I have the time but not the energy to explain neocolonial core/periphery economic relations and how there is greater Ethnic Diversity in the major cities of the Global North than in any given major city of the Global South due to the “direction” of economic power and why what you just said is incorrect.
There is, to my great agony, no pad see ew in Bogota. And Indian food barely arrived not five years ago.
I don’t think you could get a truly generic human setting without stripping it of all culture, both in quests and aesthetics. Even as Disneyfied as it is, as soon as the first human designs were modeled around Arthurian castles and such, it locked in a culture reference.
That the game barely does anything with it doesn’t remove that foundation. It just makes it undeveloped.
And I think you can keep being miserable about how Warcraft story unfolded and blame it on intentional or unintentional biases. Personally, I understand why these imperfections took place and I don’t particularly mind it.
Yes it locked in a cultural reference, and that was Warhammer/LoTR more so then any other specific ethinic or cultural touchstone. Blizzard probably never imagined or thought that an RTS faction was ever suppose to evolve into what is effectively the standard bearer of humanity in an MMORPG and has been playing catch up every since to the point they literally had to change the race of NPCs to make them more diverse.
Nor could I ever blame them considering the limitation of gaming when Warcraft as a franchise started. But that was what they were going for, humans were suppose to just be humans more so then being European humans.
Pretending LORD OF THE RINGS isn’t a SPECIFIC ETHNIC TOUCHSTONE is an aberration of a claim
Tolkien is howling from purgatory, I can hear him now. Mans tried to create the UK pagan-folklore analogue of Dante’s Divine Comedy with it’s use of Roman pagan folklore and you out here claiming it’s not specific to any given ethnocultural group.
Did I say Lord of the Rings itself did not have an ethnic cultural touchstone? No, I specifically said Warcraft, because while warcraft was inspired by Warhammer/LoTR it effectively made its own story and at best took superficial note from both.
Warcraft is a copy of a copy.
An simulacrums still are derivatives of that original reality and it is not so far removed that you can claim that it isn’t in that lineage.
Stormwind is the West. It is an allegory of Western Society. It is not, in any way, ethnically “neutral”. It’s “genericness” isn’t a feature, some pretense of galaxy brained consideration you pretend, but a reflection of the lack of ethnic depth among the majority of the dev team.
To claim that it is Tolkien is to claim it is a cultural touchstone specifically of the Anglo West, which it is.
You cannot pretend it is not an allegory and representation of the Anglo West no matter which way you try to bend and twist it. It’s ridiculous to do so.
It is suppose to be an allegory of any city that just wants to peacefully live their live but due to circumstance keeps getting thrust into world wars.
And again, all of that cultural touchstone blizzard took is superficial.
Believe what you want but Blizzard as a global company has always tried to make their games have more general humanistic tendencies as oppose to anchoring it to any particular ethnic group/value system.
A great example is Overwatch. Sure, the agents are from diverse backgrounds and they celebrate that diversity but ultimately the value system they use is has always been generic things like “the world could always use more heroes” “trying to make a better place/helping the needy”.
The humans of Warcraft are no different. It is not a “western allegory” its a generic “humans that want to live in peace but will fight to defend that peace”.
Lmao
The entire game is superficial ergo why we are asking for depth lmao
Ah yes an entire game where every single playable race is a reference to either a specific period of Western History, a specific genre of Western literature, or a specific Non-Western ethnoracial group
But you insist the Humans are just “muh generic helpless victims”
Absolutely ridiculous media literacy
The only one that needs media literacy here is you. Warcraft was a generic good guys vs bad guys trope.
And we do get it. But not in the way that you want. Using the human heritage armor as example, it was generic Alliance good guys fighting bad guy stuff with a hint of Vanilla lore.
Entire games that they literally make as inoffensive as possible because ultimately what they care about is gameplay.
Warcraft 1 and 2
Warcraft 3 was not, and WoW was not, and should not continue to be.
That’s not historical and cultural depth. The Orc Heritage quests were. Human was not.
And yet the fact remains your claims that the WoW Humans are “Generic Helpless Victims Constantly Dragged Into War With No IRL Ethnic Basis They’re Derived From” is completely wrong and ridiculous lmao
Warcraft 3 RoC while it did give darker shades to everyone, was literally the good guys races of Azeroth joining together to fight the big bad Legion.
Similarly, literally 95% of all raids in WoW is the various races of Azeroth stopping their fighting to deal with a bigger bad.
The Defias/Onyxia is one of the most important historical and cultural event to have happened to Post-RTS Stormwind not tied to the faction. It permeated EVER story of their zones.
No it is not, their conflict with the horde was not of their making. The Stormwind humans were not interested in expansion and was more interested in just living their live and had the orcs never invaded I would imagine that is what they would have continued to do for years to come, especially considering they did not border anyone else except the Gurabashi(and even then they were not particularly interested in expansion)
That’s not CULTURE. That’s not DEPTH. That’s a widespread questline.
As oppose to the blood elf heritage questline? Their questline revolved around the Scourge/Arthas and the corruption of their well which ultimately influenced their starting zones/their start in WoW. It didnt talk about their culture nor did it deepen what we already knew about them.
And no it is you missing the point of Warcraft and its “hero factory nature”.
That one also sucked lmao
Goblin one was garbage
Tauren one was a special trainwreck cuz it foreshadowed cut content that we all speculate what mess it was going to be regarding Zovaal and Anshe
The Orc Heritage Questline is the standard for what all should’ve been and what all should be moving forward.
Stormwind is generic in the sense western high fantasy has a stock default “sort of Europe in the middle ages, except adapted to modern sensibilities” setting. It is, pardon the pun, plain white toast. They forgot that jelly exists, I guess.
WoW has serious White American biases built in. Heck it is even in the geography—That’s why it gets cold when you go north but hot to the south despite the fact both ends of the continents should be chilly.
Even if the foundations of the race itself are about having the most vanilla medieval fantasy knight cliche, that doesn’t excuse treating it superficially.
Orcs were also initially introduced as the stereotypical fantasy race, even if their trope was subverted in Wc3 by turning them “good”. And yet, they’ve outgrown it to the point we now have a fair approximation regarding relevant cultural aspects, different segments of their society, a cultural background that defines their modern day behaviour, and a long list of characteristics beyond “generic nemesis for humans”.
I mean, want to know an indicative of this? You can take the Mag’har customisation options, pick a random skin (without clothes, context or anything), or any of their current classes, and instantly know a lot of information regarding: what clan is he from, what background does he have or problems did he face, what creed does he follow, what aspects of his personality would probably define him, what relation he’d have with his kin and/or his faction, what social status would he probably have…
You do the same with the human creation screen, and the result is narrowed to a pretty tight corner. Lots of blanks to fill in, as the medium itself never bothered giving you an insight on the character’s context.
I know that specially in roleplaying, people love a blank sheet. But i think that even in those cases, the setting itself should facilitate the bare minimum development regarding the construction of a race. And with humans, i do not feel that being the case.
Don’t know if i’m an oddball here, but i do not need to have aspects of my particular culture introduced into the game to feel welcomed in it whenever i play as any race.
And i would feel more aggravated if the toll for it would be to have this sort of superficial treatment.
I personally feel far more engaging to tag a long a race with a richer background and development, even if it feels more alien to me. Because that way i can get lost exploring its inner workings, and entertain myself on how it faces any struggle that i may have tackled differently.
Exactly. And why is this systematically ignored? Why throw away the card that could’ve expanded so much the human lore?
Is it a tacit way to signal that on top of having this superficial and cliche medieval fantasy them to them, human species as a whole was also culturally monolithic?
As in “They all behaved the same way, had the same culture and customs, and the same societal values”.
Or is it plain lazyness?
Because either alternative is really really disappointing.
It’s even more aggravating because with the orc clans they KNEW how to tackle similar circumstances (as seen in their heritage questline), so we know they know how to address this kind of situation.
I’m not all that versed in all of WoWs works, but i recall one novel that at least tried to differentiate human kingdoms before the Second War. If only through their rulers/kings.
How cool would it be, to have for example some lines about human segments that do not follow the Stormwind pattern. About some of them having different roots, that make them behave differently, wear different clothes, or even by physically distinct.
Maybe Stromgarde was so linked to its Vrykul roots that they did not pray to the Light.
Maybe all that time spent battling the Amani, made them pray to similar gods as them.
Maybe they prayed to a Loa, only they called Halazzi differently and pictured it as a lion instead of a Lynx (hence humanity’s current symbol).
They could’ve even kept their rulers being “Jarls” and Karls, instead of kings and nobles.
Maybe Lordaeron was the most religious of them all. Or maybe it filled in the “merchant” trope, and turned to be the wealthiest.
Maybe the constant magic influx that surrounded them, made humans from Dalaran appear to have distinct features that marked them apart from the rest of the kingdoms/clans. They may have even facilitated a whole bunch of elf half-breeds that could now populate the setting.
I don’t know, there are just so many alternatives and venues that the race could expand on.
PS:
And even if half/most of those kingdoms are gone, the fact that Stormwind became the working refugee hub for them all, should facilitate the player and the story with a means to explore humanity through their different optics.
We wouldn’t even have to settle with a background check, as many of their people could realistically want to carry on the customs their kingdoms may have had.
Trollbane wants to rebuild Stromgarde does he not?
In this specific case I just always assumed we’re in the northern hemisphere.
As far as Warcraft Humans, I tend to think similarly (not exactly) as Zerde does. There is a blank slate there for people to see themselves in. It almost makes more sense for Blizzard to meld it all together than try and concoct some stuff this late in the game.
I see Baal’s point. We have other cultures represented as races in game, Humans can use that diversity and lore depth. But it is a mine field, and they have enough trouble going on.
Sure, Blizzard can expand on the lost kingdoms, and the House of Nobles, and a lot of stuff. But they have to tread carefully.
I imagine if we find an Allied Race of Humans in Tel Abim with darker skin who live like ancient islanders, and someone refers to them as savages or something… forget it. It is just less trouble to throw skin colors into a Disney castle and call it a day.
How would expanding on Stormwind’s medieval setting take away anything for current human fans, though? The theme’s already there; it’s lacking details, not a setting.
Why should Warcraft tread any more “carefully” than other settings that actually bother expanding on their human segments?
Warhammer is quite literally based on our RL, with Bretonians being the French, Kislev being Russia, The Empire being UK, Cathay being China, etc.
And they all behave in their particularly awful way, often dialing up to eleven any negative RL stereotype that inspired their fantasy.
We then have D&D, with humans from Calimshan (Middle East fantasy), Damara (Northeast Asia), Rashemaar (Middle and South Africa), Tethyrian as European,…
Another example we’d have, is the Elder Scrolls videogames, with Nords and the Redguard.
In all, why can’t we separate art from reality? There are ways to tackle the building of a fantasy race without having to be on the lookout for an underlying hidden message.
I think that if we allow this mindset to take root, it would hamstring any work of fiction out of sheer fear of offending some collective somewhere.
Do you consider any of the settings above as problematic?
Are we to simply accept that WoW humans are to be shallow out of fear that someone may find any sort of correlation with any RL collective? That’s what dictates WoWs writing nowadays?
Also, at this point in Warcraft, what racial stereotype, cliche or whatever, hasn’t already been used in any way with the other races?
Irish-Scottish Dwarves being often portrayed as drunkards, Meso-american inspired Trolls literally called savages by pretty much all their enemies (as well as some of their own allies), Noble Savage tropes for Native American inspired Tauren,…
What’s the difference with WoW humans?
For full disclosure, i do NOT think humans should be dumped with all the stereotypes that accompany certain fantasies if Blizzard went down said line. What i’m saying is that there are settings that manage to expand on these traits without turning into a racist parody or a distasteful display of cliches.