Like I said, Blizzard devs officially disagree with you about the “bad guys” thing.
The devs also said they would never make high elves playable. But they changed their minds. Give it time.
I personally think blizz should’ve stuck to their guns when they initially released the Void Elves. Giving them high elf customizations opened a whole can of worms that can’t be closed now
at this point I consider trusting the Blizz devs to be a bad faith argument in and of itself
I did mention that, yes.
But compared to the other races that have joined the Horde (all of whom, save for the Pandaren of the Wandering Isle, have had a bad interaction with the Alliance at some point) the Highmountain Tauren have only joined and stayed due to that bond of friendship and racial identity.
Suuuuure they are. Okay Erevien, go back to your corner and settle down.
Indeed. Sure Blizzard has used the Horde more than once to do a villain arc. But within that villain arc there’s always those who stand up to the villain, who fight for the ‘true Horde’ and what it’s supposed to represent.
During Garrosh’s reign pretty much all of the racial leaders of the Horde at that time, save for Gallywix, turned on him, because he was destroying the Horde, although the rebellion was spearheaded by Vol’jin.
During Sylvanas’s reign, there was a lot of rumbling and discontent among the leaders (although Sylvanas had more support than Garrosh did) but it was Baine and Saurfang that rallied the Horde against the tyrant Queen.
It’s unlikely that there will be another despotic Horde leader moving forward, since the Horde is now being run by a council. Even the Forsaken are council led (council within a council, council-ception?), so while the Horde may occasionally do evil things, it won’t be as ‘The Horde’ it will be on an individual unit level I’d imagine.
What’s honestly throwing me though are certain comments I’m seeing, and it’s getting surprisingly loud, all things considered, and that is that it’s time to make the Alliance go ‘full fascist’ and have Turalyon or one of the other Alliance leaders (like Danath) go ‘full racist’ against the Horde. And, I mean… I get it right? Horde players want to feel like they’re not the villains for once. They want the Alliance to get beaten by the bat. And racism does exist within WoW lore. Garithos was extremely racist towards non-humans back in Warcraft 3.
But these same people calling for characters in WoW to delve into racist behaviours, are also the same people calling out Blizzard for using racist writing tropes, and… I mean…
You can’t call out writers for using racist language/character development and condemn them, and then demand that those same writers use racist language/character development because it would make you feel better. That makes zero sense.
the Horde council was installed by Anduin to make the Horde weaker.
Well no, you are wrong
One thing is to use the in-game history of racial prejudice to move the plot and balance morality
Quite another is to use IRL racist tropes from the past 400 years to write the Races of the game based upon those same IRL peoples
I am for the former
I am violently against the latter
And to be clear, that includes using intra-European ethnic stereotypes: I don’t want to see Magni become a raging alcoholic that beats Moira or something (alcoholic irish trope), I don’t want to see Goblins written with neither antisemitic tropes nor cringe Southern Italian stereotypes (misognystic alcohoics)
Well no, frankly I disagree.
Either you trust the writers with using racist language/character development or you don’t. If you don’t, because as you said they’ve used racist tropes in their writing, either consciously or sub-consciously, then what do you think the ‘racist’ characters they create are going to go after the Horde for?
They’re going to attack their race, skin color, their culture, the way they talk, they’re going to call them savages etc. They’re going to rip into those wounds that PoC and other marginalized groups deal with in real life, often on a daily basis and you want Blizzard to dive into that for the sake of ‘Alliance bad’? No.
Blizzard has, to their credit, removed a lot of the racist language from the game, even the term greenskins (although whether that was because they saw it as a racist trope or because Games Workshop can be litigious is unclear, might be both), and they’ve been working to make the races they expand on, like the Tuskaar, more accurate to the culture they are influenced by, so I don’t think they want to backslide in that direction, and I’m with them, I don’t want to see them do that either.
They need other dividing lines if they want to go on the offensive against the Horde and treat them poorly. What happened at Teldrassil and Lordaeron City in BFA is a good starting point. Racism/fascism should always be a last resort.
Really? I beg to differ.
Then you’re differing with Blizzard, not with me.
They might disagree in principal but not in practice. I believe (read second hand somewhere) Christy Golden was quite content in using SS operations as basis on which to model the actions of the horde.
That seems a long way from where it aught to be.
That’s what we’re complaining about.
Lmao
Eg: Night Elves are an abomination amalgamation of Greece, Rome, Wiccans, Japan, Korea, and a slew of other things, and Trolls are a thoroughly concrete combination of Anglo Caribbean, Black USians, Haiti, Amerindians in Latin America, and West/Central/North Africa
The ethnic prejudice Night Elves have against the Trolls (due to eugenicist denial of their descent from Trolls) and the ethnic prejudice of Trolls against Night Elves (due to the loss of their lands during the Kaldorei Empire) is an example of in-game racism due to in-game histories
Absolutely ZERO of the characterization therein would require Trolls to invoke IRL analogues of Anti EAsian Prejudice and absolutely ZERO of the inverse would require Night Elves to perform in-game Anti-Blacknesss
You just need to be a competent writer
With the range
And self awareness
And ideally formal training or education in such topics
Or they can create villains that don’t rely on racism/fascism to be villains.
Using racism/fascism to create evil characters is a crutch and it’s completely unnecessary, it’s not creative and despite your meandering post, you know too damn well that people would get outraged, and understandably so, if Blizzard went and decided to go full racist/fascist with their villains.
Edit: To add on to this, if Blizzard were foolish enough to embrace racism/fascism again for the sake of ‘Alliance bad’ it would seriously embolden people within the WoW community who like to use racism as a tool to harass others, especially players who identify as/are PoC.
I’ve seen what happens when those people are emboldened and the WoW community already has more than enough of those types. Blizzard should not encourage them by giving them what they want.
Miss ma’am we are playing a video game whose premise is a race war based on coalitions of nations where every playable “race” is based upon at least 2 IRL ethnoracial, ethoreligious, or ethnonational groups.
There needs to be racial animus between the races of the factions lmao
And?
You can have a war between factions without resorting to racism/fascism. Look at BFA as a perfect example, the largest war between the factions in WoW’s history and it was not caused by racism or fascism.
Again, as I said above, using racism/fascism is a crutch, and an extremely weak, pathetic one at that. It’s not creative, and all it will do is embolden the worst parts of the WoW community.
Speaking of which, I did a brief check on your Twitter account, because your name isn’t unfamiliar to me. Weren’t you literally calling out someone for sending fascist/racist Turalyon memes the other day? With a picture showing Turalyon stomping on Zul’jin? Wasn’t ‘Fasc’ literally in their user name?
You really want to embolden those clowns by encouraging Blizzard to actually go into that territory? I don’t. You might be able to handle it when it they come swinging at you, but there are many others who can’t handle it the same way you can. Be more considerate, especially of those who would easily get harassed further by the crowd this move would embolden if Blizzard pushed forward with it.
You know what would happen. The fact that you’re seemingly okay with that troubles me.
i’m frustrated that they kept the horde’s dragon debauchery in the game/story but deleted trollbane calling eitrigg by his skin.
The person was using an edited image of a hate crime toward a black person in a movie in a rant wanting to kill Troll babies and pregnant woman that was sent to me and Zari.
Lol
Lmao
The alliance is getting the villain bat one way or another if Blizzard at all has announce of self respect, and it will require either them doing, as usual, the invocation of real life racism to designate someone as wrong due to their in-game coding (eg how Wrathion in 10.1 is now being described as smelling like spices and oils and sweat in a derogatory way), or they use more correct in-game racial animus that ought to exist in the first place because *it’s the literal premise of the game.
That’s all they know how to do, and the latter is intrinsic to the entire base premise of the entire game.
The point of the game was and needs to return to being “racism bad mkay”.
And you cannot have that without using it in the game.
Deeply unserious, rangeless reply
And that’s disgusting, it really is, but they were also using WoW imagery in it as well. That person is one of the clowns that I’m referring to, the people who would absolutely CHEER from their pit that’s been reserved for them in hell, if Blizzard did what you want them to do.
The Alliance can have the villain bat, I honestly don’t mind if they do, but IF/WHEN they do, racism/fascism should not be the reason why. Have it be blind rage or revenge. Many of the Alliance are still bitter over what happened during the Fourth War, and for good reason, maybe they decide that the Horde got off too easy after Sylvanas yeeted herself into the air as a puff of smoke. Maybe they think that the only way the red will be cleared off the ledger is if they wipe out Orgrimmar in the same way the Horde wiped out Teldrassil.
That is more believable than Turalyon or any other Alliance leader suddenly going full racist/fascist at the drop of a hat and leading the entire Alliance into war.
I do not condone, and will never condone, the use of racist/fascist themes in video games unless that video game is set in a historical period where such themes were present. And even then, they need to be handled respectfully, as to not cause more pain and outrage.
What you want isn’t the way forward champ. Be better.
Wait, they’re doing what now?