New update for Stormwinds guards: Black and asian skins to the NPCs. Positive or Lore-breaking?

Lore Story
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I would much prefer there to be an explanation as well, so long as it’s told through the world and not through some filler NPC-bark or throwaway cutscene. The reason as to why they might want to avoid creating an explanation at all is because… well, it gets awfully political, doesn’t it?

Which is a bit ironic when it comes to WoW, to be honest. People call you racist for simply asking a question, meanwhile the game we’re discussing portray East Asian stereotypes with a race consisting of Kung Fu Panda bears.

Most of the original races in the game borrow from real life cultures as well. Trolls are Jamaican, Orcs supposedly portray black culture and Tauren are inspired by the Native Americans. The European feudal aesthetic however, is of course portrayed by humans! People have written scientific papers examining the textual narrative of World of Warcraft and it has kinda always been inclusive yet racist all along. Some might view this as something that is problematic, but I personally don’t. People like and respect these fantasy races, and Blizzard has treated their source inspiration with respect, not disdain.

However there is still potential in the world for them to expound upon. Like the Wastewanderers in Tanaris. They’re obviously influenced by the real life Bedouins, and the real life Bedouins are awesome. It would be super cool to see the humans living in that area of Azeroth get some more love, but let’s be real… we’re heading to the Shadowlands™ :frowning: …

Played the intro once but didn’t think much of it. Never really finished the core story for the alliance, either.

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Those gnomes always lived in Kul Tiras, they were not foreigners. If I’m not mistaken it’s even mentioned in one of the Drust records that the Drust fought against the gnomes in the past. Furthermore, it’s mentioned that the harbor of Boralus is the only part of Kul Tiras most foreigners ever get to see, so those refugees most likely would have been left to rot in front of the gates. Especially with Ashvane manipulating Katherine.

Also, travellers =/= massive flood of refugees

Played the intro once but didn’t think much of it. Never really finished the core story for the alliance, either.

You should, you are missing half of the story.

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Not that it’s threatening your point, but just to clarify:

Not as such. What you are probably referring to is this:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Drust_Stele:_Conflict

This stone shows multiple conflicts or one great battle with many scenes. In the oldest they fight beings that look like themselves or great beasts. In others they fight much smaller beings that resemble gnomes in stature. In another the Drust are driving some Naga back into the seas. Where the carving is most recent the Drust are fighting men and women bearing anchor sigils.

The Drust fought people of gnomish stature before the conflicts with humans came. Might be gnomes, but doesn’t seem that likely.

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What can I say except you are 100% right. In this and the rest of the post.

It’s a damn shame really, to look at the treatment other races had, and how rich their lore turned out to be by highlighting said differences and how they ended up coexisting.
Trolls, dwarves, orcs, Tauren, elves,…
The Mag’har race is basically built around feeding from several distinct cultures to the point of creating expressively a story around how several clans came together to create a proper faction.

In all, throwing down the drain the possibility to have humans feed on those sort of stories, seems like a monumental waste. And it baffles me how willing certain people are to defend that being the case.

To be honest, those that did so we’re probably just trolling/baiting.

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Which would still imply that they do enter past the Kul Tiran borders.

Hence, not isolationists.

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It’s the best thing to do since these options are available for player-characters, in order to merge PC and NPC in a way we can call immersion.

You know, my motto is “if it’s playable, it happens in universe - if it happens in universe, it must be shown on screen and backed in the lore.”

Now there will be a matter of proportions.

  • either the Stormwind dwellers are mainly white-skinned, like Stormwind in Classic (=before non-white characters were removed)
  • or there are all skin tones in randomized/equal proportions. I guess they’ll do this. Which may be, quite a strong visual retcon, as Ion admits.

Still, the story implications…

It could imply that the black azerothian or asian-featured azerothian humans like white ones are all storyless spontaneous features among all humans, from Stormwind to Lordaeron and Arathi. This seems to be the case… if considering it will also happen for Dwarves, Gnomes, and Thalassian elves…

But it could also be (…later?) a step towards unpublished lore like remote Human kingdoms / Dwarven clans / Elvent holdouts, in the South Seas, the Forbidding Sea, and so on.

“lore-breaking” is your opinion as a fan. All this is a huge visual retcon, or “retrospective visual continuity”
… “retviscon” :joy:

Well, the same already happened to Sylvanas, Gallywix…
Now it will occur to generic NPCs.

Saying this is somehow “baizuo” and bourgeois moralism. Sorry.

Regarding worldbuilding, obviously Blizzard is “diversitywashing” playable avatars in order to align with current American (or wider Anglo-saxon) politics, public concerns and social fashions.

This may be quite good - after decades of backwardness or, let’s say politely, “incomplete” fantasy words with no black humans in it.

But story-wise when they make a change like this, this is retcon.
And retcons shatter established fictional worlds - like it or not. That’s the concept.

In fact this is the problem with “Mankind” in Warcraft:

  • Few kingdoms, even fewer left standing in late WoW.
  • Fatasy magic-races already taking the spotlight for diversity of apprearances and diversity of mindsets/cultures.

Too tiny a world…

I mean, just compare with T.E.S.

The plot hole is deep, here, my good sir.

let’s speak about ethnic groups or peoples in this case

Lol, Kul Tiran are already treated as a separate race of Humans. That’s still a bit mindblowing for me. I reassure myself with the holy reply “nevermind, it’s magic, ain’t gonna explain” :joy:

I’m afraid that, if we read Ion’s reply, most seemingly, there will be random non-Darkspear trolls among Darkspear NPC as well.

This is even worse for immersion than that retcon around human skin tones…

In fact, once again, WoW worldbuilding is poor and shallow. You hope for deep lore behing appearances. But there are only apprearances.

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Why do you want to die on this hill? They literally refused any contact with the Alliance for 10 years. They were isolationists, and would not have allowed refugees inside their kingdom. It’s simple.

This may be quite good - after decades of backwardness or, let’s say politely, “incomplete” fantasy words with no black humans in it.

There were always black humans in Warcraft, such as the Wastewanders. They just didn’t have appropriate customization options.

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Funny how you mention them as a way to explain by lore these changes, and still called me racist for implying Blizzard could’ve used them to explain how these features came to be.

I proposed this too. In my opinion, is some elegant way of introducing these features and give a plausible reason that enabled Stormwinds multicultural situation.

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Actually not black, but tanned. I checked in Classic.

Moreover this wasn’t the point. Wastelanders have been stated by “word of god” answer from the devs, that they were regular former smugglers, slaves and pirates that settled in Tanaris 5 years before WoW. That is not what I call proper and respectful worldbuilding if you mean it was all about black people in Azeroth.

So you talk about another retcon - and/or another unconsistency between core game canon and Expanded Universe canon.

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Well, to be honest, i think that to some degree we’d need to have these sort of things happen with several segments.

Building up an entire kingdom, unheard of until now, constitutes some monumental effort that also clashes badly with the history we know regarding human kingdoms. It would be a different kind of retcon.

Because of it, i do think that leaning on the “Stranded human collective that developed their own features because of a series of hardships and their own natural adaptation” theme, is far less disruptive for the overall setting.

That’s basically the sort of narrative blizzard used to create the Taunka, the Frost Dwarves, the Dark Iron, and the Sand Trolls (amongst many others).
Blood elves followed that exact same theme, as they were basically a bunch of Night elf refugees that were forced to adapt to their new situation.

I mean, up until we had expanded lore regarding Kul Tiras, they were introduced as extra bulkier because they had developed tougher to face sea monsters.

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Why do you?

Maybe this will be quicker if you tell me what isolationist means to you.

Because opening your city as a trading centre for the world’s many peoples sounds incongruent to me with the concept of ‘isolationist’.

They were happy to have foreigners rest in their country and open shops along their harbour, why does that classify as isolationist to you?

For accuracy’s sake, no, they were no different from the humans of the Eastern Kingdoms.

The Wastewanderers are bandits from the Eastern Kingdoms, who came there after the Third War.

With that alone, there would be no reason why they would be in any way ethnically different from the people in their countries of origin.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Wastewander

The Wastewander Bandits descend from a small band of human pirates who arrived in Kalimdor around year 20, shortly after its discovery by the people of the Eastern Kingdoms.

According to Ask CDev, most humans in Tanaris have not been there for more than 12 years, and, in the case of Uldum, no more than 4 years.

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Isolationist means that you refuse any diplomatic interaction with foreign countries for an entire decade. Which is what Kul Tiras did. Furthermore, allowing literally 5 people of other races to trade in your harbor =/= not being isolationist. But fine, since you really want to do this, it is stated that Kul Tiras grew isolated in the Kul Tiran race description: “the kingdom grew isolated and vulnerable to dark influences.”

Also, those Wastewanders, as is made blatant by both their clothing and titles (one of their leaders is literally called Caliph), were clearly not based on european culture. Regardless, there is also the girl from the Travellers novel, so deal with it. Afro humans were always part of the lore.

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Another way to do that, wich yes, requires some retconning aswell, but less so, is to let’s say ;
Kul’Tiras is predominatly populated by peoples of the ‘black ethnicity’, with the other ethnicities arriving and intermingling there after it’s founding.
Dalaran is predominantly populated by peoples of the ‘Asian ethnicity’, same past events of multiculture akin to Kul’Tiras, as mentioned above, and Stormwind.
Another Kingdom being predominantly populated by peoples of ‘Semitical ethnicity’, Stromgarde?, Alterac?, any of the others?

Just thinking, those kingdoms are there, it would help diversifying the different Human Kingdoms, similar to how Guildwars did it, or the different kingdoms mentioned in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, if anyone read those, or how about The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan?
There’s going to be retconning anyway, this seems like an easy and far less big of a retcon, there were 7(!) different human kingdoms, after all.
I mean, if the excuse for Kul’tirans looking different from Stormwind or Gilnean humans is ‘They fought seamonsters’… it shouldn’t be to hard to come up with a lighthearted reasoning as to why wich is wich.

Things like the Proudmoores could just be retconned, it’s just a different skincolor and some facial structuring after all, and in that you basicly have two birds in one stone too. Or they could just spin it like Jaina’s family settled in Kul’Tiras much later after it’s founding. Same for Khadgar really.

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But you said that they could not take in refugees because they were isolationists.

Are refugees a diplomatic expedient?

I’m not following here.

I have not disagreed with this. Humans are already diverse.

I clarified that the Wastewanderers are not some alien breed of Human. They have the same origin as the rest, they come from the Eastern Kingdoms, therefore any ethnic diversity would be parallel with their places of origin.

So, they’re not exactly a separate kind of humans.

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The issue with said alternative, is that Blizzard has already exhausted the themes that feed the notable/known human kingdoms.

Stromgarde/Alterac are based around the traditional “nords”. As the novel goes, they are mountaineers that fight clad in furs, iron and axes. They are the Wildlings and Winterfell.

Stormwind/Lordaeron seem to follow on a more traditional “Knight” trope in its most basic form. Cavalry (Brotherhood of the Horse), church of Holy Light, and all.

Gilneas is now expanded as the sort of victorian fantasy theme. More in the line of terror classics about characters like Lawrence Talbot (the famous werewolf in several Wolf-man stories).

Kul Tiras is now simultaneous feeding on the pirate/naval theme, as well as the “ruthless sailor of some Moby Dick tale” that hunts krakens and other sea monsters instead of whales.

And Dalaran is an amalgam of humans that come from the other kingdoms. Less of a culture on itself, and more of a melting pot that welcomes specific individuals from all across the land. Arguably, given how lacking they are regarding their human lore, and thanks to stuff like magic exposure, they could indeed be the ones that facilitated most certain change regarding the humans that inhabit it.

But overall, i think that the themes of the other human kingdoms are already encased in some defined archetypes that do not facilitate changes.

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If all foreigners are not even allowed past the harbor, obviously a flood of refugees would not be allowed inside the country.

I never said the Wastewanders are a separate race of humans. I said they are based on afro culture. Thus people who claim these people are an asspull don’t know what they’re talking about.

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Sure, but we got reminded that WoW =/= Our RL cultures.
So who’s to say that in WoW the ‘Black ethnic’ group does not have the background of ;

Or the ‘Semitic group’ ;

I mean, there are Black Elves now and Black Dwarves and Gnomes, this is Blizzard’s own setting, but those races come from European folklore and myth, (although ‘pygmies’ are a thing in both african and South american folklore).
I think there was actually a tribe of little people somewhere on the African continent, I believe.
Anyway, just thinking out of the box and putting it to word.

Wasn’t this ‘Racism’ a few posts up?

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So it is racist to acknowledge that african people have a long unique history of culture and tradition?

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Exactly this. It makes for an uninteresting world where Stormwind serves as some sort of amalgamation for the entire of human race. Lordearon is dead, Gilneas is cursed and lost, Theramore was nuked, and the other human Kingdoms only get a passing mention in the world. We see some ruins and some banners.

One could argue that there isn’t time for them to constantly update the world, and that’s a fair argument. My only counter-argument would be that they are focusing on the wrong thing, and have done so for a very long time. Classic World of Warcraft proves that its experience is pretty much timeless, but the story of BFA you can watch on YouTube and you won’t really miss out on any unique experiences provided by the game. Classic World of Warcraft has a design that’s somewhat emergent; each player has a very unique journey. BFA does not, and that is the greatest failure with modern WoW in my opinion.

It’s ironic, in a way. It feels as though Blizzard added all those cutscenes, all those linear paths, and all those dialogues where VIP NPCs constantly hurl the word “hero” at the player in an attempt to make each individual player’s journey feel unique and exciting. It accomplishes the exact opposite.

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This has been discussed many times and there’s no way they can implement another Classic type of game in retail. It’s just, it doesn’t work anymore. People changed, life has gotten busy. Nobody has time to spend 3-6 months to level a character, nobody wants to carry 2 bags full of soulshards for the sake of RP.

As a wise orc said: times change! And to be honest, WoW made it really far even in its current state. To be able to keep this game subscription based and still have millions of players 15 years later is a real achievement.

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