The arbiter is a girl, the Archon is a girl, Winter QUEEN is a girl, the Primus is missing but I’m assuming they’ll have to fill their diversity quota and let the female spider lady you help take the spot. The only male “leader” is Denathrius and he ended up being a villain along with The Jailer.
This is the first expac where we have zero male role models or leader figures in the game, and let’s be honest women leaders haven’t been working well for the game’s lore considering Sylvanus straight up tried killing the whole world to get what she wanted.
We 100% need more male representation in the game, and I don’t just mean side characters or quest givers but like actually making them feel as respected and important as their female counterparts.
Even the old school male leaders like Thrall and Baine have turned out to be weak, constantly relying on Jaina’s help.
Like I understand there’s a lot of money to be made by appearing like you care about diversity, but this expansion’s characters feel very shoehorned in and it shows that the writing staff cares more about appearing PC than representing both men and women equally.
While I don’t specifically mind the leaders being female, I do mind if they are making them all female for ‘diversity’. There is a certain point where if you fight too much for diversity you end up ruining said diversity.
“There aren’t enough female leaders in this game” soon becomes “All leaders in this game are female” because of ‘diversity’. It’s a balance that is hard to meet and I don’t think we’ll ever meet it. Personally I like the method of spinning a wheel to see if the next character will be male or female. The odds of being born a certain gender is 50/50 in real life anyway, so why not let rng take the wheel for the game as well.
The Arbiter isn’t currently acting as a leader, we have no idea what’s going to happen to her, and has spent the entirety of Shadowlands (thus far) in a functionally dead state. It feels disingenuous to list her.
Disagree. The location of the Primus is the most interesting aspect of Maldraxxus’s mystery narrative. He’s also turned out to be the most competent of all the eternal ones we’ve met so far. He’s so cool we get to interact with him before we even officially recover him!
And Denathrius was promptly replaced with Renathal, who is also male.
You have also forgotten that our “guide” for this expansion, in the same role as Magni and Khadgar in expansions past, is Bolvar.
It certainly doesn’t seem like Blizzard has a gender balance issue, even if we go exclusively by your list alone.
I do miss the 80s era action hero leader achetype. Your Hellscreams and Saurfangs, (pre BFA character turning emo after his sons death - I feel like his reaction and path to it was more ‘human-like’ and less orc like who would have valued the death of a son in such a glorious end and finally being at rest with the orc ancestors).
A Thrall that was not against war/aggressively defending his people and/or territory.
Edit: I still feel there is room for both and its not an either or scenario blizzard are just following the current social trend of female empowerment… I dont really care if the heros are female or male as long as the story is good, e.g Battleangle Alita, the Metroid series, Kill Bill, Alien Franchise, Hit Girl from Kick @$$, Aeon Flux, 5th element… its story and setting that matters not gender of leaders.
