The true inspiration behind most of the warcraft races

[Beloren]

A while ago, some guy did an amazing post on the background of most of the wow races from real life culture, it was a good read, and i found very helpful with fairly accurate infomration, except I think he was entirely wrong, because the wow races were not influenced by scholarly research both historical and arcaheological, but were entirely based off popular fictional races of our era. Now the things those groups were based on might lead to someone who actually did real life research, but not the wow races.

So, where do you think the inspirations really come from?


Here is my guess:

• Humans - standard fantasy 80s/90s cartoon humans
• High elves - largely based on LotR high elves, then localised to a DnD derivative strain
• Blood elves - a dark elf variation of high elves at first, then given a more humanised bad boy spin to them.

• Night elves - original night elves were a unique adaptation of the original fusion of DnD dark elves and a spin on forest elves - then in wow, playable night elves reduced to dark skinned forest elves.

• Orcs - based on Star Trek Klingon adaptation of DnD orcs.
• Trolls - I don't know where their inspiration came from, they seem quite unique in this incarnation

• Tauren - a racial adaptation of the Minotaur, also an original variation - giving a minotaur as a race, and then basing that race on the native american culture - I belief this was Chris Metzen paying homage to his native american familial roots.

• Goblins - very typical fantasy goblins who are greedy and hordish, very unoriginal, they are given alchemy/engineering spin though with a vermin like breeding quality.
• Dwarves - LotR/DnD dwarves
• Gnomes - a unique adaptation of DnD and garden gnomes, the engineering spin is quite unique as well as their high intelligence.

• Draenei - original Eredar were based on demons, original draenei later modified to Broken I think were original. I'm not sure what really inspired the TBC draenei, but I don't think it was original although i've never seen it before, maybe someone can help. I think Chris thought it novel to give demons an angelic side - almost like the biblical accounts of Lucifer and the angels that fell with him who are regarded as the leaders of the demons, they actually were originally angelic beings. Modified to be mortal like.

• Worgen: Based on werewolves of local fantasy, adapted to wow with both night elf and gilnean roots - they made it original in the warcraft world
• Forsaken: Classic zombie apocalypse, with the spin that some zombies are sentient in control of their faculties, allowing them to be a playable race of undead humans, it allows exploration of this in a rather original way. Except sentient zombies aren't really original, so I guess not original. I would say izombie or the UK's "Being Human"

• Pandaren - Kung fu Pandas? (for the MoP fleshing out)?
• Vulpera - blizzards version of cutesy furry races very popular from far east asian series

Allied races are just variations of the in game main races in warcraft lore. They are entirely based on them:

• Nightborne - pre-sundering night elves
• Void elves - void wielding blood/high elves
• Highmountain - Cenarius enhanced Tauren
• Lightforged - Light infused Draenei
• Mag'har orcs - original orcs uncorrupted from fel
• Dark Irons - dwarf clan in warcraft lore with a mines of moria dwarf inspiration
• Zandalari - original trolls (in the same way kaldorei are original elves)
• Kul'tiran - humans with a little bit more vrykul in them
• Mechagnomes - half mechanised gnomes

What do you guys think?

[vian]

Pretty sure the Orcs take their inspiration from GW Orks.

[Hubbl3]

Pretty sure the Orcs take their inspiration from GW Orks.

GW Orks don't talk about "muh honor" all the time and just want to smash things. Also they are fungi.

[Nerovar]

GW Orks don't talk about "muh honor" all the time and just want to smash things.

So basically the original demon corrupted Orcs?

[Saltysquidoon]

Humans/HE/Dwarves/Orcs/Goblins/Gnomes are (or at least at some point were) just lazy GW/DnD lifts (which were in turn mostly LotR lifts).

Night elves were unironically and unapologetically "but what if drow and wood elves?"

Blood elves hilariously were one of blizzards more unique takes on a fantasy race so it's a good thing they wrote them out of existence at the end of tbc.

[huth]

What do you guys think?

I think you're far to quick to dismiss that other post about real world influences for purely fantasy influences. There are clearly visible inspirations from real world cultures in addition to fantasy, whether it is architecture, clothing or culture which could not have come from the fantasy influences because they don't have them/have different ones.

You're also completely wrong about the Pandaren since they predate Kung Fu Panda by years.

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Humans/HE/Dwarves/Orcs/Goblins/Gnomes are (or at least at some point were) just lazy GW/DnD lifts (which were in turn mostly LotR lifts).

Night elves were unironically and unapologetically "but what if drow and wood elves?"

Blood elves hilariously were one of blizzards more unique takes on a fantasy race so it's a good thing they wrote them out of existence at the end of tbc.

A lot of them then developed in more original directions, though. And unlike many of the influences, Warcraft dwarves are a thriving race rather than slowly dying out.

[Saltysquidoon]

A lot of them then developed in more original directions, though. And unlike many of the influences, Warcraft dwarves are a thriving race rather than slowly dying out.

Aye, credit where it's due, Blizzard has fleshed out various races over the years to make them feel more like their own thing (to various levels of success). No point pretending their inspiration doesn't have pretty obvious sources though.

[Villager720]

Just want to say that eredar/draenei were clearly taken from tieflings in D&D.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/tiefling

[Beloren]

I think you're far to quick to dismiss that other post about real world influences for purely fantasy influences. There are clearly visible inspirations from real world cultures in addition to fantasy, whether it is architecture, clothing or culture which could not have come from the fantasy influences because they don't have them/have different ones.

.

you think Chris Metzen, did research into world cultures , history and arcaheology? I some how don't think so, he understood cultural trends and what was cool, and i think he watched a lot of tv , read a lot of fantasy stuff including played DnD

So most of the races are influenced by pop fictional races, those are the ones that are int run influenced by real life cultures and peoples, i mean these things come from somewhere.

I don't know what his education or the scope of his knowledge is, so ofc I feel some of the things he added may have had real life influences directly, like the Tauren I feel he based entirely on his native american heritage, and so to the forest left side of the night elf which has a fusion of his celtic and native American cultures.

But most of this stuff writes itself, he knew what was cool, and how to make it work in this hodge podge mix of many fantasy worlds they created their own version of.

So I'm not dismissing the other guys post, all the stuff you see in many of these fantasy stories and franchises, books etc, that Metzen would have read and been influenced by can be traced back to those real life cultures that guy picked up, but they fit far better I think when looked at from the point of view of popular fantasy series like DnD and lotR rather than real life stuff.

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Aye, credit where it's due, Blizzard has fleshed out various races over the years to make them feel more like their own thing (to various levels of success). No point pretending their inspiration doesn't have pretty obvious sources though.

Exactly. I mean most of us wouldn'tb e posting here if we didn't like something about the way they did all those various races, definitely credit where it is due.

I also don't udnerstand the loathing for races that are pretty much LotR heavily inspired, every race is inspired by something from pop fiction, why does the 1 to 3 out 30 race that is inspired LoTR receive vastly more criticism than all the others? I never got that. If you don't like that version, at least blizzard have given us several incarnations of every race for us to like, in addition to many races

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Im pretty sure most of it comes from Warhammer.

Didn't warcraft exist because Warhammer asked blizzard to do a video game for them, but pulled out of it? And warcraft is their salvage of the project, so it has a heavy Warhammer influence which is inturn heavily DnD influenced. But many of the blizzard founders were heavy DnD players - so it's not surprising.

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Just want to say that eredar/draenei were clearly taken from tieflings in D&D.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/tiefling

omg, yes you're right, they're directly from DnD.. hehe. I knew they had a familiar feel to them, just couldn't place my finger on it.

[Hyoss]

Pandaren - Kung fu Pandas
What do you guys think?

I think you are definitely and absolutely wrong here. Pandaren were part of Warcraft canon way back in 2002, and the movie came out 2008.

"Blizzard's longtime art director Samwise Didier originally created the pandaren race in his own art. The origin can be traced back to Didier's brother and his "fantastic skill at mangling up words and phrases". During a desert camping trip, Didier's brother commented that Samwise was "like one of those panda bears -- you're never cold". Even though he meant to say "polar bear", the saying stuck and Didier was thereafter known among friends by the nickname "Panda""

https://wow.gamepedia.com/History_of...en_in_Warcraft

You should probably try googling the race history first, as fun as it is to speculate yourself.

[Aucald]

GW Orks don't talk about "muh honor" all the time and just want to smash things. Also they are fungi.

Heh, is that the reason why Draenor in WC2: BtDP appears to be covered with towering mushrooms as opposed to trees like on Azeroth? Interesting bit of connection if so.

[loras]

A while ago, some guy did an amazing post on the background of most of the wow races from real life culture, it was a good read, and i found very helpful with fairly accurate infomration, except I think he was entirely wrong, because the wow races were not influenced by scholarly research both historical and arcaheological, but were entirely based off popular fictional races of our era. Now the things those groups were based on might lead to someone who actually did real life research, but not the wow races.

So, where do you think the inspirations really come from?


Here is my guess:

• Humans - standard fantasy 80s/90s cartoon humans
• High elves - largely based on LotR high elves, then localised to a DnD derivative strain
• Blood elves - a dark elf variation of high elves at first, then given a more humanised bad boy spin to them.

• Night elves - original night elves were a unique adaptation of the original fusion of DnD dark elves and a spin on forest elves - then in wow, playable night elves reduced to dark skinned forest elves.

• Orcs - based on Star Trek Klingon adaptation of DnD orcs.
• Trolls - I don't know where their inspiration came from, they seem quite unique in this incarnation

• Tauren - a racial adaptation of the Minotaur, also an original variation - giving a minotaur as a race, and then basing that race on the native american culture - I belief this was Chris Metzen paying homage to his native american familial roots.

• Goblins - very typical fantasy goblins who are greedy and hordish, very unoriginal, they are given alchemy/engineering spin though with a vermin like breeding quality.
• Dwarves - LotR/DnD dwarves
• Gnomes - a unique adaptation of DnD and garden gnomes, the engineering spin is quite unique as well as their high intelligence.

• Draenei - original Eredar were based on demons, original draenei later modified to Broken I think were original. I'm not sure what really inspired the TBC draenei, but I don't think it was original although i've never seen it before, maybe someone can help. I think Chris thought it novel to give demons an angelic side - almost like the biblical accounts of Lucifer and the angels that fell with him who are regarded as the leaders of the demons, they actually were originally angelic beings. Modified to be mortal like.

• Worgen: Based on werewolves of local fantasy, adapted to wow with both night elf and gilnean roots - they made it original in the warcraft world
• Forsaken: Classic zombie apocalypse, with the spin that some zombies are sentient in control of their faculties, allowing them to be a playable race of undead humans, it allows exploration of this in a rather original way. Except sentient zombies aren't really original, so I guess not original. I would say izombie or the UK's "Being Human"

• Pandaren - Kung fu Pandas
• Vulpera - blizzards version of cutesy furry races very popular from far east asian series

Allied races are just variations of the in game main races in warcraft lore. They are entirely based on them:

• Nightborne - pre-sundering night elves
• Void elves - void wielding blood/high elves
• Highmountain - Cenarius enhanced Tauren
• Lightforged - Light infused Draenei
• Mag'har orcs - original orcs uncorrupted from fel
• Dark Irons - dwarf clan in warcraft lore with a mines of moria dwarf inspiration
• Zandalari - original trolls (in the same way kaldorei are original elves)
• Kul'tiran - humans with a little bit more vrykul in them
• Mechagnomes - half mechanised gnomes

What do you guys think?

Seems fairly accurate, though gnomes being intelligent and engineering savvy features in dnd a bit as well, though not to tye same extent.

The orcs though seems a bit of a miss, as they started as purely malicious demonic creatures not too different from any sort of "hostile alien invader". They've picked up a lot along the way though, making them one of the most interesting and nuanced warcraft races alongside warcraft trolls (which i adore... in a very nonsexual way).

Personally i'm often disappointed with how homogenous warcraft humans have always been in my eyes, atleast kul tirans bring some variety but i kinda hope that the woke-ish inclusion of othet "race" humans of different colors is a precursor to the addition of more human "homelands" as opposed to just Lordaeron, stormwind and Kul Tiras (and to a lesser extent Northrend i suppose).

[VinceVega]

The gnome one is a bit weird for.
wow Gnomes aber basically identicall from every other gnome in d&d.

Look at the games for example. BG1/2 and Icewinddale.
Magic and technology basically.

[Beloren]

Seems fairly accurate, though gnomes being intelligent and engineering savvy features in dnd a bit as well, though not to tye same extent.

The orcs though seems a bit of a miss, as they started as purely malicious demonic creatures not too different from any sort of "hostile alien invader". They've picked up a lot along the way though, making them one of the most interesting and nuanced warcraft races alongside warcraft trolls (which i adore... in a very nonsexual way).

Personally i'm often disappointed with how homogenous warcraft humans have always been in my eyes, atleast kul tirans bring some variety but i kinda hope that the woke-ish inclusion of othet "race" humans of different colors is a precursor to the addition of more human "homelands" as opposed to just Lordaeron, stormwind and Kul Tiras (and to a lesser extent Northrend i suppose).

Thanks.

Yeh, the orcs started off as your classic DND orc enemy, but with an origin that was fleshed out.

• One of the greatest things about wow is how a lot of these races are fleshed out in ways other franchises do not.
• The story of them continues well past the opening narrative of them - which also doesn't happen in many franchises - some races like night elves were planned well beyond what was shown in their original introduction
• The races also evolve as their story continues - most games like dnd are set presentations, and your adventure continues the story, there is no real evolution, other franchises don't last long enough or aren't popular enough to warrant meaningful continuations and improvements.. it's a shame that those who took over wow handled it so poorly and neglectfully, they could have done a lot more.
• Finally, warcraft has an excellent visual presentation of their races, in fact I feel this far surprasses that of any other franchise, and in fact the art team has told as more about the races than the quest/stories have after their introduction. Which is incredible, but also a bit sad, because the story has switched focus to individual characters and events

[loras]

Thanks.

Yeh, the orcs started off as your classic DND orc enemy, but with an origin that was fleshed out.

• One of the greatest things about wow is how a lot of these races are fleshed out in ways other franchises do not.
• The story of them continues well past the opening narrative of them - which also doesn't happen in many franchises - some races like night elves were planned well beyond what was shown in their original introduction
• The races also evolve as their story continues - most games like dnd are set presentations, and your adventure continues the story, there is no real evolution, other franchises don't last long enough or aren't popular enough to warrant meaningful continuations and improvements.. it's a shame that those who took over wow handled it so poorly and neglectfully, they could have done a lot more.
• Finally, warcraft has an excellent visual presentation of their races, in fact I feel this far surprasses that of any other franchise, and in fact the art team has told as more about the races than the quest/stories have after their introduction. Which is incredible, but also a bit sad, because the story has switched focus to individual characters and events

You're welcome!

Agreed on pretty much all points, to me WoW has "progressed" from a world centric game to a character centric gsme, and as such has become much more shallow and less interesting.
And it reflects on almost everything else as well, even the landscape serves the story and its characters, no convincing world is like that.

Though i have to give some credit where it's due: Boralus was the first city that genuinely felt a bit like a living city rather than an elaborate prop, so it's not all bad or worse.

But in the end that character focused story does take the replayability down several notches, as a story can only be
genuinely told once. Afterwards its marks on the landscape just become disturbing nuisances if they are so numerous.

Thinking back this sort of trend started to feel out of place for me during cataclysm.

[Soon-TM]

Just want to say that eredar/draenei were clearly taken from tieflings in D&D.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/tiefling

Now that's an interesting bit of background. I was under the impression that that all the (core) Alliance races plus a couple of Horde ones (namely Orcs and Goblins) were blatant LotR ripoffs, especially the WC2 alliance.

That's what I liked the most in WC3/early WoW, when Metzen felt confident enough to give a spin out of the usual LotR-based tropes. Back then, humans (some of them, at least) weren't one dimensional goody goody two shoes, dwarves were actually interesting (especially their relationship with their Wildhammer and Dark Iron cousins), dark elves (aka nelfs) were actually good folks, even if their society was a Republican dream made true.

On the Horde side, Orcs were actually trying to atone for their past atrocities, Tauren were the Native American-inspired giants, peaceful by nature but they would kick the crap out of you if you bothered them too much. Trolls were actually a quite mixed bag, instead of Tolkien's one dimensional baddies, and even the walking corpses had a sense of solidarity, at least among themselves. On top of that, the "light elves" (aka belfs) could be quite the edgelords. It was a quite refreshing take, all in all.

But Danuser & co. are so stereotypical with their writing that it's almost funny.

[Dug]

Those "inspirations" for forsaken are so dumb can't tell if you're serious. Not to mention them coming out YEARS after the fact.

[Beloren]

You're welcome!

Agreed on pretty much all points, to me WoW has "progressed" from a world centric game to a character centric gsme, and as such has become much more shallow and less interesting.
And it reflects on almost everything else as well, even the landscape serves the story and its characters, no convincing world is like that.

Though i have to give some credit where it's due: Boralus was the first city that genuinely felt a bit like a living city rather than an elaborate prop, so it's not all bad or worse.

But in the end that character focused story does take the replayability down several notches, as a story can only be
genuinely told once. Afterwards its marks on the landscape just become disturbing nuisances if they are so numerous.

Thinking back this sort of trend started to feel out of place for me during cataclysm.

It's interesting that again, most of the breakthroughs and impressive stuff are in the visual presentation, i.e. the art - while the story may inspire this, it's a shame that same inspiration doesn't quite translate to the lore.

perhaps it's because of this character focus, which I am puzzled by, world and race building is very important, and while I know stories continue in the zones they flesh out, no progression or little to nothing on what has come before is equally puzzling. Besides for an mmo who still doesn't commit to proper story telling in it's game, the character focus often feels like the wrong approach.

[loras]

It's interesting that again, most of the breakthroughs and impressive stuff are in the visual presentation, i.e. the art - while the story may inspire this, it's a shame that same inspiration doesn't quite translate to the lore.

perhaps it's because of this character focus, which I am puzzled by, world and race building is very important, and while I know stories continue in the zones they flesh out, no progression or little to nothing on what has come before is equally puzzling. Besides for an mmo who still doesn't commit to proper story telling in it's game, the character focus often feels like the wrong approach.

Agreed.
And this, no more no less.

[Beloren]

Those "inspirations" for forsaken are so dumb can't tell if you're serious. Not to mention them coming out YEARS after the fact.

I mean a zombie apocalypse isn't a 00s invention that started with Wc3, nor were sentient zombies/undead, they aren't an original creation - iZombie ofc came later, but that was obvious... if you have a guess as to where he drew the inspiration from in particular.. alternatively he may have just wanted to have zombies/undead in wow, - i men it's kinda cool, what kid doesn't like a good ol zombie flick - rule of cool addition. and did his own story to make it happen.

Zombies are popular fiction