It’s also not sexist and look at the whole context. I was talking about other characters than Anduin and trying to say: You don’t have to put big things in as a focus. A character is what he is, there can be small things. Of course it also can be a more important part of the story, it all depends on how it’s told.
My message? Holding the story? Was Thrall talking to Jaina in WC3 holding the story?
Was Groms struggle holding the story? Flyn and Shaws story didn’t hold back the novel at all. Yes love stories can be boring, Lorthemar Thalyssra once more as an example. That’s a different matter however. Wasn’t even talking about love stories.
No. It’s can be a direct driving force for the story. Nothing of this would hold the story back at all.
There is no negative outcome, compared to “non diverse” characters.
Nope. It’s one statement taken from many.
You can, you don’t have to.
In short: You can use it as more important, larger things.
If you combine it with “bat-isms”, self finding, a struggle you can go many different routs. Perhaps even a force that’s not from Azeroth, perhaps some Void monster that’s… something for some reason.
Besides Meta reasonings (such as, “We don’t want to tell this story yet”), there were a series of circumstances that only could’ve been taken into consideration after the Legion invasion.
Chief amongst them, the fact that both sides had depleted armies and lacked the means to project their strenght in several points across the globe. Something that could be taken advantage of by the one that acted first.
Besides, choosing to open up yet another front amidst a demonic invasion isn’t really an intelligent move.
Many such stories should not be considered ‘woke’ in the setting due to blizzard never specifying that they where controversial in the warcraft setting in the first place.
Like the lgbt-representation, the times it comes off it is never in opposition to conservative elders or societal norms, its just mentioned as a matter of fact thing, which works fine.
Racism works as long as its not between humans, for the simple reason that we are all humans, and having your character suffer a puddle deep allegory for something you yourself has experienced is not that fun.
Also i just want to say, i really dislike the word woke, mostly because it originates from the alleged ‘lucidity’ one experiences while under the influence of the nonoes. its just druggy and self-flagellating.
Now if i could design a ‘woke’ shudder story it would be about how the seed of republicanism/early democratic ideas start taking root in the kingdoms.
How noble would Anduin be when his cherished subjects demand reforms and representation. Would he send in guards to disperse angry crowds violently?
How would the bloodelves serves the issue of Legitimacy? They where after all a monarchy, drawing upon the legitimacy of their rule from the dynasty in charge, and now when Lor’themar refuses to form a new Dynasty, he essentially rules without any state propaganda backing him, soley through the might of his armies and the local elites who support him.
Let me tell you my perspective and why I disagree with the entire premise.
I’m gay and every time I see such proposal and posts like those throughout this thread my first reaction is that it’s a discussion between straight white males that know very little about such issues. All these ideas to implement features that demonstrate how inclusive the game is usually come up after some controversial or tragic event (such as the recent court case against Blizzard). You know how it feels? It feels fake and forced. Throw in a few “inclusive” stories, now everything will be alright because we’ll show how sorry we are about what we’ve done.
No. If there was any misconduct the people responsible should answer for it and we don’t need any ridiculous game events to “make up” for IRL crimes.
For many people WoW is an escape and they don’t want to be reminded of all the real world issues due to ingame events that were likely implemented dishonestly just to improve the company image.
That said I realise many minority members might have a different view, but I’m naturally allergic to all ideas that suddenly show up right after some sort of misconduct case comes up.
How about a story of lost trust and faith? Since that’s what a lot of fans are feeling towards Blizzard. It too would serve to send a message that they wish to make amends.
It could be us coming back from SL, lost leaders in tow, only to see both Alliance and Horde almost torn into multiple quarreling sub factions. With major leaders gone and the undead onslaught both factions suffered and as a resault their unity was gone.
So it could be either players restoring faith into Horde/Alliance idea by traveling good old Azeroth and helping out normal people in need while rescued leaders would take care of solidifying the factions once more.
OR
It would be player characters who would lose faith into their faction and it’s leaders, leaving rescued leaders to do their thing and instead focusing on helping the people of Azeroth.
This allows to tell multiple loosely connected stories of strugle and hardships of normal people who are feeling betrayed and lost. While at the same time include multiple new side characters of various races, genders, sexualities etc.
Please don`t. Even though still a game, read the name, please. World of WARCRAFT. This game has to be about racism (orc vs humans, taurens vs gnolls, everyone against Forsaken). This game has to be about war, conflict, honor, horrors, power, politics. Not a safe space for minorities. This is a virtual space, you can be anybody, but in a WAR, in a conflict. If you want something inclusive (there is nothing more inclusive, like a virtual space where you can be anybody) and want to push diversity…Well, diversity is like sex. If you have to force it, you are doing it wrong.
You can have all that AND the positive aspects that “wokeness” preach about.
One thing does not negate the other.
Just like Game of Thrones included gay characters that in no way diminished the grimdark ambience of it’s realism.
Or humans from different ethnic groups in a plausible and coherent way that didn’t discriminate any “minority”.
Can’t speak about the “sex” part.
But that’s because i don’t think sexuality and all has a place in a setting such as WoW. Not in a way that actually builds any significant narrative.
And i think such because i see few ways to create such stories without either (a) doing it badly (token arm-candies or cheap teeny drama), or (b) in a way that I personally find insteresting.
But this last bit is just my opinion.
So GoT has no war or blood in it? What?
I really don’t get those takes. You seem offended not the other way around.
Sorry I don’t want to derail the topic, but I also don’t have an different answer. The question was as for it to be in the focus right? Then I would really say something a character can draw strength from, or something a character has perhaps suppressed, for water reasons. Perhaps only because of war and the character themselves did not want to have this “luxury” . At some point late in the story something forces this character to get clean with themselves though.
You are kinda right. On the other side, there are only some apparent heterosexual relationships (Thrall & Aggra, Draka and Durotan, Mankirk and his wife…), for most other NPCs and PCs, their sexuality is not even mentioned. So it is up to the player to assume orcs have fierce heterosexual orgies in barracks or majority of gnomes are homosexual, since there are no gnome children in the game. So, instead of pushing it, I like it being absolutely neutral and using only the player`s assumption. Because, even though I have absolutely nothing against LGBT and other people, I see literally no benefit of having such characters ingame. Perhaps, if my text is reading somebody from this community, they can tell me their opinion, how woul they feel about an openly homosexual NPC?
BTW, there is a male orc with female voicover in the Caverns of time, next to the Keepers of Time quartermaster. Nothing explicitly stated, again, on the players discretion to assume what they want.
As i said, in terms of sexuality, i’d rather WoW was kept as asexual as possible.
Because, as seen with this examples:
Olgra is an example of girlfriend in a fridge (*), whose only purpose is to have the counterpart be more proactive, without requiring any sort of build-up or personality.
Aggra is an example of an accesory without agency whose only purpose is to complement Thrall as a character, and be but another stepping stone in his climb as a character.
As a hobby story writer myself, I think the use of racism, sexism and other negative things is an important tool for every story writer.
I always love to compare Destiny 2 with WoW when it comes to certain parts.
The Season of the Splicer has Lakshmi-2 as a character that puts both hypocrisy and racism in place against the Fallen/Eliksni (an enemy race that is for the first time working together with the Guardians of the last city). And you know what? It makes people getting in touch with the narrative. One side argues that the Eliksni should not be in the city, the other says it is time for change.
And that makes the story so good. Because you get attached to it.
Meanwhile Blizzard tries to avoid controversial story decisions, because they expect people to complain about it, even publicly. But the thing is, without controversial story you don’t make money. And people will always complain.
You know the old saying “Se*x sells”, right? Same with controversial stories. This is the reason why News in the USA always focus on every piece of drama and controversial happening. It makes them money and gains views.
Blizzard should stop being so afraid and dare more. People want dark stories in their game.
Halo Reach is one of the darkest Halo games in case narrative. And that is what makes it so good. Game of Thrones was so favored because of controversial scenes and events in the story. And even classics like LotR has some sort of racism in it. Dwarfs and Elfs/Elbs (not sure about the english name) don’t like each other that much, as proven in “The Hobbit”. And yet here we are, having Gimli and Legolas being not that friendly to each other at beginning and starting to become friends over the Triology.
I don’t think they are afraid at all. Perhaps trying to fake their image because of the investigation. Take a look at Teldrassil. They are at best incompetent.