#it's also usually a constant fight between devs and executives unfortunately

[hadoriel]

Hey, as somebody who's been playing WoW for about a decade now and is deep into lore and all that... Some of these points seem a bit outdated. I totally agree with you that the game's narrative needs to be constantly doing better, especially since there's a lot of old stuff over the course of the franchise that has either aged badly or was never looked at critically enough (I mean, it was born from a bunch of white American dudes, so there was a lot of bias they'd just never confronted when they created it)

But I do think that, overall, we're making strides in the right direction. I mean, some of it is awkward, like every side couple being gay in Dragonflight as over-correction, but at least we're no longer at the stage of 'everyone headcanons a main character as queer to the point one of the writers goes on Twitter to yell at them and frantically claim the character isn't gay' from the Pandaria years. Heck, they finally caved and confirmed Chromie as trans, after they made her character joke about in in HOTS a decade ago. And although her story isn't spotlight, she's still there, talking about taking her humanoid form, in several quests. Flynn and Shaw got a whole book together, traveling part of the world

Orcs, Trolls, Tauren etc have been heroes for a while. I think a better solution is rather, when an Orc is a hero (a la Thrall), he shouldn't be made more humanized (like giving him eyebrows??) and/or they should be given better spotlight (instead of, say, us saving Baine in Shadowlands for him to just sit in a corner... literally). We do have a lot of characters from 'monstrous' races that could be in the spotlight, lots of really cool ones, too! In fact, that's one thing that I love about Warcraft's worldbuilding, is that there's so many characters that aren't human. But Golden really loved Anduin, so we keep getting him, there's a lot of elves, and Thrall is pretty much the default Horde character to choose from when they don't want to build up someone else. I'd love to see Ji and Aysa again tbh. Talanji would be nice. Point is - we DO have heroes of those races. It's just that they either don't get enough spotlight or, in Thrall's case, they humanize them too much

This will probably be up in the air for a while. I remember my hackles being raised at Drustvar's storyline, because that was so recent, and yet the overarching plot of the zone was 'the native people here are evil legit witches and our colonizer ancestors killed them - we need to kill them again' with a token couple of 'good' people of the native culture who hole themselves up in a cave and lament how evil their brethren are. So, yeah, we do need to keep talking about this, though I think it's a bigger issue than just WoW, of course

I think they've been successful at this. The Tuskarr in Dragonflight tell actual Inuit tales, have actual Inuit names, and were approved by actual Inuit people, for example. Goblins seem to be working towards a new future with Gazlowe in charge. I was pleased that the centaur were matriarchal without being evil (as is stereotype - even as recently in WoW as the blood trolls in Nazmir) and the archeologists were espousing modern archeology ethics, like returning their finds to the people they belonged to

Have you seen the new character coming in War Within? The black half elf lady with the prosthetic shield arm? I do think they're trying. But unfortunately the toxic gamer bros have been calling her a 'diverse checkbox' character and getting mad, even though we know very little of her so far besides being a major character. Yes, it took WAY too long to add darker skin tone options for player races. But they are moving forward

"... mansplaining to a PoC coded monster that his government system is inherently wrong" - I think you're talking about Anduin here, yeah? Who was he saying this to? For some reason my brain keeps going to his dumb conversations with Sylvanas instead orz. Nonetheless, the Light is... unfortunately Christian-based and it makes me uncomfortable, as a non-Christian, but I do think they've also been trying to diversify the Light so that the Christian elements are uniquely a human culture thing. There was a big ruckus over it regarding the Paladin hero talents a bit ago on Twitter, actually. I don't think we've even touched human Light beliefs since, what, Cata? I just generally think Anduin could've been a good character, had he not been treated like he was always right, and then dragged through the mud as a forced attempt at being a foil for Sylvanas' insanity through SL

Anyways - I don't think, just because Warcraft has some issues, it should be outright banned in random polls, especially when we DO have canon queer characters now valid for the blog in question. I don't think anyone should really bother poll blogs about 'ugh I hate this media it's so bad!!' unless it's like... actually overtly offensive outright. Which WoW isn't

To OP poll blog themselves, sorry for the reply ramble. Please don't ban Warcraft because of a random anon lol ;; It's a big and old franchise, has problems, but it's nothing like... bad bad awful ban worthy

I'm not asking you to pull Mathias Shaw, I just want more people to be aware that white queer characters doesn't equal wokeness and the general exclusion of non whites from LGBTIQA discussions.

I also criticize media like World of Warcraft so the writers will eventually get the message that stuff like this is offensive and they should do some damage control like:

Stop depicting orcs, trolls, tauren and countless other "monsters" as purely evil villains, let them be heroes too.

Admit the countless white colonizing characters did wrong and that people like Zul'jin were wronged.

Tone down the racial coding a little bit and don't do it for new races they create.

Stop having all prominent human characters be white and for god's sakes, tone down the white savior vibes!

No having characters like a blonde blue eyed white guy from ersatz europe that worships ersatz christianity mansplaining to a PoC coded monster that his government system is inherently wrong unlike Ersatz Europe's absolute monarchy does NOT equal talking down toxic masculinity, it (unintentionally?) endorse a white supremacist vibe. PS: Did you get my other Warcraft Ask?

I know! I was just putting that in the tags because I've had problems with people making assumptions about what I stand for as a person before based on "allowing" a certain media to go through. Not targeted at you specifically! Although my knowledge of WOW is severely limited personally, I agree with everything you're saying here! Also yes, I did, I'll post it after this one. I've been holding off on answering certain asks because I just don't have the time to do thorough research right now, so I'm glad you elaborated on what you meant!