Foreward
Hello all, I’ve got another world building question that definitely has no direct answer and anything we as players come up with will be contended by someone: Just how prevalent is literacy across Azeroth? Of course given that Azeroth and Warcraft as a setting doesn’t have a clear 1:1 reference point with earth’s history thanks to the facts of; having multiple sapient species and their own linguistic history including alien and artificial species, and last but not least magic and technology that can permanently alter an organism’s mind both in sapience and “intelligence” we can only go off of what has been directly shown to us and what we extract from those facts.
Premise
For the sake of discussion we’ll disallow any one-off individuals such as Subject 9 who were given enhanced intellect that is far beyond the capabilities of their usual population. We’ll also say that we are primarily looking at the written language of an individuals native language and then look to their ability to read and write in the lingua franca of Common/Orcish if their native language does not have a written component.
Opinion
That being said I think if we aggregate all sapient species on Azeroth the average “person” would be Sub-Literate thanks to populations such as Kobolds, Murlocs, Gnolls, and other “Monstrous Humanoids”. If we take out those populations and instead focus on the “Major Players” of the 2-Factions and the other World Powers I think if we take the average person, they would fall under the Functional to Basic Literacy levels where they can read things such as signage, public notices and recreational reads like goblin magazines and the various S.R.N. but may struggle with denser works of texts such as historic record, religious doctrine or Manuals/Treaties. At this point I think that between the Alliance and Horde, both sides will have a roughly equal Literacy rate not only due to the sheer sizes of their populations but due to the amount of cultural amalgamation that has occurred over the centuries/decades of these factions existences.
With my own personal baseline set I’d like to move on to every Roleplayer’s favorite topic, their own character, as I talk about Bel’s specific level of literacy! I found that playing her as Common Sub-Literate has actually presented a fun challenge and some interesting hints to drop into roleplay! I figured she’d struggle with writing and only be able to read Common as necessary due to her disrupted upbringing. If it were supported in the mechanics I’d love to have Bel have a similar level of literacy in Orcish as well as be near fluent in speaking the language, but Blizzard has yet to pull that ripcord.
Question
At this point I think I’ve rambled enough to ask you all, what do you think about the literacy rates of Azeroth? Do you agree or disagree with my assumptions? Would you think of your character as a standard for their group or an outlier?