I would say the solution then would be to let Silvermoon and Suramar take a role in magical affairs that fits their stature, instead of artificially inflating the younger human kingdom.
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Nothing means anything in a world where the writing sucks, which it does. Why even talk about anything?
Blizzard gave the magic talent thing to the humans as far as back in Warcraft 2. Horde had warlocks and shamanism. Now more then ever the Kirin Tor is the main focus whenever it shows up. If you want that to change you need to take out the Kirin Tor first fully because as humans they automatically dominate the direction of the story.
That will not happen. Elves are not the best mages anymore. And void elves and night elves took over all the tropes the Horde elves sued to call their own before.
Alright, so it won’t happen. This was a productive conversation.
It has been Alliance aligned for most of WoWs history.
It’s a human organisation at its core, whose existence often comes in detriment of actual development for several Horde themes
For writers, it’s basically another lazy mean through which they can avoid tackling how the different races view mages, or how their magic users actually approach the Arcane.
And even that, is a “luxury” that Alliance humans have been denied.
Because surrendering Dalaran and the Kirin Tor to neutrality, basically gives up a chunk of their history without having anything in return.
They do not have any relevant mage collective left for them alone (at least for the Horde-side, we have sub-groups such as the Magisters, etc.)
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Look. I get your point. But Blizzard had time since 2007 to make the elves relevant. But that didn’t happen. No blood elf mage was included when we took down Malygos. It was humans again during the mage order hall campaign and now on the Dragon Isles we followed Khadgar who was there to aid the blue dragons with a Kirin Tor expedition corps. Once more the Nightborne and blood elves didn’t show up for it. If you miss so many chances to SHOW the audience that the elves of any kind are master of the arcane then Blizzard blew it up and gave it no further attention.
Then you missed their appearance Mists of Pandaria: where a large part of modern Zandalari and Zandalar’s aesthetics pull from. Not to mention that in Cataclysm they’ve already been described and seen as a tribe with political power and pull even amongst other larger tribes.
So because they missed their chances before, they should just keep doing the same crap you don’t like for the sake of consistency? That doesn’t make any sense.
No. Just remove the Kirin Tor completley and don’t make studying magic a critical part of the plot. That way nobody feels left out when it doesn’t happen at all.
That ship has sailed. I would have love it if Dalaran had remained permanently Alliance after MoP but Blizzard wants Dalaran to be neutral. And now more then ever it is the centre of arcane magic study to the point we have Kirin Tor members even from Horde allied races.
I agree. And this is honestly why i generally do not like neutral factions in WoW. Because what they typically do is steal core themes from the respective faction.
The Argent Crusade essentially stole the entire human Paladin theme from the Alliance and humanity. Paladins, Knights and the Light in general was taken by the Argents and human Paladins were MIA from the Alliance until they showed up in the Stromgarde Warfront. And even then that doesn’t really make up their absence in my book. But with the Argents being hopelessly neutral, you also had some incredibly awkward and weird moments in CATA where Tirion and the Argents simply ignored the Forsaken raising people into undeath and plaguing the very land they healed.
Part of me wishes the Argent Crusade would have became an Alliance faction post WOTLK. They would have been the perfect faction to represent Lordaeron within the Alliance with Tirion as their leader.
Dalaran has done to human and Alliance mages what the Argent Crusade did to human Paladins. And honestly it does this to Horde mages as well given that the Kirin Tor are the go to mages for each faction. Dalaran’s neutrality hurts both factions and i find the neutralization of Dalaran to be incredibly bland. I’d prefer if both factions had their own Magical orders. Both factions being lumped under the same neutral umbrella for their various classes is destroying any unique identity left in the game.
You can also throw the Cenarion Circle in this too. They’ve always been the go to druid faction but “neutral.” They have many core and classic Night Elf themes that we should see being used by the Night Elves themselves to give them identity. I’d prefer if the Horde developed their own druid faction. Both factions have so many mixes of druids now and you could have unique interactions between them within their own factions.
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Blizzard always makes Alliance Groups into the Neutral Group and makes the Neutral Group into Alliance Adjacent too (see: Ebon Blade) because of the nature of “Western = Base”
They need to and should divy up the “Class Factions” and make Dalaran into an Alliance city
They can stil have Horde be present, and likewise Scholomance The Overcity (hypothetical Warlock Dalaran run by a Horde-leaning Black Harvest part of the Forsaken) with Alliance Slaughtered Lamb Coven having an embassy like the SUnreavers in Dalaran
I really think they need to/should’ve developed a Pandaren flying city (visavis heavenly city myths) that was the neutral hub forever
Exactly my point.
In the long run, having neutral acting parties end up either removing unique aspects of those involved, or downright give up core aspects of a race to “share” them amongst the rest.
And this has resulted in the complete erasure of Dalaran as a kingdom.
This is a shame, as it could’ve presented an interesting juxtaposition with the rest, by bringing forth a debate regarding several themes that they manage differently:
- Religiosity vs “Science” (Arcane)
- Monarchy vs Oligarchy/Meritocracy/Magocracy
There is a lot to consider regarding religion alone, as I’d imagine that Dalaran would probably be inhabited by an agnostic majority that would rather rely on the arcane, over the Light.
And that’s still not counting the different visuals they present in their city, how these came to be, what’s their take on diplomacy and elves relations,…
I may be spitballing, but there is so much that could’ve been told if Blizzard gave these kingdoms more depth…
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Those were not alliance leading.
He used Alliance Adjacent - but even if you wanted to play that sort of word association, Bolvar was basically Anduin’s wet nurse, and now he leads the Ebon Blade. Then we have his daughter as one of the main characters in Kul Tiran questing.
Of all the annoyances of the past few expacs, one line that really bugs me is when Bolvar is all like : “we are off to save THE king!”
Like… maybe your king…
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I don’t understand why the Trolls and Orcs or even the Dwarves are ok with having different skin tones and different clothing types based on the regions they inhabit that differentiates them.
Why is that ok but for humans it isn’t? Other stories and games have humans be from different regions with different cultures so… whats wrong with that? Are all those beloved franchises bad now?
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After talking to some people in this thread, the main reason seems to be that they believe that acknowledging the physical differences amongst humans would give a leeway to certain player collectives to push for racist narratives against the RL ethnic groups that could be identified with said traits.
To be honest, I must say that said problem would be better solved by addressing the players, instead hampering the story depth.
And if it’s such a monumental task, there are workarounds that could be taken to prevent such issues.
But again, that’s my opinion. And at this point, I know better than to insist on certain topics, as I know the race debate is a tender subject in the US, with quite some polarised segments on both sides of the fence.
I’ll just say, that I see it as a damn shame.
When talking to some people here… sometimes I get the impression they don’t understand world building or stories. Its like WoW is their single source of story experience in fantasy or of course… politics.
They just can’t seem to separate the two. And before they quote me “Hur dur no politics in art” yes there are plenty of it. Especially in Fiction because it can literally put you in another person’s skin in a setting where you are more open-minded to experiencing their point of view.
These people think if you sacrifice world building on the altar that you would have a more inclusive world. Nothing could be further from the truth in my opinion, you could do both.
You could do it well.
Or you could do it badly.
Arcane and House of Dragon? Awesome shows.
Rings of Power? Absolute turd.
Race and diversity had nothing to do with either one’s success but they both had it, one just had crap world building and character arcs while the others didn’t
What did the Orcs get? They got flags and told us “Oh I am from so and so region back in Dreanor but now I live here” Thats all they have to do with the Humans.
We got like 6 or 7 human kingdoms to use right? Plenty of lore to go around.
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I will state this again and will note that this is only representative of me.
I do not want my character to be from Fantasy Africa. Far too many games if I wanted to play a black character, I had to be either an entirely different species or some weird janky amalgamation of Caribbean and African cultures.
Blizzard and WoW being terrible with fleshing out their already established kingdoms is one thing. But I personally am pefectly fine with the separate skin tones and the like just being the result of robot body turning into flesh weirdly. I not need nor care to be from some far off island/continent/nondescript area that only exists to justify my skin tone.
EDIT: I am old and tired lol. If a game world was designed from the ground up to include the various skin tones and the like for humanity from the start and was representative of that is one thing. But trying to add it in after the fact, especially in a setting that is already super dodgy with everything…please…just let me be a deformed robot.
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