Wanting to be hated

Lore Story Forum
1517

Right, so again: I initially misspoke in attributing this quote to Genn. It’s actually his father Archibauld speaking to Genn as a child.

I mean, I read it in a similar vein to one of Garithos’ random quotes from Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.:

I hate working with these…“people.”

I mean, the people of Quel’Thalas did have a name: Quel’dorei. Or, in Common tongue, high elves, or even just elves. Archibauld Greymane would have been very much aware of this; his deliberate use of the term “demi-human” to refer to the Quel’dorei makes it pretty clear that he views humanity as the master race, with others like elves and dwarves being sub-human.

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1518

Swans.

Demonspawn I tell you! :rofl:

1519

I would ask why would you pick up a game like World of Warcraft, whereas other games exist where the core identity is not built on a premise of war and conflict?

I’m genuinely curious to anyone who comes into WoW thinking they’re going to get an experience like Final Fantasy?

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1520

Have you played Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne?

Also, side note: plenty of warfare in Final Fantasy XII, so…

1521

Final Fantasy doesn’t thrive on this notion of two warring factions. It’s limited race pool and no direct loyalties by race alone is a stark contrast to WoW’s divided nations and people.

And Warcraft is the precursor to why the factions exist. Any cooperation made isn’t on the same scale of the Alliance and Horde as they are now. Where more and more bloodshed has been spent. And let us not forget the writing was more tolerable back then.

1522

Depends on the game.

Final Fantasy XII: The Arcadian Empire vs. The United Kingdoms of Dalmasca and Nabradia, and later the Resistance and the Rozarrian Empire

You mean human-centric.

Final Fantasy X and XII both had plenty of, “You’re not one of us” on the part of the Guado and Al Bhed (X) and the Viera (XII).

Kind of the point I was making; the factions have always existed since Reign of Chaos, but the whole point of that game was to establish that the Alliance and Horde are capable of working together, often against a larger, mutual enemy (The Burning Legion, the Scourge, etc.). We even saw this around the time of Wrath of the Lich King with the Battle of the Wrathgate.

So if you’re asking why someone would want to play World of Warcraft and then be…I don’t know, offended by faction conflict?

It’s because the Warcraft story has traditionally been that these factions can rise above their mutual differences, and take the titular “war” to their true enemies.

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1523

Incidentally, there’s another, ACTUAL Excalibur allegory in Northrend (NOT involving Frostmourn or Arthas) that is actually more closer to the Original story, one that’s tied to both Christian and Pagan roots of the story.

1525

As much as I somewhat agree the game could be better if it wasn’t so heavily set in the idea of “Alliance Vs Horde”, and that the hatred between the factions could be quenched. I fear it’s not the basis Blizzard themselves want to set, especially with how the game is built.

Time and again the warstory comes up, whether in minor ways such as in Warlords of Draenor with separate starting zones and the war on Ashran, or in larger ways like in MoP, and BFA. As I mentioned, the game is also built up from the perspective since classic, that the factions are at odds, the same is said for the games before it even in Warcraft 3 up until a certain point.

So I feel like that whether people like it or not, the hostile relations as separate entities that are the Alliance and Horde are at the very base philosophy in everything about the game. It’s difficult for me to think of any way to move on from that aside from creating another game entirely.

On a personal level I also think that a big portion of the game is the identity of being apart of the Alliance and Horde as a player is also still fairly big. Some players prefer Orgrimmar, and the themes of the Horde, other players prefer Stormwind and the themes of the Alliance. Perhaps some interest in the game would lose traction as well, meaning a lot of players would lose interest.

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1526

Clever Girl…

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1527

Oh that’s awesome. They should of TOTALLY made the Zandalari based off that.

1528

:pancakes:

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1529

As a person of European descent, I object to the Racist stereotype that Blizzard is pushing that Humans, being white-European coded, are engaging in the systematic brutal slaughter of “innocent, indigenous peoples” and “imperial colonialism.” I demand Less offensive and historically inaccurate mischaracterizations of a race that is clearly meant to represent my people. The Implication that all members of a ethnicity are all guilty of crimes committed by a few members and long ago is insulting and racist.

And anyone who disagrees with me is Racist.
/s/ns

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1530

Wenzli is very clearly talking about FFXIV. The MMO.

It’s not human centric. It’s just a different aesthetic than WoW’s.

It also heavily benefits from a “Story first” design method where the systems in the game serve the purpose of feeding the player the story. It also heavily benefits from the fact at the FFXIV devs don’t think they stand above the Community as gods. They actually listen to feedback and when the feedback is negative they either go “Hey our bad. This is how we’re going to fix it.” or “Hey our bad. We can’t fix it right away but we will work something out.”

Hell they take the opinions of their community into account so much that when Natsuko Ishikawa (writer) got endless praise for two straight expansions for her work on the Dark Knight class quests they promoted her to being the lead writer for their next expansion who’s story is easily the best in the FFXIV series to date.

Edit: To bring this FFXIV focused post more in line with the topic at hand. FFXIV makes sure to give you plenty of feel good lore about the different playable races with applicable. Limsa Lominsa is a pirate port and mainly related to the Roegadyn (Think Kul’tiran but less campy) so if you run around and do the side quests you’ll get fed feel good lore about the Roegadyn.

Rak’tika Greatwood is the home of the Viera (Tall Ladies with Rabbit Ears) so if you do all the side quests you get fed a lot of Viera focused lore.

1531

Not sure how you jumped to this conclusion, unless you’re mistaking me for Baalsamael.

Quite the opposite, I would call for greater separation from the real world and Warcraft’s fictional one.

Same as Blizzard announced that homophobia does not exist in Warcraft because an ideal would be that all relationships are exist as solidly as the love within them, I would neither want to quest for racists nor be hounded by racists in game, regardless of which fictional race I’m playing in WoW.

This thread carrying on to myriad of posts about racial representation in Warcraft is functionally a different topic to what I brought up to discuss. If you would note, for more than five-hundred posts now I have not engaged any of the posts that have been going on here that have been rambling unabatedly. If you believe my intention was to create a thread for people to call each other racist back and forth among other things I believe you came into this thread with a preestablished negative mindset.

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1532

No, I don’t think that’s what you specifically wanted out of this and isn’t what I said; however, I think you made this thread to stir the pot. And no, I’ve not mistaken you and Baal, of course, as I mentioned his name in my reply to someone’s post who used your name. I came into this thread curious from the title, read your OP, and then was confused by the point as I said in the first sentence in my first post in this behemoth. It doesn’t prompt any discussion and is, like I said, mostly a commentary on your real life experiences and how they prevent you from seeing others’ points of view.

1533

And over the length of this behemoth thread Baalsamael has covered how his real life experiences have, as you said, left the game inseparable from the issues of racism he has been afflicted by and the systemic problems he sees throughout Warcraft’s writing.

Baalsamael brings up how Warcraft is plagued with caricatures of racial representations, and in so much claims Warcraft as perpetuating racist stereotypes along with negatively presenting cultures representative of real life ones that he empathizes with.

Baalsamael concludes that Blizzard will never stop writing this way, and so insists that racial representations of historically imperial cultures should also be presented negatively, in specifically to be generally racist, rather than having a moral high ground - which, obviously, Baalsamael sees said moral high ground as racist in of itself.

My experiences do not prevent me from seeing Baalsamael’s point of view. I simply do not agree with his conclusion.

It is my insistence rather that Blizzard stop vilifying the cultures Baalsamael is fond of, and that Blizzard is fully capable of this should they choose to.

Baalsamael’s only response to this is to dismiss the possibility, as he will not believe Blizzard is capable of this - which I don’t blame him for, but that is where any further communication ceases to exist.

Now, in more than fifteen-hundred posts, honestly no one else has brought up a view for why racism should be further incorporated into the game beyond that they like the faction conflict and think that the Alliance being racist would add to the game. To which, then, yes, you are right, I do not and would not share in their views.

There have been people who agree with me that the faction conflict is long passed its welcome and should no longer be a pillar of Warcraft. And there are people for whom the faction conflict is an identifying factor of what makes Warcraft Warcraft, but don’t see racism as necessary for that to continue.

But please, if you think I have missed any other views, feel free to point them out.

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1534

In your OP you said:

That isn’t saying that you understand but disagree.

1535

Those statements remain true. I do not understand Baalsamael’s desire play characters that would be hated in-game.

However why he would want to be is also not what Baalsamael has discussed in the thread, which instead has been what I covered in the last post, that Baalsamael believes Blizzard will always villain bat the Horde, which is what I can understand and disagree with.

I also don’t know what you are trying to prove beyond that I did indeed say what I said.

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1536

Alright.

So ummm, when are we going to start applying this kind of thinking to the other races in WoW? Because it’s already been identified by the OP and insisted by others that the Humans of the Alliance have been depicted as less and less flawed in areas they once were.

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1537

The thing here s that while Blzzard has never explored the subject of homophobia or discrimination against LGBT people, it has cultural posturing, explored racism, xenophobia, ethnic bigotry, ethnic conflict and other racist themes. Quite a bit.

And where once, it explored it on both factions, it’s been increasingly becoming portrayed as this thing that’s an inherent flaw -in say- Orc, Troll, Drust, or other cultures in order to justify why we need to stand up against them, it’s been fading out of the Human and Night Elf narrative and treated either as a bad apple, or completely justified given the circumstances. Or at other times by playing into real world racist stereotypes.

It’d like if WoW did include homophobia, but the only way they showed it as more of an Orc or Troll problem than a Human or Night Elf thing. Or if they tried to introduce it and try to justify it in universe with something like, “The Night Elves need to promote procreation for the race to survive ,” while condemning Trolls executing LGBT people as a display of their savagery.

Because they have no problem with the above when it comes to racism. Or genocide. Or torture. Or any other variety of terrible human acts.

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