Moral lessons are one thing. I will admit, power always fluctuates in this universe. In that sense, warcraft has always been written like a comic book. But moral lessons have not really been the biggest substance of this games lore. The issue I have with a lot of night elf writing is how much they try to simply cut away stuff from it, or fixate on ancient history. Because ultimately, nothing about the ancient Highborne empire culture matters. They cast off all of that when they were charged with protecting Nordrassil. Most Night Elf lore that blizzard has made does not actually reflect the night elves we play, the few bits of lore we have for modern night elves tend to write them a little bit too… peacefully, i’d say.
Although in terms of power, it’s not really like that should be ignored. I would argue that doing the pre-patch quests and reading the Novellas, you never got a real night elf experience from any. You had a Horde experience Horde didn’t want, and a night elf experience that seems to forget a lot of their core themes and specialties. The only good thing is that the person writing the Horde side one seemed to try and use older Malfurion writing as his basis, not the one in Val’sharah. Otherwise, the night elf side of the storyline did the least possible for Night Elves because acknowledging everything they have means the Horde would actually have a costly fight.
If they intend to only use genocide for shock value (like Teldrassil) then I 100% agree. I think it was done well in blood elf lore initially, because it was people we understood were innately evil and mostly did not have free will. Outside of 1 guy who was still a pawn. It also developed blood elves into something very interesting. That hasn’t really happened to Night Elves. Because at the end of the day, it’s not their first time being victims of genocide. Like nature, a lot of their core personality back in wc3 involved stubborn tenacity and hardcore dedication to nature and their faith.
But that’s not true? Otherwise the Night Elves would have saved them from being wiped out by the Centaur. Tauren are chill and aren’t actively looking to make enemies.
Because they are loyal to the Horde. They see the Horde as family and even when things get rough, they stick to their ideals in making the Horde the best it can be.
Well, your idea of “debating honestly” is just taking everything you say for face value, and not denying a single claim. Which, at that point, it’s not a debate. It’s just you complaining about people not seeing things the way you see them.
I haven’t denied everything. We have found common ground that Blizzard has a human bias. We disagree on the reasons why that bias is in place. We also disagree on the role Night Elves play in that bias.
It wasn’t just to Night Elves. It was a peace summit between Tauren and Night Elves. It is just that Night Elves were killed, and every Tauren made it out okay, save for Hamuul Runetotem, who took an arrow to the back.
So again, your claim this is somehow Night Elf favoritism is baseless. It is just the typical slaughter of Night Elves for the sake of Horde story telling. This event did nothing for the story of Night Elves.
Wrathion is not a child. He looks like a fully grown man, with fully developed brain. Just like the Frostmane, who were were donned in weapons and armor, and treated everyone who came near with death threats.
Hardly. Humans are everywhere. On Horde side, RP seems to be booming. Night Elf communities? Dead and have been so most of BfA. The Night Elf RP community is where I live, man. Don’t act like I don’t know what I am saying.
Relevant that it is an aspect of Kaldorei life that has been completely abandoned 10k years ago, and any practicing Highborne was killed on sight throughout that time.
If you want to say all that is Kaldorei story telling, then it’s Blood Elf story telling too. Somehow I don’t think you believe that, but it is relevant of their history, and it is more connected to Blood Elf culture than it is to Kaldorei. So, if you want to say Legion was a Night Elf expansion, it was a Blood Elf expansion too.
I know people like to forget Tauren exist, but there was a lot of Tauren in Legion too.
LOL, they hated Illidan. They teamed up with him because their world was literally about to be torn in half by a Dark Titan. There several big moments where they were appalled by Illidans actions! Illidan wasn’t made to be a good guy in the slightest.
That wasn’t framed like it was okay… I think the phased uttered immediately after was “YOU DOOMED US ALL, BETRAYER!”
Demon hunters is not Night Elf pandering. They are a caste all their own. They are the outliers of night elf society. They as specifically the anti-thesis to nelf culture.
You have all these examples of Blizzard favoring Night Elves, and every single one of them is Blizzard deviating from the Long-vigil and Elune aspects of Night Elf identity. Which has been the core of Night Elf cultural identity for the last 10k years, and ultimately the version of the Night Elves we meet in WC3 and Vanilla WoW.
Saying Highborne and Demon Hunters is Nelf pandering is like saying Void Elves are Blood Elf pandering.
We can’t see that. These events are many years apart, and Chronicle makes a point to say that Azshara is uninterest in War with the Zandalari, and went out of her way for a diplomatic (albeit via outright extortion) solution. Chronicle may not say the Empire of Zul was declining, but it doesn’t say the Night Elves were expanding into their territory either. It describes expeditionary forces, and the “Openly hostile trolls”
Now if this was from the perspective of the Kaldorei, then maybe you would have a leg to stand on. However, Chronicle is not written with that perspective. It is supposed to be a mostly objective recount of history (I think Blizzard say it is from the perspective of the Titans? ). So, when it says Azshara was not interested in conquest, it means she was not interested in conquest. When it says the Trolls were openly hostile, it means they were openly hostile.
Hey, you’re repeating yourself again, lovely. I guess I will repeat myself too. None of what you have shared actually proves what you say it proves.
I have refuted it at every turn.
Sure, Horde players who want to believe your bias perspective. You don’t need to convince them. They already want to believe you. Objective people are just going to see you repeat your failed arguments over and over again.
No, that wasn’t the complaint at all. He was expressing the feeling a lot of Nelf players have. Which is that the Night Elves are so often used as the scapegoat for story telling that never involves them, that it is starting to feel like active malice from Blizzard. Their power level has nothing to do with it, it’s the frequency in which bad things happen, and the Kaldorei’s inability to do anything on their own.
If a human out-engineered a Goblin, or a Dwarf was a stronger Voodoo priest than a Troll, you would be complaining here on the forums.
We can agree here. But I argue that War of Thorns was really they only time they have done it. Before war of thorns, they were just the obvious damsels in distress to be saved by the rest of the burly, hairy-chested Alliance.
Tamanii, Why is it, when this guy says the exact same thing as me, you throw him a like? But when I say it, you gotta be all “I am only replying to you so others aren’t mislead by your lies!”
It’s an example of Night Elves being used to garner sympathy and make the people doing the attacking (or getting accused of it) look bad. Of being used, as you put it, “Damsels in Distress”. Again, I never said that Night Elves don’t get killed. Just that when they do, Blizzard makes a deal about how it’s terrible in a way they don’t do with many other races- namely trolls.
Wrathion’s adult human body is not his real body because he’s a dragon, not a human… And the Frostmane whelps weren’t fully grown either. They were half the size of adult models and ⅔ the size of the next smallest Frostmane model.
The amount of people actively RP’ing Night Elves isn’t the same as people playing Night Elves.RP’ers, to say nothing of those who are active in community discords, are already sliver of the population on RP servers. Night Elves remain an extremely popular race that Blizzard still releases stuff for.
As pointed out before, Blizzard brings all Night Elf stuff right back to the Kaldorei Empire/War of the Ancients and what Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azharara - and others who were living participants- did, how it impacted them, and how they reacted.
It is indeed part of the history of Highborne, but Lothemar, Liadrin, and Rommath didn’t personally grow up in Surumar. They didn’t serve in the Moon Guard. They didn’t visit to Black Rook Hold. They didn’t live under Azshara’s rule. They didn’t fight in the War of the Ancients. They only know of it through stories. For Night Elves, particularly the main Night Elf characters of the franchise, this was their actual life.
It’d be awesome if Blizzard expanded more on what Night Elves stuff to things that’ve happened since then, but all that stuff involving Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azshara, the War of the Ancients (or its repeats), the Kaldorei Empire, Cenarius, the Emerald Nightmare, Ysera, etc is absolutely Night Elf related content. Now whether it’s GOOD content or not is definitely up for debate, and I’m not going to argue with people who say it’s bad. I think plenty of it is bad too. But I will argue that it’s lore with a Night Elf focus.
Afterall, the main reason why so many people thought the Nightborne were coming to Alliance and why so many considered them going Horde to be a betrayal was because of their affiliation with Night Elves.
And, yes Void Elves are absolutely part of Blizzard’s clumsy attempt to pander to fans of Blood Elves- particularly those who wanted to play them on Alliance rather than on the Horde. I mean as far as many people are concerned, they’re still not enough like Blood/High Elves. And if Blizzard decided to have Void Elf content that’s all about Quel’thalas, Kaelthas, the Troll Wars, and Magister Umbric’s family, that’d totally double as Blood Elf content and pandering alongside High/Void Elves.
That was Turalyan’s initial response. He got over it pretty quick. The story vindicated Illidan in the end and through his actions, he earned the begrudging respect of the other heroes.
Yes, the events are many years apart. The Titans, from their point of view, state that Azshara (who I suppose interviewed her and received honest answers?) had no interest in conquest. Yet their accounts mention her expeditionary forces travelling into other lands before Trolls attack her. And the maps over the years show her empire expanding across others’ lands.
The fact that Trolls are repeatedly presented as being totally unreasonable and that this is as good a reason as any to genocide/displace them- and how Blizzard tries to whitewash it and justify it is kind of how this whole exchange began. Blizzards decides that what the Titans say is the unbiased truth.
For Night Elves to remain useful to Blizzard as damsels in distress and victims, they have to be regularly framed as being pretty/good/right. Because it’s harder to garner sympathy for a race that’s framed as just as flawed as any other, and even harder to do for a race regularly framed as being ugly/bad/wrong.
The OP discusses that, as well as the use of Night Elf suffering by Blizzard, for the sake of making us feel bad for them. You talk about them serving as ”Damsels in Distress”.
[“But it serves no purpose other than to say how sad and beaten Night Elves are and then they do nothing about it. I can understand the use of tragedy as a rallying point – but not when it leads to nothing. “
](To Writers: From a nelf fan)I agree that Night Elves are used by Blizzard in an attempt to try and frame what’s happening as very bad and they’re using the Night Elves as Damsels in Distress.
If a character’s suffering is constantly played up for tragedy and an attempt to invoke pity/pathos/heroics, it’s bad writing, but it’s not the narrative and writers hating the character.
I’ve liked your posts before too. Heck, I’ve agreed with some of those same points when you brought them up- like how Night Elves are damsels in distress and how their history should be expanded beyond just what happened during and in direct response to the Kaldorei Empire/War of the Ancients and the characters that experienced it. Or how Blizzard shouldn’t have the one society with the most matriarchal always being saved by dudebros.
But the post I liked also isn’t arguing that trolls aren’t ever used as vehicle for racist stereotypes. It’s not trying to argue that models half the size of adult models called whelps are adults.
It has become more of a thing under WoW. The RTS was a lot more comfortable showing characters/races as being more complex, but WoW has definitely embraced more of the comic book storytelling- with more black and white morality, a focus on the personal exploits of heroic heroes and dastardly villains, and more and more big speeches about hope/love/honor/redemption.
The ancient Highborne culture matters because it’s what Blizzard keeps coming back to for Night Elf stuff. All that stuff that happened thousands of years ago involving Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azshara, the War of the Ancients (or its repeats), the Kaldorei Empire, Cenarius, the Emerald Nightmare, Ysera, etc is absolutely Night Elf related content.
But yeah, they should definitely stop mining that well and focus more on what Night Elves have done since then.
My suggestion was to have Blizzard stop the tendency of having the bad guys attack them. If Blizzard feels they need to keep using somebody getting killed in droves for the sake of tragedy or to show us how dastardly/threatening a character is, they’ve got dozens of other races to use.
Yet his human form appears as a fully grown adult. Explain to me the mental maturity rate of dragons and Trolls.
Because I think if a Troll is capable of wearing armor and wielding weapons, being openly hostile, and cry our death threats with sadistic pleasure, they are not “Innocent, helpless children”
They are warriors.
Yet are relevant when we are discussing Night Elf portrayal in the story. People will always play a races for the aesthetics. The fact that the Nelf RP population has become near non-existent in the wake of BFA reveals that people who care about the Night Elf portrayal in the story and lore are unhappy with it.
It doesn’t matter. The Highborne is culturally dissimilar to the Night Elves. So much so, that even Blizzard thought the Nightborne were a closer fit to Blood Elves than they were to Night Elves.
if you want to say Suramar was Night Elf pandering, then Void Elves are Blood Elf pandering.
Except, at least, Void Elf and Blood Elf culture is the same. So that is even more true than saying Highborne stuff is nelf related.
You are missing the point here. You are not just saying that is has nelf focus, you are using it as a platform to suggest that Blizzard has a pandering bias to Night Elves… Which doesn’t hold any water because not only is it not what nelf players wanted or asked for, it further serves to deconstruct Kaldorei identity and culture.
The readmittance of the Highborne in the Kaldorei society is such an absurd thing, because it undoes something that has shaped Kaldorei culture for the last 10k years, and it serves to homogenize the Kaldorei into the human, more “civilized” races of the Alliance.
If this entire argument began with you making a claim about how Blizzard shows favoritism to the “civilized” and “Imperial coded” races of Azeroth, then you don’t have a better example of that then Blizzards complete defamation of Kaldorei identity.
But if you are going to say that, and in the same breath, say the Kaldorei is one of the main races that is served and advantaged by that bias, then your credibility is totally lost.
An assumption made by you, not necessarily the truth. For all we know, it is something he never gets over.
Not really. Illidan’s actions in Legion stand alone from his actions prior to that. He still is denied the respect from Tyrande and Malfurion.
All of that doesn’t change the face that he is, specifically meant to be an outlier and antithesis of the Kaldorei culture and way of life. It’s not nelf pandering.
We have zero evidence of Troll genocide or displacement. We don’t know how much their empire/populations declined. The fact that we hear about Azshara’s expeditionary forces not coming into contact with Troll resistance, and we are explicitly told that Azshara was disinterest in conquest, heavily suggests that there was no Troll denizens in those areas.
So again, you are making assumptions from the basis of headcanon, not what the lore actually says.
Not really. They just have to not be actively hurting people or doing bad things.
Maybe, but it could be, and it feels that way, is the point. And I argue that prior to war of thorns, the damseling of the Night Elves was done with indifference. There was far less moral signaling with it in Cata, and more over, there was never any resolution to it.
To this day, Ashenvale is populated with Horde deforesting large swaths of Kaldorei territory, and a looming, unanswered question of whether or not Ashenvale has any Horde presence at all. So, clearly, the narrative doesn’t express any concern for the fate of the Night Elves. It is a perpetual, unending and indifferent distress to populate Nelf zones with character motivation.
Unlike preCata versions of those Zones, which was mostly just Night Elves defending their own zones, and tending to the wilds and native flora and fauna found there.
But you have to see how those things ARE debatable though. I have already said that your perception is valid one. It’s just your insistence that it HAS to be the objective truth that is the problem.
For instance. I believe the Alliance is a vehicle for Human imperialism. I believe the Alliance is just Humans vassalizing nonHuman races and cleverly disguising it as diplomacy and cooperation.
If people want to debate that with me, I can bring up a number of examples of why I think that, and I can show them the evidence that convinces me.
What I can’t say is that is an objective truth of the lore. Just like you can’t say that Frostmane whelps are children given how they act. You want to perceive it that way? Fine, but not everyone has to agree with you, and there is plenty of valid evidence to support their perception as well as yours.
But they don’t. Which is why I outright reject your premise that Night Elves are somehow on the advantageous side this supposed racial coding.
First, I am not convinced there is any actual racial coding going on. Second, if there was, Night Elves would be a victim of it just as much as Trolls have been. If not more so.
I would argue that they also kill a ton of other races, but they only dwell on it with Night Elves. I’d actually argue it’s always been that way though. Even when WoW came out, it said stuff in the night elf intro about how many of them are left. But the only playable race that wasn’t nearly wiped out after wc3 were the Dwarves. They even retconned Siege of Orgrimmar after the fact so it was a minority of Orcs that stayed with Garrosh. They only want ‘meaningful’ losses to happen to a race whose lore they constantly throw out the window.
I would also argue that Highborne empire lore is general elf lore. It is more reflective of all the others barring the Void Elves, because the same core values of that Empire were preserved by the Highborne when they went east. It’s night elf related, but you cannot really compare who they were with who they are now. Their ancient empire lore is a foil to show that they changed themselves. So focusing on expanding the lore of that ancient empire means very little for modern night elves, unless blizzard also expands on the Highborne who returned to society and how their society is continuously changing because of it. But based off Suramar, blizzard seems content to completely ignore that the Highborne returned.
There is no honest debate with you. If you had actual quotes, links, references, etc to back up your claims (well mostly anti-claims) you’d have posted them a long time ago and you wouldn’t crop out others’ responses to rob them of context before responding to them. You’re not even responding directly to me in the thread.
And I definitely don’t expect you to be able to see examples of racism or racist tropes in WoW’s race coding. Afterall, you can’t see any of the real world parallels with the following.
Practice a religion called 'Voodoo" that is chock full of references to West African and derived religions.
Speak with an African inspired accent
Have temple cities featuring Precolumbian stone pyramids, are said to ritually sacrifice their foes, and they wield macuahuitl-style weapons.
Travel about in outrigger canoes, triangular shaped sail boats, wear tiki masks and live in Polynesian style stilt houses.
But there’s a lot of people who unfortunately think racism begins/ends with swastikas and clan hoods. This is sadly not the truth.
No, I’m just saying Blizzard has a disproportionate Night Elf focus - along with Humans and Orcs, but they’re at least the OG races… More specifically, that Blizzard likes to specifically create or frame situations where aggression against Night Elves is treated as being wrong/bad in a way that it isn’t when it comes to violence against many other less popular races.
You’re the one trying to conflate it into me stating that Blizzard would never do anything bad to them, and always gives Night Elf fans exactly what they want.
The past two storylines in which the Warchief goes crazy and starts on the warpath begin with fighting with Night Elves in Northern Kalimdor. And before that, it was the Orcs that got hopped up on demon juice. The race that’s currently clear cutting Azshara (Goblins, especially Gallywix) are not treated sympathetically for it at all. BfA isn’t the only example of Night Elf suffering being played for tragedy or being used to spur the good/right characters to act against the bad/wrong ones. It’s just the most blatant and high profile example.
A child wielding weapons, armor, and crying death threats is still a child. More tragically, they’re a child soldier. Blizzard wrote a scenario featuring child soldiers in which we’re sent out specifically to kill them like it’s the most regular thing in the world. That’s messed up.
RP’ers pick races based largely on aesthetics too. Humans/Elves aren’t far and away the most popular RP races simply because they’ve had the best/richest story in WoW. And all RP has taken a nosedive in BfA compared to when it started and countless guilds/communities/servers have dropped in activity. But Night Elves remain among the most popular races.
Like I said before: Yes, Void Elves are absolutely part of Blizzard’s clumsy attempt to pander to fans of Blood Elves particularly those who wanted to play them on Alliance rather than on the Horde. I mean as far as many people are concerned, they’re still not enough like Blood/High Elves. And if/when Blizzard decided to have Void Elf content that’s all about Quel’thalas, Kaelthas, the Troll Wars, and Magister Umbric’s family, that’d totally double as Blood Elf content and alongside High/Void Elves.
I agree with you on that point.
And as I said before: It’d be awesome if Blizzard expanded more on what Night Elves stuff to things that’ve happened since then, but all that stuff involving Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azshara, the War of the Ancients (or its repeats), the Kaldorei Empire, Cenarius, the Emerald Nightmare, Ysera, etc is absolutely Night Elf related content. It’s also why so many people were surprised and upset with Nightborne going Horde. They thought they’d go Alliance because, you know, Night Elves.
Taraulyon got over it pretty quick because his initial reaction was to call Illidan a betrayer and try and strike Illidan down. He stopped trying to strike Illidan down and stopped treating him like a betrayer and and instead went back to working alongside him on the Vindicaarr.
The lore tries to paint her in the best light and tries to make it the Troll’s fault for picking a fight, but she’s still expanding into territory that’s not hers, built homes there, had her troops killing trolls, and eventually territory that was once part of the trolls was now hers.
That the text itself tries to white wash it is exactly what I mean by Blizzard framing opposition to Night Elves as being bad/wrong and specifically creating situations to try and make the player feel better about Trolls getting genocide/displaced.
Just as you and I have noticed that despite Blizzard constantly portraying Anduin and Stormwind as being reasonable and not interested in conquest, they’re end actions are still those of an imperialist hegemony. They did the same with the Kaldorei Empire, only Azshara’s campaign included a lot more killing and outright taking land for herself.
You can’t have a Damsel in Distress if the you’re being framed as a bad/wrong person that the story doesn’t encourage you to care about. Just being in distress doesn’t make a character a Damsel in Distress. The villain has to cause the distress, thus spurring the heroes to action.
That Night Elves, of all the races in WoW, are the ones that repeatedly get attacked in order for Blizzard to tell us who the good/bad guys in a conflict are.
That’s the thing… I am not making claims. You are. And I have refuted all of them. You have misrepresented your evidence. All of your claims require an extrapolation of the lore.
Which is fine, but don’t pretend like it’s objective.
I see Blizzard taking inspiration from real world cultures. I do not see it as coding in the way you are describing. Especially not with the intent in framing as some sort of European colonial fantasy.
Especially when included in your claim that the Night Elves part of that colonial coding. If anything, the Night Elves are coded as European Pagans and Pre-Meiji Japan, between “Westernized” by the colonial coded races, who are taking advantage of the war and displacement that has come to their lands at the hands of the Horde.
If I believed Blizzard was that deep, I would believe that to be the case. Blizzard isn’t that deep though. The Horde races are “coded” as they are for aesthetic reasons. The Alliance is “coded” as they are for aesthetic reasons. There is no racist framing going on, there is just weaponized intertextuality and nostalgia, based upon the precedents of pervious expansions and games.
A Druid of the Talon wanting to drive off the creatures who are assaulting sacred shrines is racist? That does sound like the laziest argument I have ever heard, and is not worth my time.
Yes.
Racism and Slavery is a crime every race has had to suffer through. I know that is an unpopular opinion in this day and age, but it’s the truth.
And you are wrong.
You keep saying this, and I have proven you wrong several times now.
When it comes to the faction conflict, it is.
Again, you keep saying this, but you have yet to rationalize some key details. Despite Wrathion being a Welp, his human appearance appears a fully developed adult, and he has a mental acuity to rival the greatest minds of Mortal races. I do not think we can call him a Child.
Likewise, while physically small for Trolls, the Frostmane welps are still taller than the adults of many mortal races. They are arms, armored, openly hostile, launching night raids against the Dwarves. They are organized and militarized, showing advanced mental acuity, and again, their dialogue is not dialogue you would expect from children.
You can use situational evidence and draw a conclusion that they are children, that’s fine. But again, do not pretend it is at all objective. I can use situational evidence to say the opposite and it’s just as valid, if not more so.
Not really. Culture and lore play a big part.
That is a lie.
Human/orc/Blood Elf/Worgen RP is still booming. Far beyond anything that can pass as a Night Elf RP community.
As I mentioned before, the Night Elf community can barely scape up 10 people for RP events.
Except I don’t believe that. I was using it as an example for how absurd your claim is that Highborne/Nightborne lore is nelf lore. But it seems you are just okay with being absurd.
No it’s not.
They had bigger problems, you know, fighting an unending demon army. That’s not him “Getting over it.”
Illidan isn’t Night Elf lore. He is the antithesis to everything Night Elves stand for.
Trolls that were described as openly hostile and attacking her people.
“Once” part of the Trolls. Not anymore, and we can’t say if the Empire of Zul hadn’t declined to the point that Trolls were no longer inhabiting those areas.
Considering that it is never mentioned that the Night Elves invaded Troll territory, and even made a point to say Azshara had no interest in conquest. It is safer to assume the Empire of Zul regressed on it’s own.
Or just a natural transition of power. They aren’t trying to frame anything here. Just describing the death of one Empire and the rise of another.
It’s absolutely childish of you to say that just because the story doesn’t describe the genocide and displacement of the trolls, that it is racist coding and framing. It could just be no genocide and displacement ever took place. In fact, that seems to be what the lore is suggesting, not your own headcanon.
Actually it does. Being a Damsel in distress just requires one to be a damsel and in distress. Especially in Wow, where villainy often depends on perspective. Like I mentioned already, Cata, the Horde was the aggressors, but the game hardly depicted either side as Good or Evil.
That was Stonetalon, and if you play the Hordeside leveling campaign, you’d be there when Garoosh LITERALLY dropped the Orc sergeant responsible from the Horde… and over a cliff as well.
There were 2 times druids were killed by Garrosh’s Horde, or made it to seem like they did:
The shattering Novel-NIght Elves were attacked by Twilight’s Hammer Orcs, made to look like Horde Orcs, and witnessed by Hamuul Runetotem (Horde Archdruid). Hamuul reported to Cairne who then went off on Garrosh
The druid school in Stontalon, bombed by an orc general, in Cata which is the event which ends with the idiot orc being “dismissed” (thrown off a cliff)
All in all, I’d say the villain batting of Garrosh, in books, might have started in Wolfheart (Horde invasion of Ashenvale) or Tides of War, in game likely not till he goes after the divine bell.
The thing is, THIS was the Garrosh the player Horde needed, willing to take the fight to the alliance if need be, but still following SOME kind of code of honor (not killing kids/children) and looking out for all of the Horde.
Garrosh was honorable for all of one single quest, where Blizzard themselves admitted it was out of his canonical characterization. He wasn’t a hero. He was a villain.
And Blizzard decided the best way to show said honor was to face him off against Krom’gar, who was portrayed a being even worse. Krom’gar’s crime? Being even more violent towards Night Elves than Garrosh was.
Or, you know, bombing a school. Them being Night Elves is irrelevant.
But when you look at everything through the lens of race, I suppose bombing a school doesn’t seem as problematic.
Frostmane Welps: Openly hostile.
Stonetalon Druids: Literally cowering in fear.
Frostmane Welps: Armed combatants
Stonetalon Druids: Unarmed neutral noncombatants
Frostmane Welps: An organized military force lead by Grik’nir the Cold
Stonetalon Druids: Part of the Cenarian Circle, completely uninvolved with the War
But clearly, the only thing that matters here is race, right?
So you’re not actually arguing for anything. Just being contrarian. This is why there is no honest debate with you.
Blizzard didn’t just take inspiration from real world cultures. In the case of Trolls, they also use tropes, and stock characters, which aren’t actually based on any actual cultures, but rather on popular (and often racist) ideas.
Of course I don’t think the folks at Blizzard are being intentionally malicious. And you’re right, they’re not being deep or self reflective. That’s why so many unconscious biases and use of racist tropes persists.
If all she cares about is the safety of the shrine, she wouldn’t have to go off on a tangent about how some races are inferior to others and openly admits to as a reason to drive them off.
Stuff like this is why I don’t expect you to be able to correctly identify/acknowledge instances of racism. You can’t even acknowledge racism when a member of one fictional race is expressing racist attitudes against another fictional race.
You call it “an unpopular opinion in this day and age, but it’s the truth,” followed by absolutely no actual figures or references to back it up. of the role chattel slavery’s played in the history of systemic racism in the US.
Stuff like this is why I don’t expect you to be able to correctly identify/acknowledge instances of racism. You can’t even acknowledge some of the highest profile examples of racism in the real world.
Yep. Humans -especially the UK/American mashup that’s Stormwind- and the concept of American Exceptionalism Human potential are definitely at the top of the pack in WoW when it comes to justifying Imperialism. You’ve called out Blizzard on it’s Human imperialism, and I agree. I think it’d be even more egregious if Night Elves spoke with Celtic/Japanese accents, and Blizzard drew on common US media portrayals of Celtic/Japanese based on tropes set up in the 1800’s, and sent us on quests to put them down whenever they rose up.
But WoW’s Imperialism doesn’t end with Humans and Night Elves and other Alliance races. Those are the peaceful conquests. Blizzard like to have other races be mean to humans so the Humans can slaughter them: Drust. And Trolls. And Gnolls. And Kobolds.
And it doesn’t just have Humans as perpetrators of imperialist expansion. Elves are also part of this overall framework, with the Night Elves’ imperial past and participation in the Alliance’s current Imperial actions are similarly whitewashed and swept under the rug. High/Blood Elves too.
Even the Horde gets in on this, with the Horde running roughshod over indgenous tribal peoples that are in turn villainized: Not Humans and Elves, of course, but the Forest, Jungle, and Sand Troll tribes, Centaur, Quillboar, etc.
BUT then WoW turns around at other times and declares that bloody Imperial conquests of the characters it wants us to not like (at the time) are a bad thing actually! Particularly when it puts Humans and Elves at risk. They don’t try to white wash it. They play that stuff for melodrama, cast the perpetrator in the role of villain, their victims and their allies as heroes, and we get NPCs preaching about freedom, honor, peace, etc.
I’m right.
Be sure to remember how right I am when Night Elves when in the next expansion, Tyrande killsteals Nathanos from you before you follow her into the Maw to rescue Night Elf souls, then venture into the the Emerald Dream Ardenweald and learn more about Ysera, Cenarius and Elune.
WoW’s narrative isn’t some to some dispassionate amoral tale of civilizations rising/clashing/falling in a natural Darwinian, “survival of the fittest ‘’ cycle. Where no judgement is cast and everything is on the table as long as your side wins.
WoW story engages in all kinds of moral framing and uses the language of visual media to cast characters as heroes/villains. It’s story is full of big goods and big bads. Who wins/loses doesn’t depend on the numbers, skill equipment, resources, or tactics of the participants. It depends on who Blizzard decides is going to win in order to get the kind of story they want depending on the characters involved.
It’s why whenever they want to make Garrosh/Sylvanas/Horde down the path of antagonist, they just contrive a situation where they can have them be bad and start hostilities in Northern Kalidmor. And when they want to have someone look even worse than him in comparison- like Cultsits or a rogue general- they have them be even crueler to Night Elves.
That is a lie.
Human/orc/Blood Elf/Worgen RP is still booming. Far beyond anything that can pass as a Night Elf RP community.
As I mentioned before, the Night Elf community can barely scape up 10 people for RP events.
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It’s the truth.
Night Elf players don’t have any special monopoly on playing a race for aesthetics/story/lore. RP for everyone is down. But Night Elves remain the most popular race. This is objective truth, reflected in the numbers. It may be an unpopular opinion these days, but it’s true.
You make the salient point that Blood/High/Void Elves have shared history and lore and then turn around and claim the idea is absurd? They’ve only been separate races for at most a couple of decades. In the case of Void Elves, barely a couple of years.
Turalyon was dealing with the unending demon army when he accused Illidan of being a betrayer and tried to strike him down. Nothing about the situation or their interactions before/after Illidan killed Xe’ra changed. He got over it.
Nothing ever implies that Trolls had up and abandoned their previous territory before Night Elves just moved in. Elves expanded, Trolls attacked, Elves killed them and kept expanding. It’s genocide/displacement.
