I said that they’re flawed, not evil. That’s what Revendreth is for.
In the writing of this game, flaws = evil. Which is why the races of the Alliance are allowed to have none; and why the races of the Horde are drowning in them. While the reverse is true for virtues.
And its still creepy as hell, since it makes one of the primary factors in whether you go to purgatory to have your flaws tortured out of you is the natural privilage of your race you were born as in life (and the culture built around it). If you’re born metaphorically “rich” in natural blessings, you are just a much better person than those rats who grew up in a hard and cruel world. Hell, in the case of the Goblins, the still very new and rough around the edges society they built was their response to (and alternative) to … slavery. So, to outright condemn them for it seems to be condemning them for freeing themselves from bondage at all. If they didn’t want to be tormented for eons in purgatory, the price was to be tormented for the entirety of their life instead.
Assuming all this isn’t just a bizarre coincidence. Which I assume and certainly hope it is.
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And yet, will you judge a thief from the culture of thieves when the reasons to steal have disappeared?
Seriously, you are TRULY fringing on some very creepy rhetoric here.
You NEED to get off that sort of thinking, because truly Goblins of WoW barely scrape by a certain RW comparison because of the Tech you condemn them for as well. Without that tech focus, they’d essentially be Harry Potter Goblins … and yeah, those were a very problematic stereotype. Especially with the added idea that you are pushing here that they are all damned to purgatory because of their ex-slave race culture.
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What is RW and why the analogy with theft is bad?
You aren’t just condemning them for “theft”, its you labelling an entire fictional race as thieves that’s the problem. With them being money-mongers who would do anything for coin. They’re also bankers and auctioneers … etc. And you saying that their entire race deserves purgatory because of that Greed cultural trend. Which … if you remove the Tech theme from WoW Goblins (which you also condemn them for) … you do sort of end up with Harry Potter Goblins. A very negative stereotype and caricature of Jewish people. Hell, they’re even called “Rats” in game a few times (which Naz* propaganda occasionally referred to Jews as).
EDIT: And again, I don’t think this Afterlife issue is anything more than an unfortunate name coincidence, but if its not it would be VERY problematic for MANY thematic reasons.
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That is the problem. They are ready for literally anything. Usury, auctions, banks - do it all you want. Goblins also do not disdain slave labor (or working conditions close to slave).
Yes, I condemn Goblin Tech. To send them to Revendreth for this is not. They are sent there for an irrepressible desire to deceive everyone, to climb higher and not let anyone in. Greed mixed with contempt?
It seems like the whole world deserves to be deceived. Not “we use tricks to deceive the world,” but “how can we not deceive the world?”
The escape hatch is that since it’s folklore it can be hazy contradictory or just even wrong.
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Yeah, lets hope they use that hatch on that particular folk-lore. They also would be better off not attaching Fox-kit or Hyena cub sibling murder tendencies to their Roma/Bedouin hybrid inspired Fox people as well.
Seriously, these fools at Blizz…
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The story forums have become a parody of itself. This thread and everything in it is peak story forums.
It’s refreshing to remember that Warcraft is a comic-book tier story and not an eschatological and philosophical examination of morality and spirituality.
It’s just a bit of fun. That’s it. That’s all it is. That’s all it’s meant to be.
Hardly worth calling Blizzard employees “fools” or suggesting they go to seminary school before they’re allowed to write B-Tier fantasy fiction.
This whole subforum must be purged by fire.
Reminder to everyone: World of Warcraft is not a morality play. Blizzard is not under any obligation to present its story in a real-world ethical or moral way.
If you are having trouble processing any of that, which some of you are based on this thread and the nightmarish Night Elf threads, then I highly suggest you take a break from WoW for a few months, at least until 9.1 arrives or maybe even until Shadowlands is done.
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It is, because stories that exist to be consumed within a market inherently promote ideas, values, and beliefs, intrinsic to the nature of consumption (due to inherent integration), capitalism (due to choice among varied options in a market, popularity, etc), the existence of games as both mirrors and representations of society and culture, and the fact this game in particular is constructed as a hyper-amalgamation of literally dozens of peoples and their histories across human civilization, from Roman Antiquity, Victorian British Empire, to Post-Slavery African Americans, to Pre-Colonial Tawantisuyu, to Modern Caribbean Nation-states, each in turn having varied moral “weights” to those histories and moments shaped partly the contemporary situation of their heirs as well.
World of Warcraft was, once upon a time, a story about survival and how war is ultimately bad, sometimes necessary yes, sometimes unavoidable yes, but ultimately bad. At its core it’s an anti-war story, about how war is an easy trap to fall into, etc.
This flaming hot mess?
- Where genocide, declared as such by the devs, is on the verge of being justified by some magical divine greater good scenario?
- And this aforementioned genocide was perpetrated upon the Celtic-Wiccan-Roman-Japanese-Korean metaphor race by the faction that has the African-Native American-Turkish-Hungarian-MENA Orientalist-Bedouin-Caribbean peoples?
- Where we are in an “afterlife expansion” where some people are auto-damned to WoW Hell and dead children are sent to WoW Purgatory?
What the hell are we supposed to be walking away from this?
God forbid we attribute a good portion to the widespread negativity and misery among the playerbase since BFA to the fact the story itself is promoting the grimest, darkest, most miserable moral/ethical perspectives known to humanity.
How can Blizzard or anyone expect the community to be happy when the story we are forced to experience through gameplay only demonstrates cruelty, abuse, and misery?
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Walking Dead, Sopranos, Game of Thrones, etc. etc. etc. a million other examples
Some of us like cruelty, abuse, and misery in our storytelling.
Your inability to separate storytelling from the writer’s own real-world humanistic beliefs is your own personal failing. It has nothing to do with anyone at Blizzard.
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All of which are TV shows and all of which regularly featured storylines about empowerment and perseverance, not endless, continuous grimdark crap with zero levity.
The last time we had a vaguely positive, feel-good storyline was Jaina reconciling with her mother. Before that… maybe the Suramar questline? And before that… maybe Mists of Pandaria? Given WoD was incoherent, but I guess we could count the “coming together” end cinematic that was never properly explained.
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I mean, Bastion is just the maw with extra steps
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The 9.1 storyline is nothing but Tyrande and the Night Elves choosing to go down the road of positivity and betterment and forgiveness and all of those humanistic ideals. The ideal that vigilantism and vengeance for the sake of vengeance are inherently wrong.
And the story forums have absolutely ripped that story decision to pieces.
It’s hilarious to hold the position that “Sylvanas has always been evil” and “Blizzard is obligated to tell a moral story” and “Sylvanas has been a major character in Warcraft for 15+ years” all at the same time.
And yet many posters here do hold those opinions. Schroedinger’s Canon? How about Schroedinger’s moral storytelling?
Sorry but positivity for the sake of positivity is boring. Jaina’s arc in BfA was boring. Jaina is now a boring character. That is not good storytelling, it’s almost the opposite. It would be like turning Sylvanas into a goody-two-shoe blonde-haired blue-eyed elf now who hugs Vareesa and all is forgiven.
That’s much worse storytelling than anything about Vulpera or Goblins. 
EDIT: Almost forgot for video game examples:
SWTOR Empire side storyline. The Bounty Hunter, Inquisitor, Warrior, and Agent. All well-told stories that do not rely on fake morality to tell an interesting story.
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Not when it’s tied to “The Dead Night Elves have a purpose to save Ardenweald which is Elune’s greater good plan”, which inherently has with it “I let you all die, the genocide was part of my plan” wrapped up in it.
Because what Blizzard is due to repeating the same mistakes and what Blizzard could be must be held in conjunction.
It isn’t, actually.
Well, to be fair it’s fine in 8.0
But after Dazarlor and “To attack the Zandalari would make us no better than the Banshee Queen” line Jaina’s story ceased to be interesting and she became just another generic goody-two-shoes character in a long line of goody-two-shoes characters. She’s the most pathetic rule-follower ever in Shadows Rising, she’s less morally complex than Anduin for goodness sake.
Why is this a bad thing? Other than whiny Night Elves?
Why is it a bad thing for the story to be that Elune has a dark side? Isn’t that exactly what the Night Warrior represents?
That can be a good story. It may not be a moral story, but it can be a good one. And again, Warcraft is not a morality play.
EDIT: Also just to point out, your interpretation of this interaction with Elune is assuming the worst. I do not think it is likely that Blizzard pursues the option of “Elune wanted the Night Elves to die.” It’s just not happening. I think even suggesting that it is proves your desire for better, more morally complex storytelling.
tl;dr
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I want a Tyrande who makes Azshara look like an amateur if they do the whole “night elves should die for the greater good thing”
When people do not have fun, they start asking questions. When the devs made the choice to ignore the concern, situation started to escalate. As time goes on, it very well might go past the point of compromise and discussion to an outright rejection of the people who made such story turns. And there would be no1 to blame outside of the company called “activision-blizzard”.
You are free to financially support what they do. Does not mean that others are obligated to never criticize the story, or to exclude the story from the list of the problems of the game.
False. The devs themselves talk about morality (check the Evolution of Thrall panel) and lessions to learn. Nobody forced them to bring in irl morality and concepts into the previously fictional narrative.
Sure. Except they made a conscious choice to use exactly that way to evaluate and validate the characters and the story turns they wanted to. So, when the community does what the devs request, no point in complaining about community following what the devs state.
If you try to use “the intention of the devs” as a way to justify your take on the story, it would be nice if you yourself find out the language used by the devs themselves when they talk about the story they created, and their reasoning for why those choices were made.
It should be then advertised as such and provide equal oppotrunities to all parties to participate.
It’s 1 chapter out of the “9.1 story”.
They are chosing a path of “genocide is cool for the promotional materials, but will be waved away, because the horde is new, improved and corrected, thus the core of the problems are resolved automatically”.
[not to mention what that means to the value and the concept of the original W3-Classic-TBC horde]
Not to mention the false advertisement aspect of the story sold as “seeking justice” and the “aftermath of the event”.
It tells the story that if you’re a dev favourite then anything can be forgiven, regardless of what is done. And genocide is fine if for the greater_good™.
Well, what do you [not you personally, but as a figure of speach about the dev team] expect if you take money for 1 story, and then silently replace the things people are emotionally involved in, but by whatever the devs themselves prefer to do for the money they took.
different people are different. With different motivations, etc. Does not make “wrong” the whole rejection of the story revisionism and deconstruction of what people loved for the sake of validation of the devs’ biases and preferences.
Depends on the execution. Depends on the detail. Depends on the context. Depends on many implementation details.
Well, of course it was. It was 180 on the promo materials. Why would it be considered good? Some liked it though, despite inconsistencies, etc.
Yeah, and that is the funny thing that you support that the narrative is a problem, while ignoring the common problems that plague it, regardless if that is what was done to the elf story, or to the W3 horde identity.
Do you have a race / faction which is explicitly sold as the Empire equivalent? Do you think that with the current dev take on morality, that “Empire” side would have any validity or necessity shown in the story?
Because it’s not the ruleset of the universe. There won’t be a follow up of demolishing the “new” and “improved” horde and then saying “nah, it’s all fine - for the greater_good™”.
It was just an event for shock value that dragged a few participants on the border of “out of character”, and instead of a follow-up to the event, it brushes it off under the hood of conveniently appearing greater_good™.
Clear message, clear foundation, clear execution of the explicitly mentioned concepts - that is all that lies under those discussions as far as I can tell.
It matters what they show, not what they imagine which when talking to each other during the planning stage of the development.
gl hf
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