Yeah I don’t think so, I think it’s the same as basically any villain RP group. Moreover blizzard has severely under developed the “Humans only” policy with the Gilneas stuff being the first on screen example of them attacking non-undead that aren’t adventurers. The main thing people think of when they think of scarlets is religious zealotry, which historically at least in tabletop has always been a pretty fun villain concept to play with.
This isn’t a thing though? Half of these guilds spend their time arguing about how the scarlets aren’t actually racist just anti undead lmao. Most examples of this are baseless rumors made up by people, probably like yourself, who have some weird irl politic based complex about people playing pretend in a video game.
And that would be totally fine, if we weren’t talking about RPers. If we were talking general players who only really engage with quests and dungeons? Sure, they’d probably just look at the in-game evidence and conclude the Scarlets were just an evil anti-undead group.
But we’re talking about roleplayers. Roleplayers are already going to be more invested in the lore in general, because you kinda need to for roleplay. They’re going to be more inclined to know the biases of the Scarlets.
That is true too.
But there’s a cross-section of religious zealotry and discrete racism that the Scarlets, of all WoW factions, easily taps into which tracks with many American religiously zealous groups who also just so happen to espouse casual racist rhetoric.
(Thad Disclaimer: I’m not saying religious belief leads to racism, not that racism and religion are a thing. I’m strictly speaking about American religious groups that are akin to the Scarlets.)
And no, not every Scarlet roleplayer is going to do so for the same reason. Some just want to be the baddie in other peoples’ stories who never does any permanent damage to the other players, and gets to escape without permanent damage themselves, which is fine. Some just want to play as a member of some bad guy group. And there’s always dozens of other reasons.
But you specifically asked about people being weird about Scarlets, so I explained about weird Scarlets.
Though I’m questioning your initial intent, given you’ve suddenly changed this to some weird accusations about other people’s hypothetical political beliefs, while also trying to come across as some expert on Scarlet roleplayers at the same time.
It’s a thing, it’s a such a problem with two of the SC guilds on MG, people actively work to throw them out of Stormwind because all they do is disrupt things with their nastiness
Yes and in my experience since wotlk half or more than half of the Scarlet Guilds admitted dwarves and ICly elf (this was before velves were a thing) players. The most consistent and usual way that these guilds were played were zealots. Virtually every guild I’ve ever seen almost exclusively leans into zealotry and the anti-human stuff being almost entirely out group paranoia. I have also seen numerous very VERY weird stuff surrounding scarlet RP in regards to the people who OOCly hate them, such as harrassment and metagaming being seen as OK against scarlets where it wouldn’t be tolerated towards any other guild, or even villain guild. So I’ve personally seen a lot of people who’s mindset of “why would you rp as racist zealots unless u are one irl” in wow, hell I’ll even admit when I was a younger teenager I was pretty sympathetic of this mindset until I grew up and realized it was a completely unhinged way of viewing roleplay.
Mind you, this is all operating under the assumption there would somehow be something wrong with rping your guild as racists, there isn’t. But still this is execptionally rare.
Again, not really, it’s a very hamfisted comparison. Afaik the majority of living they kill (outside of adventurers) are non-scarlet aligned lordaeronian survivors. Most of it comes from a place of paranoia and there isn’t a direct link between their faith in game and the racism, more so partially Abbendis ideological (not religious beliefs because they fail to intersect these beliefs) and mostly paranoia as they’re literally killing other living humans. Even the big on screen example of them killing the worgen is more so a result of the worgens “curse” rather than them being seen as like “non human filth” or something.
FYI this isn’t how a lot of villain guilds work. I would say most villain guilds do not exclusively or even primarily do cross guild RP. It’s more or less the same as good/neutral aligned guilds in terms of most of the RP being within the guild.
It’s not hypothetical at all, multiple people have in this thread and others expressed that there is an inherent good in Blizz using the scarlet crusade as villains again because of contemporary irl politics.
I dunno, my own experience and those of others I speak with, and those of the vast, overwhelming majority of others unaffiliated with me who have expressed their opinions on various RP forums and external sites seem to have very different experiences than yours. Either you’re just trying to be a contrarian, or all these people are wrong and you and the minority expressing an opposing view are right.
I literally was discussing individual roleplayers. “Not every Scarlet roleplayer” is the exact context of that statement. Nothing I ever said was applying motivation to an entire guild.
Given our experiences are so utterly and wildly different, and you’ve openly expressed that you’re attributing dissenting opinions to a political stance, I don’t think there’s anything productive remaining in this conversation.
James Doohan voiced a ton of characters in the Star Trek Animated Series. In “Missing the Mark”, Mark Hamill voices every DC character he’s ever done…including himself!
Scarlet RPers have a constant issue with some seriously problematic people and a tendency for entirely too much guild based authoritarianism. On Horde side, it was the Blood Knight RPers in BC/Wrath, then for a while it was the Kor’Kron RPers until Garrosh got the boot, and now it’s back to being blood elf house guilds as nature intended.
This is purely casual observation, though.
And of course there’s crazies in every basket and plenty of normal people wanting to have some fun with an interesting piece of set dressing and some cool baked in concepts.
This feels almost like the current situation about Sokka. You need actual character flaws so characters can grow. And well Varian grew because of the people who sorounded him while his counterpart, Garrosh, didn’t and the people who surrounded Garrosh feed his darkest impulses(this includes Thrall)
Plenty of people tried to keep Garrosh in check. Thrall, Vol’jin, Cairne, Saurfang and others. He was surrounded by people who tried to push him along a different path.
The difference is that Garrosh was in a position of power to ignore and push out those people, and then did so.
That’s not a fair assessement and you only get that if you did not play the campaigns Hordeside. In Wrath it’s Saurfang who keeps telling Garoosh that he’d better behave and elsewhere it’s Thrall. But in the end in both cases, he refused to listen.
Did Garoosh get some bad cards in his deck? Sure… he was put in a position that he wasn’t ready for, but so was Anduin. Both made choices on how to play the cards they were dealt.
So lets start with Thrall, he did ultimately feed Garrosh’s pride too much, Thrall wanted the orcish people to keep their pride and ultimately that lead to Garrosh(and the Horde’s) undoing. Had Thrall been more sensible and mentioned to Garrosh the mistakes of his dad or gasp how his dad would never have redeemed himself without the Alliance’s help maybe he wouldn’t have turned out that way.
Cairne got killed off by Magatha before he could actually guide Garrosh and by extension Vol’jin became relatively distant to Garrosh to the point he almost got his people to leave the Horde. And due to Saurfang’s kid dying he was out of the picture as well.
That left Malkarok and later Zaela as the only one to truly council Garrosh. So while Garrosh not having sound council was not his fault per say, the events had ultimately conspired to make it so the only people near Garrosh to give him advice by the time he did become Warchief was the more warmongering amoung them.
I’ll grant you Thrall was the weakest “positive role model” figure, but you’re focusing exclusively on their TBC interactions and ignoring their Wrath to just before Cata ones. Thrall was always trying to tell Garrosh to keep his anger in check, even if it never sunk into dopey Garry’s head. It’s not fair to say Thrall wasn’t trying; it’s more accurate to say Thrall wasn’t doing a very good job.
I’m going to correct myself on this one; I had thought there were more interactions between the two pre-Mak’gora than there were. Cairne shouldn’t have been on my list.
Vol’jin became distant not only for the death of Cairne, but also because Vol’jin kept trying to check Garrosh’s lust for war, and Garrosh effectively (or literally?) called him a coward for it. This was of course after Cairne’s death, showing Vol’jin had still been trying to get through to thick-skulled Garry, until Garrosh pushed everything too far and Vol’jin made his death threat.
Vol’jin was there, was trying to advice Garrosh, but Garry wasn’t listening.
Here you’re focusing on the ending and ignoring Wrath before that. We have an actual in-game event showing what Saurfang’s relationship with Garrosh was like; putting Garrosh in his place when it came to poor tactical ideas. But you’re already aware of this, so moving on.
Unsurprisingly, I’m going to disagree, but not totally.
It wasn’t that Garrosh didn’t have sound council; he certainly did… Until he inevitably pushed them away (or as you pointed out, killed them in mak’gora due to Magatha Magatha’ing). I don’t want to give Garrosh a pass for not having proper council; he absolutely did. He chose to not listen, and he discarded them in favor of council that fed his bloodlust.
It was absolutely his own fault. It was never that he lacked proper people around him. It was always that he never cared to listen to them and would have rather listen to people telling him what he wanted to hear.
Regardless, he was not the sort of council Garrosh needed.
Vol’jin threatened to kill him. Why would he listen to someone like that?
And it was when he was warchief that he needed that council the most. The problem is he was elevated to a position where he never truly got the guidance he needed because the person Thrall was hoping to guide him, Cairne, died.
You’re missing the point. Vol’jin threatened to kill him after trying to curb Garrosh’s bloodlust. It wasn’t until the end, when Garrosh just would give a damn, that Vol’jin made his threat.
I disagree; it’s before he’s in such a position that he needed to be put in check. Before he had all the power to not listen. You don’t wait until someone has the ability to send an army out to destroy the world to put them in anger management. You do it well before they reach that point.
I think we can both agree that ultimately, Garrosh never should have been given the easy pass to important positions that Thrall gave him, and this is a big failing of Thrall.
