Slashdot Mirror
Stereotyping the Horde
Terra Nova is having a discussion today entitled Cultural Borrowing in WoW, looking at the cultural references made in relation to the Horde (Jamaicans for the Trolls, Native Americans for the Tauren) and what that means given the Horde's reputation as Evil. From the article: "I want to talk about how science fiction and fantasy often engage in this type of borrowing -- most 'new' things are just old things recoded. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on Klingons points to the Soviets, Mongolians, and Japanese Samurai. In most cases, I think this whole process of cultural encryption, mash-up, and recoding is fun -- perhaps what good art is all about. Looking particularly at WoW, though, I have to wonder sometimes..."
when I clicked I got the "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."... has it stereotyped me (because I have a girlfriend) as someone who doesn't play WoW?... surely the fact that I am on /. means I really am the core demegraphic
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Terra Nova has absolutely no clue what the word "lore" means. The entire premise of both the links in the story are patently incorrect. The Horde is not inherently evil, nor is the Alliance inherently good; yes, there are definitely cultural stereotypes behind many of the races, but attempting to dredge up bullshit by making this link is insane.
The only inherently, directly "evil" race in all of WoW is the Forsaken (undead). As an Alliance player, I don't know the Troll leader, but I can vouch for both Thrall (the Orcs) and Cairne Bloodhoof (the Tauren) as wise, intelligent, brave leaders. Both kick ass, and neither are severely vulnerable to hubris. The same goes for King Magni Bronzebeard (the Dwarves). However, the leader of the Cenarion Circle (Stormrage), linked to the Night Elves, is arrogant, self-righteous, and condescending. The leader of the Undead is cunning and greedy.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that this story starts out by implying Blizzard is racist by saying Native Americans and Jamaicans are evil, yet if anything Terra Nova has the entire thing backwards.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
The horde isn't evil, they're just alien. That's part of the entire point of the game! The horde is a player race, and if you're a member of the horde then you're the "good guys" and the Alliance is the "bad guys". Of course the horde has all of these strange, "other" cultural identifiers tagged to it-- that's why the Alliance hates them. If you see these cultural identifiers as negative, that just means you share the Alliance's prejudices.
I imagine the author of this article stumbling through the woods, complaining loudly that he can't get a good view of the forest because all of these trees are in the way.
Yes it is ?
Horde is a gathering of orcs, orcish, trollish races. Orcs, trolls were always EVIL - not talking about metaphors, real evil, really real evil - in celtic legends, and tolkien have brought them to the lotr as such.
But later on the net, as it always happens, some crowd has come up and SOMEHOW related the horde with "REBEL", the "ordinary man" - just like many ~13 bambino, punk/death metal enthusiast have related the EVIL sith to 'rebel' 'charismatic' and 'extraordinary'. Ah the elves, who are the mentors and protectors of humans in celtic legends have been made into some 'snob' race.
Bullshit. Everything to its place - if one enters a game of fantasy, based on myths, they have to stick to the core of the myths.
This seems more like an inner talk in the lines of "i want to be evil but i cant make myself accept it since the community wont accept people who are wanting to be evil, even in roleplay" to me.
Read radical news here
[My son] was afraid of the Undercity. And that's just from the imagery ... as his father, my only defense in this frightening choice would have to be that I am just trying out evil, just getting to know it, just using evil instrumentally for some greater purpose. He abviously can't grasp that now, but even if he could, these are the only possible justifications for me to inhabit such a wicked being.
The author is confusing ugly with evil. Perhaps he should be teaching his son not to judge people on appearances?
Not that undead isn't somewhat evil, but a 3-year olds fear at unfamiliar faces is not a spectacular judge of this. And, I certainly don't know anything evil about trolls! They are downtrodden, and ugly, for the most part, but not evil. The author seems to be reading his own preconceptions into this a lot more than Blizzard is.
To anyone that gives a few minutes of thought to the story of WarCraft, it's clear that the Horde isn't evil.
I think WarCraft, if anything, is posing a criticism against the entire Western mindset from the Medieval period up through Modernity. The Orcs have ceased being manipulated by demons and have returned to more peaceful, shamanistic roots. The Tauren are in a similarly peaceful mindset. The article also notes that some aspects of the Alliance represent technology and capitalism, but a lot of the technology depicted in the game is faulty or untrustworthy. Note, for example, the harmful effects of many of the failed experiments of Gnomeregan.
The articles in question cite appearance and old mythology a lot; I think Blizzard is attempting to turn the stereotypes of Orcs, Trolls, and Undead as evil on its head. My experience in the game is that they have successfully taken fantasy races long considered to be evil and made them noble.
It seems like most so-called 'racism' out there isn't blatant and deliberate, but rather subtle and unintentional, made by everyday people who believe themselves not to be racist but occasionally come across that way. In the strictest sense, what could be percieved as 'racism' in WoW is racist insofar as the developers' consciousness of what they were doing. I mean, if someone at Blizzard observed Jamacians (well, actually Rastafarians, as not all Jamacians are as their stereotype makes them out to be) and then said to themselves, 'well I'll make a character out of that' ...then I'd say that's racism. But if the resemblence was concieved at an unconscious level or was just a coincidence, well, that's not racism at all. I'm not sure we'll ever know which it was. Another great example is Jar-Jar Binks. On one hand, he looks like he's straight out of a minstrel show. On the other hand, maybe he's just a bumbling alien.
My own take on it is that it signifies not racism, but just some lack of creativity on Blizzard's part.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
If you're confused about whether or not someone is a member of the horde, this fine Megatokyo T-shirt should make it obvious.
Speaking as a white male caucasian and die-hard fan, Star Trek is pretty fucking offensive in its borrowing of racial stereotypes.
Klingons - black skin, brutish, unintelligent, hyper-aggressive, extremely athletic and possessed of a mystical earthy wisdom that's a direct rip of the "magic negro" phenomenon. They're a condensed version of every stereotype about Africans.
Romulans - intelligent, devious, amoral, harsh semi-collectivist government, yellow skin, slanty features, related to 'emotionless' creatures. Condensed version of every stereotype about Asians.
Ferengi - greed-obsessed swindlers of the lowest sort with bulbous ugly noses, comical ears, and they are constantly lusting for Federation (read: Caucasian) women.
It's all there, plain as day. Obviously in the Klingon case there's been importation of 'good' cultural elements like an honor system, etc., but the basic stereotypes are glaring. Tolkein doesn't score much better, either. At least Dune, as the nerd classics go, has the decency to glorify a non-European race.
--Ryvar
"Slashdot is teh suck, mon!"
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Cultural borrowing happens in almost every fantasy game, book, and movie. Read some David Eddings novels if you want examples that knock you over the head. The only fantasy races that AREN'T based on real-world culture(s) are the ones that are completely inhuman like demons, undead, etc. Even then, the styles associated with them are generally a mock-up of a real-world culture.
Frankly, I liked Warcraft better when the orcs and trolls WERE evil. No one could say the games were out to make a political point; it was simply strategy mixed with classical fantasy.
My main is a 60 night elf druid, actually.
I think it's a part of human nature to think of 'those guys over there' as bloodthirsty, uncivilized animals. My bachelor's is in anthropology, and in my reading, time and time again, all over the world, any ethnic group, society, or culture refers to itself as 'the people' -- that's literally what names like 'Navajo', 'Hopi', etc. mean. The implication is that anyone who is not in your group is not exactly human. It doesn't matter whether you are a large kingdom or a small group of hunter gatherers. Those guys over there are bloodthirsty savages with long penises, one step up from animals, who are just salivating to come over here, kill us, and rape our women.
This kind of racism is by no means limited to white Europeans conquering other groups. When the first White Australian prospectors encountered native New Guineas, the New Guineans thought that these whites were going to rape and seduce their women with penises so long they had to wrap them around their waists! What a reversal of stereotypes -- blacks afraid of over-sexualized white guys with long penises.
It should come as no surprise that these motifs are repeated in fantasy and science fiction. I'll admit that I'm not widely read, but you rarely find some truly creative and outlandish descriptions of extra-terrestrials. Mostly they are some kind of 'Noble Savage' humanoid with bumps on their head, or a mask, etc. Non-intelligent life forms are some re-capitulation of Earthly life forms, be it plants, insects, reptiles, etc.
For instance, in Star Wars, you have Chewbacca, who is some kind of Bigfoot Woodsman who growls to communicate, wears no cloths, and has a crossbow for God's sake. A crossbow. Same deal with Ewoks -- cute pygmies, naked, furry, with wooden spears and magic.
Same deal with warcraft. The Humans are all white guys, with medieval clothing, architecture, and religion. They build churches and practice alchemy and magic. They speak with various British Isles accents. The 'Others' set up tents like Mongolian raiders, have shamans, which is the name for a non-European witch, live in tribes, have cheifs, etc. Orcs are basically Big Scary Black Men in green skin -- muscular, wide notrils, thick lips. Taurens have Totems like North Pacific Native Americans. The Orc Hero Blademaster is obviously a samurai -- people might doubt that orcs are stereotyped blacks, but no one can seriously argue that the Blademaster is not a Japanese guy in green skin. He even has a Japanese accent! "I Hear-O and Obey!" Trolls are voo-doo practicing Jamacans, etc.
This is the basic fantasy paradigm that we inherited from JRR Tolkein and the racist perspective of the world he lived in. It's called the White Man's Burden -- it was Europe's job to bring civilization and culture to those poor, dark-skinned people inhabiting the rest of the world. This was the justification for the resource explotation of Asia, Africa, and the Americas that fueled the wars and industrialization of Europe, finally culminating in WWI and WWII. The Hobbits were the British, "A nation of shopkeepers" as Churchill put it. The warring factions of humans, elves, and dwarves were the various European nations that couldn't stop their infighting to face a common threat. The Orc armies that Saruman raised represent the vast resources marshalled from the colonies to finance the new European war machines.
Your honorary anthropology degree in a nutshell. For more detail, check out _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
In World of Warcraft, the Horde is not evil. The Tauren (native american) are actually extremely peaceful nature lovers. So there premise is completely wrong.
The only stereotype in the game of Horde vs Alliance is that more mature people play Horde. Now an in depth study of that would make a much more intesting read.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Look, if we went out of our way to avoid offending anyone when borrowing cultural attributes then every even remotely evil race in the game would be portrayed by wooden actors with no discernable accent. Attempting to find social commentary in the cultural makeup of fictional races in a video game is giving the game way too much credit. Log off for a little bit and spend some time away from the damn computer, or just quit trying to turn your MC runs into a sociology paper.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
It was too me very refreshing. The entire "series" had this element of turning stereo types upside down. One of the games allowed you to forge an allience between a village and some gnolls. You could have easily slayed them to complete the quest but making an allience made for a far better game in my opinion.
Nonetheless stereo types are the norm. It is not that suprising really. I have talked to other Torment players who never "discovered" the undead village because they immidialty went into slaughter mode upon spotting the skeleton guards.
It is easier to be able to spot the goodies from the baddies in an instant so you know who too hit with a big sword and who to heal in the confusion of battle. It is kinda the reason why soldiers were uniforms, in some ways zombie is just a uniform that identifies the NPC as an enemy.
But why use real world races in a fantasy setting? Well two reasons, first the Star Trek reason. It allows you to discuss real world politics without immidiatly having all the real world baggage. The klingons were like the soviets but were not the soviets. Be symphatethic with a klingon is okay (Kirk does it several times) be symphatitic with a communist is not.
Sci-Fi often uses this tool the most classic being the case of the two alien races fighting each other tille exstinction. One black and white, the other white and black. Obviously a reference to our black vs white struggles BUT without at any point having to deal with wich of the characters is the white person and who the black.
The second reason wich I think WoW took is because it safes time, copy and paste a culture is easier then making up your own, plus it increases immersion. People will be adding their own knowledge to your game making it seem deeper then it really is.
I don't really think there is that much meaning behind it except perhaps the general kinda low level racism that is so common among all of us it is just part of live.
Could you really picture a jamaican like culture in control of advance tech? Be honest. For that matter could you imagine a troll with the bearing of a british gentleman?
The predator had dreadlocks. Could you imagine him with a Beatles haircut instead?
Like it or not but we are all prejudiced. We can overcome it but at a basic level we expect certain behaviours from people with certain looks. It is as simple as that fat people have good humor and thin people have none.
You can read to much into things.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To anyone that thinks the creators of WoW are racist: YOU come up with even TWO cultures for use in a fantasy game, then tell me that you didn't draw anything real-world cultures, and that you aren't a racist hypocrite.
For example, what I call not betraying what I belive to be true, another may call arrogant, self-righteous, and condescending, which has a history of being rather sloppily used.
Let's face it, every 2 sided battle is geared towards "good" vs. "evil". We've been taught that time and again, in every movie, game, whatever. It's always "good" vs. "evil". It's never "one good side" vs. "another good side". Good doesn't fight good. Never seen a script that didn't suck where good fought against good.
Let's look back on the Warcraft line (which pretty much is the setting for WoW). Remember the name of the first "Warcraft" game? "Orcs vs. Humans"
Now, pick the bad guy in that makeup. If my memory is not too much lost to booze yet, I think I distinctly remember that the Orcs were displayed as the big, bad menace that would sweep across the lands and enslave all that is remotely human (or dwarvish) if the player failed.
Orcs have also been, in pretty much any fantasy setting, from D&D to a lot of MMORPGs, the bad guys. Whether they are in WoW, by the history of Warcraft and also the history of "Orcs" in various fantasy games, they are.
That last statement also holds true for Trolls. Same thing. No matter what fantasy story or game you turn to, they're the baddies.
Undead... blood magic, torture, disturbing the peace of the dead... can we get more evil?
Tauren are pretty much the only ones in the set that aren't already lumped into the "evil" corner by any fantasy story. Mostly 'cause I can't really think of any that even mention them.
So whether or not they're portrayed as "evil" in WoW directly, I can see why people would see them as "evil" if they don't bother to read the whole story behind it, in case the story explains their motivations. But in pretty much every book, at least 3 out of the 4 "horde" races are found in the "evil" section.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But that's a very good thing indeed!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If you follow from Westfall all the way up to Onyxia, it becomes apparent that the Alliance is thoroughly corrupt. TFA has it backwards.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
I'll let you guess at the answer to the last one. Just for reference, I would have accepted either "Green Drazi" or "Purple Drazi" as alternate answers.
Though I freely admit nearly complete ignorance about WoW and its special linguistic argot ('gank'? WTF?) I get the general sense of it from your timely Babylon 5 reference. Special props! And people say watching sci-fi is a waste of time.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
"The human race is the only one with children, and charitable giving, for example. Orcs, on the other hand, value warfare and power." I like how the article talks about orcs being evil and this is one of their examples. It seems humans and orcs have a lot in common.
"...good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
A game like Warcraft is purposefully light on the issue of morality. Each race and faction is given the same duties: Smack stuff around until it is dead, take all it's valuables, and unquestioningly do all the quests you are told to do. The player is never given "choices" to decide right from wrong, good from evil.
Every character, regardless of race, is regularly told to kill others (NPCs) without the chance to find out the other side of the story. This alone is more evil than simply trying a race with a less humanoid appearance. Horde characters are interesting because they more shadowy... living in under-cities, living in land gained through conquest, and have unusual racial traits. But check your definition of evil -- having an appearance and character traits far removed from human does not make a person evil.
As Ash from Evil Dead implies, the distinction of good and evil is simply on which side of the gun you stand.
TFA is interesting enough. It makes some definite points. The races in the horde CLEARLY have their roots in extreme cultural stereotypes. Even without a "good" or "evil" side, one has to wonder about the value of such stereotype-based icons. (How would people feel if there were a "black elves" race, with dark skin, giant lips, short curly hair, and a love of watermelons and fried chicken, for example?) You could argue that even just having stereotype-based icons around reinforces the stereotypes, and may not be the most healthy thing.
But what's REALLY telling here is how many people jump on the "teh horde r not evil! Artical sux!" bandwagon. Mostly without, it seems, having actually read tfa. Is this because people are just overly-sensitive to political correctness these days? Is this because they have well-thought-out, reasoned viewpoints with differing conclusions? Or is this because slashdot is full of people who love WoW, and can brook no ill spoken of it, no matter how indirect, and who respond to any perceived threat to their game of choice with huge volumes of poorly-reasoned posts defending their game of choice?
Personally, my money is on the last one...
According to the lore (if you read the books that are scattered all around Azeroth), one can think of the alliance races as the equivalent of "the man", and the horde as being minorities (as their stereotypical behavior implies); including the attempted genocide against Trolls (which is why they hang out with the Orcs) and the Orc concentration camps with demon breeding programs.
The taurens side with the horde because (if I remember correctly), the Orcs and Trolls helped them fight the centaur races, even though the Night Elves had historically been their friends (due to their shared Druidic culture).
But why the undead? It's fairly obvious that humans (in WoW lore) are quite xenophobic, and would shun their undead kin; one notices this everywhere.
The only "evil" really inherant in the undead is that they are sick of being considered not people, and are willing to make all humans undead to make their point heard. Many, if not all high-ranking undead were once high-ranking humans of one sort or another, but upon death, were shunned by their own people, forcing them to join a group that they once hated, feared, and killed. Yet they still choose to fight along side the undead...why? I'll leave that up to those who bother to read the books (in the game; the paperback ones you can buy at bookstores, I hear, are horrible wastes of pulp).
For fuck's sake, it's a damn game. So what if the races of the Horde - fiction - are based upon racial stereotypes in real life? So what if the world in World of Warcraft really is biased toward 'western' cultures? It's not the end of the fucking world if the trolls have Jamaican accents or if the Tauren culture resembles that of the indigenous tribes of North America. The writer of the article needs to remove whatever quantity of sand that has found its way into their vagina and get on with their hopefully substantially less politically correct lives.
unfortunatly the author and the author he quotes have no clue of the game. The one thing that sticks out in WoW is that you basically get to kill every "race" in the game. As alliance you kill human members of "evil" rogue syndicates (defias), you kill evil dwarfs (darkiron), evil gnomes (shadowcouncil), evil orcs, evil elves, evil dragons etc etc pp. At the same time you work for good trolls (zandarla), good undead (argent dawn), good tauren (cenarion) etc. In WoW, no race is good or evil. At the most, factions are. Even then, often it's ambiguos at best.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
"I mean, if someone at Blizzard observed Jamacians (well, actually Rastafarians, as not all Jamacians are as their stereotype makes them out to be) and then said to themselves, 'well I'll make a character out of that' ...then I'd say that's racism."
No, not really. You forget one essential ingredient: for anything to be racism it also has to carry some kind of negative connotation. If it just presents or borrows from some race, but does _not_ pass any kind of judgment of it being "evil" or "inferior", then it's simply not racism.
E.g., Star Wars borrows heavily from the Japanese, but noone would call it racist for that. E.g., Jade Empire isn't just borrowing from ancient China, but is outright set in an exaggerated fantasy version of China. Yet noone would call it a racist game.
And the Horde are just a different bunch of cultures. (You can't even say it's one different culture, because each of its tribal components has a different culture of its own.) They're neither good, nor evil per se, and in many aspects they're not even that different from the Alliance cultures.
E.g., they still live by the same honour rules. They lose honour for attacking civilians, just like the Alliance does, and they gain nothing from attacking weaker opponents, again just like their Alliance counterpart. I.e., it doesn't look "evil" to me in that aspect. There's nothing in there that says "you're great if you go slaughter their women and children and gank their newbies", and which thus could be judged as "evil".
And Blizzard certainly passes no judgment there. You're not asked to choose a "good" or "evil" side, like in EQ2 or COH/COV, you're simply asked to choose Alliance or Horde. Each one thinks they're the good ones and the others are the enemy, and each one is just as guilty of crimes against the other. E.g., it's damn hard to say "Dwarves are good, Tauren are evil" with a straight face, when the dwarves are the ones desecrating the taurens' cemeteries and such in the name of archaeology.
Basically if you can view one of those cultures as "evil" or "inferior" just because they're different from the RL western culture, then you've just discovered your own bias. Not Blizzard's.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Is being moderated a troll when talking about trolls a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't think it's really fair to say the Horde is evil - Taurens (Nature lovers and generally cute and gentle creatures) are definitely not evil, while humans are definitely evil by nature (corrupt, domineering, only interested in pillaging the whole continent around their home towns of Stormwind and Ironforge to eradicate everything they do not like).
Thats just my opinion, the other 6 races are kinda in-between.. I think that the Undead and Night-elves are both just victims who would be much happier if they weren't caught up in the whole mess.
Will program for karma.
One of the things I particularly enjoy about the Warcraft lore is that while the story is often told from one side or the other, there is not necessarily any absolute good or evil. Characters you'd assume were actually 'good' often are forced to ally with races or beings you'd assume were 'evil'. Some beings in the warcraft universe believe in order (alliance AND most of the horde), while others believe in chaos (the burning legion, et al). Some characters, e.g. http://www.wowwiki.com/Illidan seem to be in a purposefully ambivalent position on this 'line'. In some situations, he's undeniably evil incarnate, but he still shows surprising compassion for the non-demonic at various points in the back-story.
Another interesting point is that while the forsaken do kinda want to wipe out all life, that is for two main reasons: it's their only method of reproduction, so to speak - i.e. kill something and raise it from the dead. Also, most living things want to kill all the undead, as they view them as an abomination of nature. Nothing quite makes you want to kill something like being hunted down for genocidal reasons by them. Whether it's preferable to be alive or undead presumably hinges on what state of 'living' you are currently in.
While I'm not denying the insightful anthropology observations, methinks you view WoW a bit one-sided. WoW actually lets you play both sides.
Sure, you can play Alliance and view the Horde as a bunch of primitive superstitious savages with their witch-doctors (shamen) and carved totems, just waiting to be civilized by the White Man.
But the gist is, you can also choose to play one of those tribesmen and try to see the world through their eyes. And I mean not just play an orc for the knock-down protection and axe specialization, or a Tauren for the herbalism bonus and couple of extra hit points. Try to really understand their story, their philosophy (as little of it as the game gives you). Try to really see the world through a Tauren's eyes: their lands poisoned and destroyed by that goblin cartel, their sacred burial places dug up by dwarves who couldn't care less about someone else's traditions or beliefs, etc.
Try to imagine your shaman not just as TEH L33T PVP CL4SS, but really as the keeper of the tribe's lore, customs, identity. The one people come to when they want to honour their ancestors, or need spiritual guidance in their lives. Try to imagine yourself picking up the mace and shield not for xp and gold coins, but really to defend your tribe's very existence and identity against a world bent on wiping it out completely.
Try to understand that when a tribe would end that desperate as to send its shamen on the front line, that tribe is risking its very identity and history, because those were the guys who kept that. Those guys were not just priests of some barbaric spirits, but the living archive and history book of the tribe, plus civil authority figures. If your shamen died, that was the end of the road: from there on you had no history, no lore, no identity. The Romans for example understood this and tried to wipe out druids to erase the gauls' national identity. Made them easier to rule.
Try to follow their quest arcs and understand where they came from, what they want, what they believe in, and that they didn't as much lack Alliance technology, as _rejected_ it.
And if then you can still tell me that the Alliance are the good guys and the Horde as a bunch of primitive savages and stereotypical evil to boot... well, I'm guessing you won't, if you have a degree in anthropology.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the horde is evil just as long as you're playing alliance. if you're playing horde, alliance is evil. it's just a matter of perspective - I tought it was really simple to understand. orcs, trolls and taurens sure are not evil and forsaken might be but that's sort of a "secret" to the other three races.
One thing that you see over and over is the persecution of the other races by the Humans. The Humans mistakenly see themselves as the premier race of the game. They have made allies with the three other 'most human' races out of convience. They're mostly lead by the 'Light' (which is an allusion to Christian religion) in their actions, and see anyone who stands in their way as defying the light. Look at the book by Shadowpriest Allister (Holy Bologna, What the Light Doesn't Want You To Know). The Undead have found that the Light is a sham to give the Humans a reason to fight the Horde on behalf of the true enemies, the Burning Crusaide (see the Stratholme, live side for more evidence).
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
The important thing that I see here is the blatant use of stereotypes. In the end, I think which races are the evil ones is less important than that all the races are expressing stereotypes. Resorting to stereotypes is just laziness, and it's harmful to both the group being stereotyped and to the group being misled. When you use a stereotype you're neglecting to accurately portray the culture you're using as inspiration and you're also neglecting to make up your own ideas. You're spreading misconceptions that cause misunderstanding. It doesn't make it okay if it's something that "everyone knows anyway." Why would that make it all right to reinforce it? It's all like minstrels performing in blackface. To quote South Park, "Either it's all okay, or none of it is."
OMG you want the game to be racist against people from Michigan!!!
I think the author didn't do enough research because if you actually play in the game you quickly see that neither side is "evil" and that there are many factions that cross the lines. Tuarens and Night Elves who don't care much for The Horde who put the natural world first are in Centarian Circle. There are evil Dwarves and Orcs up to their own monkey buisness (they are evil because the goal of their monkey buisness is entirely *evil*) that will attack Horde or Alliance characters with equal hatred. Argent Dawn is a collection of both Alliance and Horde that consider the threat from the Scourge a much bigger problem than the petty Horde vs Alliance squabble.
Ignoring the author, there is an interesting sociological angle to the world Blizzard has setup. You have two factions who are at perminate odds and who have been saddled extreme problems "understanding" each other (it is hard to communicate, impossible to help, or otherwise interact with them in anything but a hostile manner). If one jumps into the game and studies the players interacting with each other they'll find all sorts of interesting things that can be studied. How players will rationalize attacking another player. How a player will automatically, and possibily, subconciously "demoting" the other side's status as players (those guys are idiots, stupid *insert class here* they have the easy mode!), and scarily how players will be in glee in misery over the angony of another. There is fertile stuff here to study some dark behavior found in humans.
Another point of interest, World of Warcraft is clearly a "Western Centric" game. The cultural and symbolic references are familiar to Western Civilization, specifically in North America. As already noted, Bliz uses familiar cultural references to add flavor to the game. Dwarves are Celtic (to me, the men sound Scottish while the women sound Irish). Trolls are Jamacian, maybe more of a blend of Carribean Island. Tuaren are presented like Native Americans. This is a bit of a stretch but the Forsaken are presented more like "goths" outsiders who don't fit well anywhere. These make sense to me as a guy who lives in North America. The question on my mind is how does this present itself in other countries outside of North America? Heck are any of the audio cues and dialog changed? How in the heck does one do a Scottish accent in Chinese anyway? I'm wondering what other countries make of this "flavoring" in the game.
While most of the arguments are centered on the idea that the Horde is not really evil, and that those sorts of distinctions in the game are only a matter of perspective, there is a basic point a lot of people are missing. The thing is that the Western Caucasian cultures are depicted in the Alliance races as being human, while the "foreign" races are depicted as not-human. The good vs evil dichotomy isn't even necessary to paint a negative connotation by depicting Rastafarians as (albeit misunderstood) Trolls as opposed to misunderstood or different colored humans. I don't blame Blizzard for having placed cultural elements into the various races to give them more depth and feeling, but the problem people can have is in their interpretation of those choices.
Say the game was instead based in an Asian setting, and the humans had a Japanese or Chinese cultural template, and classes ran along kung-fu masters and Samurai archetypes, and the costumes and architecture were based on those designs. Then say that the orc equivalents were based on the Western Imperialist era culture, who believe that it is their duty to bring "civilization" to these savage nations. Or say the Humans were based on the Arabian and Persian cultures from the periods of the crusades, and the Horde armies were invading from the west, believing they are reclaiming what they see as their own ancestral holy land, or liberating their persecuted bretheren living in those areas (or insert your own justification). This paints a very different connotation on the cultures, and although the game could make various justifications for the behavior on both sides to remove the idea that any one side is inherently evil, the perspective on which side is human automatically invites a certain interpretation.
Again though, I'm not blaming Blizzard for building off of a very successful franchise that was itself based on fairly prevalent fantasy themes. I applaud them for actually repainting the historically "evil" races as sympathetic. The problem lies in the original fantasy setting all these sorts of games are based off of, and the natural and inevitable outcome of having any non-human races in a setting based on human cultures or stereotypes.
Actually, I wouldn't mind playing a couple of those games I mentioned; I'm tired of Fantasy games that are constantly set in the Tolkien based European Medieval period anyway. One or two is enough, but all of them?
Anyone stop to think that Blizzard maybe... *gasp* played out these sterotypes intentionally. I always though of the scottish dwarves, jamacain trolls, goth undead, and nerdy gnomes as satires on their associated types. Maybe I'm just wrong though thinking that a troll singing about smoking two dwarves is trying to be amusing.
I think people need to lighten up on the whole idea. Comedians make fun of racial sterotypes every day. Why can't a game developer?
Specifically, the Humans are very fractured. Unlike some of the other races (there is no questioning the authority of Thrall as the leader of the Orcs), Humans are fractured and scattered and are presented in game as having complex political issues. There is no Human leader even though there is a "king" (but the reagent runs things, who seems like a level headed nice guy) there are very few who pay anything more than lip service to their leader (the Priests claim they should be running the spirtual things, Mages claim they should be running the magical things, etc). Even the most acliamed and popular Humans like Jaina Proudmore couldn't get people to rally around her in this situation. It is in this climate that Onxyia could sneak and do her stuff.
The Humans nor The Alliance aren't evil or corrupt. They are just driven to excell (human nature?) and unfortunately don't agree on how to do it.
I am not so sure that the author ever played much Horde. That is mostly what I have played. Here is a better breakdown. Probably the most "good" race, i.e. noble, would be Tauren. I think you could make a case for saying that the Orcs may be the 2nd most "good" race. I am talking about the main-stream player Orcs. The Trolls, that are a player race, are an off-shoot of the blood-thirsty trolls in the world. The Orcs are helping them to shed their canabilistic nature, and be more understanding. The undead, well, I think that is more an alliance of convience. I think it IS telling that there are 2 major cultural centers for the Horde. One belongs to the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls, the other one belongs to the undead. If you play through the story line quests, you will find the Tauren are very noble, and feel proud to stand next to their orc allies. If you play the orcs, you will find they are still batteling their brethern that ARE still demonically controlled, or wanting to go back to that life. There are definately a lot of good vs evil in the horde itself. There are a lot of inner demons in the horde. If you play the Horde, you will realize one major thing about the Alliance. They are the betrayers. They betrayed the trust of the Horde, and have broken promises and even broke their own alliance with the Horde. The Allaince are made up of oathbreakers, and opportunists. They are evil. It just depends upon who's perspective you are looking at. I have long held that calling the Horde "evil" is wrong. The morality of World of Warcraft has very little to do with good or evil... more along the lines of a million colors of grey.
You know, it's funny. The reason I was confused was that when I was growing up (not that long ago, to be honest) the word 'gank' meant 'to steal rudely, with force or disrespect.' It's interesting how word meanings migrate due to time and change of context.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Coming up with a culture that is completely removed from a known culture is impossible. It would be like mixing paint until you find a "new" color. Someone will critic your color and say, "but it has a little blue and a little green, and doesn't it look a lot like...". If you invent a new culture that has no connection with those that are known it is so unbelievable they will reject it immediately. Unless they are being obvious about the associations (star cough wars) then I don't see the need to bitch.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The orcs WERE the race to volunteer to side with demons, create a portal to Azeroth, and slaughter humans, aren't they? And orcs = the original horde
Who says the Horde is "evil"? The Forsaken (undead) are, certainly, but the Horde in general has an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" relationship with them (mainly as a pretext for having a playable undead race, most certainly).
The Humans themselves, as portrayed by the World of Warcraft games, are certainly not what I would call "good". Many of the Humans are portrayed as rude and bigotted, the elves can be aloof and haughty, dwarves as gruff and angry, and gnomes... well, nobody really likes gnomes anyway.
If anything, it seems Blizzard did an excellent job of showing an inherant nobility of many of the Horde races, and how each race presented can have both good and evil members.
To claim Blizzard is portraying the Horde as "evil" really demonstrates an ignorance of the games and what has been done in them.
Did anybody take the time to notice that it's just a fucking game?
What it basically comes down to is if you are playing a game, and no nothing of it's lore you will assume whatever race(s) are fighting the humans are evil.
Reasons for rolling one race or another vary. For example:
When I picked my first character, I was looking for a hybrid on the horde side because I wanted to play the evil side (since I enjoy ganking). Since the warlock didn't have good melee attacks, I was thinking about the Shaman. I decided I didn't want to play a Shaman though, since I usually associate Shaman with being healers and I wanted a more offense based hybrid. In what can only be called a dumb move in retrospect, I rolled a human paladin. I really had no desire to play the human race (or dwarves) I was more picking my race because of what class was available. Had there been some kind of undead death knight, I would have taken that.
Trying to come up with reasons why people pick one race or another seems silly. Doesn't everyone decide on a class when picking their first character then pick the race from there?
Long time. Just watch She-Ra and see how they have called them the 'Evil' Horde. I tell you, to He-Man and She-Ra everyone who was..
;)
Oh, wait, you're talking about the World of Warcraft universe, not about the He-Man/She-Ra universe.
Nevermind.