Having dead people paid in advance and giving mortages to their families left behind. Literally the entire thing of Gazlowe is him being a worker’s rights activist. Any other Goblin with decency puts profit first.
There are people who believe that anything to the political left of “squeeze the worker for every last drop of profit from their labor and undermine any protection of their safety and livelihood” is communism.
Much like this definition of “decency”.
6 Likes
The lack of political literacy in this community is endemic.
Humans coming from different regions of Azeroth is dumb.
It causes more problems than it would cause, especially with the toxicity and stupidity of the player base to implant even more IRL poison.
Just go on an RP realm and see all the literal racist ERPers with “Valeborn Thug” and other derogatory assumptions on PoC characters into literal and vile racist stereotypes if they went this route.
No Human nation should be defined by skin deep attributes. Players should see themselves from any kingdom.
8 Likes
Agree.
Humans all share the same background about Vrykul clans settling across the EK.
In order to have them come from anywhere else, Blizzard writers would need to retcon or invent a lot.
And the story already severely lacks cohesiveness as is.
I’d say that speaks more about some parts of the playerbase than it does about the story, doesn’t it?
Maybe the solution to said issue isn’t in the story itself.
The solution may be to have more strict policing and punishments for bad player behaviour.
If you do not understand that there is a causal link between narrative choices and player actions, I don’t know what to say. Neither live in a vacuum.
There is a reason other (read: better) examples of games and media use concise world and thought out world building to originate such differences.
It’s partially why I dislike how heavily non-human races are drawn on from IRL cultures and peoples because it reinforces real world cultural linkages (both for good and bad) but then at the same time does not take the time, care, or consideration to check itself for such biases. It’s why I find and err away from Trolls because they are so inherently linked to real world peoples that not only do they at best become a carbon copy representation, but at worst you often get deeply seated racial injustices, stereotypes, and even worse - Just look at the recent controversy about the name of an elite unit of Trolls.
It’s literally taking more than 20 years to undo Trolls from being just a racist mockery made by 20 year old white dudes.
If you made humans draw directly from real world “origins”, with it you then bring every assumption - real or not - into the world with it. Think of every sickening and vile racist stereotype from colonial eras on and you have just brought every unconfirmed bias into the game. You have made racial assumptions canon.
WoW never has taken the time and consideration to put the depth in the game to mitigate such things. If they, tomorrow, added a lost Human Kingdom from a locale fitting to an IRL location comprised of only PoC, you would then likely bring every real world racial bias into the game. Sure, it bring some good things! But a lot of bad, too!
This isn’t the Elder Scrolls Universe where each race has literal librams of history and care dedicated to it by professional lore masters. This is WoW, where time and time again the ‘wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle’ mindset has led to controversy after controversy for a lack of care and consideration to what narrative choices can do to people.
There should be no reason a person wants to make themselves in WoW as a Human and imagine themselves as a sailor from Kul Tiras or a Warewolf from Gilneas and suddenly be blocked by racist naysayers going “NUH UH, GILNEANS CANNOT BE [Insert PoC here]”. Say one thing about Stormwind, but it’s a modern melting pot, and players should be able to go to every land, every human kingdom, and see themselves represented by a vast myriad of cultures.
This is for inclusion and this is for evading cultural and racial biases.
Because our narratives are inherently linked to real world narratives.
4 Likes
Maybe the issue lies here too: The fact that instead of working to create depth, we randomly decide to tie weights around the story’s ankles through a combination of excuses such as player misuse or writer incompetence to do better.
This point of view is very telling.
Why should Humans be considered a parallel of RL? Why can’t they be treated as any other fantasy race in the setting?
Just as we look at orcs, or dwarves, or elves, and work with the guidelines the story gave us regarding them, I think that the narrative would benefit from having people simply stop trying to create self inserts, and started considering it mere fiction.
Yes, several aspects of its races are indeed, inspired in RL themes. And we should be on the lookout for harmful underlying messages signalled through their usage.
But for the particular scenario you’ve mentioned? Maybe the issue is to take it as if the person in the opposite screen was speaking to you directly instead of towards the character you are using.
Would you say that if I used my Dark Iron dwarf to go about my business in Ironforge, people would be racist if they pointed out that it surely must be from the Dark Iron Clan and not of the Wildhammer one?
If Khal Drogo appeared in Winterfell, I would probably assume that he arrived with the Dothraki, and would never mistake him for a Stark.
You spoke about problematic takes regarding the story.
Well, in my opinion, one of the main causes for problems, is the fact that people want these humans to be an ingame representation of RL when they should be treating them as another fantasy element of a setting defined by its own rules.
I would also like to note, that in the humans particular case I doubt that anyone with a modicum interest in the story, would actually make said remark.
Mainly because the human history in WoW, has pushed them to converge all in the same place for the most part of their MMO phase.
So it would’ve been completely normal, to have most of the population be of mixed heritage, and mixed physical features.
I’m sorry but this sounds like the abandonment of narrative depth for the sake of tokenism.
I can’t agree on that.
There are ways to be inclusive without having to set up an empty carcass of a race whose sole purpose is to be a lookalike of the player.
You just need to do a better work.
3 Likes
I’m tired. I was thinking about responding directly, but I’m tired.
I posted on main initially because I am outraged from what I keep seeing.
I come here and see people consistently arguing for / against genocide and villainizing real players and people.
I go on twitter and see just yet again another race or sex based controversy coming out of this game.
In a great and utopic world where Blizzard could do it justice and players could separate itself, I totally understand the value of disparate cultures and races.
But it’s not. So I’ll put it like this:
Right now Humans are in one big pot. Every human you could imagine is inside a circle together. Every race, every nation, every profession. Everything. It’s all in one big pot.
Now, you take a portion of that pot out and put it outside. You have just created an ‘Other’.
From now on, you have purposefully notated this group to be other than the rest. On the surface that seems great, you can give them their own things! But at the same time, now every cultural bias and enmity linked to how that group can be Otherized comes into play.
I personally am sickened every time I go into Stormwind and see people trying to othering others. Between racial ERP and habits, colonial era caricatures, or outright racism. Those are all player led and driven real world biases but are fringe because the Lore and World generally do not support it.
Guess what happens when you make the lore support othering? Support separation? Support showing how one group of humans is different?
I’m not going to argue it anymore because there is no argument to me:
No Human nation or group in WoW should be defined by the color of their skin. Every nation should include Humans of all kind.Period.
And if you need an in-universe reason, use Baal’s. It works great.
8 Likes
“Storytelling is a tertiary concern. Our first priority should be targeted alienation of whoever annoyed me on Moon Guard today”
Lol okay, I’m done. If you think that what it’s about there is no point hanging around. Have fun.
You said you were tired half an hour ago. How are you staying awake?
You’re all nuts.
2 Likes
Which is why WoW as a sort of philosophical experiment failed
The point of WC3 was undermining the trope of Orcs = Evil. Orcs still are racially constructed with various subaltern peoples in-game, and what was novel is that they werne’t inherently evil as they were in Tolkien and derivative media.
The past twenty years, instead of undermining racist tropes, reinforced them with how the Horde is written.
5 Likes
So in other words, the Horde can never be perceived as doing anything wrong because to ever paint them as doing anything aggressive would be racist. Any unprovoked attack by human on the horde would also be seen as racist so cannot do that as you then make every paint Alliance player that way. Everything about your argument is flawed because it relies on the writers being hamstrung into making sure they aren’t going to be vilified for writing these stories, because a perceived bias(not to say there aren’t writers currently who don’t have a bias).
I agree the writers need to do better in writing the Horde and the alliance, but they shouldn’t be forced to always be considering if they are writing racist troupes or not just because they decided to make a bad orc or have a human kill an orc.
If they are more even handed with distribution of cultures or dilute them enough there is multiple representation of both sides, then they don’t need to be constrained by modern day politics and racism. Which would be a hell of a lot better for the story.
I really hope when we see these “rebels” who were likely titan forged people they have also devolved into humans, dwarves or gnomes have a completely distinct culture different to what we have seen before.
1 Like
No, I’m not saying that.
I’m saying there’s a difference between world-building “darkness” using IRL racist tropes and using simple in-game histories.
I’ve repeated this at least ten times in this thread.
You are insufferable.
They should. Using racist tropes for worldbuilding is bad, and also lazy.
3 Likes
I don’t think I’ve engaged in this thread but what the heck was this take that wouldn’t want the devs to do better in this regard
1 Like
You do understand that in warcraft 3 that the orcs drink demon blood again and go on a murdering spree. The only orc that has any conscious displayed in the campaign is thrall who was raised by humans.
Nothing about that Campaign displayed orc culture as anything different than it has been in the past or present. In fact it is a story that has been retold so many times because Horde players keep asking for " warcraft 3" horde.
Now if we are talking about rexxars campaign that specifically doesn’t really cover much of the Horde outside of them having rebuilt their home after driving off the quillboar. Rexxar is only loosely associated with the horde as well and preferred to stay out of the horde and just wander. That campaign however went to lengths to paint the Kul’tirans as racist bad guys and that kind of stereotype is something I don’t want to see repeated.
This idea that orcs were good guys in warcraft 3 is a fairly flimsy argument
1 Like
Argue with Metzen
Well perhaps you should stop applauding warcraft 3 as some paramount of their writing and perhaps they will stop villain batting the Horde every time they need some conflict.
Warcraft 3 was a good story but I would like to see something different. You want the writers to write the Horde better perhaps pick a story in which a Horde leader doesn’t go evil.
Some reasons I see…
-Warcraft lore and Alliance lore is based heavily on the humans. So there is less scope for its development . For example, the succession from one human leader to another was also the succession of Alliance leadership. And, given how much Anduin occupies center stage, it is a key part of Warcraft plots.
-Good story telling requires conflict. But there seems to be an allergy to anything negative for the humans since Arthas. So they fight against the baddie, over and over, which, given how much things resolve around them, is the expansion (or at least Alliance, for faction conflict) baddie for the expansion.