It’s not just about the lack of “strong” male characters, but also about the role that male characters play. As I’m taking things pretty slow this time around, and doing all of the side quests along the way, I’ve only made it halfway through Hallowfall. And yet there is one pattern I’ve seen again and again.
We meet two or more npc’s. One male, one female. They disagree about something. Eventually the female npc is proven to be right and the male npc either becomes evil or admits to being wrong. Either that or the male was the bad guy all along and has to be either defeated or put in their place by a female npc. Thus far, I’ve counted at least 30-40 quests where this has been the case. And I have yet found one single quest where it’s been the opposite.
Truly, I don’t really care about this whole anti-woke crusade. It’s not like I sit around with a notepad waiting to write down a memo every single time this happens. And I also have no problem whatsoever with Fearin being black or with Anduin being depressed and so on (actually find his story pretty touching). And I do rather like the storyline of this expansion. Yes, I do kinda miss characters like Garrosh, Varian, if nothing else then for perspective, to make characters like Anduin stand out, but all things considered, I still enjoy the expansion and more so than Dragonflight.
Even so, when it is this prevalent it is hard not to see it as a deliberate decision on the part of the developers. And it’s not about whether or not I agree with the message or where I stand politically, it’s just that it takes me out of the immersion. It’s like the ultimate Wilhelm scream. When it’s this obvious, instead of seeing two npc’s interacting with one another, and, you know, being immersed in the story, I see the message behind this interaction, and yeah, that takes me out of the experience.
Also I end up with the feeling that the reason the male npc is not winning the argument and the reason why we don’t see a character like Varian is not because it doesn’t make sense in the story (because Varians were the standard of WoW for like 15 years), but because someone somewhere has deemed it unacceptable. And that makes me feel as if the game has been, I don’t know, bridled and so, to some extent, has my experience.
I don’t know if that makes any sense.
And I do know there’s a racist and sexist backlash to all of this. I know there are people who rail against Woke because they are hardcore right-wingers who disagree with the message. But to me, it’s not really a political issue (I’m actually far left IRL), as much as it is an issue concerning the autonomy of art and imagination.
And it is a fact that the game no longer has characters like Varian, Garrosh, Arthas, Illidan, Tirion, etc. and that almost all male characters in the last few expansions have mostly been quiet, introspective, unassertive, often ineffective and mostly relegated to the sidelines while the female characters have been out there solving most of the problems.
It is also a fact that the modern day WoW, in style and tone, and with its emphasis on things like feelings, friendship and validation, is indeed going for a much softer and wholesome approach than the games of old with their rugged, epic, often larger-than-life characters and events. Just compare the cinematic from WoD to the final cutscene from Dragonflight and it becomes obvious in so many ways, it’s hard to believe it’s even the same game.
And finally while some of these aspects have changed gradually throughout the lifespan of WoW (and even prior to WoW during the RTS games) something happened to the game between 2018-2022 which drastically altered its vibe and narrative tone, specifically in matters of identity and how the various genders and characters were presented, as was common to much media during that time. Indeed in these specific matters (not gameplay obviously), the WoW of late 2017 was far closer to the WoW of 2004 than 2017 is to what we had during Dragonflight and also, from what I’ve seen, thus far, of the War Within.
Now whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of personal preference and if someone prefers the modern day storytelling of WoW to the that of the older versions of WoW, that’s their prerogative. These people are not wrong, nor are they woke, liberal snowflakes, they simply have a preference. Similar, if someone prefers the WoW of say eight to ten years ago, where you still had characters like Anduin but also characters like Varian and Illidan, that doesn’t mean that they’re sexist jerks, insecure in their masculinity, etc. etc. Again, it’s just a matter of preference.
If we could all realize this, get out of our echo chambers and try to actually listen to one another, who knows, maybe one day we’ll have a game that can appeal to both sides. And the war within the community will be over. But this necessitates a need to listen, to go beyond scapegoating, name-calling and only arguing against either strawmen or the most extreme representatives of “the other side”. As Obama once said, “Throwing stones is easy” and while it might make us “feel pretty good about ourselves”, in the end it’s only going to cause more division and suffering and, as he put, we’re “probably not going to get very far”. And indeed we’ve seen this cycle so many times. One side criticize the other, then the other digs their heels in, people come out to defend them, retaliates, and so it continues, seemingly without end. To quote Taran Zhu:
“I see now why your Alliance and Horde cannot stop fighting. Every reprisal is itself an act of aggression, and every act of aggression triggers immediate reprisal. YOU must break the cycle.”
If the Horde and the Alliance can come together despite their differences and make the world stronger because of it, perhaps in time, so can we. And we can have a world that can accommodate both sides (and everyone in between). That, too, is diversity.
so some of this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me /shrug
