I really didn’t want to go there honestly, but I think you’re just presuming a lot. You mentioned 40 pounds as the daily average of your area, right? Assuming we’re speaking fulltime, my country’s minimum is lower than that even if we were talking euros instead. My views on the matter remain the same to the person you were originally quoting on the matter.
Because in the end of the day, it doesn’t change the fact that some people are making a living off of it and they need to also be able to put food on their table. Additionally, just because the cost of living in certain countries may be low (and as a result wages are as well), in other countries it’s rather high. Everything has two sides after all. I just have to love how this whole AI thing has made people attack freelancers and small businesses (cause guess what, that’s what your average commission artist tends to be) so they can have something pretty that they feel entitled to.
While I don’t go out of my way to insult players I see using generated images, I understand why people feel strongly about it. I feel strongly about it, too, but it doesn’t excuse completely villanaizing someone.
For me AI is problematic largely because
a) it uses creatives’ own works to compete with them on their own market. This is different to the prior tech advances of say, photography or digital art over traditional mediums. A lot of generative AI software, from my POV work more like glorified search engines; it goes through the scraped data and offers you its best guess created from that data. We’ll see what the lawsuits make of this in the coming years as it impacts a rapidly increasing number of people
b) unlike real artists, AI prompters hardly give anything back to the art ecosystem. Real artists often support other artists, buy art books, resources and courses to learn more, subscribe to other artists’ channels, and help spread their content to more eyes. Meanwhile people using AI are just looking to take & profit without giving anything back.
If my friend buys a car in the bad end of town, from a bloke infamous for chopping up and reassembling stolen vehicles to sell as his own property, why should my friend expect any sort of a positive reaction from me - or anyone else?
It’s still theft.
The AI is the initial thief and then the seller, sure, but they’d evaporate if no one took an interest in what was being peddled.
Precisely. Better to omit it, than support the frankly dystopian trend that AI “art” has become.
And if they hypothetically won’t, frankly that’s a bullet dodged.
People will still roleplay with yiur characters regardless of if you do or do not have art. It isn’t a necessity for the hobby, and if it were it woild objectively make roleplaying so much worse.
Coukd you imagine if a guild rejected applicants because they didn’t have art, or lacked “quality” artwork? That would be insane
Purge of Dalaran is nowhere near as big of a deal in the lore as people make it out to be. In fact, it´s even a great thing for blood elf fans on OOC basis because it brings high elves down to the moral level of blood elves.
If we take Purge out of the equation, we end up with blood elves who banished high elves from Quel´Thalas, brainwashed their own dissenters, tortured a naaru for its magic (they didn´t know the naaru let them), sided with Legion (Sunfury were brought back into the fold after TBC) and betrayed Dalaran twice (yes, there were Sunreaver NPCs in Darnassus, maybe look at the guys holding up the invisibility field).
Meanwhile, what did the high elves do? They…didn´t want to ally with the Horde? Feed on other magical creatures? Stood against blood elves being brought back to Dalaran, an Alliance city (and were proven right)?
Without the Purge, high elves are the ones who haven´t done anything to blood elves, while blood elves did a lot of bad to high elves. You need Covenant to keep things balanced coming into Midnight.
Draw it yourself.
You might be under the misconception that I´m pro-AI. I´m not. Just becase I take issue with arguments people on my side use and an extremely unkind stance some hold doesn´t mean I support the other side.
I completely agree. I´ve adressed that here (probably was posted just as you were writing your reply):
I miss the forum drama threads. They never quite recovered after Drums of War.
I dislike the dismantling of the sexism, graphic language or violence or other prejudice in the setting- Not because I like those things for shock value, but because it adds layers and differences to the cultures in the game, whereas in many ways wow these days feels more like a 21st irl setting with a fantasy filter over it. Wow is more like an Isekai simulator than a whole immersive experience these days.
I think, in hindsight, all the different versions of WoW are in the long term quite damaging to the whole IP. The playerbase is very fragmented, but there is no putting the genie back in the bottle anymore. Further, if you tried to force classic players to play retail or vice versa, you’d just annoy both sides.
Prisoner of war RP can be done well and it gets shut down way too easily by people.
I hated how quick it slanted towards people tolerating them in roleplay. You literally had a boss in a dungeon complain that his family, friends and society shunned him outright for being an utter freak.
Thats obiviously where the problem lays imo at least.
but again i think most good artist will always have work, AI art just never looks that good again at least not yet, its improving fast though so who knows in a few years
sure, but again its a cruel way to say it, but get a new part/full time job and do the art in your off time. If you cant live off it then stop digging your own grave.
I also want to add that I don’t think any people are actually telling people ‘don’t have art’, only trying to familiarise them to the reality of artists and why certain people price themselves as they do. Of course you’ll find a lot of artists that price themselves 20, 30, 40 dollars and create very beautiful works, even if they won’t obviously be full illustrations. You just got to know where to look.
Additionally, a lot of people who commission art in AD, as well as artists hold raffles, mini competitions and all kinds of stuff to gift people art, if they don’t just randomly do it cause they enjoyed RPing with people. I’ll personally never forget our AD’s very own Acrona for offering to draw a prize for one such competition that I won when I was still a struggling student and it made me so stupidly happy, to the point that I still tell everyone about it. And acts of kindness like that from artists like that is why I defend them and their right to moderate their own business as they please.
Of course you’re not wrong, there are some people who can have very snob attitudes on the matter, but as ever, it’s not as black or white as people try to make it seem, nor do I personally think the use of genAI, given all that we know of it, is justifiable under any circumstance - though I agree, no one deserves to be publicly lynched, or wished bodily harm, or anything else that was mentioned above either.
I also don’t understand why that should be a thing just because some people want something. Hell, I wish I could afford a car as well, but I’m not bullying car businesses about it and telling them to find other ways to make profits - and of all, they’d probably deserve it far more than just someone drawing for a living.
Why exactly? They’re not more powerful classes on a gameplay level and people RPed Death Knights and Demon Hunters well before those classes were made available.
I think the problem is that Blizzard have kind of been bad at writing these things into the game in the past. it’s not that darker topics should never be in WoW IMO - it’s that Blizzard often fails to do such topics justice.
Adding this as an afterthought but Pandaria of all expansions strangely did it best at points - Sunwalker Dezco losing his wife and one of his kids (albeit the latter happening in a book) and Chen Stormstout finding his niece deceased on a rock in the Dread Wastes. They somehow managed to include two instances of infanticide in the Kung Fu Panda expac.
For sure, i think real art is better in most cases but the whole talking down on people that use AI is silly
Im not really understanding what you mean 100%.
But i dont think you should bully an artist because you cant afford their art, i also dont think artist should be expecting people to make sure their income is the way they want it to be. probably a bad explanation but my english is not that good so its a little hard to word properly for me
This unlocked an ancient memory of mine. Of two Night Elves role-playing as a master and apprentice Demon Hunter several years before Legion, and really nailing the grit and twisted nature of their calling as well.
Or at least, so my youthful self thought at the time. I hope they got to enjoy the classes when they eventually were added.