After refreshing my knowledge about Tauren lore, I realized how problematic and racist it is that Tauren joined the Horde. Blizzard, why have you written a story where the Native American inspired race of cow people (who are NOT a meme race, Mandy) join foreign colonizers from across the sea to fight against the natives of their own continent? Why have we constructed this weird fantasy alternate history, where the Natives eagerly help the colonizers, who immediately raise and army and start to deforest the region? Just because the Orcs helped them kill the centaurs- who are a problematic, cartoonishly evil Mongol stereotype? And why are we supposed to accept that this alliance is eternal, no matter how many times Orcs prove that they’re violent, colonizing and full of toxic hypermasculinity? Is there some sort of WHITE HISTORICAL REVISIONISM going on? I don’t know. I’m Gurdakar the Tauren, and I’ll main Tauren rogue in Dragon Isles. I’m as invisibull as Blizzard’s awareness of history. I say NO MORE. Make Tauren join the Alliance, or make them leave the Horde.
I’m not certain making the Tauren join an equally imperialistic and colonialistic faction will solve that problem tbh
The centaur have always been a deeply problematic take on Mongolian culture and people though that’s for sure. Hopefully they will fix that with Dragonflight
That actually happened in early Mexico. Some tribes who were enemies with the Aztecs fought alongside the Spanish. The Tlaxcaltecs for example. As a reward, the Spanish gave them better treatment than other tribes.
I mean, that’s up for debate. Humans definitely are, and they’re the “main” Alliance race. Recently, the Alliance as a faction did try to take Zuldazar for themselves (mostly an unprovoked move by the way). There’s also the “Light crusade” plot that’s probably ahead of us.
Not anymore, but the Kaldorei Empire was a thing.
Yes they are. See the Stormpike clan in Alterac Valley who wishes to drive the Frostwolf Orcs out of their lands, the Dwarves in Bael Modan who killed the native Tauren to get the spot, the Explorer’s League in Bael’dun…
Present-day Gilneans aren’t, but Kul Tirans are, and Kul Tirans are descended from Gilneans.
That’s pretty much how the Spaniards took down the Aztecs. Even with their guns, they weren’t going to pull that off on their own, but they took advantage of the fact that the Aztecs had made enemies of just about everyone that they had met.
I do find it funny that you complain about colonizers but then trivialize the colonization attempts that happened and currently happening by races of the Alliance.
Both factions are colonizers, it just happens that the Horde has some native races as well.
Night elves are evolved Trolls, Humans, Dwarves and Gnomes were made from the land they live on. Orcs are invaders from a different planet who moved from one continent to another and immediately started to colonize the place.
You are aware that the night elves quickly and violently expanded outside their territories once evolving into night elves right? They even took slaves like early humans and at least one instance of a Sea giant who they shackled and had dance for spectators outside a temple of Elune.
Dwarves also didn’t awoke in present day Khaz’Modan. they awoke in Uldaman and traveled north and fought the trolls that lived there, taking their land, which the ice trolls still contest to this day. You even beat frostmane children to death in the dwarf starting zone.
Or a even more recent example, the war of three hammers happened a few hundred years ago and made the wildhammer travel far away from their highlands into the hinterlands which is the host to the second largest forest troll city, and has been home to the forest troll since at least 15k years ago with no recorded earlier inhabitants. Yet they came in and pushed the trolls back stealing their land. Mind you that there’s still dwarf individuals that are alive from this time period as Muradin is said to be 236 years old and not considered eldery. Not to mention the whole Alterac valley or barrens operations.
Humans also originated in northrend and then spread into EK taking land from the trolls and teaming up with the colonizing high elves.
And in even more recent memory the stormwind humans has tried to expand into gurubashi territory in stranglethorn vale twice in the last 100 years.
The Kul tiran humans (once gilnean) colonized the kul tiras islands from the drust vrykul and quilboar, leading to the firsts essential extinction and collapse of society.
I could go on and on, but just because you are native to a planet does not mean that you can not be a colonizer.
Of the player races, only 6 could not be considered colonizers, even though they’ve technically now taken part in or aided colonizing by joining the factions and they are:
Tauren, Highmountain Tauren, Pandaren, Lightforged Draenei, Vulpera and the Trolls.
Tauren definitely seem to be colonizers. They are from Pandaria or Northrend, and the Bloodhoof were nomadic until their Centaur rivals were dealt with.
… they’re evolved Trolls. I wonder what your source for enslavement of early humans is, because, at least in the War of the Ancients novel, no Night elf knew what a human was.
Irrelevant, they are the made of the land, and when they were earthen, they were all over Azeroth. They went to Uldaman to sleep after the curse of flesh affected them.
It’s funny that you add Trolls in the list, because they’re just imperialist colonizers who got defeated. They’re no victims. They got defeated with their own weapons and now whine about it.
I’d not call their widespreadness as colonizing since they were travelers and do not seem to have actually taken lands etc from other races, from what we’ve seen and from the history the Tauren seemed to mainly have done their own thing traveling around, even opting to travel further away from the trolls when hunting grounds were shared.
They were later almost hunted into extinction by the centaur which is at this point they joined the colonizing Horde. And they have now settled permanently along the plains they used to travel when nomadic. This is just for the kalimdor tauren though since the Taunka and HMT do not fit this bill. But yeah I agree as my last sentence in my previous post said that all races of the factions have inadvertently become colonizers or at the very least aided it by joining either of the factions.
