Dude I had an issue with you calling them monsters…. They been on the receiving end of this from the beginning. They didn’t choose this fight elf’s did. Sure they upset and call you an invader does that make them monsters? Heck elf’s are xenophobic towards the trolls as well but hey ignore that.
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Cannibalism, slavery, eating of other bipedal sentient races, ritualistic sacrifice.
I’m sorry, are they not monsters or is that all wholesome chungus behaviour to you because they’re poc coded?
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I didn’t, I called them racist up above. Elves are absolutely xenophobic, famously so. They just have this little thing where they’re not eating people, etc.
The game rightfully calls out elven stupidity, but blizzard and it seems people on the forums are terrified of doing anything but painting the Amani is poor little victims. Sorry their empire of slavery and cannibalism took a turn for the worse and another group with a bigger stick came by, but hey. Let’s feel bad for them because uhhhhhh.
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You do know the kaldorei elf empire also had slaves.
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Yes and they paid for their hubris by breaking the world and losing 80%+ of their population and nobody misses the Kaldorei empire. Nobody pretends they were a victim (even the Kaldorei don’t, they blame themselves and magic addiction and specifically outlawed it for millennia) in anything and almost all of their ills were self inflicted.
Why won’t you make the same concession for the brutal, murderous troll empires?
They didn’t just live amongst the pines hugging one another.
Half the ruins you run into in Hinterlands, and Arathi Highlands etc are just temples built for human sacrifice to their Gods.
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Is this how they feel? I’m pretty sure the hatred is still there, but they recognize it’s hate for hate’s sake now. And they can’t keep it up. Torundo I’d probably put in Group A, more than Group B for example. Like Lor’themar, he’s known too much war to ever put down his weapon, but he also recognizes how pointless the conflict is at this point.
I don’t know if they’ll “make up” with the Elves, but they might be able to stop the skirmishes. Finally respect eachother, and for once have some history where they’re not fighting (The Fought the Void Together) which might lead to actual peace eventually. Once the current generation Trolls and Elves die out. Which will be a long time for the Elves…
I really like the Bitter Truth, it helped me view there was a lot more complexity to the world of peacecraft than it seems. But in-game can’t be as good as a 15 minute lore conversation, you just can’t get that in-game, 15 min is too long.
Hmmm, I wonder why the designers did that…
You point at this and say “Look? See? They’re savages!” Almost like you forgot this is a fictional game and it is that way because designers made it that way. WoW has always had extremely superficial lore that relied on stereotypes, and at times yes, racist tropes.
In Zul’aman, I didn’t see any ritual sacrifices but it could just be me missing something??
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Because it gave the trolls flavour instead of being elves but stick huts instead of tree houses.
The trolls being savage was awesome.
Hugbox trolls stink.
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You’re so close, sooo close. “It gave them flavour” hmmm and they just had to land on that you think? Look up eurocentrism maybe.
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What are you alluding to, that they’re a racist caricature and that this intentional blanding of them is somehow good?
Like seriously, what’s your point?
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No, nothing so extreme. Just that from your earlier comments you seemed to be deriding anything that didn’t fall into the “savage trolls” stereotype as a
and a
etc. Your comments really go on about this using a lot of bizarre internat slang
When stories like “Bitter Truth” clearly show there’s more depth to the black/white portrayal of early WoW you seem to enjoy. I also wanted to maybe prompt you to think about why you enjoy such simple narratives??
The trolls are monsters. The blood elves are monsters. The trolls are victims. The Blood Elves are victims. All this is true at different times and different perspectives.
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Yeah, like when I said the elves were also racist conquerors and deserved a lot of the misery they got. Mentioned the Kaldorei empire collapsing due to its own hubris, and paying a hideous price of most of their people dying and sinking into the ocean.
The trolls being different instead of just being stick hut elves like they’re made to in this expansion was good. The trolls being savage warriors who sew terror in their enemies, ate people, etc was awesome. This isn’t Eurocentric. People are different, there’s different cultures and them being different is good. Turning everyone in one mushy blob or sort of the same morally and culturally is lame.
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Yeah I’m noticing a pattern with you for sure!
And apparently for you, the tropes you enjoy are “racist conquerors” and “cannibalistic savages” being conquered. Again, you seem soooo close to getting it. Maybe reflect a bit?
The Blood Elves weren’t racist conquerors in my eyes, as much as they were refugees, veterans, and exiles. They needed a place to settle, and that territory was owned by Amani, and conflict ensued. This isn’t a narrative of “racist conquerors” and “uncivilzied savages!” this is everyone trying to survive and thrive.
The Blood Elves hate their children being killed in raids as much as the Amani do, what a mushy blob they are all.
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You mean exactly what they were for almost the entirety of the game history and most troll architecture and armour/cosmetics are about? The witherbark pots of boiling people don’t exist now, let’s just wash everything because “ermmm, maybe this is a heckin’ racism?”
My bad for finding their different culture cool and not liking the cut and paste identical to modern left leaning politics with a rustic skin slapped on top.
They absolutely were. They viewed others as lesser. The did conquer into Amani territory when resettling after their schism with the Kaldorei. The elves famously didn’t even think humans worthy of learning magic for the longest time and they were on “friendly” terms with them.
Are you purposely just leaving out their obvious racial superiority ideals that are littered throughout their history just so you can feel better about making both sides equal?
No, not the point being made.
Liadrin suddenly going “wow they’re just like us” because they had resource problems feeding their people and suddenly dropping millennia of hatred where friends and family on both sides are butchered for nothing other than racial pride (Amani trying to reclaim their slave empire from the Gokinye, and the elves trying to repel “filthy savages” etc) is what is mushy and blob like.
Further made stupid by this whole “Dey is kin!!??!! No!” Bit in the new harandar patch we all just collectively suffered through because when has someone being kin ever stopped the trolls from murdering and eating them? Or the elves from killing them for sport?
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We only hear about the races that managed to resist it… Funny how that works.
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More and more I read these…takes, the more I’m starting to think that Queen Azshara had a real golden opportunity on her hands when she was empire building
If you know, you know
I like Azshara.
Even her gambit with the Legion was an attempt to elevate the Kaldorei Empire to the cosmic scale. I really wonder sometimes if she ever had any real intentions on living up to her side of the deal she made with Sargaras… Or was she really so full of herself to believe she could share power equally with him.
I do not get that impression from her when she deals with N’zoth, but that could be character growth.
Still, that awkward moment where your race is too boring to genocide.
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Knowing Azshara? She likely had little intention of holding up her end of the deal once she got the power boost she was looking for. She did the same thing with N’Zoth, turned on him when she got what she wanted from him.
That’s the joke. That’s how boring trolls are. How unskilled does someone have to be when a Queen looks at her growing empire and thinks I don’t want to anymore, these people are boring me to death
Even more insulting when she ordered the Zandalari to put a leash on the other tribes and the Zandalari did what they were told.
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That’s how they were written, not how they “were”, were implies they’re real and objective. They were written shallow, superficial, and you apparently gravitated towards that.
Every race can be savage. I big part of “Bitter Truth” describes how the elves are just as savage, if not more so, than the Amani.
You find it “savage” actually
That’s not what’s going on here, but maybe you’re a right winger who is trained to dislike that stuff, so you probably see it everywhere. I think that’s a big reason why nowadays you can’t tell a story without people crying ‘OMG WOKE”
You really can’t see anything other than black and white, can you? A big part of the Bitter Truth shows that at different points in history, pretty much every culture is good, bad, cruel, the victims, etc.. I’m trying to highlight one perspective and you immediately revert back to the very shallow, low-resolution “racist conquerors”…. you still don’t get it, do you?
Isn’t it though?
Liadrin didn’t suddenly go anything and they reference her past trauma (family butchering…) multiple times. Liadrin is probably the best example of a character that has undergone growth, and changed her ways.
To me, you seem like you’ve latched past and very superficial generalizations that have obscured your perspective, and are incapable of accepting character development or nuance past that.
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If we can’t discuss things in the world of Warcraft universe on the world of Warcraft forums without a sense of permanence and that what is written about them in lore books is real in the setting, then what are we even doing here?
Don’t be a nihilist, Lebowski.
How was being a brutalist tribal empire shallow and superficial? Those things exist in real life and they were every bit the horror show the game makes the trolls to be. The aztecs sure didn’t build murder pyramids to rip the hearts out of still living people to appease the sun god just to “own the chuds lmao”.
The trolls were written as savage, cunning people who would butcher then eat you. It’s in a fantasy setting. They’re an ontological evil for most of their history. They not only made constant war on the other races, they gleefully went after one another too. This isn’t some projection, or whatever. It’s literally what they did in the framework of the overarching story.
Savage =\= UNFUN SUPER UNCOOL EVIL WAAAOOOWWW
Sorry to break it to you, but savage stuff can be cool too, bucko.
No, a lot of wow’s writing had been absolutely packed with real world politics and the good guys are just bland Disney-ified idiots with standard leftist talking points and opinions.
Also not a right winger in the least, I don’t hate poor people nearly as much as they generally do.
You’re stuck in trying to be some cool nuanced bro with pithy sayings like “you’re almost getting it…” like you’re alluding to some intellectual breakthrough when in fact all you want to do is be morally grey like every “daring and bold” midwit ever.
Do you want a medal for figuring out that intelligent life is often cruel for the sake of it? Welcome to people 101.
There’s also things that can be objectively true and the troll empires were worse for slavery, brutality, cannibalism, etc than most of their neighbours for most of history. Even after rival empires, like the Kaldorei one, fell, the trolls continued to murder, stab, and eat everyone and everything around them.
The troll empires are, objectively, bad and evil for 99% of their history. While the elves may only be bad for 85% it’s still enough of a difference that it made the trolls unique and neat as foils for the main story, and allowed deep dives into their culture that we got to raid through like ZG and ZA.
Might’ve done that in a book, but in game she sure as hell didn’t and was just plucky girlpower sidekick #1 to Zul’jarra almost immediately after entering town.
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You do realize that… growth occurs in stories, right? Character development? “Permanence” isn’t the right word to use. You also need to understand that whatever is, or was, in the context of fiction, is because they were written that way.
And the colonizers were just as savage if not more so, but the narrative is that they were civilized, and the aztecs were barbarians. If you can’t see the parallel, I don’t know what to tell you other than you lack media literacy.
What I think about you is that your preferred fantasy is one of eurocentric “racist conquerors” waging war against savages. And you’re lamenting that the story is now adding depth to that and showing, actually, they’re both savages, and they’re both advanced cultures.
Thanks, emphasis on “were”
Oh sure, I like the Blood Elves too.
You can throw around buzzwords if you want, I’m just telling you it’s more nuanced than you seem to like it. It’s not black and white, it’s black, then white, then black again.
Yes and many other races continue to murder and stab everything and not even bother to eat them afterwards, what’s your point?
They were written that way, and you are viewing them from one outdated perspective.
Have you just been ignoring Liadrin’s character development for the past two decades? You’re stuck in the past.
I think the fact that you really easily write the Aztecs off as “savages” when they built stuff the filthy disease ridden europeans couldn’t even imagine says a lot about how simple your world view is. Like I said though, you seem to enjoy the fantasy of eurocentric racist conquerors fighting savage tribes. Let me guess, you’re an american.
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