The true inspiration behind most of the warcraft races

[InflaterMouse]

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).

I think it would have also been better to have kept factions at war always, even if they fight the same bosses they could have done it for different reasons. To me I would appreciate the horde more as the "bad guys." I think it would allow for a better story line as well. Just my $.05

[Triceron]

While I can see where you are coming from with this argument, that's not how retconning works.

retconning is retroactively changing something that is hard, established continuity in a way that directly contradicts said continuity. Expanding on the lore of the orcs as they are presented in WC1 / 2 by filling out their background and explaining how they ended up the way they were in WC 1 / 2 isn't a retcon. A retcon would be something like coming out and going "yeah, remember those orcs who were manipulated by demons in WC 1 / 2? That never happened, there were no demons".

Er, they actively retconned quite a lot actually in order to make sense of the whole Orc honor thing.

It's not just a simple explanation of stuff we didn't know, it actively changed the characterization of certain heroes.

Doomhammer was no longer 'the usurper', he was made into the one who wanted to free his people and got betrayed by Gul'dan. This is a retcon to the Orcs whose original motivation in WC1 and 2 was purely for conquest. Doomhammer was not characterized as honorable whatsoever, and he actively took power by killing his superior who he deemed unworthy of the position. Not honorably through Mak'gora, literally ambushed Blackfang in his hidy-hole. There is a Warcraft 1 mission revolving around it, and later confirmed Doomhammer as the one who did it. This plays a BIG part of why Lothar fell in the WC2 campaign; there was no honorable duel between heroes. Lothar was literally ambushed and overwhelmed during a diplomatic mission to speak with Doomhammer. He dies at the start of the mission, where you see him and a bunch of knights surrounded and killed by the Horde troops.

Doomhammer was changed into the defining person who Thrall built his horde's ideals around. Not just a mere 'myth' of a man, but the lore was rewritten entirely to support the idea of Doomhammer having always been honorable, and actively fighting against the demonic influence that plagued his people. This includes Rise of the Horde, where he and Durotan were given explicit backstory meeting Velen and the Draenei and empathizing with his people.

Thrall's horde and the Orc connection to honor would not exist without Doomhammer. Hell, Orgrimmar is named after Doomhammer himself. The Horde's ideals are all based on his history and sacrifice; a history that was rewritten not by the ingame canon, but by the shift in the developers creative direction in wanting a new 'good-guy' Horde in Warcraft 3. Even in Warcraft Adventures, the Horde characters still acknowledged all their evilness and repented the old ways; they weren't actively rewritten to simply being misunderstood.

This is retcon.

[Dhrizzle]

It is almost impossible to say that the modern voice acted version of pandaren are not a direct rippoff of kung fu panda as the artwork and characteristics have tended towards that vs a couple of sleeping bears in an RTS. As they have picked up more characteristics they have become even more kung fu panda. They even picked up the goofiness, I do not remember anything in wow as "silly" as the MoP opening cinematic. The chronology of this is even apparent in your own link, so saying they were in before is completely irrelevant.

Chen Stormstout in Warcraft 3.

[Beloren]

--------------------------------------------

In regards to the OP, I really wouldn't say that WoW's Goblins are very "industry standard", outside their visual theme. Fantasy goblins are almost universally the low level cannon fodder "trash mob" of the genre, and are almost never associated with anything other than large swarms of mostly vicious, mindless grunts that end up ground into paste in the big evil army. WoW's goblins are almost nothing like that, especially with their industrial/technological bent (which in WoW is almost like it was intentionally done to make them the "flip side of the coin" as a direct counter to the Gnomes".

Wait.. didn't the goblins come first before the gnomes.. I couldn't help but think of the Harry Potter goblins who are greedy and intelligent magical creatures, .. whiles the Lotr movie goblins seem like low level fodder, I must admit i don't know what goblins are like in most other portrayals. Warhammer goblins are a full on intelligent race though, isn't that where the goblin shaman persona comes from?

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I don't think the faction focus ever did the game any good(as opposed to the RTSes). It's kinda useful for PvP, but other than that it just never ended up with anything good, just watering down stories and giving us battles we already knew would just end up with the antagonist going rogue or being a draw.

And despite it been pointed out and complained upon with disfavour, we're still getting more of it - i guess they don't value the good things they have or maybe recognise them as important enough to expand upon and develop properly.

[Feanoro]

I do love how the panda defenders keep (deliberately?) missing what people have actually said, that pandas BECAME Kung Fu Panda IN MOP, not that they were created as Kung Fu Panda. Had the playable race in MoP been even close to the old material (in the RPG, they were closer to stoic samurai, and almost scary), no one would even mention the movie.

Oh, and if you're wondering why pandas haven't played a major role since MoP? China didn't like them being ridiculous.

[Moonrage]

They based it more around Chinese mythology,

Like someone else said above me, they're similar because they draw inspiration from the same sources of mythology. Don't get me wrong, Kung Fu Panda are lovely movies and the first one sends a nice message especially, but...

Quote: Scrapped race in The Burning Crusade
The pandaren were initially planned to be the new playable race for the Alliance in World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, but about halfway through development they were replaced with the draenei.[8][9][10] In a Q&A thread on Reddit in April 2020, former Blizzard artist Trent Kaniuga stated that this was because the Chinese government told Blizzard that they couldn't use pandas in the game. By that point, the artists had already created concept art for pandaren cities and buildings, but the change happened early enough in development that not much content was cut. The developers would not get permission to implement pandas until 5 years later. According to Kaniuga, "In reality it was probably just that they needed more time to negotiate it. Pandas are a national treasure in China, so it takes a lot of negotiating to work a deal to distribute characters that look like that in China."

Here's from the Wowwiki. In fact, that initial draft of Pandaren looks much more like Po than they did later on, if you can get over the nightmare fuel that it supplies... And yes you read that right, this was back in TBC. Long before Kung Fu Panda became a thing.

I also remember that they were critiqued for making Pandaren Samurai initially, surprised to see it in the Wiki though. Either way, they based it on their own Pandaren and input from China + the fact that it was a race frequently requested by the playerbase, rather than success of a movie.

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

Man, the part about it featuring highly in polls over favourite expansions of players... I felt that. I Miss Pandaria.
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ___

On another note but still relevant to the thread, I agree with the notion that races have been watered down in favour of Muh Faction Allegiance. Aside from their looks, it feels more like I'm playing a Horde character these days, than X race.

A shame for sure, considering the potential and worldbuilding that COULD be... Hell, they're even erasing known landmarks that are such a part of certain races' entire culture, whilst refusing to implement others (Gilneas when?). And whilst the new player introduction questline is neat and straight-forward, it focuses on class. A Tauren is a Troll is a Human is a Forsaken. Although you get to see the personality of SOME races during it... But mostly, Horde or Alliance Class-stuff.

China has a patent on pandas. Of course they do.

[Verdugo]

China has a patent on pandas. Of course they do.

At this point, I am convinced that they will keep the last panda on some horrific life-support machine for as long as possible just so that they can squeeze the last drops of money out of its vegetable-corpse.

[Venziir]

Almost every fantasy race has roots in Tolkien which in turn are based off of real world mythology, stories, fables, fairy tales, etc. DnD borrows heavily from Tolkien but there are distinctions if you know where to look. Warhammer 40k almost comes off as a techno/chaos DnD game in space. Below are a few of the differences I see.

Gnomes - DnD specifically DragonLance came up with the Tinkering Gnome.
Orcs - Warhammer 40K Demonic Space Orcs... Honor was a afterthought in WarCraft lore.
Mag'har - Definitely a retcon to give more weight to 'honorable orcs'.
Draenei - Idea is a reverse of the Fallen Angel trope... WarCraft normalizes it by making it an entire clan instead of a one off.
Worgen - Wolfman... not werewolf... no tail.
Troll - Based on DnD's vision of a Troll... Troll and Ogre were used interchangeably in older fairy tales/ fables.
Pandarean - Pre-date Kung Fu Panda... probably WarCraft original using an iconic eastern anamorphic animal combined with eastern martial arts.

Technically, the original folklore surrounding werewolves, was that they didn't have a tail and would instead lift one of their hindlegs to act as a tale. As for the troll, Warcraft trolls never had an ounce of Tolkien to them. Even since Warcraft 2 they had that odd cuban'esque accent, mohawks and would throw axes - if anything they were an odd take on iroqouis warriors.

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I do love how the panda defenders keep (deliberately?) missing what people have actually said, that pandas BECAME Kung Fu Panda IN MOP, not that they were created as Kung Fu Panda. Had the playable race in MoP been even close to the old material (in the RPG, they were closer to stoic samurai, and almost scary), no one would even mention the movie.

Oh, and if you're wondering why pandas haven't played a major role since MoP? China didn't like them being ridiculous.

Almost scary? Hah, did Chen Stormstout and the brewmasters in TFT scare you?

[Koward]

Almost scary? Hah, did Chen Stormstout and the brewmasters in TFT scare you?

He is referring to the RPG lore. You can tell because he wrote "in the RPG".
Not TFT.

This is the content: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Pandaren#In_the_RPG

To be honest a significant part of MoP lore and quest text uses the same tone as the serious parts of RPG lore.
But not so much for cinematics or cutscenes. For anything visual, they revert to comic style over-the-top expressions.
Their character models helped with that.
RPG also included lighthearted things, it's not all serious and stoic at all. So I would not say it's fully opposite, but the balance is definitely a bit different.
It's a choice, not necessarily a bad one.

[Kaleredar]

The conventional races in WoW are pretty normal fantasy WH/DnD/LotR riffs that Blizzard has, over time, developed into their own thing and cobbled into some semblance of a coherent story.

For example... Harry Potter didn't "invent" greedy goblins, goblins have been greedy in human mythology overall.

As has been noted many, many times, Pandaren predate Kung Fu panda by several years.

Playable Draenei were quite simply a "but what if they were holy demons?" riff on the Eredar, who were pretty simple demonic creatures in warcraft 3.

I do love how the panda defenders keep (deliberately?) missing what people have actually said, that pandas BECAME Kung Fu Panda IN MOP, not that they were created as Kung Fu Panda. Had the playable race in MoP been even close to the old material (in the RPG, they were closer to stoic samurai, and almost scary), no one would even mention the movie.

Oh, and if you're wondering why pandas haven't played a major role since MoP? China didn't like them being ridiculous.

I highly doubt China has any continued input on WoW's art direction, at least anywhere outside of China. If you were so convinced of "China secretly backdoor art directing Blizzard," they probably wouldn't have just released an expansion where an entire zone is almost literally covered in bones and skulls, a big no-no in China.

As for why Pandaren haven't featured "heavily" since then... we've had no real reason to go back to Pandaria, the only place the Pandaren inhabit. And that's not unusual either. Worgen haven't appeared in any significant way since the end of a series of level 20 quests in Silverpine forest from Cataclysm. Did the British government order the kibosh on them? Draenei were practically non-entities until WoD and Legion. Goblins have never really moved past being more prominent than they were at any other point in time in WoW's history.

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He is referring to the RPG lore. You can tell because he wrote "in the RPG".
Not TFT.

This is the content: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Pandaren#In_the_RPG

...which is not important, seeing as the RPGs are all non-canonical and Chen Stormstout is the first in-game pandaren we see in an appearance that predates Kung Fu Panda... and is pretty much the same as his current iteration.

[Verdugo]

I highly doubt China has any continued input on WoW's art direction, at least anywhere outside of China.

You mean the one market that every big company like Disney and Actiblizz is bending over to please?

[Kaleredar]

You mean the one market that every big company like Disney and Actiblizz is bending over to please?

I’m not talking about blizzard kowtowing to China’s authoritarian censorship policies like them cutting the feed on the free Hong Kong guy. Which is something that happens, and something blizzard needs to grow a pair over.

I’m talking about art direction... like I specifically pointed out. And, like I said, If blizzard was concerned with their art direction vis-a-vis China, they wouldn’t have put forward a zone like maldraxxus which is covered in and populated with the “culturally inappropriate” human skeletons.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole concept of shadowlands is seen as pretty “racey” to the Chinese government.

Those would probably be seen as way bigger “issues” than whatever nonsense the guy I quoted was saying China’s contention with Pandaren being “silly” was rambling on about.

[Verdugo]

I’m not talking about blizzard kowtowing to China’s authoritarian censorship policies like them cutting the feed on the free Hong Kong guy. Which is something that happens, and something blizzard needs to grow a pair over.

I’m talking about art direction... like I specifically pointed out. And, like I said, If blizzard was concerned with their art direction vis-a-vis China, they wouldn’t have put forward a zone like maldraxxus which is covered in and populated with the “culturally inappropriate” human skeletons.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole concept of shadowlands is seen as pretty “racey” to the Chinese government.

Those would probably be seen as way bigger “issues” than whatever nonsense the guy I quoted was saying China’s contention with Pandaren being “silly” was rambling on about.

The whole "skull = bad" cultural thing is bullshit. China is just using it to control other companies trying to enter its market. Cowtow enough and they have no problem lifting this restriction.

[Synstir]

I do think that most races are inspired by IRL races... or aspects have been added to WOW races.
This doesn't go for all the races off course, especially not for the added races after vanilla.

If I see the trolls and their Loa's with whom you have to bargain; well this happens in Voodoo cultures.
I find the troll having lots of inspiration from these tribal communities (painting of face, clothing etc).

The Tauren are very similar to Native Americans; seems obvious.

Just to name 2 examples.

Edit: The Pandaren are obviously inspired by the Chinese culture.

[paxen]

Pandaren were originally just written as the standard "eastern" mélange culture popular a couple of decades ago. Which was likely very strange for people actually living in east Asia. And while the skull thing might not be that important to China, pandas are. I have no problem at all believing that China recoiled in horror from "samurai pandas".

I'm pretty sure Kung Fu Panda and the current pandaren was a lot of parallell development. If you're making anthropomorphic pandas and want to sell your stuff in China, you base them on chinese culture and myths. If you want to make panda people based on something else you recolor them and make them some other kind of bear people.

Blizzard was working on Pandaren when Kung Fu Panda was released, and saw that they were doing much of the same thing. Of course they were influenced by it, but mainly Pandaren and Kung Fu Panda are the same concept arrived at independently.

[Beloren]

Er, they actively retconned quite a lot actually in order to make sense of the whole Orc honor thing.

It's not just a simple explanation of stuff we didn't know, it actively changed the characterization of certain heroes.

Doomhammer was no longer 'the usurper', he was made into the one who wanted to free his people and got betrayed by Gul'dan. This is a retcon to the Orcs whose original motivation in WC1 and 2 was purely for conquest. Doomhammer was not characterized as honorable whatsoever, and he actively took power by killing his superior who he deemed unworthy of the position. Not honorably through Mak'gora, literally ambushed Blackfang in his hidy-hole. There is a Warcraft 1 mission revolving around it, and later confirmed Doomhammer as the one who did it. This plays a BIG part of why Lothar fell in the WC2 campaign; there was no honorable duel between heroes. Lothar was literally ambushed and overwhelmed during a diplomatic mission to speak with Doomhammer. He dies at the start of the mission, where you see him and a bunch of knights surrounded and killed by the Horde troops.

Doomhammer was changed into the defining person who Thrall built his horde's ideals around. Not just a mere 'myth' of a man, but the lore was rewritten entirely to support the idea of Doomhammer having always been honorable, and actively fighting against the demonic influence that plagued his people. This includes Rise of the Horde, where he and Durotan were given explicit backstory meeting Velen and the Draenei and empathizing with his people.

Thrall's horde and the Orc connection to honor would not exist without Doomhammer. Hell, Orgrimmar is named after Doomhammer himself. The Horde's ideals are all based on his history and sacrifice; a history that was rewritten not by the ingame canon, but by the shift in the developers creative direction in wanting a new 'good-guy' Horde in Warcraft 3. Even in Warcraft Adventures, the Horde characters still acknowledged all their evilness and repented the old ways; they weren't actively rewritten to simply being misunderstood.

This is retcon.

Yeh. It was a retcon, and it wouldn’t be the first. Some people prefer to calm it a recast. As in recast in a new light. But isn’t that just the same thing essentially?

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Pandaren were originally just written as the standard "eastern" mélange culture popular a couple of decades ago. Which was likely very strange for people actually living in east Asia. And while the skull thing might not be that important to China, pandas are. I have no problem at all believing that China recoiled in horror from "samurai pandas".

I'm pretty sure Kung Fu Panda and the current pandaren was a lot of parallell development. If you're making anthropomorphic pandas and want to sell your stuff in China, you base them on chinese culture and myths. If you want to make panda people based on something else you recolor them and make them some other kind of bear people.

Blizzard was working on Pandaren when Kung Fu Panda was released, and saw that they were doing much of the same thing. Of course they were influenced by it, but mainly Pandaren and Kung Fu Panda are the same concept arrived at independently.

I can agree with this. Nothing is truly independent in this industry. They all feed off each other. I bet most of the Avatar artists played wow. Same with those who did Kung Fu panda.

But without a doubt, the playable Pandaren we got finally in MoP had strong Kung fu Panda influences. Surely even the most obstinate naysayers can see that.

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I do love how the panda defenders keep (deliberately?) missing what people have actually said, that pandas BECAME Kung Fu Panda IN MOP, not that they were created as Kung Fu Panda. Had the playable race in MoP been even close to the old material (in the RPG, they were closer to stoic samurai, and almost scary), no one would even mention the movie.

Oh, and if you're wondering why pandas haven't played a major role since MoP? China didn't like them being ridiculous.

Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder why i'ts so hard to understand what's been said.

[Feanoro]

...which is not important, seeing as the RPGs are all non-canonical and Chen Stormstout is the first in-game pandaren we see in an appearance that predates Kung Fu Panda... and is pretty much the same as his current iteration.

The point of bringing up the RPG was that they developed the pandas there into grim, stoic society that I'd describe as a cross between Spartans and samurai. Instead of using that in MoP, they made pandas goofy and humorous, drawing heavily and obviously from the then popular movie.

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Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder why i'ts so hard to understand what's been said.

Because acknowledging that we're talking about their development rather than their creation would force them to then acknowledge the Kung Fu Panda inspirations. That would make them wrong, so they pretend we're talking creation.

[Kaleredar]

The whole "skull = bad" cultural thing is bullshit.

No, it isn’t.

It IS bullshit that it’s a rule they have that represses art, but that they actually care about it as a rule, as you imply, is not bullshit.

China is just using it to control other companies trying to enter its market. Cowtow enough and they have no problem lifting this restriction.

It was a huge stopping point for WotLK and has necessitated numerous artistic concessions from blizzard before that were all made after-the-fact.

Clearly it’s something China cares enough about to enforce, much more so than they likely care what blizzard is doing with pandaren at any given time.

And because of this we can extrapolate that blizzards immediate artistic concern isn’t in pleasing China, or they wouldn’t have created an entire zone that the chinese censorship boards would likely strike.

[LemonDemonGirl]

[*]Trolls - I don't know where their inspiration came from, they seem quite unique in this incarnation

Probably a mix of DnD Orc, and West African/Carribean islander culture. They clearly have Jamaican accents . Their Loa are also inspired by the real-life Voudou Lwa (yes, that's how you spell both those words). Bwonsamdi for example is Baron Samedi/Bawon Samdi

[paxen]

Probably a mix of DnD Orc, and West African/Carribean islander culture. They clearly have Jamaican accents . Their Loa are also inspired by the real-life Voudou Lwa (yes, that's how you spell both those words). Bwonsamdi for example is Baron Samedi/Bawon Samdi

D&D troll, but otherwise yes. D&D trolls aren't "monstrous humanoids" like orcs, goblins or kobolds in D&D, but the physical resemblance between wow trolls and d&d trolls is striking:



And the regeneration bit is without a doubt from D&D (even if D&D got it from Poul Anderson).

Culturally they're West Afrcian/Carribean, or rather a pastiche of it.