i recall dark skin was always available in warcraft from classic to shadowlands. shadowlands just added more skin colors and more facial features (faces) so people of african/ asian descent can create themselves. but dark skin was always there, its just that they were rarely represented in NPC’s as blondes are almost everywhere you go. Turalyon, Arthas, Alleria, etc.
back then, you had to create a very dark man with the facial features of a european which looks a bit horrible with the older graphics. i felt bad for people with dark skin haha.
As for me i never had a problem, since my skin is a bit pale. I was represented by Edwin Vancleef and Vanessa Vancleef pretty much.
Humans descend from vrykuls who themselves have a wide range of skin colors.
you do know these humans descend from places like Gilneas and Lordaeron and Kul tiras and such…right? They arent native to Tanaris.
Why do you have to be weird about skin colour? Don’t be that person.
Is it really that much to ask to just roll with that it exists without blaming something and begrudgingly mumble about “it makes no sense”?
And as mentioned, it’s been portrayed already in the past. Even if it didn’t, what exactly is the issue?
Like, even if Warcraft had at this point up until today never had a human character of a different skin-tone, then why would it be an issue to suddenly have it aswell? It doesn’t hurt you, it doesn’t impact anything related to the story, setting or even gameplay. At worst it does literally nothing, no bad consequences for the game or setting. At better it adds some additional safety and comfort for people or just a bit of extra happiness and good feels overall.
There is ZERO reason to not just accept it without any complaints.
Draenei are allowed to be various shades of blue from a sort of aquamarine colour to purple and can even be white (not caucasian but literally white) and nobody gives a single care*.
Worgen can have all sorts of fur colours, as can tauren, vulpera, and pandaren and nobody is like “well we need to justify the amount of melanin in their hides!”
Trolls are an entire LGBTQIA+ flag in their own right with the amount of options they have.
But suggest for even a moment that humans can be anything other than white and the weirdos crawl out the woodwork to be like “uhm actually…”
They have a roughly similar facial shape, but Anduin takes after his mother a lot more than he does Varian - especially compared to the other characters mentioned in that rant. There’s a reason why people kept memeing that Anduin was secretly Arthas’ son instead of Varian’s.
My cousins both embody this though; one looks much more like my Uncle, the other much more like my Aunt. So I guess it’s just never really stood out much to me.
I don’t think it’s an issue that people assume it works the ‘normal way’ baseline. In a good amount of other fantasy settings you’ll find that that is the case, WoW is very much an exception to the norm re: how human (and high/blood elf) skin color is treated, and there really isn’t much if any writing (especially in-game) that pays attention to that topic at all.
As far as my personal opinion on it goes, I’m just glad people are that little bit more deterred from playing extremely embarrassing racial stereotypes. (looking at you, uldum/tanaris/stranglethorn human RPers).
