I think it might be worth remembering for older rpers, and reminding new rpers that nobody can interact with you without your permission. If you don’t like a type of RP happening, don’t engage with it. You are well within your right to tell someone “no” and put them on ignore if they persist in being a pest.
That being said, if you don’t want to RP with riots… don’t RP with riots. Just because you don’t personally enjoy them does not mean they are problematic.
Happy rping out there. ^^
Maybe they are rioting because when the dragon boys are in their elfish form they’re really hot.
If you run the Bastion of Twilight raid, it gives you the “Dragon Slayer” title.
As far as classic storytelling goes; the hero setting out to vanquish the dragon is timeless and spans all cultures.
Onyxia orchestrated the killing of Stormwinds Queen Tiffin Wrynn, the kidnapping of King Varian Wrynn, the enslavement of Bolvar Fordragon, and the rise of a Defias Rebellion that persists to this day.
Nefarian enslaved the Orcs, waged war on the dwarves, and wholesale butchered the other dragon flights to be used for alchemic experiments of the Chromatic Flight (which was the precursor that opens the door for the Twilight Dragons creation).
Deathwing needs no introduction; As Davan Prestor, He convinced Lordaeron to not intervene and save Stormwind during the 1st war. He also brought about the Cataclysm and destroyed a whole city district during his attack on Stormwind.
Red Dragons were an Orc super weapon during the 2nd war, killing thousands (Jainas brother among the many).
Green Dragons fall victim to the Nightmare, going insane and killing the innocent in a fever dream.
Bronze Dragons fall victim to Infinity, Deleting people from the timeline, and erasing the whole history from memory.
Malygos tried to steal mana from every Spellcaster on Azeroth during the Nexus War. Blue Dragons are also well known to hoard magic/artifacts instead of gold.
TLDR: Regardless of Dragons being victims by ulterior forces, The vast majority of commoners on Azeroth only see that a fire-breathing monster the size of a house just showed up and killed their friends & family. The truth will require more effort to salve that animosity.
If you want to say that Xenophobia is a boring trope, Sure, I won’t disagree, It’s asinine, But it’s also your personal opinion. If someone chooses to play a character who wants to protect the people from the historical terror that is Dragons then that’s their creative liberty to do so.
RP requires participation, Make your choice to participate or not but please don’t pretend to make that choice for others.
Dragons in lore have earned the saying “Beware of Dragons”.
That just doesn’t track though. Even if you take as a default the average Stormwind rando doesn’t know anything about dragons A) most people in these riot scenes tend to be actually rather experienced sorts, and B) using that to apply to dracthyr is really…weird?
Again even if you feel the baseline Stormwind random person opinion is ‘dragon bad!!!’ (completely ignoring the massive cultural connotations green, red, and bronze flights have had through history) that’s still QUITE a leap to go right to ‘we gotta riot over these dracthyr!’
Dracthyr come in all colors and styles, so even if the average human has only loose history of what dragons are, that ignorance would lead them to assume that, say, a green colored dracthyr would be a green dragon, aka the hippy dippy dragons the night elves seem to bro out with more than anything, a bronze would be a bronze dragon aka the weirdos in the desert who kinda don’t do anything 99% of the world interacts with (hell I’d argue if we’re treating the average Stormwinder as THIS ignorant they shouldn’t even know bronze dragons exist?), a blue one would mainly remind them of the guy who runs Dalaran, the city that is a major ally of Stormwind’s, and the reds would just be ‘that’s a weird colored lizard’?
The only flavor dracthyr that would invoke knee jerk ‘THIS IS LIKE DEATHWING, BAD!!!’ reactions would be black scaled ones and even then Wrathion, the close friend of the former king who literally helped save creation from the old gods personally escorted them into Stormwind to vouch for them. I’m not saying that means every dracthyr is above reproach but again if we’re using this massive level of ignorance about a fairly major race of the world as baseline most people wouldn’t know about the whole ‘Wrathion also kinda started the whole WoD storyline and domino-effected our other previous king getting ashed’ part of his story.
I’m not even saying it’s ‘wrong’ to be xenophobic about them ICly, even from more seasoned types, but it just feels really weird to say 'actually the baseline level of awareness of the world for a random Stormwind commoner would be so lacking that they wouldn’t know anything at all about one of Azeroth’s major races through its history that they not only assume every dragon is Deathwing but would look at a green scaled elf with shiny gold hair and go 'this mf’er’s here to do Deathwing stuff, GET ‘EM!’
You’re saying the baseline level of knowledge is both so deep that random Stormwind people know the Infinite Dragonflight exists and is a danger to the reclusive bronze dragonflight, but also are so pig ignorant they think everything even slightly draconic is Deathwing 2 Electric Boogaloo.
Like, the hoops you have to jump through to say ‘actually roleplaying yet another race riot as a reaction to a new race being added to my fantasy video game, as I do every new race including fluffy pandas and ‘literally just high elves, a race we historically were close friends with’ is actually quite logical and normal’ are so high it feels so much more weird than just going ‘eh I like being edgy’.
There’s no jump in the logic at all.
When the Dracthyr arrives in Stormwind to do the Dragonflight Intro quest we see quite clearly the common knowledge in how NPC’ react to the Dracthyr. They make all manner of comments; Some denote awe, bewilderment, confusion, and even hostility.
“I prefer hunting dragons, not befriending them.”
“Those things will ruin this city!”
“The only good dragon’s a dead one!”
“Go back to your home. Filthy beast.”
“I can smell those things from here. Disgusting.”
“They don’t belong here. I’d love to turn those horns into a nice little trophy.”
Yea and in Org they say stuff like ‘we’ll never forget what Deathwing did to this city’ despite him not hitting Org, it’s a really dumb part of the intro that feels really out of the world, especially stuff like ‘I prefer hunting dragons’ as if the average guard or whatever goes dragon hunting in…I guess Badlands?
Uh…the Cataclysm burnt Org to the ground. Hence it being completely rebuild in the Northrend style architecture.
“Technically” Orgrimmar was indirectly attacked by Deathwing.
The Cataclysm pre-launch event “Elemental Unrest” had Elementals attacking both Org & Stormwind.
I don’t think that’s true. Garrosh ordered renovations that had braced Orgrimmar against the Cataclysm.
No it didn’t, fire elementals, which were always a threat but made more dangerous by the cataclysm caused a lot of damages that Garrosh had repaired and reinforced to protect against further damage. Sure in the grand sense that was Deathwing’s fault but again if our bar for ‘what does a random citizen know’ is SO low they see a dracthyr that could look nothing like Deathwing and go ‘aw hell no not again with the Deathwing’ it feels like the real drama should be roving riots in Orgrimmar trying to chase out shamans who can summon those dreaded fire elementals!
Marshal Reginald Windsor had a pretty epic storyline about dealing with Dragons during Vanilla WoW that culminated in his sacrifice to expose Onyxia in the Throne Room of Stormwind Keep.
Dragon Hunting in general has a quite extensive history in Warcraft lore. I would cite it as early as the 2nd war but I’m sure someone could dig deeper than that.
Purely speculation but I would even say during the height of the Kaldorei Empire, Azshara in her envy/obsession would have had specialized forces meant to counter Dragons.
Right, Marshal Windsor, a seasoned, highly respected, military leader was a dragon hunter. Unnamed Stormwind Guard 68 probably isn’t going whelp plinking in the badlands on his weekends.
Marshal Windsor also had soldiers under his command who saw his deeds and took to heart what he had to say.
General Marcus Jonathan and his army also had great respect for Windsor and that was before Windsor’s heroic sacrifice exposing Onyxia.
King Varian himself after he returned and learned of these events, He will go on to lead a small army into Onyxias lair to slay Onyxia. Do you think Varian went in blind or did he bring a few Dragon Slayers with him? And even if his Footman had no experience in fighting Dragons, you can bet that they learned that experience after defeating Onyxia and passed on the things they learned to friends at home.
Would you not say that people follow in the footsteps of their heroes?
and even if we look beyond Windsor: There are Dragon attacks on Redridge. The locals would learn how to defend and fight against Dragons. These valuable skills would be passed along to those willing to join the fight. Conventionally surviving soldiers of King Varian Onyxia raid would be deployed to the Lakeshire Garrison.
The Dragonmaw Clan still to this day rides Dragons into Battle. Early In the 4th war, Garrosh had brought elements of the Dark Horde into the new Horde (which included Dragonmaw & Blackrock Orcs). True enough after the Siege of Orgrimmar these Dark Horde elements were given the ultimatum to accept the new ways or be disposed of. Conventionally speaking this means that Dark Horde elements that remain in the New Horde might also have added Dragon Riders to the New Hordes arsenal.
Weapons & Armor made from Dragon material is still a highly prized commodity even in the modern age of Azerite weapons. This further fuels the industry of Dragon Hunting.
There’s a mountain more evidence when we start to account for the Dwarven experiences at fighting Dragons. The Wildhammer are some of the greatest Dragon Hunters in the Alliance.
There’s also the constant battle of Mountaineers fighting Black Drakes we fly over every time you go from Ironforge - Stormwind.
I’m not saying the battle is raging forever in lore, but it shows that Generic Mountaineer #9001 at least can definitely have experience vs dragons ICly if a player wants that to be their backstory.
I also want to be clear here: “The sins of the child are not the sins of the Father” Dracthyr had no part to play in the betrayal of the Black Dragons or any other trouble that the Dragons had with the mortal races.
Dracthyr slept for 20k years and are innocent of these sins. But that doesn’t erase generations of animosity for the victims of Dragon-related conflicts. The Dracthyr must live with & come to terms with the legacy they have inherited.
My position is that the tragedy of history can generate fantastic depth in our roleplay stories. Our characters can struggle with old hatreds and either repeat the past or overcome it for a brighter future.
Going forward the story is what we write it to be. I just don’t want any of us to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that lore didn’t happen.
To clarify as well, this is also 100% my view.
Humans (and by extension in fantasy, sapient races) are far from perfect and tend to blame people who (like the Dracthyr) are entirely innocent of the blame. But in regards to character writing, it’s possible to write a character who has reasons that make sense to them to be hostile in certain situations, even if said reasons aren’t an excuse or justification from an OOC viewpoint.
Otherwise all characters are either 100% good people or ‘morally grey’ in the sense Blizzard writers mean it. And those sorts of characters aren’t as engaging, imo.
That is, in fact, also my view. I’m not talking about random characters having drama, I’m talking about how dumb and tiring it is that every expansion since Wrath seems to have involved the phrase ‘and then Moon Guard had RP race riots regarding the new character types added’ because almost always the same small group of loud weirdos want an excuse to do some edgy RP.
9/10 times the riots are started by Scarlets and the like, WHO FRANKLY ARE CANNONICALLY HATED AND SHOULD NOT BE IN STORMWIND TO BEGIN WITH, but I digress. The fact that we allow this sort of crap to continue is frankly stupid. It is interruptive of other RPers who just want to enjoy their time, it is bogging down the areas of the city they decide "Oh lets start some stupid race riot here!’ at, and generally just making people miserable because they can’t pull their heads out of their butts for long enough to maybe take oh, five seconds to think what they are doing. And again, why do we allow this sort of behavior from a faction that is literally named a kill on sight enemy of the Alliance? You wanna hate on people? turn that onto the actual cannonical enemies that hang out in front of the Cathedral all day.
Scarlets got their redemption arc during the Legion Xpac in the form of “Scarlet Pilgrims”
Roleplay gives them the creative liberty to do whatever they want. Most importantly it’s their 15$ a month, they can play however they want.
Scarlet Pilgrims are accepted. So too are their extremist values, as long as they are tempered.
Contemporary evidence is in the form of the Argent subsect: “Brotherhood of Light”. These are Argents who are just as extreme, if not more so than the Scarlets + they don’t have the baggage of Demonic manipulation.
Disclaimer: I don’t RP a Scarlet Crusader and there is a legitimate IC reason for my character’s mog.
As others have already said, you are ultimately the only one who can decide what sorts of RP you acknowledge from scene to scene. There is no one forcing you to acknowledge characters who are openly antagonistic towards your character because they are a dracthyr.
That being said, antagonism is a natural and logical reaction given the in-universe history and lore. It is no different than a human viewing orcs as savages, or an orc viewing elves as prissy and arrogant good-for-nothings. These are legitimate viewpoints shared by what is likely a large portion of these populations. Warcraft is not real life and it doesn’t follow the same rules, share the same values, or exhibit the same signs of social progress that you might see in real life; specifically, progressive-leaning areas within the US/EU where compassion and open-mindedness are more likely to be found. Comparatively speaking, Azeroth’s denizens are likely far more ignorant and ignorance leads to fear of the unknown, which leads to distrust and sometimes outright hatred.
Just as you are entitled to immerse yourself in the setting and enjoy your own flavor of RP, so too are those who choose to RP the World of Warcraft as a darker, more flawed place where antagonism and conflict is around every corner, in part due to the wildly different belief systems and histories of conflict between the races of Azeroth.
I should note that it’s rather unfortunate when someone feels the desire to RP a character but is told not to or warned against doing so by their friends because the simple presence of an in-game tabard is enough to direct unjustified ire towards them from other players. Keep in mind that most Scarlet RPers are probably just normal roleplayers like everyone else. There are bad apples in every community and you should try to not paint all with one brush.
My 2 cents.
I’m starting to think Deathwing was onto something when he tried to destroy Stormwind.