No, I literally didn’t.
No, I never actually argued that but you argued as if I had, starting with an insult and descending from there.
YOU started this argument.
Continuously, you kept posting these idiotic responses that had nothing to do with what I was actually saying and I ignored you but you were just spoiling for a fight.
Literally, you are a Troll in every sense of the word.
You tried.
You were the one doing mental gymnastics because of the “wrong target”. I wasn’t even the first one to call you out.
You agreed the quest was messed up. But then you went on a very strange “crusade” to justify the murder. With things like: “No one send you there. Only the quest… It’s nonsensical because I say so.”
There is really nothing to defend this quest and I don’t get why you even tried. Everything is as intended.
I can let it rest, but your whole argumentation was why I responded to you.
Remember when this thread was about gnomes?
That was a fantasy. This thread was always about angry people needing to be vindicated on the internet.
Personally I’m always amused by the people who talk about throwaway quests like they’re prosecuting a trial at the Hague.
I returned to utter forth my words of wisdom once more… CHILD SOLDIERS… Don’t justify troll invasion with complaints of alliance fighting against child soldiers.
how about you guys go make a different thread to debate about Frostmane trolls
Herr Benedikt, you stand accused of killing non-hostile trash mobs in an instance; how do you plead?
Lol what are you people on about?! It’s no longer valid since Cataclysm revamp where mobs are no longer hostile. They’re just walking around minding their business, AND on top of that Dwaves outright say that they want to kill them all.
They’re NOT Child soldiers. They’re children hiding in their places. And the dwarves are going out to kill them.
This is absolutely disgusting.
I’m notoriously bad at reading troll facial expressions. That being said, these trolls don’t look angry to me. They seem to be confused… maybe a little frightened.
Something happened that we’re not seeing here, . I say we do some investigation before we just kill every troll in sight.
And to kill the stupid claim that frostmane whelps are children, this is what oneof Soothsayers sais :
Soothsayer Shi’kala
Da spirits be angry with us.
I don’ know why the spirits be rejectin’ us so.
Don’ worry, child. Grik’nir gonna help us get through this.
I did not. I never made that argument. You just read it that way because you wanted to.
I was arguing context of the quest in particular.
I’m sorry you lack the reading comprehension to understand.
Hardly a “Crusade.” And it was “justifying” it about as much as "justifying the thousands of quest mobs we kill ingame.
Context matters. Sorry you don’t understand that.
Technically, my argument started BECAUSE you responded to me.
Prior to your little tangent, I was haven’t a pleasant dialog.
Looking at your comment’s that’s an interesting answer. Hey, whatever makes you happy.
This really is the Crux of the argument though.
Once upon a time, the Quest was justified (at least, as a threat the dwarves were facing.) But then the Zones and mobs get changed but the quest was never updated to reflect that. So it causes a noticeable disconnect that was never intended.
Keep in mind that the Soothsayers are a Cata added mob, that were not present when the Quest was originally implemented. Their presence should not be a valid indication that the whelps were intended to be children.
Ironically, the quest text you quoted was from that same added quest, which completely changed the context of why the Trolls and Dwarves were fighting in the first place, as the original questline (or lack there of) didn’t have any reason. You just killed the (hostile) Trolls in the area and moved on.
They should of, at least, changed the name of the Mobs.
Admittedly I only clicked this thread because I couldn’t fathom how gnomes could be so interesting of a subject that it would reach 212 replies. Turns out no, the thread only made it to number 12.
Oh well, gnome-sized interest for a gnome-sized race.
Bold to assume it was even a mistake to begin with and not intentional
The Trolls were going to take over Anvilmar. With a fire elemental. They’re not minding their own business, that’s a threat.
They’re absolutely child soldiers. They have weapons and they’re not hiding. They deserve to die.
Stop being a pansy and get over it.
Well I guess I’d want to hear from Afro-Caribbean WoW players and see what the consensus is there.
Because the playable Trolls don’t strike me as weak or subservient or inferior or even savage as they’re presented. They’re formidable warriors and magicians who ride dinosaurs and are frequently the voice of moral reason in the Horde.
No. I think what happened was, like with the Tauren, you had a group of dorky gen x white guys just coming up with ideas for this fun fantasy game they were making. And they added on some themes and ideas that are pretty dodgy by today’s standards.
Is it offensive? I don’t know it’s not my culture. But I will say if you came to me and said we’re doing a Chinese inspired race and they’re all karate pandas - I’d say that’s probably going to come off as in bad taste. But MoP was well received in China so, tf do I know?
Yeah real disgusting when trolls force their way into dwarf lands and use child soldiers to justify it. My tusked friend you might have a point if the dwarves were killing whelps on Shimmer Ridge, but no the dwarves are protecting their own land.
Only posting again because we’ve kind of gone of topic, and there really wasn’t much on the topic to be spoken of to begin with…
Black guy with dreadlocks and grandparents from Haiti, who is also a (non-initiated) practitioner of Haitian Vodou speaking here. I’m actually on a Discord server with many people of Indigenous Pre-Columbian heritage too. It’s all about Trolls, Troll lore, and discussions of the real world references we see in game.
The consensus tends to be, as many things having to do with ethnic portrayals in popular media, “It’s complicated”.
The proud and resilient magician/warrior with a connection with dinosaurs is certainly the Horde experience of Darkspear Trolls and eventually Zandalari. That’s actually one of the things that attracted me and others to the Warcraft franchise to begin with. I mean, there’s still lots of issues- Darkspear/Zandalari are the “good ones” while most other Trolls are still bad, and there’s still a lot of stereotypes born of racist caricature, but it’s a heck of an improvement over most popular media/fantasy portrayals of anything approaching the cultures of Mesoamerica, the Pacific Islands, or West Africa as inspiration.
Like seriously, I can’t think of an MMO that does it much better. Which is kind of depressing in its own right.
But when it comes to the Alliance experience, pretty much all Trolls are backwards savages that practice dark magic and pose constant threat with their endless (yet inevitably doomed) crusades against the more civilized races of Azeroth. The ones allied with the Horde are just more cunning than the others.
Take Vol’jin for example. In the Horde story, he’s Thrall’s right hand man and trusted confidant. He called out Garrosh from the get go and led the rebellion that took him down. He’s probably the biggest hero the Horde has after Thrall. He and his tribe in particular are also notable in being generally opposed to the other Troll tribes, and all the more successful for it.
Several of us posters have been telling people this was offensive for years. Decades even! Heck, criticism of this kind in fantasy and popular media goes back centuries!
The biggest stumbling block has always been that the majority people who make this stuff and consume it are indeed just “dorky white guys just having fun”. No, they aren’t thinking about it. And they don’t want to think about it. Many resent having it brought to their attention. It’s a reminder of the fact that some aspects of the the media we enjoy are born of and perpetuates this kind stuff.
So then in roll the arguments intended to dismiss it as a concern. “It’s not actually racism/colonialism/genocide/child murder…”, followed by, “Okay, but even if it is, it’s justified because of X, Y, and Z…” followed by, “You guys just want to make everything into a political/race/faction argument.” But there’s never a willingness to acknowledge that the material could be offensive, or poor writing, that anything could possibly be done to address it- even as we ask Blizzard to address to much else in game.
And because the creators and so much of the audience fails to listen or acknowledge what’s happening, it keeps happening. All the while wondering why all these other people are making such a big stink about it.
The problem isn’t so much that Trolls are antagonistic. It’s not even that they have coding from real world cultures that are still subjected to this stuff to this day. It’s that they are all this and, in the game, repeatedly villainized, dehumanized, treated without empathy, to the point where quest givers regularly send us to collect their heads, or the heads of their children, and people don’t really bat an eye.
This would be terrible no matter what race it was. But doubly so when you’re talking about a playable race based so obviously on actual people whose recent history is so defined by the consequences of this kind of dehumanization. It doesn’t cause racism. No. But it does feed into a larger pattern of normalizing it.
Like I said before, had this been a quest where a Horde character was sent to kill Night Elf or Worgen “whelps”, this conversation would have gone very differently. Because we’re invited to empathize with them and see them as having humanity and heroic potential in a way we don’t with Trolls.
Thank you I couldn’t have hoped for a better response.
I guess my question would be;
How much nuance is fairly expected?
I’d agree that the Darkspear and Zandalari being ‘one of the good ones’ is pretty f’ed up with all the baggage that comes with Trolls Afro-Caribbean flavoring.
But, who’s presented that differently Hordeside? The Worgen are beasts just as ruthless and eager to turn humans as the Forsaken. The humans are either cruel or foolish. Same for the Dwarves, particularly in S.Barrens. The Kaldorei in Ashenvale are cold blooded- killing even terrified peons and assassinating diplomats. And also they try to sabotage the Sin’Dorei’s defenses which would lead to them literally being eaten alive. Really only the Draenei and Gnomes come off as basically harmless and that’s more to do with the narrative just forgetting about them.
My only problem here is, as we can see, the Alliance are given ample absolution. Ceaselessly. Even the Defias - who’s red bandannas are reminiscent of the West Virginian Coal Wars which was also workers revolting over exploitation- are actually all dangerous criminals and terrorists who long ago abandoned any lofty goal and now just want to hurt people.
If murdering Frost Troll villages was shown with the same callous disregard you see for Blighting human farmers I’d call it jake. But as we see here;
No it was totally justified the kids are actually child soldiers and there going to burn everything down unless stopped.
I wouldn’t expect, nor want, every last quest to be an exploration on the ethics of combat. This is a game where I mind control every AFK Alliance I can underwater because I find it hilarious. We are not obliged to be our best selves nor thoughtful of everything.
But there seems to be a disconnect here. Where the Alliance are never made to be thoughtful of their deeds, which comes off as tasteless at best when it’s applied to factions characterized with the cultures of historically brutalized people.
But I do genuinely believe that’s just more of WoW’s ever present tonal problems and not a deliberate middle finger to Haitians. They could of course try listening to their player base to try to remedy these concerns but - c’mon. We all know we’re just shouting into the Void in the story forums. If Blizz understood their fan base they wouldn’t have destroyed two cities for, far as I can tell, basically no real reason at all.
Although, I’ll add, I’m a white man who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and spent entirely too much of his adolescence playing WoW.
And I’d credit the Darkspear for sparking a curiosity toward the actual Voodoo religion which lead to me talking to Priests in New Orleans and owning several books on the history of Haiti.
I’d hardly call myself an expert. Just more informed than average. But point being - if the Trolls were conceived as a racist caricature designed to insult Afro-Caribbean culture, they did a real ish job of it. For me at least.
Weird to say but yeah I’d probably have zero idea who Toussaint Louverture was if 13 year old me wasn’t enthralled by the silly tusked dinoriders who sounded like Ms.Cleo.