Should we have Skinwalkers in WoW?

Community General Discussion
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Would be cool to get some more horror elements in WoW.

Not the jump scare kind, but the eerie type kind of like Silent Hill & Drustvar.

Imagine you start an escort quest where the NPC takes you deep into a cave to retrieve an item, then when you reach the end of the cave your screen starts getting super distorted and the NPC starts morphing into a Skinwalker and tries to eat you, which triggers a quick-time event where you have to spam space bar hard/fast enough to escape or you get eaten.

Inspiration

Sorry if this seems out of nowhere, i’m chilling in my car waiting for a friend right now and a Deer came up to my window and started staring at me for a little too long for comfort, so my mind kinda wandered to this topic.

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Probably not a good idea, because Skinwalkers are a real life belief of the Navajo people, and they don’t like it when these things are discussed or represented outside of their culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin-walker

The legend of the skin-walkers is not well understood outside of Navajo culture, both due to reluctance to discuss the subject with outsiders, as well as what Cherokee Nation academic Adrienne Keene says is a lack of the necessary cultural context the stories are embedded within. Traditional Navajo people are reluctant to reveal skin-walker lore to non-Navajos, or to discuss it at all among those they do not trust. Keene, founder of the website Native Appropriations, has written in response to non-Navajos incorporating the legends into their writing (and specifically the impact when J. K. Rowling did so) that when this is done, “We as Native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions about these beliefs and traditions … but these are not things that need or should be discussed by outsiders. At all. I’m sorry if that seems ‘unfair’, but that’s how our cultures survive.”

This would invite unwanted and unnecessary controversy into the game.

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Wow, I straight up did not know this.

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same with the wendigo

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Sure.
Just give me your skin, I’ll make it work.

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“Skinwalkers were shape-shifters who could assume the form of any animal which allowed them to travel quickly and gave them the ability to hide in plain sight.”

looks at the definition

looks at a druid

looks at the definition

Ok, so you want evil druids then.

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The game itself is heavily criticized for its use of cultural appropriation (not on this forum, obviously), but elsewhere, so doing a disrespectful representation like Rowling did would only make it worse.

Edit: Nvm, the article clearly says it’s disrespectful

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Seems like everything is a supposed skinwalker.

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It’s not like “skinwalkers” are only native american. People just liked the name and made it more general.

Loki turned into a horse and gave birth to Sleipnir and his earliest mention is like the 9th century.

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Blizzard can make all sorts of enemy shapeshifters if they want, but calling them “Skinwalkers” is just inviting cultural appropriation controversy for no good reason.

Just make evil Druids. Much easier.

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The Wendigo, which is already in the game, already has the same controversy around it.

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Oh, I agree they shouldn’t be called skinwalkers.

Besides considering the drustvar witches and kul tiran druids, they’ve already covered the general idea of “skinwalkers”

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Yeah, but to be fair the Wendigo isn’t really a Wendigo. 99 times out of 100 when people say “Wendigo” they mean “Yeti”. Maybe that’s why there’s less controversy attached to that lol

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We have Druids and Worgen. We’re good.

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The whole game is created from cultural appropriation. You have Taurens who are based on Native Americans to Pandarens that are based on Asian myths.

So the answer is now to purge the game of every reference that borrowed from another culture. It about respecting the source and not mixing up an element or elements as a joke.

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No, it’s to listen to players of color and treat their cultures with respect lol, as well as hiring devs from those cultures.

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Worgen can be considered skin walkers.

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The developers have already taken from cultures and used elements that they liked with out treating the sources respectfully. They have stereotype many WoW races on other cultures.

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Of course, but Steve Danuser and Ion said before Dragonflight, that they would be working with “Inuit leaders” to make sure the the Tuskarr are portrayed respectfully, and the Tuskarr are generally perceived that way iirc.

https://youtu.be/I98OdOg1LdE?si=mTEhnNRnxwOuc1iE

Starts at 56:50.

They can do the same with other races.

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in addition to being frustratingly gender fluid to the point where looking into Norse mythology regarding Loki feels like researching diving headfirst into a conspiracy plot;
Odin then took that horse of his son and rides him into battle
which is fun

wait until they find out what tauren culture is primarily based upon
i think it could be done if represented with respect to the myths and with a lore spin on it
obviously taking a deformed malevolent human and making them able to shapeshift, slapping ‘skinwalker’ on it, and calling it a day would be the height of disrespect and would just be cultural appropriation
however if they tie it to tauren (perhaps grimtotems or feltotems) and make it wholly evil with a new name to boot while respecting traditions surrounding the skin walker, it would be more of an homage than a shallow ripoff

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