Youŗe arguing semantics. Alliance races are very clearly meant to make people think of certain irl cultures.
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Tell me what a gnome’s “Culture Coding” is.
I dare you to try. Convince me.
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You are being deliberately obtuse. No one is suggesting that these cultural “norms” are accurate in any way. For nearly every race they don’t extend past the surface level, and tend to be more based of the “Hollywood” interpretations of each of these cultures. For example the Dwarves accents, Highlands living, history of Warring Clans, Braveheart facepaint … While the Tauren are literally “Disney’s Pocahontas” in their Indiginous North American themes. These are popularized stereotypes of each group used as a base to build a fantasy culture off of in most cases.
Still does not change the weird coincidence that the majority of the “By Default Good, Pure, and Flawless” races of the Alliance do have those roots based around traditionally Euro-Fantasy tropes. While those that are inherently more flawed and just naturally more prone to evil on the Horde … don’t.
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The IT club. Complete with the radiation poisoning.
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Not really. I just have a problem with people equating aesthetic with European culture. The difference between Warcraft and your Disney example is most often Disney is portraying real world cultures. You don’t need to guess that Pocahontas is an indigenous American, or even coded as such… We are made aware outright that is what she is.
Whereas humans being “English with a hint of Germanic” is complete speculation purely based on the ignorant idea of what English and Germanic culture looks like.
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To be entirely fair that’s mostly due to the sanding away of cultural nuance and themes done to the races over the years. There was far more depth prior to even Cataclysm, but internal conflict that would provide more cultural distinction has largely been ignored in favour of external macro threats.
In keeping with the themes of this thread, I’d argue that adding blanket negative qualities as simple-minded as racism isn’t the solution to making the Horde and the Alliance more equatable. The problem right now isn’t alignment or morality, it’s simplicity. A better solution would be to reintroduce internal conflicts for each race that are more complex, thus allowing more focus on their nuances and themes as a race as opposed to ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
House of Nobles resurgence for Stormwind, tribal unrest for Tauren, Darkspear struggling with their sudden importance in the Troll world, actually showing us the Ironforge Senate. Something like what Goblins got in their heritage chain, but more dragged out, an internal issue that they can push back but never really is defeated, because it’s more complex than just one enemy to bonk over the head.
That’s how you bring the factions into the same sphere again in terms of story equity, not something as boring and obviously bad as racism.
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Agreed. Centaurs always struck me more as Mongol coded. Orcs struck me as more generic barbarian tribe.
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Orcs seem to be more Conan the Barbarian but green, to be honest. Even centaur, though they share a lot of nomenclature with Mongols, have little in the way of any cultural alignment with them.
I mean, it’s almost offensive to the Mongols to compare them culturally in any way with the Orcs…
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Shandris is a Hwacha:
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Yall racist lmao
Imagine arguing that Tauren aren’t North American Indigenous, that Zandalari aren’t West African + Latin American Indigenous, that Orcs aren’t Mongols + Antiblackness (which is literally what Tolkien admits and regrets etc), that Blood Elves aren’t heavily borrowing from Orientalist interpretations of MENA peoples (Minaret spires, hookahs in the inns, etc)
Dwarves, Goblins, and arguably Gnomes have “Antisemitic Stereotypes” as one of their ingredients. Tolkien literally admits in his letters that he made Dwarves obsessed with wealth and made Dwarvish to sound “Semitic” (his words! Verbatim!) and later regretting both Dwarves and Orcs.
And modern Goblins as long nosed money obsessed short people are one of the OLDEST European antisemitic tropes in fantasy, that even JK Rowling perpetuated on Harry Potter of all things.
WOW Gnomes at least have the Eastern European former Soviet gesturing with the Chernobyl-Gnomergan parallel, as the “engineers” of the Alliance.
The Playable Humans are meant to be Western US/Euro Empire. This is obvious.
That’s even without getting into how half the Alliance races are Titan-origins, who themselves are largely Norse, Hellenic, and Roman with ONE vague gesturing to Egypt (Raden, who looks like yet another White Guy).
And then you have the Night Elves who are a flaming hot mess of East Asian wood houses + Greek Byzantine architecture + Neopagan/Wiccan symbols and religion + some Korean food references + Tyrande with some West Asian Nondescript Accent
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This is exactly what they did prior to the Cataclysm. And part of it was indeed having issues of human supremacy or unfounded aggression against Horde based on unfounded biases be a part of the Alliance’s role in the setting.
It wasn’t a blanket negative quality used to cast every single Alliance character in a bad light. It was an internal issue that couldn’t be pushed back but never really is defeated, because it was more complex than just one enemy to bonk over the head- and not for lack of trying.
I don’t think it’ll be racism, for reasons I outlined in an earlier post, but Stormwind/the Alliance needs some kind of actual systemic/cultural issues that prevent the faction and it’s characters from always making the most virtuous/morally superior decision.
Because Blizzard’s made it clear that flaws and biases exist amongst individual members of the Horde races that would explain how such tribal conflicts happen and escalate to the point of violence.
But what’re the biases/flaws endemic to Stormwind/Alliance that would allow something like a “Noble resurgence” to actually lead to any conflict? Conflict that doesn’t make anyone in the Alliance look bad? And all without any quests that involve bashing people over the head in a game that’s 90% bashing people over the head?
Because since the Alliance story has excised any overt bigoted elements, their only catalyst for any conflict has been disagreements on how to survive extermination at the hands of the latest external threat.
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Is that scene from darkshore? My god thats the most anime thing I’ve seen her do in ages lol!
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Yall have any idea how it feels to be Afro Indigenous and have the Wiccan Metaphor Religion be the “correct one” and have the Indigenous and African beliefs relegated to the sides or even outright lies?
They were planning to villain bat and kill the ONE Loa based on a a real life Voodoo Lwa!
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Warcraft Orcs are not Tolkien Orcs, so that’s a false comparison right there. The entire POINT of Warcraft Orcs, and Tauren, and Trolls, and Forsaken, was to take typically monstrous races in fantasy and actually give them something more nuanced than just being trash mobs.
This has been stripped away by the writers bit by bit, yes, but the base of the lore still remains.
Also, again, Orcs aren’t Mongols, the only similarity is… their hats, maybe? The Mongols used highly advanced tactics, and were led by someone who united them through either ingenius 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.
To compare Orcs, especially the Old Horde, which I’m assume is where the bulk of the comparison comes from, to the Mongols shows a blistering lack of historical understanding for the sake of some odd ‘gotcha’ moment.
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Time to bring back my girl Vanessa V. and her merry band of red bandana-sporting outlaws!
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Not in the strictest possible sense but come the F on. If I made a fantasy kingdom led predominantly by brown people and gave them titles like Sultan and Imam I don’t think anyone’s mind would immediately jump to Indonesia even though they’ve had no shortage of either.
I’ve said before Stormwind is very Disney to me because that is many American’s go to visual when we’re talking about fairytale kingdoms. But to suggest it’s not at all related to IRL Europe is just asinine.
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Bwonsamdi is now my best friend, apparently.
To be fair, I never got around to beating him up or killing Rastakhan myself.
You’re right in that wow made them even MORE Mongolian than Tolkien
Tauren, being the North Amerindigenous Metaphor Race, and Trolls, being the Afro Caribbean + South Amerindigenous Metaphor Race.
Trolls, who every expansion we kill and they get villain batted. Whose every aspect of culture is an instance. (Atal Dazar, Dazar Alor, ZF, ZG, ZA, ZD, The Other Side)
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In b4 they argue that the Cata Air Elementals (Caliph and Sultan titled with turbans and look like Victorian Genies) aren’t an Orientalist Metaphor lmao
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Stormwind’s internal issue could easily be the influences of the other, still defunct kingdoms, honestly. And the House of Nobles would allow for a lot of pushback against Anduin too… they were a major entity before Varian returned, and part of one of the cooler and more interesting quest chains in Vanilla, and then Varian came back, waved his hand, went ‘lol absolute monarchy’ and… that was it.
There doesn’t need to be racism inherent in that, so much as jockeying for power and trying to pull Stormwind, the only truly functional human kingdom (sadly) in a lot of different directions and strain it. They unfortunately killed off one of the more interesting aspects that could lead to this already, in the form of Lady Prestor… much like how they killed the major plot point of Blood Elves in the same xpac they were introduced in (honestly, resolving a race defining problem in the same expansion? Come on, Blizzard). But all the races have so many issues they could bring forth that would help give them more nuance without defining them by their antagonism to the other faction.
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