Okay seriously guys. If someone approached any Blizzard devs and asked, “Hey, can there be dark-skinned elves?” What do you think they would say. Would they say no and pull up a bunch of vague lore explaining why they can only be white, or would they go “Wow it’s 2014 these player skins are outdated and in a fantasy universe that should be fun for everyone despite our constant slip-ups in the past we can safely say that dark-skinned elves can be a thing because it has really uncomfortable racist overtones to let a human-looking human-coloured only be white, maybe one day we can patch in new skins for them and a whole bunch of other races, like for dark iron dwarves or white furred worgen or mag’har orcs”
Creative design aesthetics = “racist overtones”?
Also, the problem with this line of thinking is that if you find it “offensive” that someone is excluded, you then have to add literally EVERYONE.
All colors, genders/mixes, heights, weights, etc. You have to add piercings of every single sort, tattoos, every single eye color, every possible physical peculiarity, every ethnic trait, every ear shape, every finger length, all three body types (ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph), etc. etc. etc.
Where does it end? How do you find the resources to do all that? Or are you saying that skin color is somehow special, while all other natural and acquired traits that people identify with are somehow inferior?
And what if someone is “offended” or can’t “have fun” because their character can’t wear flip-flops in-game? What then?
Being “offended” is entirely the “offended” party’s fault. You can’t seek to impose your personal desires on someone else’s creative efforts. Or rather, you can, but that makes you sound like a 5-year-old child who wants the entire world to conform to their desires.
And all that isn’t even mentioning that there are dark-skinned character options in-game, just not for elves, so the whole “racism by exclusion” argument is moot either way.
Bruh.
