Please explain how the Orcs are Mongolian without referencing them conquering things. Or their hats.
Definitely time to resurrect the Defias.
Again.
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How about we just have a complex web of lies and deceit and power brokering and we introduce Vanessa VanCleef to Anduin so that we can have some conflict there and maybe a spymaster who is actually somewhat competent and doesn’t get kidnapped by dreadlords.
Vanessa VanCleef as Royal Spymaster? With possibly a “we are not our fathers” narrative?
Please make this happen.
In order for the races of the Horde to work as a deconstruction of traditionally villainous fantasy races, people have to, on some level, recognizes that they actually are referencing to those traditionally villainous fantasy races.
And the tropes associated with those traditionally evil fantasy races didn’t just emerge out of a vacuum.
And at the time many of the tropes associated with orcs were codified, being " highly advanced tactics, and were led by someone who united them through either ingenious conquest or political maneuvering. They created the largest land empire in history and then governed it, and often in spite of the destruction allowed those they conquered a lot of freedom, including self-governance and freedom of religion," was not the prevailing view of the Mongol Empire.
You were more likely to see the Mongol empire depicted as a murderous band of mounted raiders dressed in furs and leathers, with horned hats and living in yurts. Disparate feuding clans that were only a real threat when united under a single warlord who would then led them from place to place in order to conqueror, rape, and pillage.
Also, Tolkien himself explicitly said that orcs resembled the “least lovely Mongol-types”.
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I don’t think anyone actually educated in world cultures would have their minds jump to anywhere in particular, since those qualities are so broad.
Precisely; people are forgetting that all of these Tropes that Tolkien perpetuated, fermented, or invented were built from an internalized ORIENTALIST perspective and a heaping of scientific racism (race science, phrenology, etc).
The entire Horde is, at its root, an Orientalist Re-Imagining of the Subaltern peoples of Anglosphere Empire (Mongols, Hunarians, Afro-Caribbeans, Africans, North Amerindigenous, South Amerindigenous, Arabs, Turks, North Africans/Imazighen, and more).
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The words “Sultan and Imam” is broad??? In Western fantasy tropes?
Are you kidding me?
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Huh, just went I want to take a small vacation, these threads appear, let’s have a look
The alliance being just a background actor in a war setting is a really diservice to its player and also the narrative
Because you don’t want and you are even taking out of context the post from Baal
Aside of your background for brown points(te faltaron chancletas de parte de la abuela wey) the whole point it is not to make the Alliance racist but actually explore their flaws they used to have and bleed into their mindset. You even play a race that literally has for policy “kill the inferior scum first and ask questions later”
Honestly I never get the why people want some kind of fairy tale narrative in a war game, having morally grey characters with flaws makes the faction interesting in the context these people have real personalities and a backbone to not let other step on them which is the main criticism that literally everyone has on the Alliance.
Warhammer does it with every faction(even chaos with token good teammate) and I think this is what the game has failed us, they want to generate conflict while holding back the factions in taking proper actions and one siding said conflict in the spectrum of morality(Horde bad, Alliance gud)
First time I agree with you but it has to be both sided, I don’t want Alliance actions to be ignored like the Assault on Dazar’alor as the same you don’t want to see Belmont or any forsaken npc that was in darkshore screaming orders in some neutral questline
Why not? People cheered at characters like Rogers and just swep them under the rug and pretend they didn’t exist because they don’t want to tarnish the white socks is just showing favoritism rather than solutions.
Fandral and the Church of Stormwind says Hi(as the latter is a secret basement for Twilight cultist to recruit)
I think showing their own ruthless is what people ask for. They have nutjobs like Maiev, Turalyon, Alleria and their own dreadlord now. Ignoring their flaws and just make them passive and voicebox about “war is bad we should hug together”
As my oldest forsaken friend said after finishing SL leveling
“This game tries so hard to be heroic and cute that it falls into cringeness. The devs have forgotten this game was a dark fantasy setting rather than a mobile game for twitter/facebook users that get offended by anything”
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Edwin van Cleef and his daughter would also like an honorable mention for being the only ones to give a damn about the kingdom’s lowest-income class.
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Vanilla in general did a great job at portraying both factions. Both sides had reasons and motivations for doing what they were doing, but neither of them were clearly shown as evil or good. Just regular people. Like when you played a paladin and got to level 20 you helped out the people in the kingdom and someone like Duthorian Hall was clearly a nice and good guy all around. However, this did not stop the overall Alliance to intrude into Horde territory.
There was more moral complexity at work…this actually continued quite nicely up to Wrath of the Lich King. A prime example is Varian denying Alliance help in the fight against Yogg-Saron. Obviously he would not work together with the same people who are allied with the Forsaken, who had just recently wiped out an entire army including Bolvar Fordragon. A perfectly fine human reaction from him.
But, this was slowly and steadily removed from the Alliance. They were no longer allowed to act irrational at times or to be more precise: They were no longer allowed to act human.
One of the primary reasons why the entire reasoning of Sylvanas during the pre-patch of Battle for Azeroth fell flat. “Oh no the Alliance attacked us in Stormheim, oh now they attacked in Silithus…clearly they’re going to wipe us out someday! Forget about the fact that the Horde has been extremely aggressive towards the Alliance for several expansions by now.”
It would have worked better if the Alliance actually had started some more serious blows against the Horde, maybe even directly after MoP…but no such thing happened. Hell, even in Ashran it is heavily implied that the Horde were the ones who attacked the Alliance first.
Which is quite funny, because the Alliance couldn’t be further away from being imperialistic. Like…what? Conquering Stromgarde, which was a human kingdom, or Darkshore, which is ancient night elven territory, now makes them imperialistic?
It somewhat worked in Vanilla, where especially the dwarves pushed the frontier further and further into Kalimdor, even building an entire fortress within the Barrens. But, nowadays?
What’s necessary are characters who are allowed to have more than a single emotion. Like…look at Tyrande. At the current stage she’s like a rabid, frothing dog (I love dogs, but for the sake of the argument) without any further depth. Anduin is “Mister Golden Boy” who’s so golden and precious that in the single moment, where he showed any kind of emotion ingame where attributed to a freaking old god.
I said it before: WoW simply lacks in interesting and more complex characters, with their own motivations, ideals and goals with which you could write an interesting plot about different ideas clashing with one another.
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Oh yes and all was hand waved with “Onyxia did lol” and the house of nobles doesn’t exist anymore.
This is the main problem with Blizzard, they keep stunted the Alliance in order to keep some vanglorious righteousness feeling which has only caused more problems narrative wise to the point the faction seems more fake than the dietary info in Mcdonalds
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My grandmothers on either side were sweethearts and never once hit me.
Also, you didn’t have me on ignore?
And now the average Alliance player refuses to accept to bring any themes of classism or racism back, or even “any villain bat at all”
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See that’s the thing.
I don’t believe Warcraft inspired anyone to have some deranged worldview. But the reality is people with those beliefs do play these games, and I think there’s a reason Kek but not Bur got all weird on us. And it’s, at minimum, not helpful when the Alliance isn’t made to question their motives.
With the Forsaken at least, I still distinctly remember going to the Apothecarium for the first time and seeing all the sadistic ish RAS was up to. And going "Oh. Even though the Scarlets are doing horrible things to the Forsaken just a few miles away in their Monastery, your guys aren’t innocent victims here. Not all of them at least.
And in my Alliance playthrough Kul Tiras stuck out because you do see a lot of really concerning stuff that isn’t neatly fixed. Some aspects of Kul Tiran culture is dangerously superstitious and xenophobic. Opening them to the outside world may help with those things eventually, but it’s in their culture. It’s not one bishop driven mad by void whispers or a dreadlord ruining an otherwise good thing.
Now to be clear I don’t think that’d fix anyone. Even stuff like 40k’s Imperium and Fallout’s Ceasars Legion have those sort of fans despite being a scathing indictment of those beliefs. But it might make them a little less comfortable, and that’s a net win.
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Because it’s 2021 and we demand better writing. Relying on old and outdated racist tropes to tell a story needs to die.
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Why does it seem to me that the solution will be to create a second MMORPG and transfer half of the players there?
In one game you will be a nobility defending against the godless in a godless world, you will be the second nobility fighting for the right to exist with the godless in a godless world?
Um … This concept seems to be missing about a couple of million subtleties.
Sylvanas is tried by Tyrande and Greymane in a closed court without lawyers or any spectators, two judges (aka executioners) and a defendant. Greymane, against the background of Anduin’s salvation, “raves” with nobility and decides to “spare” (not kill, but torture). Tyrande disagrees and, holding him by the throat, asks him what he lost from Sylvanas. He grinds any noble nonsense, Tyrande kills him, then kills Sylvanas, perhaps under her comment.
Tyrande announces that Sylvanas killed Greymane because she was helped by Forsaken fanatics. She announces a hunt for the Forsaken and all who harbor them (for the entire Horde).
This scene did not come up further. Other scenes: Tess joins the hunt and accepts the Worgen curse. There must be some kind of investigation by the Horde. Attempts to send ambassadors (Bane) with the results of the investigation, but he is killed. The “noble” Anduin emerges and teams up with the Horde to protect it from Tyrande’s wrath. Anduin dies somehow to capture Tyrande and her followers in the Light. Don’t kill.
In theory, this should give the worgen pride in their curse, the Nelves the teeth and chimeras, the Horde the “pride” of being misunderstood by the savages. Fi.
Admire! Hate! Twirl your finger to your temple! Give me reading!
And Orgrimmar will be melted by acid breath, and may it freeze in time being only a picture, and may the moonfire kill anyone who dares to approach him. May the madness of the night elves be famous, justified, not listening to the voice of compassion, because only by destroying the whole world will we protect it from now on and forever!
Can you tell me which of the topics would be better to write all this in?
Presenting racist villains for the purposes of calling them out/condemning them “needs to die” because “this is 2021,” which is supposedly more diverse and tolerant than any other year…?
…
Do you even understand what you’re saying?
I said relying on outdated racist tropes to tell a story needs to die…you said the rest bro
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Racism as a general behavior is “outdated.”
That doesn’t mean it no longer exists and shouldn’t continue to be addressed in fiction, “bro.”