Guys, it costs you $0 dollars to let people have dark brown skinned elves.
ok i had this in tags initially but im all fired up now so here we go lol
if your argument against poc being portrayed among the warcraft fantasy races is “Well The Lore Says-”, what you’re actually saying is “i literally care more about time-travelling dragons and nightmare moose than the erasure of millions of real life people, some of whom actively engage with this franchise”.
i don’t give a shit how long ago this game was made. i’ve been playing since vanilla, i know how backwards it can be – the racism inherent in the worldbuilding itself is as glaringly obvious as it is excessive. it sucks. it sucks and it probably won’t change.
but here’s the thing: new content is created all the time. new lore, new stories, new canonical information. they can choose to include poc in the warcraft franchise whenever they want, and they overwhelmingly decide against it.
go into the character creation screen and count how many realistic mid-to-pale skintones you can have for your toon. now count the realistic mid-to-dark ones. explain to me how that makes any sense. and let’s not even get into poc facial features and hair – because the only places you’ll find them are among the classic “evil” and “savage” races.
hiding behind lore is not only lazy, it makes you look like a complete asshole. you know who else is a complete asshole? the developers who thought turning a catch-all stereotype of First Nation tribes into anthropomorphic cows was a good idea. don’t even get me started on trolls.
there is no excuse. and if you think there is please hmu so i can block you
I’ve also been ignoring this for a few days, but I have something to say about this.
Be realistic:
More and more, the devs are inspired by US the players. I’ve seen it happen with something that I created and with stuff that other people have created. Just recently, they added in someone’s Jed’hin both as a flavor thing and as a World Quest. They added in my Gnome Run as a micro-holiday before that plus a lot of other tiny things.
The people at Blizzard inspire us, but it’s apparent that we give them ideas sometimes too. Less by just using words but more by showing. After all, we’re in a community together.
The people who I have met online from Blizzard are people who really enjoy creativity. Some of the stuff they reshare blows me away. They inspire the hell out of me at times. I highly doubt that they’re going to come out like a rules lawyer and say that you must abide by x and y rule of lore. I’ve never seen it. Instead, I often see them enjoying people’s creations even if they don’t fit within the “laws of lore.” Because lore is ever changing.
If you want to make a character with brown skin? Make your brown skinned Elf, Human, Dwarf or Gnome. Don’t look for other people’s approval.
Make fantastic art of them, share good stories of them, write little bits about them. Proudly tag that stuff on here and any social media platform that you can. Maybe you’ll inspire other people to do the same, maybe you’ll inspire Blizzard in some way, but at the very least, you’ll be true to what you want to roleplay.
Don’t have changing Blizzard’s mind as your goal, but know that nothing is concrete. Things are always changing and sharing what you create can help others feel more comfortable to create similar things if they’ve been told it’s a taboo.
Lastly:
World of Warcraft has given you a sandbox to create as a roleplayer. People saying you have to abide by certain rules, especially those about skin color, aren’t worth playing with at all.