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

There’s nothing to explain. An asian guy has been training warriors in Stormwind since Classic. They don’t need to explain anything, you should’ve just paid attention.

Also I remember some Asian High Elves in the Warcraft movie…

also some Vrykuls themselves have really dark skin if i am not mistaken

Wouldn’t give whatever is shown in the Warcraft movie any kind of credit in terms of story.

That’s true. Still, that would be our way of accepting it, and not Blizzards actual/canon explanation (which even in said case would sound rather lacking still).

That would fix some of the problems, yes.

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Of course only Blizzard can say what state of the lore is.

State of the lore is kinda shett, I doubt Blizzard’s going to come out and say it, though.

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There’s a black character in Warcraft: Traveler whose ancestors are specifically stated to come from Arator. You know, the cradle of civilisation, proving directly that all skin colours come from the same place all humans originated. OP has been proven wrong over and over yet still wishes to insist a whimsical video game’s lore needs a developed eugenics explanation to every single skin tone. :grimacing:

Also the “Arabic” Wastewanders have as many light skinned/white NPCs as they do black/brown. Because, as shown time and time again, skin colour has zero association with geographic location when applied to the fantasy humans of Azeroth. He’s yet to show a single example to the contrary, and insisting that the queen of Stormwind was only cast black because of “agendas” shows where his arguments lie; he’s not someone worth arguing against.

As a person that this change was added to represent, I am very happy with it, because I and many others value fantasy settings that represent a diverse range of people. You will have a hard time finding a person of colour who wants a WeirdChamp eugenics explanation to why some humans aren’t bread white. It’s a magical fantasy setting where the humans were literally designed by gods themselves; it’s not a stretch that some of the vrykul these humans descended from were black, or had traits that were broadly “asian”.

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Having ancestry that calls back to said kingdom is irrelevant to the characters features thousands of years later.

We have both RL and ingame precedents that showcase how such distant ancestry is of little effect regarding how characters are currently shown. The Farraki were jungle trolls. Taunka and Tauren were both Yaungol.

You mean like trolls, orcs, elves, Tauren, dwarves,…have? I mean, at least for the major ones.

Seems like Blizzard disagrees.

Enlighten me, why should humans not have that?

For someone so prone to dismiss anyone as “not worth” speaking to, you sure seem rather bent on ignoring the argument made and making up your own straw man to deal with.

I’ve yet to come across a single person that argued against a fantasy setting which represents a diverse range of people.

Good to know you’ve somehow been named the spokesman for an entire collective of people.
My hispanic a** appreciates the gesture, but would rather you left it out of it.

And yes, I’d say that any person interested in the plausibility of the setting, would rather have something other than “A wizard did it”.

Specially after years of being drilled with stuff like Ice Trolls, Jungle Trolls, Dark Iron Dwarves, Wildhammer Dwarves, Earthen, Tauren, Taunka, Yaungol, Blood elves, Night elves,…

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Because it is not a make-believe race being dealt with. The humans in this setting are the equivalent of the humans in real life, and it would be incredibly unsettling to see an almost wholly white-led storyteam begin to start claiming “ah yes, the asian humans are from Pandaria, the black ones are from Uldum”. It would be incredibly tone-deaf and borderline offensive, especially coming from a franchise with a history of very poor takes on racial diversity/some very dated stereotypes making up their races (tauren as Hollywood Indigenous Americans, trolls with a Carribean accent being cannibals).

The examples you use;

are races that were known to span entire continents; tauren were nomads that traversed Kalimdor, and the troll empires of old covered the continent. This is very much unlike humans, who are all descended from the same place. Humans are descended from vrykul in Northrend, whom in turn were created by the Titan keepers. These humans emigrated from their ancestral home and settled in the Arathi Highlands, scattered until united by the first king of Arator.

There is zero room there for a “lost tribe” of Stranglethorn humans that are black or whatever else you’re asking for. The narrative is as simple as “some vrykul were dark, meaning the humans they became were dark”.

If you are instead implying that the humans were all originally white ( :upside_down_face:) and somehow developed Afro/Asian features through environmental adaptation, that theory doesn’t hold up when we acknowledge there are no human settlements in any areas that would encourage those sorts of traits to develop (Kalimdor, Stranglethorn, etc.), ignoring the obvious fact that such simply isn’t how evolution works in the slightest. Humans solely inhabit the southern and northern regions of the Eastern Kingdoms, and yet display a wide array of racially diverse features because they were created, born from literal stone, and therefore do not need to follow real world human evolution.

Black and Asian humans have existed in-game since 2004, as many have pointed out to you. Blizzard has always portrayed the humans of Azeroth as a kingdom with a wide range of skintones. This isn’t new, and is not a retcon. Humans work differently in this setting than they do in real life. What you’re asking for is a retcon that changes this.

EDIT: https://i.imgur.com/2hX7UUP.png Some dark skinned vrykul right here. Available in the Wowhead Dressing Room. The logical ancestors of the dark skinned humans.

Funny how you simultaneously argue this, and the “Because of Magic” argument.

How it suits to discard examples that highlight the appearance of notable features and how these are tied to different backgrounds/circumstances, and then go ahead and say that humans should be different because…magic.

There is nothing, using either RL or ingame standards, that would support a situation of diverse features within the same kingdom. And without an explanation that highlighted how were humans capable of maintaining distinct features in a setting that had every other race, adapting theirs to the environment they were settled in.

Not when other ingame races had similar origins, and were given in time, distinct features.

Not when we, as human beings in real life, have slowly distanced from how we looked back in the Neolithic even if we all originated from the same place.

…why? Who gets offended by a video game?

Are you really going down that line of argument?

Do you get offended if a story about vikings isn’t shown diverse enough to have a black cast posing as part of the Viking village?

Farraki were Gurubashi. Dark Iron, Wildhammer and Bronzebeard all come from the same place and time.

Azeroth doesn’t have a single kingdom. Nobody is saying that these features weren’t there prior.

What I find ridiculous is to grasp at magic as the lone reason to sustain a how is it possible that a single kingdom hosts different ethnic groups. Specially in a setting that has highlighted time and time again, how it cares about explaining the background of the different collectives that have notably different traits.

And it’s weird reading you holding onto magic as the lone reason as to why humans, of all the species that inhabit the setting, should be the ones that grasped at magic the most to explain ethnicity. More so than dwarves, orcs, trolls or pretty much every other fantasy race.

All for what exactly?

You’re projecting an argument I never made; continuously referencing a point I never brought up.

Humans are not diverse “because magic”. They’re diverse because they are a Titan-born race, which was created and designed, and then afflicted with a curse (of flesh). This is as opposed to evolving naturally. I guess you could call that “magic”, but no more magic than any other Titan-created race.

If you really want an explanation, then consider we see a wide variety of metals used to create Iron Vrykul. Some literal iron, some bronze, etc. Then perhaps the darker metal vrykul (bronze, copper) became flesh vrykul with darker skin. These vrykul subsequently had human descendants that matched their darker skin tones, and “Afro-centric” features.

I have no idea what you’re even arguing here lmao. WoW isn’t a historical setting; it’s a fantasy one. It’s made-up. Has its own rules on how race and skintones work. And in this setting, humans are diverse regardless of origin, for the same reasons there are very pale blue night elves from the same place as deep rich purple night elves.

There is mate. There’s the human race in-game and all its portrayals. What’s shown to us is canon. Been that way for sixteen years now. Plus, gnomes and dwarves, who have had dark/‘black’ skintone options since the beginning (and are getting expanded options in SL, along with blood elves).

Yep, all races who developed different traits based on their environment (except Wildhammers, which is very much simply a cultural divide). Humans, on the other hand, all descend from one place, and settled in very similar environments (hilly/forested regions). The difference between Elwynn and Hillsbrad is not as vast as the difference between Stranglethorn Vale and Tanaris.

Forcing it is the right thing to do because it gets the racists out of hiding.

You are making up on the go an explanation about “different metals”, to explain features that in RL (and in other cases ingame), were born out of natural evolution. And doing so without any kind of backup or source.

Want to talk about Titanforged races? Okay, let’s focus on the other Titanforged race that currently has not one, but three distinct backgrounds/reasoning for the differences it species has: Dwarves.

All dwarves came from the same place. And up until Modimus Anvilmar, the bulk of their race lived together in Ironforge.
Then, war happened and the clans splintered, much like the kingdom of Arathor did.

After that, each clan went their own way and started its own kingdom.
How did they evolve?

Well, for instance the Wildhammer took to the hills, and developed a leaner and taller physique, probably born out of their customs about gryphon riders.
Dark Iron and Bronzebeards remained “mountain dwarves”, with the former ALSO developing unique traits like greyish skin tones, eyes adapted for dark tunnels, and higher fire resistance due to their new home beneath Blackrock Mountain.

We also have expanded information regardinng how the race was then categorised into three distinct groups: Mountain, hill and Frost dwarves.
Being the latter some isolated case that remained its own thing by adapting to cold climates after leaving Uldaman.

In all, if Blizzard brings all three kinds together again, we can track the reasons behind the multiculturalism said occurrence would create.

Now, explain again how is it that the Dwarves, that started of on similar terms as humans, that had similar events such as them around the same time, aren’t contingent to this random head canon you threw about “different rock/metal tones”?

If they have something resembling some background for their different ethnic groups, why human can’t/shouldn’t?

Because as of now, you seem to be grasping at Blizzards laziness to develop any kind of story regarding their notably different human features, and making up some head canon in order to explain such, when logic would dictate that said eventuality should have people asking Blizzard to do their work and create some actual reason behind it.

This whole thread is based around judging how good for the story it is to have these differences within the same kingdom, in the way they are presented.

And if your answer to said question, is to accept and deal with Blizzards bad storytelling and lack of care to explain notable physical differences in the human race (while grasping desperately at head canon that didn’t apply with any other similar case), then the answer it’s obvious regardless if you admit it or not: the way they are addressing this feature it’s bad/lazy storytelling.

It isn’t good or anything for the lore or whatever, because frankly it doesn’t matter when skintones are concerned.

You know why these diverse options are good? Because people can make characters that represent themselves. Not once was a mention made of black, asian or white human, humans were always just called humans.

If you think these additions are lore-breaking you’re as dumb as those people that roleplay homophobia, which also doesn’t exist in Warcraft, and are at worst a full blown racist that has questionable tendencies and at best looking at the game through your own cultural glasses.

As in, Stormwind looks/reminds of a medieval fantasy European kingdom so black and asian people can’t be around, or there can’t be that many of them.

So don’t forget, Stormwind isn’t a fantasy medieval European nation, it’s a full blown fantasy nation with architecture reminiscent of “medieval” Europe.

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this is the true redpill.

Remember PoC options were added for the benefit of PoC, not angry white dudes on a wowhead comment section

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If you are to reduce the whole thing to catering, why did you feel the need to intervene in a thread created to discuss how said feature was handled storywise?
If you don’t care about the quality of the story behind said feature, why even bother writing here?

If you had some blue balls about arguing against some “angry white dude” (talk about racism, lol), stick to that Wowhead comment section you mentioned.
Because as far as i recall, the reasons exposed for disliking the feature weren’t about the inclusion itself.

I came here because our Russian elf’s wth comments, so I read further into the thread and I came upon “gems” like:

“Adding black and asian people to a fantasy kingdom with European-inspired architecture makes it lose its identity.”.

“Black people are from the jungle and can’t come from one of the main seven human nations”.

Makasa lived in, or frequently visited, Booty Bay but it is clearly stated her ancestors come from Stromgarde.

The Wastewanders (the only notible human presence in Tanaris/Uldum) only arrived there after Kalimdor was discovered in Warcraft III, they were stranded there and decided to make permanent residence after the Southsea Freebooters destroyed their ships.

Blizzard never highlighted that. The Wastewanders are from the Eastern Kingdoms, Makasa Flintwill descends from Stromgardians, Woo Ping has always and only been seen in Stormwind. Where did they ever tell they were from “other parts of the world”?

I’m going to stop here, because I think I made my point. But really, at no point was it ever suggested or hinted at that humans are all uniformely white, that the seven kingdoms were mostly white, and that other human races either come from other parts of the world, or from minor, independant(?) nations, since only seven human nations existed.

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Ah so it’s ‘PoC’ vs ‘white dudes’? …sounds pretty racist if you actually think it through.

Also ignore how the OP Never mentioned he was against inclusion of other skintones to begin with.

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the sheer clownery afoot in the world of warcraft story forum :clown_face:

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Or just some heavy dose of denial and projection, I suppose that really depends on how you want to look at it.

Yeah, he wasn’t against the inclusion of black or asian humans, aslong as they come from somewhere else (like a jungle, get it, because black people come from jungles) and his idea of a fantasy nation borrowing medieval european architecture can remain a white nation.

Even if such concepts are ridiculous in World of Warcraft because humans are cursed evolutions of metallic machines.

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