Only white people can be named John is a hell of a yikes take.
Also it probably works the same way that being a playable Sand Troll now works. The darker skin tones are hale from lands where it would make sense for their skin tone to be darker and have joined the Alliance because “Humans together strong.”
I really like your response, thank you for wording it in such a way.
Was she really the first with that? No idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised, I never cared for her stories.
Which, honestly, makes me think back to when Battle for Azeroth was first being announced as an oceanic expansion.
I remember there being a lot of talk about possibly exploring human island nations, in order to bring more diversity into the (human-dominated) Alliance.
We still haven’t been to Tel’abim, for example.
Are you going to be like Aki and argue that western names aren’t western names because “sometimes non-white people are named that!”?
I’m fine with never visiting Tel’abim. Adding Kul’tirans when we are already over bloated with human exceptionalism is enough to make me want to vomit. But nah we needed to give Humans dominion over Druids and Shamans too.
There are other ethnicities than “White guy” that live in the western nations.
Nope; pretty much all the major fantasy racial stereotypes—certainly the concept of world-building as we know it—go back to Tolkien and Middle Earth, first and foremost.
I mean, the Horde has had access to paladins since The Burning Crusade via blood elves, and later got Tauren Sunwalkers, and now Zandalari…er, Loa-Knights?
As far as “faction = class,” the days of Vanilla are pretty much gone.
But you don’t normally see their fantasy versions be dominated by Noble Kings and Queens, knights in fancy armor, and Christianity parallels. That is very much a “white guy” fantasy.
Prelates.
Dwarves, Draenei and Pandaren are already there if we need to a new Alliance Shaman. Tide Sages or whatever aren’t needed.
Same goes for “I got drust in me blud.” for Druid. Night Elves and Worgen got it covered. I don’t need a Human preaching to me about the importance of nature.
Again: You can thank J.R.R. Tolkien for that.
I mean, I don’t disagree, exactly; I’m just saying this isn’t something that’s strictly limited to Alliance races/classes.
It’s why I am actually partial to the whole “let every race be any class” idea, so long as it were given a good story reason/explanation for why.
Because yeah, I agree 
re: the Alliance and human exceptionalism. No way some young human knows more about nature than a race that’s literally practiced druidism for 10,000+ years.
Tolkien wrote about banker Goblins? I know about the greed but, eh ok.^^
People blaming Tolkien for “problematic” fake fantasy races that don’t exist is trendy right now. Don’t pay it any attention.
“Banker Goblins” is a pretty easy/logical extension of “Greedy Goblins.”
Tolkien’s original take on the goblins was that they were actually more along the lines of weapons manufacturers—he wrote that they “delighted” in making things like explosives and such, and were “no doubt responsible for the weapons” that had troubled the world or some such, likely channeling his own experiences in World War I for inspiration (think mustard gas, landmines, etc.).
I think the word you’re searching for is, “historical-literary analysis.”
It’s more than a little simple-minded to make the claim that, “these are fake fantasy races, so they must have come out of nowhere.”
True, it was a bit of a copout that the humans of Northrend were just a bunch of white lumberjacks instead of perhaps Inuit or some other real world culture that exists in cold, icy climates.
They instead had Taunka and walrus-people fill that role. Another case of nonwhite cultures being represented by inhumans, unfortunately.
Didn’t we technically get that with the Tuskarr and Taunka?
Not arguing your point re: humans, but it feels like that’s what they were going with.
You got Tuskarr as a generic mish-mash of northern cultures.
Again, I’m not even blaming Blizzard here, just pointing out that simply adding more faces to character creation isn’t really diversifying Humans as an in-game race.
Yeah, I remembered them seconds after I posted that comment haha thanks
Not saying they came out of no where. They obviously have some inspirations from the real world. People extrapolating that “Oh these writers are all a bunch of bigots” from it is where I draw the line.
It’s like the age old example of the Teacher harping on about why the writer specified that the curtains are blue.
Sometimes the curtains are just blue.
Is that what we’re doing here? I didn’t get the impression that we were making moral judgements on the character of wow’s writers here so much as pointing out problems and suggesting fixes?
Oh, I’m happy to admit that I also draw the line at outright calling someone like Tolkien a “bigot.” I’m well aware that there are layers and degrees between “writing about white Europeans” vs. “Writing badly about people who aren’t white Europeans.”
So no, I wouldn’t say Tolkien was a “bigot,” per se.
But he was undoubtedly Euro-centric.
Though it should probably be noted that all the heroes in Lord of the Rings are specifically written as Nordic/British Europeans, whereas all the Men who join Sauron’s army included:
Make of that what you will.
Agreed, I don’t think tolkien had any consciously malicious or bigoted intent with his writing.
I read somewhere that he even regretted not writing more nuance to the characterization of the orcs because he hated the trope that we would come to know as “always chaotic evil races”.