bother me. 2003’s Battlestar Galactica’s gender swapping and race changing didn’t bug me in the least, because adaptations have to make changes to the source material, so why not add diversity?
With Warcraft it’s different yet again. NPCs suddenly having different skin tones? Doesn’t bother me. Because I have the meta awareness that the original dev team never thought to include much for diversity, and this is sort of just… Fixing an error? I don’t know how to word it.
There should be nuance in these things, and our views on them should have nuance too.
But yeah, the idea of converting everything I’ve written over the last… Dear god, has it been over thirty years? Oh god, it has, I’m so old, omg, I need to stop playing video games and start being an adult, where has my life gone, how did I let things get to-
At least from what I’ve heard, 5e is pretty easy to convert, I’ve gotten the impression at least with some stuff you can just drop it right in. But I’m just a player who hasn’t had a group for years, so it’s all theoretical for me. But 2e was the current thing when I first got into it.
I recently gave away the contents of my Realm of Terror box black to my nephew, though the box itself is long destroyed. I still have Forbidden Lore, the Red Box, and the Domains of Dread hardcover book. I considered giving him the Red Box and keeping the Black Box (stuffing the contents into the Forbidden Lore box). I also gave him Masque of the Red Death, but that was because that one had also been beaten up badly over the years and I had a second one I bought a couple years ago.
Also still have first printings of Vampire of the Mists, Dance of the Dead, and The Enemy Within, which is part of the reason I don’t dunk on Christie Golden as much as some other people even though I don’t like how she’s used Anduin’s character in recent years.
I didn’t say it was out of place. I simply said the point was that there wasn’t much development, while we have that for other clans for Orcs and whatnot. Is it needed? No. Is it a desire? Sure. I’d love more culture and background for lots of things. But mostly, I was going off of the whole Tolkien conversation earlier.
People were jumping on Smallioz when I believe they were misunderstanding his points on that other subject entirely.
Honestly, I think I suck at communicating. I am constantly getting into arguments with people and I just don’t know what I am saying or how I am saying it that comes off as so enraging to some.
Anyway, you got what I mean exactly.
Wow… lotr, honestly its all of them. Its the same symptom. They use the easiest method thats almost like a token gesture. And I don’t understand why people pretend thats better. it honestly feels like the parents give my brother the toy he wanted for his birthday and my gift is the privilege to share the gift with him.
And if I ask why this is so I get called ungrateful.
I kinda jumped in as the way he started off was pretty hostile to the more open casting, and treating something not actually established in the books as the way it had to be.
As I said above to someone else, it might just be that you are over thinking it. It’s a story, things that were not stated can get filled in various ways, there’s just always the point at which you draw the line. The issues of Earth are not the same as Middle Earth, or Azeroth, so we don’t need to necessarily assume that skin color has the same culture significance, or is tied as closely to geography as it is here. If nothing changes based on the skin color of the character, do you need to spend much time modifying the way of your world to accommodate that feature?
You aren’t going to read this, but that has never stopped me from doing anything.
I’ve pinpointed what I think the issue is. When you see someone not getting what you’re trying to say, you double down on the same wording. You’ll expand on it, but still use the prior poor wording.
Much earlier, I (against the advice of medical professionals and mental health experts) came to your defense. Because after a while, I saw what you were trying to say and realized it wasn’t what it very much looked like you were saying. I disagreed with it ultimately, but on grounds that weren’t “you’re being a racist” and more along the lines of “but WoW, skin color, so on and so forth” that isn’t worth rehashing because you’d be too stubborn to read it anyway, just like you won’t read this.
If you were open to a suggestion, it would be when you see yourself caught in an argument with someone and you just know they’re not hearing you, take a step back. Approach it slower, and go out of your way to try and word it as differently (but with the same intent) as possible.
… AAAAAARRRGH!!! Why not for me??? I’m still seeing Basic Blonde Vanilla Alynsa!! Everyone else gets to see the Caramel goodness, why does it not show for me?!?
