Not sure if that’s actually the case, but men are cool when they’re well-written.
In FF14, I have quite a few favorite characters. All of them are male.^^
Since WoW’s story is rather poor and the NPC models are not very attractive, I find it a bit difficult here. I guess if I had to choose, it would probably be Varian. Before TBC, I also liked Kael’thas. But otherwise… really tough.
And the recent expansions… zero interest in the characters. So yeah, as a woman, I wouldn’t mind if men were in the spotlight or at least shared it with the female characters. However, the remaining male NPCs are all rather… well… not that great.
I just think its funny when people are all “I NEED MALE CHARACTERS IN THE GAME DOING STUFF…not me though. I like to look at a female character as I play. BUT I CANT BELIEVE THERE ARENT MEN IN THE STORY. and yeah, my character is in the story, and I made my character female. BUT THAT DOESNT COUNT. SOMEONE ELSE NEEDS TO BE MANLY”
All I am saying is…be the manly character in the story, on the screen you want to see!
I only have one Worgen who is in human form most of the time I play as a werewolf, like actual turn on the full moon and kill you kind, not the deviant art kind. Otherwise I don’t got any furry characters unless you count druid forms, which I don’t.
The OP laid out a relatively clear opinion with evidence to back it up. Stories like:
Alien
The Terminator
Million Dollar Baby
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
Those are a few examples that had VERY strong female leads. I think the issue he has with Blizzard, is that the current trend in story telling to be the result of California based political ideologies instead of the pursuit of writing excellence.
Not gonna act like a “WoW = Woke” or “Anti-DEI” moron but the writers are obviously trying to put more women characters in the forefront of the story. That’s typically a good thing but it’s starting to feel a bit…overcompensating maybe? There are obvious and logical places to have notable male characters involved in this story and it looks like writers are scrapping those ideas to focus more on building female characters.
Like, why isn’t Turalyon with us here? He shared a lot of history with Khadgar and obviously Alleria when they went to Outland under the name “Sons of Lothar.” He also was second in command under Lothar and his first appearance in WoW is literally a statue of him holding Lothar’s shattered sword which symbolizes the decisive moment he lead the alliance to victory in the second war immediately after Lothar’s death.
One would think that a story involving Lothar’s estranged daughter would include characters that actually knew her father
Spoilers
and with Khadgar MIA or KIA, Turalyon is probably the only one left that knew him in any meaningful capacity.
The expansion did just start and I still have a little bit of the campaign left so maybe they do have something planned but atm, it feels like a lost opportunity.
Edit: With the final part of the initial campaign questline released, I have been delighted to see Blizzard writers incorporate past characters and events into the story and dialogue. Turalyon has arrived and is actively engaging with the story and Khadgar even recalled the events of their expedition into Outland all those years ago. We still haven’t seen interactions between Faerin and characters that knew Anduin Lothar but after seeing the initial campaign finale, I am refreshingly optimistic about what the writers have in store for us.
WoW never had writing excellence. So to suddenly state its because of “California based political ideologies” is just a “red state based political ideology” based on not knowing basic history and reinventing facts to push a political agenda.
Your argument is “WoW’s writing was always terrible, therefore it couldn’t possibly been written with DEI in mind and anybody who says so is anti-DEI”?
That’s… a weird argument to present, especially when the OP states that he likes well written female characters and doesn’t like shoehorned ones that are weakly written.
What is your proof that wow never had good writing? I’d say vanilla through wotlk was interesting enough to drum up 15M subscribers and an IP that is still carrying the game today. Did the writing borrow from George R.R. Martin and Tolkien? Absolutely. Those are still much better inspirations than Vanity Fair articles.
Vanilla was alright since it was all world building. It didn’t try to continue the RTS story with the main characters like future expansions did. Big lore characters were more like cameos in vanilla and the only one we actually fought was Kel’Thuzad who we didn’t even kill anyway. The rest were all made up for WoW, Defias story, Dark Iron story, Silithid story, Onyxia story, etc. were all WoW originals and served their purpose well.
