Racial Coding in WoW

Well that’s what happens when Blizzard insists on a faction war. How would you have written it?

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I wouldn’t have written it, that raid was a catastrophe for the story even ignoring the unfortunate implications, and the entire patch needs a complete rewrite.

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Okay, but how would you write the faction war in general? From vanilla, why would anyone play the alliance if the faction is going to be coded as white colonialists attacking tribes?

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One, try to avoid turning cities into god damn raids.

Two, make it so both sides have legitimate objectives and preform actions to achieve those objectives, not stupid stuff like “Attack them so they won’t attack us”

Three, make the alliance not completely innocent but not completely guilty, and have them act most against orcs, forsaken and goblins.

This would hopefully give both factions a lot more fun (It will still be hated mind you because whenever you create a plotbeat that benefits one faction and not the other the one not benefiting will hate it, but hopefully would be a good story)

Basically while i would have the zandalari and Kul Tirans enter the War eventually, i’d try and stop either of their capitals from getting sacked.

Of course this is starting to be more of a “Vague outline on how to make BfA better from the start”

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Ah … the dance is Indian:

They don’t really have a nomadic lifestyle, though.

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The Romani are culturally rooted in India.

From wikipedia:

Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani “came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago.”

In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.

The regular Alliance Draenei have been to and lived on 3 different planets that I know of, and the Lightforged Draenei lived on a ship that traveled across the universe.

I know that, but I still don’t see the dance and think “Romani” first. But see below.

I wouldn’t call it a “nomadic lifestyle” when they spend thousands of years per planet, personally.

… However, maybe it is what Blizzard intends, and you just picked up on the clues better than I did. (shrug)

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Budd was not depicted in a positive light. He was the stereotypical looter/plunderer and more importantly he became crazy in the end due to attempting to mess with voudoo/loot.

Turning cities into raid zones has merit. It actually give added emotional weight to things. Hell, even during siege of Ogr people who did heroic got to see a sha infested Stormwind harbor.

You make it sound like preemptive wars dont happen in the real world. Pro tip, they do and if nothing else Blizzard probably wants people to realize preemptive wars are still morally shady things

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Preemptive Wars do happen, but generally they have more reason’s then just “Attack them before they attack us” Japan didn’t bomb pearl harbor because they felt the USA would enter the war, but because they knew their actions would spark a war with the USA, and they needed those resources to continue the war with china, as they sunk way to much into it to pull out. So they attacked as soon as possible in a desperate attempt to just make the USA not want to fight them as they knew a prolonged war was a lost cause.

Preemptive Wars generally aren’t declared unless you want something else from the war as well. They also almost never work.

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14 year old history/fantasy buffs :
`https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1384545-screaming-cat

Ihaveabsolutelynoideawhyyouwouldthinkthegnomesindragonlanceareannoying.justbecausetheytalkreallyfastdoesn’tmeanttheyareannoying,butthatalotofknowledgeneedstobeimpartedatyou.youshouldembraceourdifferencesandbehappywhatthegnmesprovidetothealliance.

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Not every race is based off an existing racial group. Blood Elves, for example, are not based off of any European culture. Just because they are white and wear metal armors doesn’t mean they’re medieval Europeans. They’re actually inspired by 80s hair metal musicians, more specifically Sebastian Bach. That’s where the long blonde hair, narcissism, snarky attitude, duck lips, addiction/substance-dependence come from.

And I’d argue that goblins certainly aren’t inspired by late 1800s America. They’re a play on money hungry Jersey Shore dirtbags. Blizzard has always taken more queues and inspiration from pop culture than they do from actual history. This is why Pandas come off more “kung fu movie” than actual Chinese and Tauren seem more like natives from Wild West movies than actual historically accurate natives.

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reading through this thread and b i g y i k e s from some of y’all

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Believe it or not, I think that it would be more like the Ottoman Empire. Blood Elf furniture looks very Ottoman in the way it’s designed. Pillows, Hooka’s, lots of curtains.

Not to mention, but the Blood Elf language sounds vaguely Arabic with an Indian mix. Even the word for ‘Sun’ in Blood Elven is ‘Alah’, which is also the god of Islam.

I would say only the Raiders and Wolf riders have this sort of ascetic, notably in the fur hats on the Wyvern riders.

Other than that, I’d say it’s a combination of nomadic and tribal cultures around the world.

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Actually, Belore is the Thallassian (The Blood/High/Void Elven language) word for the sun.
-alah however, seems to be a suffix describing something having to do with the Light.
Example:
“Anar’alah belore” means “By the Light of the Sun”

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I can see that. And all the domes and such. Ottoman/Byzantine + a dash of Venice (which has definite Middle Eastern influence thanks to the Silk Road) + just a touch of leftover Celtic/Art Nouveau from their Night Elf roots.

Interesting that it sounds that way to you. It strikes me as sounding more like Tolkien’s Sindarin, which has become the basis for most generic fantasy “elf languages” (not in specific words, but in general sound).

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I disagree. I think Stormwind is very American. #1 in everything. Always bailing out our allies. Leader of global conflicts. Accepting of other races.

The other human kingdoms are just a different flavor of British. Worgen are Victorian British if Trump was a Worgen and Kul’Tiras is navy British if everyone was wearing their pirates of the Caribbean cosplay.

I’ve never gotten the Dwarves to be strictly British. They either live in a mountain or Mordor. The only mountainous civilizations I can recall are the Inca or the Tibetan kingdoms in the Himalayas. I’d like to think the dorfs are a straight Tolkein rip off.

I like to believe that Nelfs are Celtic. You know, because of druids and nature worship.

Um. They’re called Little People.

I don’t think Draenei have a parallel real life counter part. One would think with the super sexy Russian accent that they’re Russian, but no. I’ve found their history to have some semblance of the Jewish diaspora.

I disagree. Orcs are very German.

Ye.

I think the Forsaken are modern North Koreans.

Ye.

I don’t think so. They seem like a straight rip off from Tolkien. They just lack the OPness of the lotr elves.

Gobbos are libertarians if their memes became real.

I do think racial coding is a negative when it comes to WoW storytelling and is more prevalent than what people are more comfortably able to say. If I was a journalist for Kotaku I would say that WoW is an extremely racist and problematic game where the light skinned races are fair, intelligent, and good and it is right to genocide the ugly, evil races. Hey, that’s just the message I’m getting from WoW’s story line.

I doubt Blizzard has the writing ability to WOW me in the future, but maybe it’s because I’m getting older and I’m not 8 anymore.

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everyone is racist in old fantasy

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No foolin’. Hell, we just finished Battle of Dazar’alor, where the Aztefricaincanesiamacian city was invaded and its king killed by a bunch of quasi-britishish sailors and the story was carefully set up to show that they did the right thing and honestly the trolls started it and they were entirely proportionate and correct nay even merciful in their incredibly justified retribution (oh and also it was probably his bargain with his god that technically did him in, and they gave him a chance to surrender, so they’ll have extra no blame pass the ketchup).
And this story of ‘you kill a caricature of colonized peoples and the story is about how it was good and right and you showed restraint and can’t be blamed’ was (astoundingly) an enormous improvement from previous troll raids, where the story was ‘these caricatures of colonized peoples are 300% irredeemable, savage, backwards scum whose genocide was deserved and good and they must be stopped from retaking anything they claim as theirs because they don’t deserve it and they just want to hurt the real people who actually matter. ps: they smell bad and talk funny and worship weenie halfassed gods and the only good ones are the ones that admit how much all of them suck.’

TL;DR: Blizzard, please don’t reuse racist ol’ pulp fiction tropes, stereotypes, and general tomfoolery in the incredibly halfassed story of your multi-million-dollar generic fantasy game.

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What I’m trying to say, is that when we have one faction blatantly styled off of European culture, and an another that’s made from everything but, any conflict between these groups is going to make people uncomfortable.

Horde players don’t want to be caricatures that terrorize white people until they’re punished or lectured.

Alliance players don’t want to be caricatures that oppress the x-men until they start fighting back, or get guilt tripped.

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