I’m not sure what you mean here tbh. If you mean that bigotry and racism IC are great plot-devices that Blizzard has used (and still uses) that’s true.
But racism is frowned upon by lots of characters. Having reasonable people among unreasonable people is also a classic narrative device from Blizzard.
Think of Wrath of the Lich King: you have the hotheaded Garrosh and Varian, but also Jaina, Tirion, Rhonin and Thrall trying to take the diplomatic route and acting as the voice of reason.
Actually a lot of the conflicts you quote had nothing to do with racism.
As for like WotA / Reign of Chaos etc showed cohesion over division, with the races overcoming their prejudices to fight actually evil demons that wanted to see the world burn.
Racism exists, but so does the tendency to believe that it shouldn’t exist or it shouldn’t be expressed - especially when it’s directed against your allies.
Besides, racial tensions as a narrative tool have been running low since basically the start of the game. The idea that you start a war because you think all X races should be exterminated is an easy narrative tool imo. Not very good if you want gray morality. Besides even in WoW most racist characters are usually depicted as bigoted villains.
Edit.
I know a blood elf as a citizen of the Alliance sounds very weird… almost as much as void elves huh. I recall there was a guild which captured high elves and forced them to feed on fel magic to make their eyes turn green. Tbh an elf with green eyes might be subject to a lot of discrimination aye, but guards defending a presumed citizen of the Alliance and preventing a mob from murdering a guy on the streets seems 100% legit. You wanted conflict? There it was. You just happened to be on the short end of the stick.
My probably biggest peeve regarding racism is people telling me OOC that I shouldn’t have my character question her loyalty to the Alliance and that I should disregard any racism she’s facing in RP because it wouldn’t be as wide-spread lore-wise. If things happen in RP, my char is going to react to them in her own way!
It came from the assumption that velves should be glad for being welcomed into the Alliance and being treated well save for that one bit of dialogue coming from a Cathedral NPC. Been told that I should just straight-out void all of the riots and pretend these months of RP have never happened.
You say that but I’m sure you’d be surprised to find out that, in fact, common people tend to follow their leaders. When your faction war leaders, i.e. Garrosh and Varian respectively hate each other’s guts, common footmen will do so too. Especially following the Wrathgate. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make, since math tells me that the amount of hot-heads in total populace would be much bigger than the diplomats (which mostly consist of very studied people, which in turn are supposed to be very rare anyways).
Ah yes. The Troll Wars had nothing to do with trolls and War of the Ancients had nothing to do with demons. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to find out that the faction splits between participants in the respective conflicts were race-based.
I am sure you’ll be also surprised to find out that Azeroth’s populace isn’t living in the 21st Century on Planet Earth. They do not exist in the same world as us. If racism wasn’t so widely accepted in Warcraft universe, why would people follow Garithos and not just overthrow him? Maybe, it’s because they accepted his views…?
Yeah, and there’s literally not a single problem with characters being bigoted. IC stays IC, mate. Bigoted villains still exist, you can’t do anything about it. Period.
What tends to fly over people’s heads, imo, is that the game often portrays racism (especially intra-factional) as a flaw, or a tragic result of circumstances, and not really as something virtuous. You can often tell whether a character’s bigotry is portrayed positively or negatively by the RPer, even worse if it gets into icky territory with thinly-veiled projections of RL bigotry.
Then again, it’s ultimately on Blizzard for lumping races, factions, and goals/values behind the same dividing lines, inviting a very trite blood-and-soil interpretation where political/factional hate is inherently mixed with racial hate, which is quite limiting, imo.
People have been complaining about ‘racist’ characters since vanilla. There was one guy (whose name I forget - Nickos maybe?) who would hold daily protests/ yelling sessions about how the Night Elves should be kicked out of Stormwind.
For me there are two main issues with ‘racist’ characters. Firstly - there always seems to be so many of them. This is probably not so much of an issue because what you’ll tend to find is the elf-hating northmen tend to guild together, which means whenever you encounter them there’s 5-10 people all muttering some variation on knife-ears, which makes it seem like a worse problem than it really is. The setting suggests that whilst people certainly don’t get along very often, race is typically a fairly minor factor in that.
Secondly, it’s often been the case that ‘racist’ characters are simply doing it to be edgy, or for purely OOC reasons. There are thankfully people out there (as evidenced by this thread) who have taken the time to actually consider why their character might feel this way and have put enough thought into it to make it an actual discussion point rather than a “quirk”, but historically this hasn’t been the majority.
Which is fine! Written like that it might seem like a very thin excuse to some, but in reality you’re talking about decades of deep philosophical and religious belief. That’s a big deal.
Yeah, there were no night elves fighting alongside demons you’re right.
Anyway this argument misses the point: it’s not that the war was done by different races but rather that racism wasn’t a cause in WotA. Demons don’t attack because of racism but because they want to destroy the world and feed of its energies etc etc.
And elves didn’t fight back because of racism. Quite the opposite some elves were enthralled by demons while the resistance had to unite and work together with other races in spite of racism and prejudice.
Some maybe were racists, others were not. To claim that we know from their lack of rebellion that a majority of people was thinking like him is quite stupid. Dwarves (and elves) followed Garithos despite hating him and being subjected to his discrimination.
Why would humans risk to dethrone the last bastion of order in Lordaeron (someone who used to be of moderate rank in the military before) and potentially give even more ground to the undead menace?
As you said yourself:
Cool, you can also do the math (and upon which data/statistics?) or you just intuitively think so? Because that’s not math.
Arguably most leaders (even if they hold prejudices of sort) are depicted as good guys in the end. In general fantasy wants to inspire positive examples over bad ones.
