Blizzard is governed by the Rule of Cool without actually thinking about what it does to the world. A rock band with microphones and electric guitars might be metal and awesome but raises a lot of implications about the state of technology in WOW that never really get answered.
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That’s true. There is a lot that blizz throws in the game and than just…abandons it for whatever reason.
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It’s added because it’s cool. It’s then abandoned because it becomes sticky to explore.
Like AU Draenor.
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Sounds about right, considering blizzs track record.
Draka has importance to Maldraxxus’s story, Rulkhan had importance to the Shadowmoon Valley Story and Gorgonna had importance to the Grizzly Hills Story.
Draka of course is the one with the biggest role of the 3 Orc Women and Blizzard made especially sure she was without Durotan in that role
Or you know it is Blizzard and they take years/expansions before character archs end/characters are expanded on. For most of Vanilla-Wrath most faction leaders barely had an apperance. It took years for many to even get the spotlight they deserve.
I’m gonna wait to see how they handle Draka … and especially her interactions with her giant mopey man-baby of a son before I make judgements on her. She has an interesting role, that really takes her out of that traditional Orc comfort zone. Professional duty-bound soldier and spy, with a lot more formal military discipline by the looks of things.
There is potential, but I’ve seen very little on the Maldraxxus storyline from the beta so far. I know very little about how she’s initially used, and very little about the settup of that zone beyond the two houses falling+their overall leader being abducted. It would also be nice if like all SLs characters she has a strong impact on a still living character, so she can maintain relevance beyond SLs.
This is what happens when certain people expect women to be written as either strong or wise, sometimes even both. Females tend to be presented in a certain way these days across all media, they can’t be seen as losers without backlash. It’s dumb because some of the best female characters that are losers/terrible people are fantastic like Dee from Always Sunny or Suzie from Curb.
Males have much more variation because people care less about how men are written, which means more is allowed to be explored. When was the last time you remember a female character being written as a loser? Or dumb? Or a clown? Or incompetent?
Aggra on the other hand was never that important. She’s Thrall’s partner but a side character and always was. The game has loads of side characters, most of them never get returned to, at least Aggra has stuck around. Blizzard already has issues with the writing for their main characters, so someone like Aggra I wouldn’t consider a priority fix.
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It couldn’t possibly be because men generally outnumber female characters and thus are given the opportunity to be a more diverse cast of characters?
This is stupid and certainly not true. As an example netflix has probably managed to remain relatively good at trying to have diverse female character achetypes. She-ra, Kipo, Umbrella Academy, Bojack Horseman and a host of other can have dumb, losers, clownish or outright incompetent female characters.
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A game created by men with an overwhelming male player base and yet has a multitude of important female characters since day dot and most recently in BFA with the exception of Anduin and Saurfang, it was female characters the starred in much of the plot driving the story. Not bad for being outnumbered.
Great. Now do Warcraft.
I’d say WoW has actually become more diverse as the years. I would say about 40-60 or 30-70 in favor of men.
This is a more recent development. Let not forget Warcraft as a series had only one female character in Warcraft 1, 1 female character in warcraft 2. By warcraft 3 we only had one female unit(except for night elves) per race(and the Horde did not have any). By Vanilla was more 2/8 in terms of female leaders. It is only RECENTLY that female characters are more balanced in terms of leadership representation.
You were the one who was talking about non-warcraft things. Yes, WoW has actually done alot better then most games in terms of represntation but it took YEARS for female characters to even get to the point we are in BfA.
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I disagree on you first reply.
I agree on your second but don’t know why everything needs to be equitable. Imbalance can be more interesting. I like how Night Elven society is structured being a matriarchy, it’s interesting.
And as for the third Warcraft females are either wise, sensible, intelligent and competent. Or crazy, aggressive, intelligent and competent. Sylvanas and Jaina seems to have a combination. In terms of fools though, I rarely see a female play one and that’s my point. I think it would be funny and entertaining to see like Budd or Zen’kiki for example. There’s more personality traits than playing the fool of course, but it’s a common one, one that people enjoy and one that seems to be exclusive to male characters.
And I just don’t see it happening. Blizzard seems to limit themselves to taking female characters seriously or cutesy. I’m just saying it would be nice to see and offer more dimensions to females in the game.
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It doesnt have to be 100% equal all the time but a degree of equability benefits everyone and allows more characters who are not straight/male or white to actually get the spotlight.
I checked and this is the only study I could find
https://www.engadget.com/2009-04-09-nielsen-wow-is-most-played-core-game-by-25-54-females.html#:~:text=Here’s%20an%20interesting%20bit%20of,core"%20game%20for%20that%20gender.
Obviously that study is now outdated and maybe the age of WoW has changed that demographic but based on that WoW was at least at one point in time about 40-60 in terms of player gender distribution.
Then you not looking hard enough. Usually these roles however are reserved for gnome/goblins but they do exist. Like it was a drunk female gnome who managed to perfect the plague. Hell, we even have Chromie(who while not an actually gnome can play the ditsy yet powerful and cute character)
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Lets see.
Build up a #strongindepenetwomen then later use her as a baby momma. I guess blizzards writers are fans of akira toriyama. Who is infamous for doing the same thing. In particular to Chi-Chi and Videl.
Valtrois - “I am an expert in Ley lines. what makes you think you are better than me”
Stellagosa - “I can see the ley lines…”
Honestly their whole petty fights during that quest is just so good. Which ends with Valtrois actually wanting to learn from Stella, which is nice character development.
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Why cant we have strong females that want to take care of their kids first? Or men for that matter? I mean that did the same thing and only returned after a long heart to heart with Saurfang.
You can have both. The issue is that blizzard writes them one way or the other. Not both.
As others have mentioned, Aggra hardly shows up in the story, and most of the times she does post Cata is to say “look, Thrall has a wife, let the Thrall & Jaina meme die”.
The only time I have seen the real Aggra shine through post Cata was when she showed up in AU Nagrand and doesn’t take crap from anyone. Unfortunately, that is dropped pretty quickly.
Not really true. We have Vereesa, who is a caring mother who has ever remained a strong female figure for the Alliance. We have Moira who prioritizes her kid but does so by prioritizing her kingdom that he will someday inherit.
Oh I loved that interaction. Valtrois remains one of my favorite characters, even after she joined the Horde, unlike Thally.
On topic, I don’t think Blizzard can’t write female characters, but rather that they pick a handful for solely arm- candy purposes or for making emotional appeals. BfA and Legion has definitely been better in that regard though.
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I love that scene. It cemented Valtrois as one of my favorites. The impressive part is she could have easily gone the other way. She’s a bit of a snob, and it can be tricky to make a snob likable. What’s great about the Stellagosa scene is it was juicy with subtext. Valtrois’ pride was on the line, and though she tries to play it cool, it’s apparent that Stellagosa’s approval was very validating for her.
Valtrois walks the line of being a very prideful character but not letting that pride blind her judgement, or being able to recognize when others might be right. She wanted to keep the Nightwell, but trusted Thalyssra’s decision to let it go. She also only needed to be asked once by Thalyssra to cooperate with the player. I was prepared for her to talk down to us the whole time, but that never happened.
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