Lore Archive for New Dragonflight Questing and Max Level Content

[Cheezits]

Hey @Super Dickmann what do you think about the Gnolls?

[Aucald]

Quite true, being a meme character is generally not a good place to be long-term. So imagine what kind of dross we have to work with here when that's preferable. Balakar whinging about how he's opposed to them because they're all women would make him a punchline, but he would merit discussion in the process. It's like with Umbric. Umbric wasn't intended to be some kind of commie parody, freeing the goblin working class by freeing them from their mortal coil, but that portrayal is the most interesting thing that bore or his entire mistake of a race has ever produced. Meme characters find their role where actual characterization is so sparse. It's why even exaggerated social dynamics beat ones that could just as easily be cut out. As for the last point, no, having the Warlords for example be conceptualized as gnomes would massively alter the entire feel and aesthetic of the expansion they're in. Replacements can only be done when what's being replaced lacks meaningful or unique traits that match its theme.

There are already a lot of discussions to be had, as evidenced by these long-winded exchanges. Also, one of the go-to strategies I've observed with people trying to meme characters is simply a form of disparagement for characters they personally dislike, not as any kind of objective critique of the characters themselves. This isn't to say every character in WoW is a treasure trove of rich characterization, but rather that the tendency is to minimalize and stripe away nuance via memes ahead of any true criticism that actually strikes at the heart of any real problem. It is, to put it bluntly, the laziest form of critique possible - and it's sadly endemic to almost every discussion here.

I already explained in detail what the themes of the original centaur were and why they were fit for purpose, so I won't bother repeating myself. THey were introduced to be an antagonistic force for the tauren and they did their job in this narrow parameter. They had themes suited to that role, they were characterized just enough to do it and they serviced the plot of the races they were tied to - the tauren in their majority, the night elves/Keepers to a much lesser one. Notably, every aspect of the characterization I describe is core to their story role. Their hatred for their own father clashes with the ancestor worship of the children of Malorne and especially the tauren, who tend to be a lot more faithful. Their aggression and association with desolate lands with the care for nature in them. Their bestial appearance being played for ugliness and revulsion with the other animal races and especially the tauren as a subversion of the generally aggressive minotaur archetype, while the centaur themselves are a subversion of the centaur as a generally wise mentor figure mythologically. They've only got a focused story in Classic, but that story functions well enough that people did bother to revisit its themes - as the comic book does, or still spur reactions about how unkind they were to Genghis Khan or mongolians or what have you to this day. That's the reason the Maruuk exist at all, as a (failed) answer to just that. The centaur are nowhere near as successful as the murlocs or even the quilboar, but each of these manage to, with very little screentime, complete their theme and role in the plot. You could not replace them with each other and maintain the same result. You can replace the Maruuk with tauren and improve their story.

You needn't repeat yourself - I read your previous essay, and as is obvious here, I disagree with your primary assertions. I also disagree with your assertion about replacing the Maruuk, so need to do yet another long dissertation on that, either. Your penchant for minimalization where it suits you makes any kind of real cogent argument unlikely if not impossible - it's not even that you have your mind concluded, you've decided based on an external issue to simply not even brook the notion entirely.

Screentime does not equal success or an adequate characterization, just ask the night elf fans. Or don't, they'll tell you anyway. See also the Bland Gang. Say what you will about the Bald Man, there were more threads about his shambles of a character than about anyone in the main cast in Shadowlands except Sylvanas, Tyrande and Anduin. The tuskarr have a clear role where they appear - it's not a dramatic one, but it's one that you couldn't do with anyone else and that's enjoyable for the people after them. I've never spoken to a single Highmountain enjoyer and I'm not sure they exist. What I do know is that they take up an allied race slot that could be used for yaungol or taunka.

I never said it did, but it is a recognition that a particular characterization is enjoyed or has become iconic, and that's what popularity fundamentally is. Popular characters and story riffs tend to get repeated and tend to get highlighted in future story arcs. That being said, I think the Night Elves are characterized just fine - they might be the apparent whipping boys for when bad things happen in the overarching story, but they're still active in the story and important to the world as a whole (though from an in-game perspective they probably wish they weren't at this point). As you yourself held up previously, conflict is good for a dramatic arc. I also personally think the Highmountain Tauren are fine - I can't say I'm a huge fan of the race as a whole from a player standpoint, but there's nothing wrong with them. Your subjective takes and preferences do not translate to anyone else's reality, and there are people who do not agree with you lock-step on many things.

[Triceron]

Does questing tell us much about the Djaradin or Scythid?

I know that some of the criticism from Beta folks was that the Djaradin were a bit one-note about just wanting to fight strong things which people felt was a bit... overdone in WoW.

I'm really curious if there's any connection between the Scythid and Malygos' appearance in Day of the Dragon

In Day of the Dragon during his madness, Malygos's visage was a skeletal insectoid creature.

It was always an assumption that he may have based it off the Nerubian, but the description didn't seem to match anything we've seen or heard of before.

[Cheezits]

I'm really curious if there's any connection between the Scythid and Malygos' appearance in Day of the Dragon

In Day of the Dragon during his madness, Malygos's visage was a skeletal insectoid creature.

It was always an assumption that he may have based it off the Nerubian, but the description didn't seem to match anything we've seen or heard of before.

Considering that it has been recently confirmed that the Dragonflight writers are very aware of the Knaak books beyond the surface level (Alex's brother and the Not-Living are brought up) I would not be surprised if the Scythid were based off that one excerpt. It would be nice if they were truly important as well.

[Super Dickmann]

Hey @Super Dickmann what do you think about the Gnolls?

I'd love to tell you, but I've had less time to play than I'd like, so I've not done nearly as much of the related content. First impressions are of a much more capable reintroduction, but bear with me here.

There are already a lot of discussions to be had, as evidenced by these long-winded exchanges. Also, one of the go-to strategies I've observed with people trying to meme characters is simply a form of disparagement for characters they personally dislike, not as any kind of objective critique of the characters themselves. This isn't to say every character in WoW is a treasure trove of rich characterization, but rather that the tendency is to minimalize and stripe away nuance via memes ahead of any true criticism that actually strikes at the heart of any real problem. It is, to put it bluntly, the laziest form of critique possible - and it's sadly endemic to almost every discussion here.

We have gone on about them for a while, but we mostly debate for sport, let's face it. The chances that you'll suddenly go 'Yes, the Maruuk are actually the cure to sleep deprivation, Dickmann, you've opened my eyes' are nill. More pertinently, that too doesn't really count for much. They're a week old and are new content along with being the topic of the thread to some degree, that we're discussing them now is a given, since what we're really talking about is barely about them and much more about integration and reimagining of races in the first place. On the topic of memes though, you're entirely wrong. Memes are part of the discussion that surrounds any given character, it's a distillation of the impression they've made on people and the more popular they are, the more that opinion is shared or resonates in some way. To keep it to WoW I like both Sylvanas and Garrosh, but you'd have to be kidding yourself to deny they've made for some excellent memes poking fun at them. Khadgar is a font of memes and is broadly popular. An absence of memes and jokes is an absence of content. It means there's nothing to latch onto - even from a meta perspective the way it is with the Bald Man planning everything that ever happened. Taking umbrage with how prevalent jokes are about a T-rated video game that most of the time doesn't take itself all that seriously and pokes fun of many of these things itself is a completely lost cause. Sure, some people confuse memes with what's actually told, see the Bald Man business, but if you take issue with it you can just correct them in the thread. That's the whole point of a forum.

You needn't repeat yourself - I read your previous essay, and as is obvious here, I disagree with your primary assertions. I also disagree with your assertion about replacing the Maruuk, so need to do yet another long dissertation on that, either. Your penchant for minimalization where it suits you makes any kind of real cogent argument unlikely if not impossible - it's not even that you have your mind concluded, you've decided based on an external issue to simply not even brook the notion entirely.

You could just admit you can't answer the points presented, it's not that much of a bitch I'm sure. Not the least of which when you're saying I'm refusing to make a cogent point while denying to offer any kind of counter as to how the characterization I've outlined is inaccurate or how my assertions on the Maruuk are wrong. But then you did just accuse me of generalization and minimization while a post or two ago you went on about how any race could be swapped for any other, so I understand I might be asking for a bit much.

I never said it did, but it is a recognition that a particular characterization is enjoyed or has become iconic, and that's what popularity fundamentally is. Popular characters and story riffs tend to get repeated and tend to get highlighted in future story arcs. That being said, I think the Night Elves are characterized just fine - they might be the apparent whipping boys for when bad things happen in the overarching story, but they're still active in the story and important to the world as a whole (though from an in-game perspective they probably wish they weren't at this point). As you yourself held up previously, conflict is good for a dramatic arc. I also personally think the Highmountain Tauren are fine - I can't say I'm a huge fan of the race as a whole from a player standpoint, but there's nothing wrong with them. Your subjective takes and preferences do not translate to anyone else's reality, and there are people who do not agree with you lock-step on many things.

I agree with you that the Night Elves are among the better characterized races and that their abundance of screentime is a show of interest by both the writers and their response to a playerbase. But you'd be kidding yourself if you thought that their appearances have been enjoyed by their target audience or that their characterization has been allowed to advance in the directions most enjoy by the playerbase. They're a concept so rife with compromises to their most popular (WC3) rendition that it might well be their most defining trait. The Night Elf story is an endless series of hyped up appearances and extra material consistently robbed of any kind of lasting win or triumphant conclusion on even a small level. Every victory is pyrrhic, every character is important, but never walks their story to its conclusion on their own terms, etc. etc. The tuskarr are a race where what people like about them and what Blizzard like about them is matched in each appearance. What's subjective is my apathy about the Highmountain tauren and dislike for the screentime they occupy. But their actual quality, their contribution to the plot, whether their traits are compelling or unique or offer something that isn't there already, that's either true or it isn't. Faux relativism turns every discussion into piffle where people who subscribe to it are either unable to say anything or use it as cover after making drastic value judgments.

[Aucald]

We have gone on about them for a while, but we mostly debate for sport, let's face it. The chances that you'll suddenly go 'Yes, the Maruuk are actually the cure to sleep deprivation, Dickmann, you've opened my eyes' are nill. More pertinently, that too doesn't really count for much. They're a week old and are new content along with being the topic of the thread to some degree, that we're discussing them now is a given, since what we're really talking about is barely about them and much more about integration and reimagining of races in the first place. On the topic of memes though, you're entirely wrong. Memes are part of the discussion that surrounds any given character, it's a distillation of the impression they've made on people and the more popular they are, the more that opinion is shared or resonates in some way. To keep it to WoW I like both Sylvanas and Garrosh, but you'd have to be kidding yourself to deny they've made for some excellent memes poking fun at them. Khadgar is a font of memes and is broadly popular. An absence of memes and jokes is an absence of content. It means there's nothing to latch onto - even from a meta perspective the way it is with the Bald Man planning everything that ever happened. Taking umbrage with how prevalent jokes are about a T-rated video game that most of the time doesn't take itself all that seriously and pokes fun of many of these things itself is a completely lost cause. Sure, some people confuse memes with what's actually told, see the Bald Man business, but if you take issue with it you can just correct them in the thread. That's the whole point of a forum.

There's a difference between having memes *about* a character, and a character becoming a meme, which is what I mean by the process of memeification. Popular characters generate memes the same way something hot generates steam in colder temperatures - or, in most cases, the way shit generates a foul smell. The problem with memeification is when something becomes steam, which has a tendency to dissipate quickly and be forgotten just as quickly. The difference there is considerable, and memeification has a noteworthy tendency to wash away any characterization that exists in favor of increasing distorted hot takes until the entire character or concept dissolves into nonsense. As you well know, misinformation is seldom easy to correct once it takes hold within a particular medium - you can correct the record dozens, even hundreds, of times but the original nugget of misinformation will continue traveling about like a virus. It's a Sisyphean and ultimately thankless task.

You could just admit you can't answer the points presented, it's not that much of a bitch I'm sure. Not the least of which when you're saying I'm refusing to make a cogent point while denying to offer any kind of counter as to how the characterization I've outlined is inaccurate or how my assertions on the Maruuk are wrong. But then you did just accuse me of generalization and minimization while a post or two ago you went on about how any race could be swapped for any other, so I understand I might be asking for a bit much.

I could indeed admit that, if I wanted to lie about myself or just hand you the easy "win" you seem to desire. My refutation of your points has been practically note for note, and you've done little more than simply say "nope" and blithely go on reframing your argument and moving goalposts wherever you need to. The fact that you pointedly misrepresented what I was saying about swapping races illustrates that you've opted to willfully misunderstand and misrepresent me, so that's not an argument in your favor. "I want yet another variety of tauren" isn't as strong of an argument as you think it is, and at least with the Maruuk we've got another cultivar of a race that hasn't been copied half to death - how many types of tauren do we have now? Mulgore, Grimtotem, Taunka, Highmountain, Yaungol, and now you want yet another? So yes, the role of the Maruuk is essentially interchangeable as I previously said, you could indeed swap them out with tauren if you wished without altering the story. You could also swap them out with yet another group of elves who live rustic lives hunting the land, and your argument would be just as bad. Because WoW needs more elves, right? We'd make them High Elves, too; despite the fact that High Elves didn't exist at the time the Dragon Isles were sealed away, just to ensure we keep that aspect of the story alive.

I agree with you that the Night Elves are among the better characterized races and that their abundance of screentime is a show of interest by both the writers and their response to a playerbase. But you'd be kidding yourself if you thought that their appearances have been enjoyed by their target audience or that their characterization has been allowed to advance in the directions most enjoy by the playerbase. They're a concept so rife with compromises to their most popular (WC3) rendition that it might well be their most defining trait. The Night Elf story is an endless series of hyped up appearances and extra material consistently robbed of any kind of lasting win or triumphant conclusion on even a small level. Every victory is pyrrhic, every character is important, but never walks their story to its conclusion on their own terms, etc. etc. The tuskarr are a race where what people like about them and what Blizzard like about them is matched in each appearance. What's subjective is my apathy about the Highmountain tauren and dislike for the screentime they occupy. But their actual quality, their contribution to the plot, whether their traits are compelling or unique or offer something that isn't there already, that's either true or it isn't. Faux relativism turns every discussion into piffle where people who subscribe to it are either unable to say anything or use it as cover after making drastic value judgments.

I don't really agree with the notion that the idea of race-specific "audiences" is one that must be catered to, and in my long experience in the WoW community, I've found that the developers actively doing so is more detrimental to the story as a whole. I understand how it comes about in an organic fashion, but I dislike the growing sense of entitlement it seems to generate - which, it seems, is a problem with the concept of fandoms as a whole above and beyond just Warcraft. Stories and characters evolve and change with the events that shape them, and if they don't then you end up with writing that is itself as dead as four-year-old horseshit. Not all change is good change, of course, and that's where the subjective and relative judgments of the person playing/reading/watching come into play. But I still hold it's a mistake to think any one opinion can or should fundamentally alter the story being told, and at the end of the day, if you don't personally like a story then you should probably stop bludgeoning yourself with it. Which is another aspect of the community I don't readily understand - the sheer number of people who seem to truly detest and revile the story, yet eat up every new development and chapter with seeming gusto. I can really only chalk it up to masochism, or just a fundamental love of complaining about an old hobby they're bored with as opposed to finding a new hobby.

[Skytotem]

https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlor...ave_paintings/

Reddit found some interesting cave paintings and the link also contains some Djaradin history from one of their storytellers, lending more credence to the theory we'll see an 'underground' patch at some point.

Long story short, Four Djaradin elders discovered how to unlock their innate magma/fire abilities deep underground when first battling the titan-infused dragons/aspects and led them into battle but Neltharion did something the Djaradin consider dishonorable and defeated them. Apparently the four of them went back underground and legends say they'll someday recover or return.

[Aucald]

https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlor...ave_paintings/

Reddit found some interesting cave paintings and the link also contains some Djaradin history from one of their storytellers, lending more credence to the theory we'll see an 'underground' patch at some point.

Long story short, Four Djaradin elders discovered how to unlock their innate magma/fire abilities deep underground when first battling the titan-infused dragons/aspects and led them into battle but Neltharion did something the Djaradin consider dishonorable and defeated them. Apparently the four of them went back underground and legends say they'll someday recover or return.

The more we learn of the djaradin the more I suspect they were originally one of the various vrykul clans who found themselves on the Dragon Isles and later got infused with elemental power and so forth.

[Skytotem]

The more we learn of the djaradin the more I suspect they were originally one of the various vrykul clans who found themselves on the Dragon Isles and later got infused with elemental power and so forth.

I dunno, the other story they have says they fought a Vrykul king and let him join after they killed most of his dudes, but their story of being 'original earth giants' makes me think they're more like the naturally occurring 'elemental' version of what Vrykul are.

Sort of like how mountain giants have both Titan made versions, and Elemental versions that happen on their own.

[Cheezits]

I think Djaradin may be Earth Giants who somehow got mixed up with Arcane, they are far too humanoid (and humanoid USUALLY means Arcane exposure) to just be pure elemental. They then got involved with infusing themselves with fire/lava to make their current form.

[Okacz]

I'm... not sure it's a good idea to adopt a gnoll child the way you would a stray dog, apparently these tuskarr don't even check if he has other parents or not?

That's fucked up man, gnolls might be assholes to tuskarr but they are still sentient people that formed a civilization. It's like 2 orcish kids trying to own a human girl as a pet, and taming her by throwing snickers bars in her face. Or whatever humans eat.

[Aucald]

I dunno, the other story they have says they fought a Vrykul king and let him join after they killed most of his dudes, but their story of being 'original earth giants' makes me think they're more like the naturally occurring 'elemental' version of what Vrykul are.

Sort of like how mountain giants have both Titan made versions, and Elemental versions that happen on their own.

That's what I meant, although to my knowledge there's no distinction in name between the original stone vrykul and the various vrykul clans post-CoF. I think the djaradin have just forgotten what they were originally, calling themselves "earth giants" as beings made of stone before becoming elementally infused and substantially altered further. The fact that they share in the vrykul mindset of conquest over reason, conquest for its own sake, power defined by strength, and so forth. The story about a later vrykul king showing up and eventually joining them only tightens the speculation that they're really of the same stock.

[Cheezits]

That's what I meant, although to my knowledge there's no distinction in name between the original stone vrykul and the various vrykul clans post-CoF. I think the djaradin have just forgotten what they were originally, calling themselves "earth giants" as beings made of stone before becoming elementally infused and substantially altered further. The fact that they share in the vrykul mindset of conquest over reason, conquest for its own sake, power defined by strength, and so forth. The story about a later vrykul king showing up and eventually joining them only tightens the speculation that they're really of the same stock.

If they are truly Vrykul, this is the second time where a Vrykul-based race appears and no character really ever mentions them by name in regards to their origins (first the Drust/the Kul Tiran halfbreeds and now this). My first thought was that they really don't want to say any of these races were Vrykul because they know fans want them playable (and would say 'why this halfmeasure') but if it's twice now that's an odd continuation.

If the Djaradin were originally titan constructs then I think SOMEONE in the Aspects would mention it.

[Aucald]

If they are truly Vrykul, this is the second time where a Vrykul-based race appears and no character really ever mentions them by name in regards to their origins (first the Drust/the Kul Tiran halfbreeds and now this). My first thought was that they really don't want to say any of these races were Vrykul because they know fans want them playable (and would say 'why this halfmeasure') but if it's twice now that's an odd continuation.

If the Djaradin were originally titan constructs then I think SOMEONE in the Aspects would mention it.

The Aspects aren't really omniscient, and given the radically altered nature of the djaradin it's likely not easy to tell. Nozdormu likely knows if it's the case or not, given his ability to view their past - but he probably doesn't care overmuch considering the knowledge of the djaradin's origins changes nothing of their current threat and/or nature (and he has far bigger issues on his mind).

[Super Dickmann]

shit

horseshit

Well, fuck me.

There's a difference between having memes *about* a character, and a character becoming a meme, which is what I mean by the process of memeification. Popular characters generate memes the same way something hot generates steam in colder temperatures - or, in most cases, the way shit generates a foul smell. The problem with memeification is when something becomes steam, which has a tendency to dissipate quickly and be forgotten just as quickly. The difference there is considerable, and memeification has a noteworthy tendency to wash away any characterization that exists in favor of increasing distorted hot takes until the entire character or concept dissolves into nonsense. As you well know, misinformation is seldom easy to correct once it takes hold within a particular medium - you can correct the record dozens, even hundreds, of times but the original nugget of misinformation will continue traveling about like a virus. It's a Sisyphean and ultimately thankless task.

Blaming memes for characters generating and becoming memes is like blaming the exhaust for the car. It's the other way around. Characters, their presentation, the impression they create is what makes memes resonate and spread around. If there's nothing to meme about, the meme won't come. Similarly, when what is there is laughable or the presentation runs completely counter to what's actually produced, as is the case with everyone from the Bald Man to Baine, jokes are inevitable. Memes and jokes are the bread and butter of organic discourse. Not only is trying to purposefully grind the fun out of the material a doomed cause, even if it wasn't it'd hinge on the ones making the calls knowing what is and isn't correct and both in WoW lore talk and for much more relevant topics that's a very tall order. Just on this forum if everyone who took the piss out of Baine got sent into the online concentration camp the forum'd consist of two people and a sockpuppet. One of the reasons this forum is the best for WoW lore talk by a country mile is because it has the most lax moderation and the highest word limit while the lack of any engagement options beyond replying and a relatively broader userbase means there's less of likeminded tards screeching into a void.

I could indeed admit that, if I wanted to lie about myself or just hand you the easy "win" you seem to desire. My refutation of your points has been practically note for note, and you've done little more than simply say "nope" and blithely go on reframing your argument and moving goalposts wherever you need to. The fact that you pointedly misrepresented what I was saying about swapping races illustrates that you've opted to willfully misunderstand and misrepresent me, so that's not an argument in your favor. "I want yet another variety of tauren" isn't as strong of an argument as you think it is, and at least with the Maruuk we've got another cultivar of a race that hasn't been copied half to death - how many types of tauren do we have now? Mulgore, Grimtotem, Taunka, Highmountain, Yaungol, and now you want yet another? So yes, the role of the Maruuk is essentially interchangeable as I previously said, you could indeed swap them out with tauren if you wished without altering the story. You could also swap them out with yet another group of elves who live rustic lives hunting the land, and your argument would be just as bad. Because WoW needs more elves, right? We'd make them High Elves, too; despite the fact that High Elves didn't exist at the time the Dragon Isles were sealed away, just to ensure we keep that aspect of the story alive.

Come now:

I'm not sure where this argument about replaceability really factors in, either; because while they are replaceable, so are the tauren, and so for that matter is every other race in WoW insofar as the general riff of "a new take on an old idea" goes.

The position you verifiably take on this very page is so general as to be useless. But more than contradicting yourself, the real problem of your take is that it's unbearably shallow. A fantasy race isn't just its physical appearance. The Highmountain tauren aren't narcolepsy aids because they're physically tauren, it's that they're thematically Bloodhoof tauren but more shallow, with less effort put into enabling internal or external conflict. The Yaungol and Taunka are vastly different from the taurne despite being cow people because their themes, one capturing a harsh survivalist aspect and the way spirituality based on cooperation works in a place where said spirits refuse to cooperate forces to adapt and the others as being entirely out of the tauren context in even so much as basic visual language by being a raiding culture. The Yaungol borrow elements of the tauren - a nomadic lifestyle, a hostile race that chased them out of the natural habitat forcing them into said nomadic lifestyle, spiritualism, a focus on their physical hardiness, but flips most of them on their head. They're nomads but rather than being in sync with the land, they feed off off it and then leave. They're chased out by the mantid, but they become just as much of a menace as they are, they're spiritualist, but said spiritualism is directed inwards, their main 'deity' is one of their own who stood out, their focus on hardiness makes them prioritize it among them their leaders to the exclusion of all else, etc. The Highmountain bring none of these spins on themes to the table and in turn the Maruuk don't interact at all with the centaur themes described. They do however match with the tauren ones perfectly.

Even you acknowledge that they're so far apart they should've been something else but you've kept going anyway for no seeming reason except a refusal to agree with me, which while funny, doesn't help your point. In giving the elf example you glance off of this discussion on themes and the usage of races, but manage to miss it. The reason there's so many elves, beyond the obvious that they're marketable and popular is because elven themes relating to their sophistication, longevity, connection and dependance on certain types of magic lend themselves to different spins and do so in ways that other races aren't intended to communicate the same way. By settling your arguments on denying the medium - a combat-focused episodic video game that is fueled and exists to enable conflict and then denying the relevance of themes in general in favor of surface characteristics, you prevent yourself from making any kind of point, and you do so in favor of a topic even you threw under the bus like two posts in.

I don't really agree with the notion that the idea of race-specific "audiences" is one that must be catered to, and in my long experience in the WoW community, I've found that the developers actively doing so is more detrimental to the story as a whole. I understand how it comes about in an organic fashion, but I dislike the growing sense of entitlement it seems to generate - which, it seems, is a problem with the concept of fandoms as a whole above and beyond just Warcraft. Stories and characters evolve and change with the events that shape them, and if they don't then you end up with writing that is itself as dead as four-year-old horseshit. Not all change is good change, of course, and that's where the subjective and relative judgments of the person playing/reading/watching come into play. But I still hold it's a mistake to think any one opinion can or should fundamentally alter the story being told, and at the end of the day, if you don't personally like a story then you should probably stop bludgeoning yourself with it. Which is another aspect of the community I don't readily understand - the sheer number of people who seem to truly detest and revile the story, yet eat up every new development and chapter with seeming gusto. I can really only chalk it up to masochism, or just a fundamental love of complaining about an old hobby they're bored with as opposed to finding a new hobby.

It's irrelevant whether one opinion should take priority and guide story direction or not or whether fandoms should latch onto specific aspect of whatever the fandom is focused on. The fact is that they do and bemoaning it is like bemoaning the tides. Even in holistic mediums it's inevitable that people will isolate say, the exploration of a particular theme or character relationship in a book or a particular piece of acting or scene composition in a film from the thing as a whole. Warcraft however purposefully aims to cater to different people and different experiences and where there's difference there's disagreement and clashing interests. Someone who wants all the races to hold hands and more univeralist stories where everyone can be anything will clash with someone who enjoys the specific racial identities or the faction conflict 4. e.g. Someone who wants the Horde to be closer to WC2 or Cataclysm as compared to someone who sees WC3 or god forbid, the current one, as a better rendition are irreconcilable. For someone to win, the other one must lose, more than that, to argue in favour of one or the other requires a value judgment and some kind of argument. No one is neutral and they shouldn't be expected to be or to simulate such neutrality. As for the last point, it's because many of them are still invested in it, all other explanations are various forms of coping. I loathe big parts of the franchise and like many others, with the ratio changing over the years, but anyone who has multiple thousands of comments on this forum and claims they're not invested is a clown.

[Skytotem]

That's fucked up man, gnolls might be assholes to tuskarr but they are still sentient people that formed a civilization. It's like 2 orcish kids trying to own a human girl as a pet, and taming her by throwing snickers bars in her face. Or whatever humans eat.

Yeah Blizz is apparently trying to play it for laughs but that... isn't the right place for that kind of joke imo.

[Super Dickmann]

Yeah Blizz is apparently trying to play it for laughs but that... isn't the right place for that kind of joke imo.

It's entirely in keeping with tuskarr culture. They had you steal wolvar pups hostile to them for reeducation in Wrath. It was a pretty inspired callback. Unlike the Maruuk, the tuskarr quests manage to keep them likable and chill while still giving them grounded, coherent traits in line with what came before.

[Skytotem]

It's entirely in keeping with tuskarr culture. They had you steal wolvar pups hostile to them for reeducation in Wrath. It was a pretty inspired callback. Unlike the Maruuk, the tuskarr quests manage to keep them likable and chill while still giving them grounded, coherent traits in line with what came before.

I don't think anything is said about re-education in Wrath, just keeping the Wolvar from going extinct.

[Super Dickmann]

I don't think anything is said about re-education in Wrath, just keeping the Wolvar from going extinct.

They're grabbing and raising the wolvar who preyed on them, much like they do with this gnoll now. They do so by having quests where you kill the adults and snap up the babies. I'd be shocked if it wasn't a deliberate callback.

[Aucald]

Blaming memes for characters generating and becoming memes is like blaming the exhaust for the car. It's the other way around. Characters, their presentation, the impression they create is what makes memes resonate and spread around. If there's nothing to meme about, the meme won't come. Similarly, when what is there is laughable or the presentation runs completely counter to what's actually produced, as is the case with everyone from the Bald Man to Baine, jokes are inevitable. Memes and jokes are the bread and butter of organic discourse. Not only is trying to purposefully grind the fun out of the material a doomed cause, even if it wasn't it'd hinge on the ones making the calls knowing what is and isn't correct and both in WoW lore talk and for much more relevant topics that's a very tall order. Just on this forum if everyone who took the piss out of Baine got sent into the online concentration camp the forum'd consist of two people and a sockpuppet. One of the reasons this forum is the best for WoW lore talk by a country mile is because it has the most lax moderation and the highest word limit while the lack of any engagement options beyond replying and a relatively broader userbase means there's less of likeminded tards screeching into a void.

I already explained both sides of the coin when it comes to memes and the process of memeification - there's more professional research on the topic if you'd like to look it up, likely described better than my brief explanation above, but still pertinent and a sociological phenomenon worthy of study. Jokes are inevitable, but when jokes become the sole stock and trade that an idea has, it's a rapid road to irrelevance and obscurity for the original idea. And yes, there are quite a few people who are pointedly trying to purposefully grind the fun out of a set of ideas, especially ideas they don't like - they're pretty upfront about it as well. "This isn't important to me, so I'm just going to mock it endlessly" is the common refrain. I'm not really the hall monitor of discourse, either; ideas die due to neglect and aggregated disdain all the time - I can't singlehandedly save them or condemn them. But I do understand the process quite well, having watched it unfold repeatedly here and elsewhere.

The position you verifiably take on this very page is so general as to be useless. But more than contradicting yourself, the real problem of your take is that it's unbearably shallow. A fantasy race isn't just its physical appearance. The Highmountain tauren aren't narcolepsy aids because they're physically tauren, it's that they're thematically Bloodhoof tauren but more shallow, with less effort put into enabling internal or external conflict. The Yaungol and Taunka are vastly different from the taurne despite being cow people because their themes, one capturing a harsh survivalist aspect and the way spirituality based on cooperation works in a place where said spirits refuse to cooperate forces to adapt and the others as being entirely out of the tauren context in even so much as basic visual language by being a raiding culture. The Yaungol borrow elements of the tauren - a nomadic lifestyle, a hostile race that chased them out of the natural habitat forcing them into said nomadic lifestyle, spiritualism, a focus on their physical hardiness, but flips most of them on their head. They're nomads but rather than being in sync with the land, they feed off off it and then leave. They're chased out by the mantid, but they become just as much of a menace as they are, they're spiritualist, but said spiritualism is directed inwards, their main 'deity' is one of their own who stood out, their focus on hardiness makes them prioritize it among them their leaders to the exclusion of all else, etc. The Highmountain bring none of these spins on themes to the table and in turn the Maruuk don't interact at all with the centaur themes described. They do however match with the tauren ones perfectly.

Your lack of understanding of my position doesn't render it a contradiction, willfully or otherwise. Strawmanning me with semantic drift doesn't make for a great argument, either. A new idea or concept doesn't require a complete subversion of its root to be unique or meaningful, and in point of fact, you're mixing your metaphors pretty liberally with your internal and external tauren comparisons. The Maruuk would be uninspired and received more as a copy of a copy if they were tauren and based on the general tauren aesthetic, but they're not - they're centaur, and compared to the OG centaur aesthetic, they're very different - just as different as the yaungol are culturally from the OG tauren, as you relate above. Where the OG centaur are generally chaotic and warlike, the Maruuk are generally peaceful and serene. Where the OG centaur can't find their level with their own lands, the Maruuk can and did. On a surface level the Maruuk do resemble the Tauren in what they've managed to achieve, although if you look at the details their cultures are quite different and espouse different values, one of which has been the backbone of this entire lengthy exchange. The Maruuk are a definite subversion of what we know of *centaur*, but you miss that fact because you're too busy conflating them with an unrelated culture from another continent altogether. This is on the same level of thinking that every Mesoamerican culture is the same because they share some themes in common, without any critical look into the details of their respective cultures. The Maruuk are interchangeable in that they don't do anything that another race couldn't do from a narrative standpoint unless that race were the OG centaur themselves.

Even you acknowledge that they're so far apart they should've been something else but you've kept going anyway for no seeming reason except a refusal to agree with me, which while funny, doesn't help your point. In giving the elf example you glance off of this discussion on themes and the usage of races, but manage to miss it. The reason there's so many elves, beyond the obvious that they're marketable and popular is because elven themes relating to their sophistication, longevity, connection and dependance on certain types of magic lend themselves to different spins and do so in ways that other races aren't intended to communicate the same way. By settling your arguments on denying the medium - a combat-focused episodic video game that is fueled and exists to enable conflict and then denying the relevance of themes in general in favor of surface characteristics, you prevent yourself from making any kind of point, and you do so in favor of a topic even you threw under the bus like two posts in.

And yet I seem to be able to make points just fine, your inability to digest them notwithstanding. I'm also not "denying the medium" inasmuch as I think the medium is a lot more plastic and generally more comprehensive than you're willing to allow. Your arguments are based on very shallow reductions into often two-dimensional quantities, distillations of properties stripped of the richness of detail and nuance, boiled down to the inane. It's one of many reasons why it's a fruitless endeavor to have these discussions, beyond the matter of having your mind concluded - if you're not open to an exploration of the concepts on their own merit, even from a rhetorical standpoint, it stands to reason you're unlikely to engage with conversation in good faith. I am not here to have continual contests masquerading as conversations that end in a tally of who's more syntactically correct, I'm here to discuss the lore and generally have fun engaging with the story to the degree that I'm able. Unfortunately, I tend to be a stubborn old goat at times, hence I get trapped in these useless types of replies with people who want to play "gotcha" with word games.

It's irrelevant whether one opinion should take priority and guide story direction or not or whether fandoms should latch onto specific aspect of whatever the fandom is focused on. The fact is that they do and bemoaning it is like bemoaning the tides. Even in holistic mediums it's inevitable that people will isolate say, the exploration of a particular theme or character relationship in a book or a particular piece of acting or scene composition in a film from the thing as a whole. Warcraft however purposefully aims to cater to different people and different experiences and where there's difference there's disagreement and clashing interests. Someone who wants all the races to hold hands and more univeralist stories where everyone can be anything will clash with someone who enjoys the specific racial identities or the faction conflict 4. e.g. Someone who wants the Horde to be closer to WC2 or Cataclysm as compared to someone who sees WC3 or god forbid, the current one, as a better rendition are irreconcilable. For someone to win, the other one must lose, more than that, to argue in favour of one or the other requires a value judgment and some kind of argument. No one is neutral and they shouldn't be expected to be or to simulate such neutrality. As for the last point, it's because many of them are still invested in it, all other explanations are various forms of coping. I loathe big parts of the franchise and like many others, with the ratio changing over the years, but anyone who has multiple thousands of comments on this forum and claims they're not invested is a clown.

I'll bemoan whatever I feel like, thanks. The luxury of different perspectives aside, I think we've reached yet another conclusion to a bout of speaking past one another, and I'm out of both patience and free time for these lengthy exchanges. You're welcome to respond further if you like, but I think I've had my say on this and I don't see much benefit in a further back-and-forth on this particular subject.