Something that never sat right with me were races like the ethereals who are side-characters in wow lore and are so clearly coded with racial stereotypes.
Merchants/traders who travel from place to place and have accents…
I didn’t think wow would do it again but with Shadowlands, we have the brokers…
The brokers are the “curious”/self-motivated merchants/traders stereotype again AND they have accents again… another race coded with middle eastern themes
one of their voice lines is literally “I live to serve”… thats so sketchy
It doesn’t matter how their lore is established, it just doesnt sit right with me… If anyone agrees please let me know.
And you’re completely fine with posting this on a Pandaren of all races?
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Ve’Nari: “Thank you, come again!”
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Of all the races… you’ve chosen brokers/ethereals? Not goblins? Tauren/trolls? Remake the thread with either of those as your leading witnesses and you’ll have yourself a proper dumpster fire of a thread.
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so… does anyone want popcorn?.. this thread can blow up
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I’ve always said it was really cool that the Native American coded race complete with tribal feathers ended up telling the white lady that it was perfectly okay for her people to come across the ocean in ships and burn his villages so they could steal their lands for themselves.
Oh wait, did I say “Really cool”? I meant “Insanely tone deaf”
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So you have an axe to grind with the ethereals? The “nomadic shifty merchants” is more a Romani stereotype than Middle-Eastern, and the Romani are South Asian/European.
And not the Night Elves who borrow from Japanese culture (the Burning of Teldrassil in hindsight reminds me of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the Tauren who are blatantly Native American?
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I am waiting for Baal.
This is his bread and butter.
Hold on to your hats everybody!
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Besides the Torii-like gates in Night elf lands, what makes them particularly Japanese?
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Their use of rigid social gender roles is akin to bushido.
And btw the Orcs have a similarity of the concept of honor in bushido.
But you see its never ever a strict 1:1 comparison. There are always some way more than others but almost every race uses a hodgepodge of human cultures to make them unique.
Wow does this. Other games do this. Books do this. Movies do this.
Its no new and if these people do something bad or something bad is done unto them it is not a racist thing.
Even if they are directly referencing RL historical events.
World war 2: the first/second wars.
Japanese Internement Canps: Orc Internment Camps
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I was mistaken about the degree, thought the architecture of moonwells, strict gender rules similar to Bushido (and originally inspired by DnD’s Drow) and Hiroshima and Nagasaki allusions still stand. Though that doesn’t mean these - or the other - cultural allusions are racist.
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Oh, we’re getting a 10 paragraph dissertation about how WoW/Blizzard has been racist for 30 years from Baal today once he sees this thread.
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Is that a bad thing? I have genuinely said that In Real Life.
There are causes and people who I live to serve. Philosophies. Ways to be.
I swear, if it wasn’t for sensitive tweens like the OP, who would know such things were offensive?
I know this is an Obtuse Troll OP… But… Yeah. I feel a bit sad that there are such sad Obtuse Troll OPs. These people somehow get off on making threads like this? Well… to each their own. Yeesh.
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When I see Brokers, I think of Italian merchants from Renaissance Venice. It’s the pants, and Ve’nari’s Machivellian rules.
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As an Asian I feel equipped to answer this 
Besides the obvious architecture (which also borrows from China and Taiwan, besides Norse) a lot of their food is Japanese and Korean, their robes especially those during the Lunar Festival or in Moonglade (Hanbok) are based on traditional Japanese and Korean styles, they have a religion similar to Shinto, their weaponry and martial styles which sentinels and demon hunters are based on take from traditional Japanese martial arts.
Funnily enough, since Vanilla, they were the other race besides tauren wearing Native-American inspired headdresses.
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And Goblins are the great italian merchants of new jersey.
I mean, it’s not like he’d be wrong, whether the racism is meant to be mean or not and I don’t believe it is.
The Bilgewater are, not so much the other cartels
This is a feature of WoW not a bug.
NonWestern peoples and POC were always the foundation of all the nonHuman races.
Including white people who were historically on the periphery of whiteness, eg the Russianesque Draenei and the Irish overtone Night Elves (via the Neo Celtic Neo Wiccan motifs) and the Jewish themes of both Gnomes and Goblins that rely on stereotypes and associations developed over centuries.
The use of these motifs is not inherently racist. Nor is a white person playing a Troll somehow blackface.
The story lines however, as of the past ten years, do end up being racist. Examples, some of which have already been mentioned:
- Night Elves are partially Japanese derivatives and their sacred tree was nuked
- Greed as inherent to the hook nosed goblin race is literally European Medieval anti-Semitism 101
- Baine being the Tauren (ie Native American) leader but being Noble Savage trope or Crying Indian trope
- Etc
Sometimes real issues are actually usefully portrayed in WoW too
- Eg intra Black Diaspora Drama, particularly Africans va African Diaspora Drama, maps perfectly with Zandalari vs Other Troll Tribe drama
- Both the Sethrak and Vulpera were based on North Africans with the Vulpera having some Romani overtones. Their history neatly maps onto IRL intra-Imazighen history with regards to their subjugation by SubSaharan Africans or Arabs or Iberians and who sided with whom
- The Lord Admiral and 3 House Lords system of Kul Tiras neatly is parallel to the Venice Signoria system of old, but with the 3 pillars of Anglo media: Period pieces (Regency and Pirate themed Tirigarde), Witches and Salem and Vikings (Drustvar), Lovecraft and Religious Drama (Stormsong)
Tldr:
- Using motifs is not racist and is a feature not a bug
- blizzard is capable of writing development for these races without being racist
- Blizzard has chosen to only develop these races almost exclusively via racist tropes for the past decade for unfathomable reasons
Also I’m probably gonna write a book on this eventually
Edit:
- Also wtb a Human Character that is Important that isn’t White, Blonde/Grey Hair, and Blue or Green Eyed. I think Flynn and Shaw at least are both gingers but both also have Light eyes and are Fair skinned. Taelia is the only one that is only 1/3.
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