I like it when a fictional universe still has gender, race or species stereotypes or differentiation. Not because I necessarily want white medieval fantasy, but because it gives more room to actually play with those stereotypes, and make certain characters stand out by being not the stereotype.
You can’t really explore the difficulties a woman soldier might face if the army already has a high proportion of women.
You can’t really make a difference between the races of human if they’re all just a random mix with no actual background as to why some look different; I think Elder Scrolls does this pretty well, where some of the different human skin tones are treated as different races (Norn, Imperial, Redguard, etc.), so there’s some actual cultural difference there too, despite all races living all over the place, so the player still has the freedom of choice. WoW doesn’t really have anything like that, a human being black or ‘Asian’ makes no difference to their heritage.
But I think it’s fine that WoW is like this… they clearly wanted to create a more “casual” fantasy world, where a lot of this stuff just doesn’t matter… which I think makes sense for an MMO.
About the only real stereotypes WoW still has are based on species; which also makes sense, it’s kind of the point of having a fantasy world in the first place. It’s a bit like Star Trek, where the humans were all treated the same regardless of skin color, but the alien species all got various stereotypical traits and different cultures.
You don’t need to justify liking it, there might be needlessly politically minded people out there that can’t take their goggles off but you don’t need a galaxy sized brain to understand why for a myriad of reasons a fantasy setting like Dark Sun or Warhammer 40k is popular. It would be a stretch to say I want to be a slaver IRL just because of a brief stint DMing Dark Sun, or that I want to wipe out races ruthlessly because I played the role of an Inquisitor in the 40k setting. Don’t let these types bother you.
I have to agree that’s why I’m drawn to trolls and the other non-human races, part of what interests me about them is their strong identity, heritage and culture. Granted it isn’t always neccessary but for me I’ve always preferred that a race has a strong identity, culture and customs because it leads to some great RP. A good example I think of from the top of my head was the discrimanation from the Zandalari towards the tribes trolls in my old guild, it created a lot of tension, atmosphere and rivalries. More specifically my old ice troll kept getting dabbed on by a certain Prelate and in turn he’d try to get him back, it was just a lot of fun.
I agree for the most part although I’ll have to say I preferred the ‘old school’ setting just because my experiences around that time were much better. I like conflict! Everyone being friends is great but it gets stale fast. My only real concern is that they’ll keep watering it down until it reaches the point where it loses all of it’s flavour. For example I really don’t like that they made Daelin Proudmoore a negative character, he was revered by the Alliance once as a hero so much so he had a statue in the Royal Gallery but in the recent Chronicles it was retconned that he was condemned. The latter is just bland to me whether as the former is obviously morally ambiguous depending on the angle of the character viewing it, it helps create conflict and drive roleplay. Characters like Daelin and Garithos often offer a more interesting narrative in my experience rather than say Anduin Wrynn or NuBaine.
Daelin Proudmoore, in hindsight, did nothing wrong.
Same goes for Othmar Garithos. They should be revered as the actual Alliance heroes they were since they, at that time, were the only ones who saw the Horde (and Blood Elves) for what they really are… Monsters and dangerous!
I think she was bad, but thats because I never liked those movies in general
Daelin I get, he had a pretty serious character arc with Jaina, and it was generally a well-explored plot.
Garithos to me, even at the time, just seemed like a one-dimensional caricature. Combine the accent, the giant chin and general haughty attitude, and he seems more like a joke villain than an actual serious character to consider.
Also, I don’t get this narrative among the playerbase that all the major characters want peace now and boohoo it’s gonna be Peacecraft, etc.
Literally Anduin and Baine are like the only major characters who want peace between the factions for altruistic goals.
Maybe Magni, but even he doesn’t care that people are killing each other, he’s just annoyed they’re hurting Azeroth in the process.
I guess there’s Jaina and Thrall, but even they seem very cautious and wary of the whole thing, considering how many times they’d been burnt before. Jaina isn’t exactly holding hands with orcs and singing Kumbaya, she just doesn’t want to carry on murdering each other for like… basically no real reason.
False. Humans are way worse than blood elves, tbh. And if we want to take Kael’thas’ actions into consideration, there’s also Arthas and all the Forsaken/Scourge to compare that to. Also, the Ebon Blade’s most recent shenanigans, which is, mainly led by undead humans. <.<
Anduin - love him from years for his believes in peace. For his faith that there is good in everyone.
Arthas - he was right. He’s story is badass as f*c and tragic. He’s maybe the best written character in all lore.
Jaina - she was kinda boring earlier but her character development in BfA is amazing.
Greymane - he is kinda stupid but funny. And he’s relation with Anduin is so pure.
Nathanos - I don’t know why so many people hates him. I feel kinda sad for him. He loves Sylvanas so much but I’m not sure that she feels the same. And his growling and everyone is kinda cute, I must say.
5 worst:
Gallywix - DISGUSTING little brat. Good written, yes, but I just hate him. He’s so egoistic and greed. Ugh.
Garrosh - he was fine before but boring. Later he become one of the worst. He’s a good meme but I can’t like him. Just can’t.
Gul’dan - selfish and pathetic. Patheticly servile for demons only for power. I don’t know who is more disgustin: him or Gallywix.
Maiev - stupidly fanatic. Her life was dedicated to chase Illidan even when he was already on a good side. It’s just stupid!
Almos all demons - they are boring. Lazy written as just agressive and destructive. Sargeras had his motives but demons? They just like pain, destruction etc. and it’s boooring.
Honestly Jaina staying an antagonist post Theramore woulda been cool, i’m really annoyed that she got tempered by Kalec and then got angry again but gave peace a chance but then became a warbringer and sacked Zandalar before stroking thrall’s arm and thinking peace was cool.
Angry Jaina was cool. Dumb flip flop Jaina is dumb.
Sylvanas: sought to occupy Teldrassil as fast and cleanly as possible in order to end the war against the Alliance before it began in earnest. Was subsequently forced in a bad spot by her general, who betrayed her orders.
Jaina: sacked the Zandalari capital and killed many of their people, including their king, only to leave right after the deed, thereby having prolonged an already bloody war needlessly. Did all this while invading a technically neutral territory to boot.
I’m just gonna say it. I found the Alliance story incredible boring, dull and out of place and it will never not anoyy me endlessly.
I loved the Zandalar story, and while I hate they off’ed Rastakhan for that chick, atleast the story was top-tier imho!
I think my main gripe with Kul Tiras is that its all about Humans. They’re the good guys and the bad guys(With the some old dull Naga- and or Vrykul-threat as a small side chain). Atleast in Zandalar, all three zones offer lots of diversity, even if the redline in the story was all about the Zandalari. You help the Sethrakk, save the Tortollans and a handfull of Wild-Gods (Krag’wa<3) and you adventure alongside the Vulpera.
I know both stories have alot of problems in them with consistency etc… But now that I almost finished the Horde-side of things, I personally, like the Horde’s warcampaign and story alot better then the Alliance D:
Garithos’ backstory generally fleshes the character out a little more but what I’m trying to get at more than anything is that these types of characters just help drive a narrative and cause conflict between players in a way that Anduin never will.
Blizzard however will bastardize the story and make characters flip flop as it’s appropiate to drive what ever meme direction they want to tell regardless of how far fetched it might be. My only real problem with the Jaina arc is that they replaced the loving father we see in WC3 with a voice actor that played a fat, wife beating, King. Old Daelin’s tone, way of speaking and his entire way of addressing the situation was out of love for his family and concern for his people. Whether as in BFA there’s a emphasis on him being unreasonable when if we were to actually unpack the subject and pick his choicest quote we can see his beliefs aren’t unfounded, they’re entirely reasonable and so are his actions. They dance around the issue, shift the blame and absolve Jaina completely despite her ultimately being responsible for his death. She sided with the Horde outright, helped them infiltrate Theramore, helped them cross the Sea, helped them escape and helped them fight against her fathers (even Theramore’s) forces. She explicitly chose the orcs over her own father.
My general disdain for characters like Anduin and Baine mostly comes from my own experience roleplaying the races. Anduin started off as a cheeky looking boy with freckles that used to be a kind of dennis the menace archetype which is the standard for a boy who’s father is absent (in the early lore) to suddenly becoming a ‘neutral’ virtue signaler. Now, neutral to me is someone that doesn’t pick sides yet in his early iteration all Anduin ever did was constantly side with the Horde and fetishsize the out groups murdering his people. He was a huge apologist. His stance could only be taken by someone that ignores history, the world around them and is holier-than-thou to the point it crosses the line of self-righteousness in to pure unbridaled narcissism. He’s Christie’s golden child.
During MoP the story forum’s standard reply for Anduin was “He makes me want to reach for a knife.” it was a pandaren poster I can’t recall but we would typically just quote her anytime he was mentioned.
As for Baine, I dislike him because the depiction of Tauren as we see in WC3 has gradually been watered down until it’s reached a state where that warrior-hunter culture and noble savage aspect they used to have has been replaced with a peacenik identity. Baine is the driving point of that. He like Anduin is obnoxious and self righteous.
