The shallowness of Human Lore in Warcraft--Why?

Lore Story Forum
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I full heartedly agree with OP and it’s because of how milk toast boring humans are that I never feel much of an interest in playing them. Humanity in other fantasy IPs have far more depth and interesting qualities to them that Blizzard has for some reason not fully capitalized on with their own spin on humanity. That isn’t to say that Humanity is bad it’s just that Blizzard could do so much more.

Personally one of my biggest gripes is Light Worship. Where other humans from other IPs have whole Pantheons of interesting deities to interact with, humanity just has a very vanilla version of fantasy Christian “God”. Compared to the Nine Divine of the Elder Scrolls series or The Six(Or Five) from Guild Wars. It feels very boring and safe. Honestly I loved what Blizzard did when the retconned Kul Tiras was mostly a nature worshipping nation with a connection to the sea. It gave Kul Tirans an interesting spin on the usual light worshipping humans.

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No.

Absolutely not.

That would be an objective mistake on levels I cannot begin to describe.

Under NO circumstances should Blizzard assign Blackness, Asianness, etc to any given Human Kingdom.

NO.

Maghar all look the same, the variations are in the tattoos and piercings

Wildhammer and Bronzebeard dwarves also look the same, the variation is only hair style and tattoos.

Troll phenotype varies on microbiome of their fur, ie different forms of moss

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I don’t think it’d be a good idea, either.

At least as far as physical appearances go, Zerde does have a point that humans are supposed to encompass the popular desire to want to insert yourself into the game by making your character look like you. Right now, everyone is supposed to be welcome under the Disney English umbrella of Stormwind humans, even if it’s working through two decades of design inertia.

As soon as you assign some random kingdom the unofficial title of Blacklandia, I think you’d uproot some of that connection some players will have with their human characters, as Stormwind will no longer be “theirs” on account of having their origin reassigned on them.

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I’d say their customisation options go well beyond that.

You have the Blackrock skin (dark grey with rock-like designs across their shoulders and bright yellow eyes), Laughing Skull and Burning Blade (grey with piercings and scars), Bleeding Hollow and Thunderlord (red-brown with or without white markings and war paint), and finally Frostwolf and Warsong (plain brown with or without black Garrosh-like tattoos).

The combinations were recently adjusted so as to enable more freedom in customisation, but in all, it’s very easy to identify distinct clans depending on the skin used. Specially given there are even lore reasons for some of them.

After getting more immersed in other mediums that handle these differences in their own way, I do not see the problem to be honest.

Going back to the D&D angle, on top of cultural differences, these humans were also portrayed with physical differences. In fact, I can’t currently think of a single fantasy setting dealing with distinct human groups, that didn’t mark distinctions amongst them. Even if they ultimately converged and cohabitated in the same place.

Being that place Neverwinter in D&D, Kings Landing in ASoIaF, Altdorf in Warhammer, Minas Tirith in LotR, etc.

Why would WoW be any different? I just do not understand what makes it particularly problematic here.

Centuries of mixing in Stormwind would even cause these differences to be but a hardly relevant footnote, as most features would’ve already been spread as soon as the population mingled together and new generations with parents of different heritage, grew.

You think people would feel unwelcome if the setting elaborated more on background development for the notably obvious physical differences humans have?

Are we to accept that humans in WoW, and in WoW alone, are to be tied to meta limitations regarding the treatment of their nations?

Why is it that no other setting is limited in said way?

We want depth for them, and yet we put up these limitations.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to develop fantasy separately from reality?

To be honest, I doubt a lot of people want a self-insert in the game.

I can identify myself with the values of a non-human race. Or maybe I just want to play as something that feels completely alien.

In all, and even if as I said the physical bit isn’t really my focus here, I do believe that it would be a good leg to lean on while developing the overall lore of the race.
I’ll repeat, that other mediums used it so, with undeniably good results.
In fact, other WoW races do so to this day.

But again, I repeat that this isn’t really that relevant to me. As I mentioned to Baalsamael, even if these humans started having distinct features depending on their kingdom, after generations of coexistence, at this point humanity’s population would all be of mixed heritage.

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Because all other people’s IRL were used for the monster races

That is the point of the game

Troll = Subsaharan Africa, Southern Amerindian, Latin American, and Caribbean
Dwarf = Scottish + Irish
Etc

You cannot assign Phenotype Blackness to a singular kingdom because it forces a racist narrative onto the game that separates Black people from all in-game Human Lore as we know it

And you certainly cannot double dip on Cultural Blackness, that ship has sailed long ago

I don’t give a damn how other franchises do it, because other franchises didn’t make the active choice to assign NonWestern Cultures to Monster Race ubiquitously and invariably and “forgot” to include NonWhite Humans for two decades.

All Humans come from Tentacle Monster Cursed Robots Of Varying Materials that landed on the shores of Lordaeron and established kingdoms with vacant blank slate histories ATM meant to be analogues of Western Europe and Anglo America.

PERIOD

You’re trying to inject IRL racial histories and opening the door for racist players and absolutely not.

There’s enough cultural diversity within the context of Western Europe to create nuance for the Humans. More than enough.

More to the point: whose alt are you :roll_eyes:

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No, I’m certainly not. I don’t not want Blizzard to correlate phenotype with any particular culture based on RL.

It wouldn’t work for the reasons you listed: most of these cultures have already been introduced through nonhuman races, and it wouldn’t make sense to double on them.
Also, the meagre lore we have for humans already discards the possibility of having such, as it narrows the iterations their culture can have, given their shared background and the few guidelines given for them throughout the games past story.

Having them randomly adopt cultures that were given to races they never interacted with, wouldn’t make sense at all.

Maybe the difference is there.

And why I personally do not see the issue: because in my case I separate the phenotype from the tropes or narrative some would expect from them.

As for allowing racism, absolutely not.
Blizzard should police and punish any behaviour that goes down said lines and as soon as they get the faintest whiff of it.
But we shouldn’t let bad faith agents dictate what the narrative is about.

Well, I think that if we are to improve, we should compare the story with those that set the bar to an acceptable standard.

Can’t expect much depth if we are to randomly hold setting elements hostage because of meta reasons such as these.

To put it differently, don’t you think that the handling of the race in those other settings feels far superior than it’s handling in WoW? Why shouldn’t we strive for that?

And I do not see how the last bit would be conflicted by the fact that segments of these robot collective, ended up developing notably distinct features, alongside additional cultural differences.
How does having black or Asian features excludes these humans from being part of the Western Europe or Anglo America fantasy?

These are all settled in the Eastern Kingdoms, they all share the same physical space.
The only thing that would change is the fact that we would have a more developed explanation as to how some of them have features that are widely different from each other.
Same as it already happens with orcs, I repeat.

Regarding the “Different metals” angle….not fond of it. Seems pretty lazy explanation.
Orcs and dwarves fared far better without having to lean on it.
And their background is the same as humans.

I’m just… me.
I do not understand the question. I’m relatively new to these forums, even if I’ve been lurking around and reading them for some time.

Also, and not that I particularly cared to clarify if I had to but….why is it relevant?

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If you look for good human represantation with unique flavors play Dragon Age. Bioware did a splendid job with world building here.

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Europe in general has a very rich history and culture blizz can easily draw inspiration from. There’s thousands of years of culture to draw from and use as a base for the humans in game.

At least, and unless I missed the mark, I think that’s probably the better route to take with the human race in game.

But lets be honest, all the cultures blizz based their races on could seriously be used in a lot more respectful way than they currently are.

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The depth being asked for here is about expanding on the culture and how they live, though. I don’t think phenotype plays into that.

Yeah, I think it would. Not only because it’s inconsistent with how WoW normally does evolution (usually magic / corruption) the game currently has going on, but right now if you want to play a normal human, you’re a Stormwind one. You go into that expecting to connect to whatever Stormwind offers.

If the game suddenly decided that your features were most prominent from, say, Alterac, I think the game would imply that you don’t “belong” in Stormwind’s lore as much as you previously thought you did. It’s different than introducing an entirely new race where you buy into the premise at the moment of the race’s introduction; Stormwind humans are a long-established one.

Also, I don’t see how separating human locations by physical appearance actually does anything to elaborate on Stormwind’s culture. What’s being asked in this thread is to see more about how these people live and interact with each other.

Orcs came from rocks and their physical appearance doesn’t differ from clan, only corruption. Black dwarves were previously the evil ones everyone murdered in vanilla, so I don’t think that’s a good example.

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Too damn bad

Dragon Age doesn’t have different kingdoms developing into different phenotypes either, every human region and white black asiatic and in-between intrinsically

So your liking Erevien’s comment is even more tedious

Literally phenotype exists only because of melanin, which is ultimately a nitrogen compound, and hair texture, which is determined by sulfur content.

The “different rocks and metals” makes the most sense playing into literal human chemistry.

Literally there’s as much cultural diversity within Europe as within Asia or South America and yet here we are :roll_eyes:

Could give Gilneas the spooky Scandinavian skull flower stuff

Could give Kul Tiras more Spanish and Italian motifs

Double down on the Germanic stuff for Lordaeron or Strom, maybe Strom is the most “still vikingish” humans

Etc

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No because that leans into race science and opens the door for racist players

“Oh you have curly hair and darker skin, you MUST be Kul Tiran, right?”

Absolutely not

POC already get enough of that IRL where racists or banal fools try to play Guess Who with our ethnic origins

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An objective mistake to be sure, of limiting body type (and phenotype customization) by “kingdom” and making kingdoms into separate “races”

When majority of Kul Tiras uses the base human model to begin with lmao

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I wouldn’t really mind if that happened to be honest. I’d take it as I would if someone assumed that my dark grey skinned orc with glowing yellow eyes, is from the Blackrock clan.

The crux here, would be to feed the narrative in a way that isn’t discriminatory towards any specific collective.

And Blizzard should prosecute those bad faith agents that use them to further any sort of racist or bigoted message.

To that particular question, I’d probably answer: “Not really, my grandma was from Kul Tiras, but I’m born and bred Stormwind (Stormwindian?)”

I’ll repeat that wouldn’t see the issue in said particular instance as I wouldn’t take the Human ingame race as an equivalent for our RL one.

I don’t feel like they are being particularly separated. In fact, several of its protagonists share the same physical traits as Stormwind humans: Flynn, Katherine, Jaina, Taelia,….

But the fact that the visuals made them stand out, fed their story in a way that makes them more unique. Even if culturally speaking they are pretty similar to their Stormwind brethren.

In all, I think that the right angle would be to acknowledge the differences, without having them be pivotal for the development of the kingdom itself.

As most other mediums do.

PS: my previous post was removed?? What did I say there that was so inflammatory?

Anyway, I’ll repeat a summary of what I said there:

Phenotype is but one tiny aspect I mentioned, and plays a really minor role in the sort of development I’m talking about.

WoW has tackled evolution for several of its races. Including Titan ones.
Also, having black or Asian features doesn’t mean you cease to be a “normal human” as you put it.

Yes, it does. Go over the customisation options for the Maghar and their different skin tones.
Some of them have even lore explanation that circles back to the evolution/natural adaptation your references earlier in the post.

I liked Ereveins comment as a form of acknowledgment and because it made me curious regarding the setting he talks about. And that Im completely ignorant about.

And please, do not go slandering my persona in other media. I mean no harm or ill.

—————

Sorry if I had to repeat myself, but I profoundly dislike feeling as if I’m getting silenced, specially when responding to claims that seem close to painting me as some closet racist or something.
I feel like clarifying if any of my points came across wrong, and in case anyone gets a different idea from the one I’m trying to express.

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My comment was about culture, not race. The different nations in Thedas have all their own style. Your average medieval one would be Ferelden.

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They’ve had black humans and Asian humans since Vanilla. It was WoD and their precious pseudo Pixar “HD” PS2 models that took the latter away. Considering the Forsaken skull faces vanished the same time, we can probably blame China.

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Don’t understand the outrage surrounding humans coming from different regions of Azeroth.

All races evolve differently based on their surroundings. They adapt. This is what we’ve seen in the real world as well. Evolutionary science tells us that the human species evolved from a form of proto-human that lived in what is now Africa before they migrated to different areas of what was once a fully connected continent with no wide oceans separating the various landmasses. The evolution of humans who stayed in Africa had most of them evolve to have dark or black skin due to having a lot of melanin in their bodies which protected them from the suns rays.

The humans who migrated north on the other hand, up into what is now Europe, did not need as much melanin in their skin, over the millennia, with countless generations being born, the melanin in the blood of what would become Europeans was reduced, so their skin changed pigmentation and became whiter. Their bodies also grew a lot more body hair as a form of natural protection against the colder climates.

That’s scientific fact, there’s no denying that.

So why is it so outrageous for the same thing to happen to humans on Azeroth over 10,000 years? We’ve seen no evidence, whatsoever, of black Vrykul, which granted doesn’t mean none exist, but we’ve never seen them represented at all. Instead all Vrykul take on a Scandinavian/Viking appearance. White skin, lots of hair, because where the Vrykul lived had a cooler climate. It is more than possible over 10,000+ years as humans spread out, for humans to evolve and gain darker skin pigmentation as they live in more tropical regions where there’s more danger from the sun, thus making these humans produce more melanin to protect themselves.

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Posts are removed without even being reported because Blizzard knows the vile nature of many, if not the net majority, of this playerbase when it comes to race and regardless of your intent, which I admittedly doubt, your arguments are playing into the hands of racist players by trying to justify their recurring arguments.

It would be an objective mistake and trainwreck to assign phenotype to different kingdoms in any capacity at all, ESPECIALLY given the state of the varying kingdoms in the lore.

It would likewise be an objective mistake to “double dip” in terms of Non-Western/Non-Euro cultures; what is “Caribbean, South Amerindian, SS Africa” is Trolls, what is “Irish/Scottish” is Dwarves, “North Amerindian” is Tauren, Turkic/Mongolian is Orcs, Orientalism is a fundamental aspect of the worldbuilding of many races, etc.

Humans are European and Anglo-American, point blank. The phenotypic diversity is due to the composition and construction of different robots being cursed by a Lovecraftian monster, point blank.

There is AMPLE cultural diversity and complexity in the full scope of Europe and Anglo-America such that each kingdom could have elaborate, rich, complex histories.

What you are suggesting does nothing except feed into the hands of vile elements of the playerbase.

You could lean into an Andalusian aesthetic for Dalaran, you could lean into Regency UK and Rennaissance Italy for Kul Tiras, you could lean into Middle Ages and Arthurian for Stormwind, you could lean into Early Modern Holy Roman Empire for Strom, you could lean into Victorian for Gilneas, etc.

All of them are radically distinct cultures and aesthetics.

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This is extremely weird coming from you, as a few weeks ago you were arguing/debating with me about the Alliance going full racist/fascist and saying that it is something that Blizzard should absolutely do, even when I told you that it would embolden the racists/fascists within the WoW community, which you know it would.

You seemingly didn’t care about that then.

But now when people are talking about humans coming from different regions of Azeroth due to how evolution works, you’re getting upset and claiming that the racists will get emboldened if Blizzard goes down this path, which they absolutely shouldn’t.

And I agree with the idea that we should not embolden the racist/fascist parts of the WoW community, at all, but you need to make up your mind on this. Anyone paying attention to your post history is going to see two very different arguments, that both embolden the very crowds you despise. Yet you’re perfectly okay with one, and hate the other despite the fact that both would create a significant amount of issues for PoC and BIPoC members of the WoW community.

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I’ve already told you repeatedly that leaning upon in-game histories of racism between the races on their own terms is distinct from invoking IRL racial histories onto their analogues in-game.

I am for:

  • using in-game lore to describe phenotypic diversity
  • using in-game histories to describe racial animus behind the factional justifications

I am against:

  • invoking IRL race science and epigenetics into human phenotypes in-game
  • invoking IRL racial histories onto their in-game analogues

Miss ma’am we are playing a game based on race war with two factions where one faction is uniquely composed of Monster Races ethnically and racially coded as Subaltern Peoples across different periods of history in the West.

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To be clear, we are all in agreement the dwarves are a monster race?