Amazing how people swallow gladly this sort of blatant tokenism.
Iâd rather tokenism than not being included in the game at all 
you could be black in GW2, SWoTR, ESO, practically every mainstream MMO on the market EXCEPT wow. it was embarrassing how late it was added
it says more than you think.
and its not like we dont have male heroes and villians hell Sylvannis is important in this yet she isnt on the screen neither is bolvar yes they are not the leaders of this but then technailly neither is the Maldraxxus guy yet he is there and he is a villian.
I like that they are reversing the roles; showing men as slightly more calmer and want to play tea parties (Mad duke), and strong women who want to fight.
However, too much of it can be overwhelming because it pushes away (strong men and calm women). Instead there should be a balance between the two to represent everybody of every personality. 
Overall too much of the same thing is boring.
Just my opinion
Archetypes in media are often the result of suits wanting them in there for PR purposes, and are often poorly implemented.
In the 90s we had lots of âstrong independent womanâ characters whose idea of strong and independent was viciously physically attacking men unprovoked to show how strong and indrpendent they were. Watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and tell me maid Marian doesnât come across as an insane psycho.
Nowadays a common trope is âthe faultless womanâ. She is born perfect, has no weakness, is better at everything than those around her, and rolls her eyes at the bumbling incompetence of the men surrounding her.
This character can never learn and grow because she has no flaws to improve upon. I guess this is the trope OP has issues with. Personally I donât give a damn about the story beyond not wanting Sylvanas to exist so canât tell if itâs the case, but afaik Jaina is a bipolar wreck, Tyrande is a fool blinded by hate, and Talanji⌠rides a dinosaur I guess? Seem flawed aplenty to me.
The only one to fit the mold imo is Sylvanas â5D chess untouchable undefeatable 1-shots everyone and was actually right all along and will be redeemed and sheâs not a mass murdering psycho I swearâ Windrunner.
Similarly, male characters (especially leads) went through a phase in the 80s where many of them were unbeatable hulking juggernauts with the personalities of cardboard whose only purpose was violence and one-liners.
But I guess the female archetypes are more glaringly obvious because theyâre most often written by men, who try to write a âwomanâ first, and âcharacterâ second.
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Your idea of inclusion is having a perfunctory effort at checking some PR box with token characters without tangible narrative purpose or explanation? WowâŚ
You really swallowed it whole.
At least if I play zandalari I can say they are paying homage to Mesoamerican heritage.
Iâd feel honestly weird if I equated my ethnicity with the space robot with dark skin that is forced into the background while the fair skinned ones take the lead and are narratively relevant.
Well you arenât the target audience for them lol. Iâm having a blast being allowed to play a black character after 15 years, and so are a lot of my friends and community. Speak for yourself and donât claim to speak for those you donât represent.
Black peopleâs existence doesnât owe you an âexplanationâ lmao. Look up Maka on Wowpedia; theyâve been in the lore for years.
EDIT: Ohhhhh youâre the guy who spent weeks arguing that black people come the jungle and deserts, right that explains a lot. Need me to link the quote from the former lead narrative designer again confirming that black/asian people have always existed on azeroth or are you gonna keep living in your bubble of denial?
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Yeah, what I noticed is that they couldnât bring themselves (were not allowed?) to ruin existing characters, so Jaina, Tyrande, Anduin, Thrall, etc. are still there.
My view: Blizzard are too frightened to portray female figures as anything other than strong and independent. Because theyâre worried theyâll be attacked for showing women in an oppressive/otherwise undesirable state by modern standards.
Honestly, itâs getting exhaustive.
Yeah, Iâd loath being targeted as the collective of people that take comfort in tokenism as a valid form of inclusion.
I wouldnât enjoy being identified with a background bush with no narrative function, whose only role would be to pay lip service to some standards Blizzard really does not care that much about, and put a tick on the âMinoritiesâ PR checkbox.
But guess everyone has different standards. Hey, at least we are given black emojis now.
PS:
If you are going to simplify the point about âBlizzard shouldâve worked to create a plausible and developed background story for distinct ethnicities within the human race in WoWâ, and turn it into âYou just want jungle people in loinclothsâ, youâd have it easier if you werenât posting on a obese Panda that pops Bruce Lee catchphrases ingame. The whole âthatâs racistâ speech losses ground when doing such from a caricature that parodies Asian culture.
Let alone that identifying oneself with a mutated space robot seems rather weird. If you wanted mutated rock-people as your ingame impersonation, you already had Black Orcs btw.
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Youâre genuinely embarrassing lmao. Itâs a comfort to see youâve dropped the pretender of giving a damn about black people and have taken to posting straight up racism, never ceases to amaze me that youâll say anything except âblack people in my video game make me uncomfortableâ, which is entirely what your posts for the past few months have come down to.
We are in the game and arenât going anywhere. Youâre better off accepting it or moving to a new game.
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Straight up lying doesnât really change what I said though. Planting an army of strawmen does not negate the points made, nor does it change what itâs said.
I honestly do not know if you lack reading skills, or simply find it hard to argue against the points made and need to make them up.
But waving around the flag about caring about minorities, is something that doesnât mash well with your stance that defends the virtues of tokenism. Specially in regards to storytelling lol.
Here:
Guess that parodies such as these will fly way above your head, but I think you can still enjoy them.
In the meantime, excuse the rest while we call out the obvious PR moves as what they are. Hope that my Hispanic mates do not revoke my minority pass for doing such 
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Mate they are not legitimate points, they are opinions, and incredibly uneducated ones.
https://i.imgur.com/72zRZfv.png
The canon explanation is that humans in WoW comes in all shapes and sizes, just like the trolls you play. That is it. It isnât deep, and will never be deep, because it doesnât need to be. Channel your energy is to far more egregious breaches of the lore that genuinely harm the setting, as opposed to retcons (which are not even proper retcons) that allow black and asian players to make real characters that they enjoy.
Black people just existing isnt tokenism. Read the article I posted; the stance Blizzard holds was that them not including PoC in-game was a mistake that they plan of rectifying.
If you hadnât noticed, Exiles Reach contains two black human characters in major roles, one of which being portrayed by a black voice actor. It isnât âtokenismâ for one of the biggest gaming companies in the world to start listening to black voices, and youâre only suggesting it is to shut down any discourse instead of listening to the thousands of PoC who love this change.
Your opinions are not universal, nor are they important, seeing as youâre a man who still watches South Park in 2020 
Just drop it and let people be happy. You think I like Blizzard? You think I support the company that didnât include black people in their game for almost two decades? Hell no. But this is my hobby, and I have every right to engage in a hobby that represents people like me, and no druid poster on the story forums is going to change that.
BLM and always have and always will, even when it is in gaming spaces and gaming universes. Dropping the subject here.
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lol @ thinking PoC canât be racist to other PoC. Get ahold of yourself man⌠
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OooohâŚI get it now. You do not know what tokenism means.
All right, let me quote the definition:
Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or sexual equality within a workforce
And most importantly:
In fiction, a token character exists only to achieve minimal compliance with the normality presumed for the society described in the story. Writers also use the token character to pay lip service to the rules and the standards that they do not abide, by including a token ethnic-minority character who has no true, narrative function in the plot .*
Token characters are usually background characters, and, as such, are usually disposable, and are removed from the narrative early in the story, while conserving the main charactersâŚahemâŚJainaâŚahemâŚAnduinâŚ
Oh yeah, yeah, of course.
Because no company would ever lie, when throwing out some PR speech.
Now lean back and enjoy your background spot with your shiny new dark palette, and let the likes of Trolls have a more developed narrative with their distinct collectives, than your entire ingame âethnic groupâ.
You do realise WoW is about as old, if not more, right? And why would seniority negate the obvious message given with samples such as those? Does it have an expiry date I didnât know about?
Iâd find it far more worrying to have such a recurring and old issue still flying around to the point 15 years can pass and still be capable of pointing out valid concerns.
They do not seem to matter that much to you when you praise perfunctory and fake attempts that relegate the bits you consider representation into the most blatant form of tokenism and virtue signalling.
Iâd honestly would rather they didnât include ANY attempt at such, if the alternative was to have this obvious form of lip service that constitutes the bare minimum to check on a PR agenda while being lazy enough to not even bother giving the attention put into other fantasy races. Specially if said attempts cheapen even further the overall quality of the narrative.
Let alone that trying to equate RL human beings with a fantasy race, is really, really, weird and creepy for me.
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itâs more about south parkâs content. friendly reminder that their ascended philosopical take on trans people was âhaha they want to become dolphins!!â AKA a thinly veiled reskin of the extremely funny not overused attack helicopter line.
Now in a few words, can you briefly explain why you have such an issue with the existence of black (human!) characters as well as the female characters of this expansion not being helpless damsels in need of rescue?
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Not a fan of addressing those that seem like sockpuppeting, but Iâll grant you an answer if only because of your hilariously over-the-top strawman:
First of, I never even addressed the damsel bits (that already reflects poorly regarding your grasp at the points made).
Secondly, not once did I find the existence of black characters as something upsetting.
I did express the fact that I find extremely funny how certain people grasp at the blatant forms of tokenism as a valid way to exemplify inclusion.
This also ties to the fact I pointed out some time ago, that has said sort of praxis often boding ill for the narrative affected by it. Mainly because it cheapens itâs value by giving far more importance to virtue signalling, in lieu of actual creative effort and consistency.
You can take the above as you will (you may throw some additional strawmans if it makes you cope with it easier), but the fact remains, that the way they handled these features remains a blatant form of tokenism that does nothing to further narrative quality, and poorly could pass as a form of âinclusionâ.
By the way, this all started when Mogi tried to argue that the inclusion of tokenism had more priority than allowing the playable experience with narrative elements that made sense in the setting 
South Park is known for tackling in a facetious way the issues that many other seem unwilling to address so openly.
If you canât understand the underlying criticism behind their parodies, then you are missing the whole point of the entire series.
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You canât compare real life lore to WoW lore in this regard. Azeroth is way smaller than Earth, and humans only populate an even smaller chunk of it, itâs much more of a mono-culture than on our Earth. As far as physical racial features go, Iâm ambivalent in this regard, but it wouldnât make any sense to suddenly include âblack human cultureâ or âAsian human cultureâ into the lore of the game.
Cultural diversity is covered by the fact that there are many intelligent races on Azeroth (unlike our Earth).
Why not? We had such going on with other playable races.
Weâve had the troll race introducing distinct ethnic groups as soon as Blizzard facilitated some new setting that allowed such differences. We now have Ice, Forest, Jungle, Sand and island trolls.
When Blizzard introduced Pandaria, we were given Yaungol. With Northrend, Taunka.
When Blizzard introduced playable Dark Iron, they highlighted physical appearances to the point no one would ever mistake them for Bronzebeards.
When Blizzard introduced Zandalari, they did so with notable distinct features.
I donât see why couldnât Blizzard expand on these human ethnic groups in a way that tackled them as relevant segments with their own background and narrative niche. Much like they did with Orc clans, these differences arenât segregating, but enriching and helpful regarding narrative quality.
Throwing some black faces around and proclaiming they are paragons of equality, is the sort of tokenism that does nothing for the story and is but a check on a PR to do list.
And turns into a disservice to the feature itself, when we note the dispar treatment other races had regarding their notably distinct ethnic groups.
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They seem unwilling to address it the way South Park does because they arenât looneys with zero understanding of the subject matter.
If you really really want a cartoon to look up to for its philosophical takes at least go for Family Guy or something. (but ideally donât base your philosophical and political inclinations on a cartoon)
yeah fair enough i confused you with the OP there, the dangers of early morning posting
but strangely you instead think that people thankfully nod their head at blizz adding dark-skinned brute-men?
You really donât see the issue there?
Are you arguing that it was a good thing that Blizz outright removed the options (that existed since vanilla!) to make black and asian characters with the WoD-era model update and a bad thing that they re-added it?
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