Pictured: Two earthen soaking in a hot-tub.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1170101966295285760/1231337284431773807/GLoJwS8bcAAbTWO.jpg
Not quite slaves, I’d think.
It helps Blizzard populate areas with people who are just there to do PC services without having to worry about who they are. Ironically, sort of like in the IRL sitatuation.
If by solved diplomatically you mean we killed a bunch of them, smashed their magic quills (printing presses) and dragged their leader before Alexstraza in a headlock.
It was a military victory with relatively generous terms. We stopped shy of executing her.
Because this game is unfortunately not written by or for people with a strong moral compass.
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Aren’t all Titanforged races (azerothian and draenorian) essentially servitor races?
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True. If I can blow my own trumpet for a minute, I’ve known that for ages. That’s why I made threads like
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It’s been addressed for Dragonflight.
As for Bastion, the Stewards do have their own area where they can knock off as desired, but they actually do seem to be creatures inclined to be helpful… kind of like skittermanders of Starfinder.
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It depends on if they were made with free will or not.
If they were, then it’s immoral because to enslave them would be to deny them their free will.
If they weren’t, then it doesn’t matter because they haven’t a will of their own.
It’s basically like comparing an automaton with a positronic brain a la I, Robot to a toaster oven. One is essentially a thinking creature with a will of its own, albeit restrained by the Three Laws of Robotics, while the other just toasts things according to external inputs.
There’s a gray area where you create a race that has a will of its own but endow it also with essentially a genetic desire to act as a servant, but then that only matters if they’re able to reproduce with genetic variation that you aren’t also controlling and can eventually lose that trait, at which point it only becomes immoral when they no longer wish to serve.
And all this isn’t even getting into the idea of creatures that weren’t manufactured, that have a free will, and just happen to be down with existing in subservience.
But I ultimately see no problem with there being slave races in the lore. It’s not real life, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to police fiction like that, and I don’t think it’s an example of intrinsically bad writing compared to, say, what Thad mentioned about heinous villains constantly being forgiven and the idea that to seek justice is wrong. But that’s a separate conversation entirely.
What about people who enslave entire races not being punished for it either?
Falls under the same umbrella.
Unless you’re counting slave races that were created to be slaves, in which case I don’t count that as enslaving a race because it’s one that didn’t exist until it was made by its master.
If I had to put my own two cents in, it would probably be connected to Blizzard’s overall handling of different societies in the game not correlating with our own society and failing to make a statement on these types of issues.
Like, I highly doubt Blizzard endorses cannibalism, killing of innocents, or outright ethnic cleansing, yet in some cases they haven’t been able to make a clear comment on some of these things sometimes, for whatever reason.
Yet at the end of the day, it is a failing on their part, no matter how much leeway or charitability we give them in the long run.
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I hadn’t heard of skittermanders before, but I agree with you here.
The moral aspect hinges mostly on choice.
If you serve because of your race or class, and you have no choice, that’s not good. If your race was literally created as servants, that’s a little more grey, but still pretty bad.
If you, as an individual, was created as a servant, that is pretty grey. But the involuntary aspect is still iffy.
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Blizzard seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. I think Blizzard does feel that Azeroth is, as Ion said, “morally grey”. But then they use modern standards of morality all the time.
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What’s “too modern” for a millieu that has steampunk or better tech and crossplanar travel?
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It’s not necessarily “wrong” . It’s inconsistent. They have the PCs do things, the have the main characters do things, they have “survivor races”, that all conflict with modern morality and then they trumpet it.
No, they were talking about Goblin slavery.
That’s messed up.
there’s a whole questline about this in Dragonflight, no, no the Draconid are not just content to serve. There’s a whole rebellion about it until the issue is resolved diplomatically
How? the Stewards are happy, they have distinct personalities and they’re pretty much like skittermanders. (google them)
They’re only happy because they don’t know any better because that’s what they’re programmed to think.