The factions emerged from conflict but have their own internal life besides faction war since they’re macro societies + several races joined them not out of antagonism for the opposing faction but out of kinship with the groups found within
It’s also pointless to keep arguing there isn’t anything to tell about factions in a context of peace since I literally gave you a long list of cool internal Horde plots to explore lol
Not by any means no
We don’t talk about E__ Ti___
have played almost literally nothing except WoW since it launched, I don’t know that reference
I’m not saying there isn’t anything to tell, I’m saying that if they have no conflict they aren’t factions. Go ahead and tell stories about tax policy or religious freedom or cultural acceptance in the various societies that don’t fight anymore. Have it all work out perfectly and make sure to fit in some dialogue that shames anyone who doesn’t think that fits. But they aren’t factions if they aren’t… Factions.
In Elder Scrolls lore, the dragons reigned as tyrants over people. Paarthurnax being one of the main generals of this system. Eventually he changed his views and rebelled against Alduin, the big bad evil dragon. He gets banished but eventually returns.
Fastforward several centuries and Alduin returns, but Paarthurnax helps you to defeat him. Helps as in ‘couldn’t have done so without his help.’
Then you have this woman asking you to kill Paarth just because at some point he was aligned with Alduin. If you talk to him about it, he hits you with some of the most iconic quotes in gaming history.
“What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
Paarth is based beyond belief and killing him just because some raving madwoman asked you to is peak drone behaviour.
Ah so you’re just arguing semantics over what the word “faction” means in a non-Warcraft context
Then idk call them something else if that disturbs you, I for one am discussing Warcraft factions as they are and have been for 20 years
it sounds like Skyrim is much better written and has a much more free-form questing system than WoW then.
Skyrim has a much more free questing because its an RPG, not an MMORPG.
As for the writing… It’s okay. Nothing stellar, but its decent enough. I love skyrim to death but the game has a lot of shortcomings, specially without mods. It’s an easy recommend, though.
If you want a stellar RPG to start with amazing writing, go for Dragon Age Origins. Can’t go wrong with that one.
have seen short videos of some of the mods, like the Macho Man one
timely suggestion, too. veilguard is just around the corner
I’m not getting into Veilguard. Look how they massacred the Qunari, look how they massacred my boys
For some races that very blatantly take inspiration from real world culture like Centaur, tuskarr and tauren should be treated with respect and shown more humanity instead of just being loot pinatas.
But what about races who have no relations with RL cultures? Like the troggs, botani, saurok and more recently the kobyss? Races that are just brutish, cruel and unwilling to socialize with other races despite being fully capable of doing so? I’m fine with races like kobolds and nerubians being shown to be more civil than how we usually encounter them and i hope other race like the kalimdor centaur and quilboar also get a similar treatment.
That being said, I’m fine with seeing a monstrous race simply be monsters.
There are literally none. Even if that WERE the case, the concept of a race being primitive and considered evil is always there, and still can be compared to how many irl ethnic groups werw portrayed irl, historically.
I collect the tithe every time I wpvp.
But not for nagash.
He can sit and spin.
I’d beat him 1v1.
Then we circle back to the other issue I mentioned, which is : behaviors and mindsets like mercilessness and unwillingness to socialize with other races can only be the product of culture and history, certainly not nature
You mentioned the Saurok. So far the ones we’ve seen have been openly hostile – why ? There’s a scroll from MoP that reads :
The saurok were originally dispatched to maintain order in the far edges of the mogu empire. A sauroken culture of superiority and hatred for weakness developed, fueled by the ego of their mogu masters.
Soon, saurok guards began to plunder the very people they were supposed to police. They grew disobedient, turning on their own mogu commanders whenever they were displeased with the spoils of war.
Emperor Dojan responded in the traditional mogu way: the souls were ripped from every living saurok in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, and he demanded the same fate for the legions still in the field. So began the great Purge.
In other words, Saurok are the way they are because 1) they were created and educated by an imperialistic group whose culture valued domination and despised weakness ; 2) they were used as disposable troopers until their masters tried to get rid of them because they feared they’d grow out of control. Isn’t that infinitely cooler and more sensical than “they’re genetically encrypted to be evil” ?
Same goes for the other races you mentioned. Troggs ? Locked up in a subterranean vault for untold millenia because their masters and creators were unsatisfied with what they considered to be a crash test/prototype. No wonder they’re not the most gleeful, social and technologically advanced race out there. Botani ? Hivemind mentality and Mantid-esque contempt for individuality because their culture was built upon the memory of the Evergrowth’s collective sentience (also, Draenor is/was a hellhole where everything wants to kill you, hence why war and death are so central to many cultures native to Draenor). Kobyss ? Ankoan tribe that had been fighting the Naga for generations until they supposedly dove deeper and deeper into the abyss and made contact with Void entities.
Every new race is an opportunity for great lore and worldbuilding. Why resort to dumb and vapid 90’s fantasy tropes when we can tell cool stories instead ? Why deliberately make the setting poorer when we can make it richer ?
And now I wanna roll a Saurok
So what? We aren’t referring to a human “race” of white, black or asian. We’re talking about fantastical creatures that do not exist and are not human in anyway. No one’s feelings are getting hurt, no toes are getting stepped on.
Because this increased complexity often conflicts with the fact that this a video game, not a book series. There is a book series attached to it but ultimately WoW’s setting mainly occurs within a game, a game that needs enemies for players to kill.
This also doesn’t answer my question as to why this is a problem? There’s nothing wrong with providing more lore for context as to why these more hostile races are the way that they are. The issue comes in when we have to extend a metaphorical olive branch and be best buddies with every kobold and gnoll clan we encounter.
This is suppose to be World of WARcraft after all.
You said it was okay for monster races to be portrayed as 100% evil, as long as they weren’t based on any irl culture. I’m telling you there’s always a connection to the real world when you create such a race. You ARE bringing up uncomfortable irl issues when you write a such a race. Doesn’t matter what accent they have.
Warcraft is a gargantuan setting spanning across 30 years of games and books and comics and other media
It can and will handle the “”“complexity”“” that comes with renouncing the evil race trope
It’s a problem because it’s dumb and it sucks
But why won’t game do the thinking for me, i don’t like thinking about complex moral judgements, says the person who pleads for simplicity