Warcraft's Story Has A Problem... 

A reminder that Kobolds are canonically a Constitutional Monarchy making them Instantly morally better than Gilneas and Stormwind both.

It's a lot to take in when as a kid you're just like, "These are monsters. They're bad. It's fine" and then as you're an adult, "Wait... why are we doing this to them?" Like you said, Warcraft is at its best when it flips a common trope for a fantasy race on its head and I really think they should get back to that with all of these.

I think the main problem is that Blizzard always thought they could pull off a Warhammer game, yet developed Warcraft instead. Particularly Warcraft 3, which pretty much changed everything from the previous 'all-combatative' Warcraft expierience where funny orcs slaughter funny humans and vice versa. Heck, most of the quest fodder races are leftovers from Warcraft 3, when thinking about it. So most of it is probably the fault of them having pretty much realized that their game had an identity beyond the same principles as the Warhammer lore, when coming up with World of Warcraft and them deepening up story lines, while making characters feel like actual characters within the world. Yeah, they did the same in Warcraft 3, but only with the main protagonists - everything else was just dissected cannon fodder, just like in any classic RTS game. Perspective changed and I guess to some degree Blizzard might still have tried in WoW to go the multitrack drifting between 'Immersive fantasy world RPG with characters actually building up the Warcraft world as time goes on' and 'Going back to the roots, for Warcraft can be as awesome as Warhammer can be. The problem is though: Unlike Warcraft there is nothing lovable about Warhammer's setting. No, I mean not in terms of fanbase, that's obviously big! I'm talking about the setting itself - if you yourself would live as a being in any of the Warhammer worlds, created by Games Workshop as an average guy. Spoiler: You won't live long. It's straight forward a grim dark future/fantasy world, where everyone is already confirmed to be a bad guy, from the random aliens/side factions that get slaughtered to the actual main factions of the game. Both 40k and Fantasy went that route and the creators of Warhammer, Games Workshop, do adress that. It's a parody universe to begin with, where whacky war action had always been the main focus of the series. It was never about character development except for maybe some guys on the main cast, but even that just exists to justify more war actions and more battles. There is no morale in both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k and the authors know that. Most of their players are aware of that (or at least should be aware of that) and in the end there are no good guys in Warhammer. Except maybe Lizardmen. Yes, I'm biased. :3 But jokes aside, I think that's the main issue though with Warcraft as a series. They started it as a strategy game in the spirit of Warhammer, they really copied things 1:1 , but actually found a middle point in Warcraft 3, where they suddenly found their own identity, somewhat distinct from their original inspiration source (despite some legal arguments regarding some unit names in Reign of Chaos with GW). And that's fine, they really could have used this as a jumping board with World of Warcraft to flesh out their world in their own image. Which I guess they did to some degree, but really poorly. That I think is the biggest issue, not only with the quest fodder, but with a lot of stuff that gets shown in the Warcraft universe. Blizzard now probably realizes to some bit, as seen with the Centaurs and Gnolls in Dragonflight, that they could actually do more to flesh out their world, but well... damage is already done and I guess a lot of players nowadays might realize that, myself included. In either way it's good that it gets adressed, because I like Warcraft 3, I like Warhammer and I even like to some degree some portions of WoW, but I also would appreciate a clear story narrative from the developers. Just like Games Workshop, as their choice is at least one to which they stick, even if it's not everyone's cup of tea. But Blizzard can't just keep multitrack drifting. That worked maybe for some time well, back in the old days of Classic, BC and WotLK, when expectations were different on the fan base. But it will fail to catch modern audience's interest for reasons you have mentioned.

You probably are the only WoW youtuber who actually cares about Azeroth’s inhabitants, not in the “male loremaster utuber” way that gets the amount of views your content deserves more. Thank you, for voicing your compassionate and thoughtful view of this world.

The one thing Warlords of Draenor did right was flesh out the ogres, by giving them a Romanesque culture. The ogres we see on Azeroth are basicly the "country bumpkins" the Horde managed to subjugate, while the more civilzed smart ogres were killed.

I always feel bad especially for the murlocs and kobolds. I get it when suddenly a kobold clan takes over the Elwynn mines yeah ok that is a hostile action. But for the most part they're just there.. Being little fellas. Furbolgs too is a strange one, furbolgs as the enemy is supposed to be the exception not the rule. But we never see that depicted, when depicting that would really be one of the easiest things in the world.

Honestly most of these races I would love to play more than the races we've currently got, I love these guys!

Even if you have cannon fodder races you should do some things with them rather than just having them be around for the next slaughtering. I find that video games often provide some cool designs for enemy creatures and i wish you could do more with them or learn about them, but sadly often that ends up not happening.

Loving this. Specially the part about the Makrura. I always found weird that despite being consistently classified as humanoids, not beasts, they're also mentioned as edible and tasty. But they are not just giant lobsters, they are not animals! they are a sapient species, a thinking race that we kill to EAT!!!!!!????

This video pretty much lists all the major "fodder race" that irks me however, there is one that I found absolutely insulting. That's the Drust. The drust are indigenous people of Kul'tiras whose history was CLEARLY one sided to show us the "bravery and honor" of the human settlers. So you are task with helping the Order of Embers make sense of the Drust's plan. So you go into this one ruin where ghosts of the Kul'tirans and drust are duking it out. So from there you uncover the "truth" but narrated by an Order of Embers member's point of view (who is really hamming it up btw). According to them, the drust lived here peacefully for thousand of years until merchants from the human continent arrived and like... started colonizing the darn place. The drust who see foreign invaders invading their lands are of course, furious and fight them to kick them out. At any time the humans could of realized "wait there are people living in this land so we should probably respect their sovereignty" but no, the narrator talks about how the settlers were "peaceful" while the drusts were SAVAGE! It's even more insulting when they point out the drust, out of desperation started to use dark arts to fight back which just begs the question of WHY WERE THEY GETTING DESPERATE TO FIGHT BACK ON THEIR OWN HOME?! I say probably cause they could smell genocide but whatever, the dark art bad and white peop-huh i mean, humans good. But that's not the most insulting part cause you really need to fly back to that zone to see what i mean. This whole quest line is happening in the ruins south of Arom stand, the headquarters of the pro-setlers order of embers. And not just anywhere south of that town but directly under the cliff... the cliff that has the statue of the founder of the order looking down at the cliff... which oversees the very ruins the Drust used to call home and became their last stand against the human invaders... Can you imagine if we built a statue of Benjamin Harrison, the US president that relaunched the indian wars in 1890, right atop a hill overseeing the site of the battle of wounded knee?! WHAT! WAS! BLIZZARD! THINKING?! NO WONDER THEY HATE THE KUL'TIRAN! ...but it's ok cause you see there are good drust who did not agree with the evil drust and *checks notes* "sided with the human settlers"... oh boy...

1:48 "kirin tor mage acting like the cia in south american governments by having you deestabilize the governing body" As a brazilian (county that had an US approved military dictatorship established because our leader at the time decided to stray slightly too close to the political left) i felt that.

As a horde player i always felt bad for the ogres, especially after getting Chronicles Vol.2 learning that they created a massive sprawling city and were the dominant power in draenor, writing them off has stupid brutes yet them creating a great city of carved stone shows they are just as intelligent as the orcs, and even before or perhaps around the same time in the universe ogres discovered the arcane and began melding it into their royal king magi, being born with two heads (Aswell as giving in to the arcane) made you a god in ogre society destined for greatness, and the story of the orcs and ogres puzzled me...the orcs and ogres share a hatred but...how why? I get why the ogres hate their monstrous ancestors the Ogron and Gronn...and even then, the gronn and ogron are seen as as even more bumbling then even the ogres?! WHAT?! They are shapers of entire biomes and yes they lost sight of the purpose set apon them by aggramar but...hmm...maybe the giants of draenor should be covered in detail...i do like the large lads of the primal world of "Dawgar" (Draenor) the ogres call it "The Known Earth" they...really just described the planet in a kind of Articulate and spiritual way, i like the ogres not as they appear...but what they could be...

This kind of reminds me of way back in Wrath of the Lich King's beta or was it launch there was a bit of a controversy back then where a Kirin Tor mage (funny how its usually Kirin Tor mages) has you use a torture device on a captured Necromancer or Mage (I forget exacty). I don't recall if the story really makes you question if that was the right call either. I remember that controversy being dismissed largely with the same tired arguments ''It's WARcraft'' and such. It's unfortunate to see that Blizzard still hasn't learned but I am not surprised considering their conga line of dumpster fire decisions in recent years in regards to their games and their shitty workplaces. Another example that wasn't mentioned here and its a really bizarre one was the Nerubians. The Nerubians were wiped out to near extinction by Arthas back in Warcraft 3 but in Wrath it seemed like maybe they could come back with time after you save some eggs? Blizzard then proceeded to completely forget Nerubians existence....until in Battle for Azeroth were you discover a group of living ones on a random island expedition which you then completely slaughter due to something something ''N'Zoth corruption''. ''N'Zoth Corruption'' is a bullshit excuse for slaughtering what little remains of a dying people considering that the Nerubians lore wise managed to break away from being Yogg-Saron's slave species and lived really close to him and yet were still fine (relatively, he would send his Faceless Ones to kill them but they actively fought them off and never listened to his whispers). With that in mind how did that one singular group break off and get fooled by N'Zoth? I know hes the manipulator of the Old Gods but I dunno Yogg could be a big manipulator too. It's pretty nonsensical to bring a group of LIVING NERUBIANS back only to kill them off because they for some reason decided to listen to another Old God. It genuinely felt like the Nerubians were only brought back then just because someone at Blizzard was like ''Oh we forgot about them, lets bring them back for a brief slaughter for some nostalgia for our players.'' The Nerubians could of been brought back in Battle for Azeroth with the N'Zoth storyline and could try to help you fight them with what history they had of breaking off and fighting off Yogg-Saron but nooo that really cool plot point was completely forgotten and instead they were brought back to be corruption fodder were you render the race even more near extinct than it was before. Another small disturbing detail with Blizzard's shit writing in regards to trolls I can bring up is that one Zandalari quest in BFA were you are told to go murder rabble rousers of dying tribes like the aforementioned Amani or Drakkari. I always found that was obscenely disturbing and I don't remember it ever being hinted at that maybe the Zandalari and the Horde players were being bad guys in doing that? Yeah sure, just beat up our dying sister tribes, its not like we should of helped them anyways. Like I could believe the Zandalari can be assholes to the other tribes but even that was a bit much for them. Wouldn't any of the Zandalari leaders questioned that?

Fanfic where the Forsaken create a faction of the Forsaken, of those that are treated as fodder as the Forsaken would if they weren't given special status. Of course, when Sylvanas does basically do this we get Shadowlands where Drust and Forsworn who rebel against colonizers and the cultish structure of Elysium alike are the fodder. Blizz really can't write a revolutionary narrative to save their life can they? It's always assimilationist, the colonizers we're right, or in the lines of "The British Historians act like Britain introduced slavery for the sole sake of abolishing it."

I actually wrote a final paper on this topic back in undergrad! It was mostly focused on trolls (Especially Zul'jin, my beloved), but I hadn't really thought of the ways it applied to so many of the other "monster" races in the setting. But like, I genuinely cannot think of any way you can frame the narrative in which Zul'jin doesn't come across as objectively in the right.

I’ve been going through early questing again since I moved to an rp server and this highlights a lot of the frustrations I’ve felt. I don’t understand why the “it’s called WARcraft” people use that to argue that all conflict in the game should be race wars with the ultimate goal of extermination. I enjoy the combat and that there’s conflict to be had, as much as I love ffxiv I’m glad in WoW you’re playing much more than reading, but I really wish they’d shift towards conflicts being driven by political disagreement and material interest rather than some races of individuals just being comically hysterical and evil for no reason. Also wish blizzard would stop consistently targeting that characterization at the horde and just women generally in the game, but I don’t expect much from them at this point

Gnolls had actual huts in the RTS. The fact gnolls just have tents in WoW has always annoyed me.

Remember, the Kirin Tor is an _Alliance_ organization now thanks to Jaina in MoP. Yes the Horde were let back into Dalaran and Khadgar is a chill dude but the Horde has no say in the Kirin Tor anymore so this gnoll quest is the Alliance being sus again.

I always felt uncomfortable about furbolgs. I always wanted to play one, one of my favourite moments was wearing the furbolg disguise for a quest. But the wolvar thing? Given what came to light in the last few years, utter yikes.

Um...the description of the Gnolls is giving very conquest of the Americas um. Straight down to the justifications for continues slaughter over what was essentially people trying to protect their homes. In fact almost all of them are...On that note this is why I find it so hard to get into big mmorpgs and similar game types because I do think to much about everything and I always find some very uncomfortable connection to me to the usually very arian looking protagonist types I'm supposed to place being the conquistadors of races who have far more of my phenotypes or similar culture/history then the devs ever allow the player characters to have. Do I'm yeah good to know I'm not the only one at least a little uncomfortable here

I'm surprised WoW hasn't just straight up said "manifest destiny for the win"

I wait for the Forsaken to return Gilneas to the worgen with baited breath. “BuT iT’s WARcRafT” my ass, if Blizz can’t even write WARS in a nuanced way, I’ll take the most overdue, toilet paper-thin peace treaty over the two suffering peoples being at each other’s throats again.

The issue with WoW is just how clear it is that a lot of the Warcraft races are able to build societies, civilizations and a unique culture. The theme of discrimination was (not as much anymore) used to be very central to the Warcraft story; the Orcs were enslaved by the humans, Elves looked down upon Trolls, Humans despised the undead and Worgen, etc. I think the largest fault of WoW as an RPG is to never allow us any agency in how we as adventurers approach these issues, as the problems themselves are actually quite fascinating...if I wasn't forced to look down upon all of the other clearly self-aware and oppressed races through my actions in WoW, I wouldn't. Given that its obvious many of these races have their own cultures and identities, they aren't inherently evil or malicious (most of the time); external factors like encroachment on their lands for the Gnolls and the rampant massacre of Murlocs force their cultures to evolve in such a way that it opposes the playable races. Sadly much of the playerbase ignores these facts, and just goes "ooga booga mrrglll swing sword, I swing sword back"

What, treat traumatized people, whether individuals or species, with sympathy or nuance? How novel.

Maaaan I haven't played WoW longer than a "free time name reclaim" in over a year, but your videos fill me both with nostalgia and justification for not making this game my life any more. The music takes me back! I love your videos so much! Also, I was a long time lore-and-world-knowledge guy, and I am learning stuff from you so bravo! You know your stuff and you're fun to listen to!

I always wished that they better fleshed out the Saberon from WOD...I feel like they could have been really interesting...but its WOD, where many things COULD have been interesting, but so much was cut that very little was actually interesting.

You are absolutely correct. But the trolls never forget, one day Zul'Jin will be avenged and Alliance and Horde alike will be shattered like the empire of Aqir was. Some quests are really detestable. I can understand some unjust gore in DK starting mission, in deeds of Hellscream and the banshee she-elf, but as you mentioned some are really distasteful in the name of honor.

First thing is first, love the video. Second as some one who’s also of the mindset that you can give your quest fodder races more lore. And still have conflict with them. Do some basic world building with the War of the Ancients. And give reason why there is conflict in today’s world of Warcraft. Third cause of you and others that I have watched I have decided to make my own videos on some topics too. And now I have some ideas for for some more videos while watching yours. A how I would rewrite a lot of the different races in WoW.

"You take and you take and you take, and when you have had your fill, you sue for peace. You promise that *this time*, this time is the last - until you grow hungry again!" - Za Da, Patriarch of the Second Order of O'Ghomorro

Very enjoyable watch. Gave me a lot of ideas about how to use certain races to flesh out my world for sake of my WoW TTRPG campaigns. Looking forward to your future works. May the moon illuminate your videos.

"Acting like the cia in South America" I am dying on how accurate this is

In halfhearted defense of the Furbolgs, I'm pretty sure their madness was a continuous process with roots in the Emerald Nightmare

I've done the Gnoll questline you started the video with, and it definitely read to me as an intentional mockery of this framework. It ends with the player character walking away in disgust after none of the questgiver's ideas work and he resolves to just kill them all. I can still see seeing it as "ha ha we laugh at our problems instead of fixing them", but it does seem to show the current team is at least cognizant of weird implications of PCs just accepting the biased narrative of the first person we come across with an exclamation mark over their head. Overall I do feel DF is at least *trying* to be better about this to mixed results. The Gnolls certainly get the worst of it, but they've added a few more caveats to their wording to make it less questionable. It could be better, but it's better than the nadir of Endless Troll Genocide. On the Saurok though, I have to bring up the Skumblade tribe from the Isle of Thunder. It's not at all important to the main questline but you run into some very fascinating stuff about their cultural mindset talking around with them in disguise. Notably, how so much of their seemingly bizarre and gross culture is all tied to a tribe-wide fear of being re-enslaved by the Mogu. They worship filth and uncleanliness specifically because they want to make themselves less desirable to the Mogu. They worship a devilsaur as a creator god because the truth of their origins gives the Mogu claim to their very souls. Sadly they don't really end up doing all that much with it, but it does serve your point to the Saurok's story potential.

I seem to recall the original idea for WOD being Garrosh taking all of the downtrodden races of Azeroth and forming a “mongrel Horde” out of them. Which just sounds hillariously tone deaf, maybe we dodged a bullet with that one only to catch actual WOD.

Great video. My only fear as that some writer will see this video and try to remedy a lot of these issues in the most boring and artificially peaceful way. It seems so many writers today have like a culturally imperialist mindset where all cultures in their stories must be brought in line with their personal value system. I want to live in an ideal world where everyone shares my values (which obviously are the correct ones), but that is a boring story and horrible world building for a fantasy universe. That gritty darkness and ambiguity are important, but we ought to respect the weight of it and acknowledge it in appropriate ways.

I do agree I sick of all the cool races been killed off. I know it's a mirror to real life but I play games to get away with the troubles of the real world. It's like the kill all elves and destory there forest story. It's in everything and I think it's because it's like in real life where have destoryed our forests. But I don't want that, I just want to play game with cool forests and creatures inside

Enjoyed the video Very much. It makes me question why I play WoW the community around it and the people are an interesting bunch for sure. The It's War!craft crowd are just idk. I really wish there were either more consequences or interactions with the other races like it'd be really fun to have quests for diplomacy with the quill boar and how to get them into the Horde as well as the Furbolgs working on a cure to the corruption and trying to save their species reaches out to the Night elves and Tauren. I thought WoW would be a continuation of WC3 and the books but it's a lot more hollow. Great content as always. Good on you for recognizing depression and taking time off. I'm sure the Blades Edge video will be awesome especially if you get some rest bonus.

If I forget to put this on your other videos I apologise, But you seem consistently a mature and sensible voice on an internet full of blustering fools, thank you for your work and best of luck making more of it! 😁

Yeah if you want to really hate the Naga, their relations with the Makrura is HORRIBLE! I was somewhat desensitized to the rest of the races but the new take on the Centaur and Gnolls for DF had made me so happy (the former in particular cuz I really like the Centaurs as a concept but not how they were implemented: nomadic tribes with Steppe influence) And then there's the Goblins, they honestly are one of my favorite races but they have a horrible, terrible history with dealing with native species: The Blackmaw you mentioned, the Pygmies of the lost isles, the Venture Company as a whole and its relations to the Tauren of Mulgore, the Da'kani Gorillas of Zandalar, not to mention their enslavement of trolls to mine Kaja'mite like what happened to them. The Draenei are also a little problematic in how they treated their Broken & Lost kin, but I like to think they grew a bit since coming to Azeroth? Velen seemed to transform a bit in Legion, I dunno. But they have this soft colonizer vibe as well particularly in their time on Draenor (Orcish/Ogre Home, Yet the only name we have for it is Draenei, wut?) also how their ship became a holy site for the Orcs, lil weird that is.

You need more subs.

Great Video, thanks for all your hard work! I want to leave an honorary mentioning to the Pre-cataclysm Worgen. Like in duskwood, where you slaughter them by the dozens and could, at that point, still skin them. Granted, those were mostly the one summoned by Elunes scythe (iirc) but its still messed up. Of course, that doenst count for the one in tirisfal and sorrounding areas which used to be arugals playground

>too many creatures getting skinned and turned into tents, rugs, and turned into trophies >Tauren rugs WoW rug salesmen: "we try our best not to discriminate!"

World of Warcrimes

I never played WoW, but in a setting about the tension between two rival factions, Some of these races could have been neutral in some way like those Gnolls may hate the Alliance, but they don't feel comfortable with horde despite the protection it could give them. Same with those Quilboars hating the Horde. Or have a little bit nuance to those other races like Harpies being spotted among the other neutral races with even a quest to help a man save his lover who turns out to be a harpy. There's this adult game I really enjoy called Last Sovereign where it starts as the usual RPG with Succubi and Orcs being evil minions, but as you progress through the story you learn more about how the Succubi and their sex-filled society works and help them intergate into human society and turn the orcs from bands of savage raiders into a cilvaisation with their own country.

WoW has been recontextualizing most of their lore..... For the original setting of the World i feel like the stance we held with those races was valid. Slowly the world has gotten more open minded to non-standard races due to the Horde and other various factions we encountered along the way. We got gnolls and centaurs this expansion, as well as an alternate timeline that is Azmerloth.....there is a Murloc version of you out there! I feel like between the Gnolls interaction with decay. The Muruk's culture and traditions.......and im sorry murlocs have always been fan favorites..... I AM MURLOC!

I cannot put into words how thankful i am someone else said this. It's not even just WOW that does this stuff but a lot of games, in some the logic is "you need to have some kind of enemies that use and can drop weapons", which like just use undead or possessed or robots or something at that point

18:07 okay so fantastic video I really don't feel like I need to watch anymore to say that. Its obvious you know your way around lore. But i hate to say it, the nuance and stuff you desire will never be in WoW, thats why I left in BFA. Since burning crusade its been 'Go here, kill things just don't question it you're the hero lul' expect as you get older you do question and i came to the conclusion long ago that A) the WoW writing team is garbage B) The more of the world of Azeroth that suffers the better, and like if thats the story you're into cool, but with no progression or consequences for slaughtering thousands meh. pass. Great video

Thank you. That's a problem I've always had with WoW, especially as the RPG got de-canonized and we lost a lot of lore one these people.

I wish you could side with the villains in WoW.

It's offensive how much the youtube algorithm snubs you.

"Murder solves most problems." - with luv, WoW quests

Hi. I am wondering where in Azeroth the first thirty-six seconds of the video was shot in? I cannot, for the life of me, place it.

A great video, thank you for making it

Idk the tents out of human skin thing is a little hard to get past

Another banger. It makes a lot of sense.

Started watching some of your videos a while back as they kept popping into my recommended page. I always knew that early blizzard way of writing was the more "Don't think about it" rockstar type of writing akin to the murderhobo fantasy of teenage D&D fanatics. But with more contemporary revisions of the lore and worldbuilding I see just how backwards and incompatible the "murderhobo fantasy" style of writing is to the more kitchen philosophical writing of today. I watch this video and find myself saying "Geez, what the hell, Blizzard" quite often. There is a huge problem with combining the "Evil Monster Race" trope with the quirky, endearing, humour of a cartoonish game (Talking early warcraft lore, not the revisionism thats happened since where the writers for some reason think Azeroth is a serious place to live in). If an MMO would be a genre of movie it would be some kind of action adventure, pulp fantasy combination. And in a game that rewards you with experience and treasure for killing things, there needs to be things there for you to kill, and if you are put in the shoes of a "hero" and not a baddie (Top marks on the Mitchell and Webb reference), you need to feel not just okay, but good about killing hordes of creatures with little to no incentive. One way of doing this is by making them cartoonishly evil, or literally born from evil, like demons and other agents of entropy like undead. Other is by making them "wrongdoers", like Bandits. Players dont want to engage in existentialistic discussion when they are told to raid a bandit camp, because banditry tends to be a symptom of a larger problem, like land being seized by a corrupt government, or war creating opportunities for those desperate enough to seize them. No, heroes just want to know that they're bad and they need to die. I think the problem lies in that 20 years ago we didn't think about quilboars as real people, as the game tried to make your character feel more like a greek hero archetype, venturing to weird places, and kill the local population for the prestige (?) but now we like to treat our entertainment with a bit more sophistication. So we expand upon the beasts we kill so that we can have more nuanced reasons for killing them other than "well they were there and made of flesh". But if we look at the quilboar, the centaur, murlocs and other fodder races we fight throughout the game, we already have good reasons to kill them without making either side cartoonishly evil. And this approach may be a bit harsh, but if we talk about the reason why People come into conflict in our world, and why nations clash, it doesn't have to come down to ideology or creeds, but the fact that We want X. They sit on X. Therefore conflict is inevitable if they dont want to give us access to X. Given this reason is blunt, but in his book "The Origins of War" Donald Kagan suggests that nations following their own interests will inevitably clash into conflict. When you make a fantasy world where the nasty things we hear about in fairy tales are true, then the mere presence of civilisation is an invitation to conflict to the creatures that live in the forests. I don't know if I can adaquately put it into words, but it shouldn't be considered "bad" that a culture, whose main goal is to grow, absorbs weaker cultures on its mission, and destroy those who dont want to assimilate, within the context of a "Fantasy" world. Where the shoe doesn't seem to fit to me is that the writing is trying to endear us to the creatures by making them more and more sympathetic. Humans and Kobolds could be incompatible living in the same environment easily if as you suggested in the video they have reasons other than "Because lol" for mining the earth and being hostile to humans. "I live here. You live here. You don't want me to? Well if you can't move me then I will move you." And on the point of "Why can't we just live in peace with them?" I would argue that peace is only achievable if it is actively worked on. In our world peace is not the default, it is worked at with a lot of labour behind it. I don't like the idea of "Evil races" that are evil just because we should kill them. As a human, we kill Orcs because they want the same as we do. To grow and exist. But in order for them to grow, humans need to cease to exist. And for humans to grow, Orcs needs to die. That's conflict that is understandable. I wouldn't expect in a fantasy world that all cultures are the same or equal in hierarchy to our own. There ARE cultures in human history that thought human sacrifice was all good. There ARE cultures in our history that think child soldiers is acceptable. If we were encountering these cultures and they were looking to take our kids or sacrifice us to their gods, we would probably object. As such, one should expect in a fantasy world cultures that see things we view as sins as virtuous. "Warrior" societies that love violence come into conflict with us because we might not like the idea of being butchered. "Fire" societies that want to torch everything come into conflict with societies that like living indoors. The key is to treat each of these cultures as real, and with the dignity afforded to them. Make the culture feel real, and not shallow, you can write a deep culture around a people who just want to kill everything in sight, or limited to just "outsiders" the key is the "why". And that "why" needs to be enough for us to justify fighting them. Will there still be problematic elements? Well that's inevitable. But if we agree that we want Azeroth to be a world that isn't just cartoonish, but is populated by people with reasons to come into conflict, then those reasons needs to be rooted in the cultures of the people and how they will naturally come into conflict with each other without outside interferance (or with outside interferance, a good deception war can be cool now and again)

Ah, yes, I remember a quest back in TFT where the goal was to kill a bunch of... wolverine people? Or something, I don't remember what they were called, and 'rescue' all the babies, and that just made me go "Hey wait a minute." Or like the 'go kill a shitload of harpies to make a headress' quest in the tauren starting zone. World of Warcraft is very subject to 'Genocide For Fun And Profit'. I think the gnoll quest was sort of trying to poke fun at that, how player characters are often, in fact, the Baddies and it's just sort of... blithely glossed over. Sort of like DEHTA and the 'loot crazed hunters'. And part of that is because it's a pretty simple game where all your verbs amount to some variant of 'kill things', and you need things to kill. The series isn't called Peacecraft, after all, and whatnot. While part of the MMORPG genre WoW, like frankly most MMORPGs that aren't named The Old Republic, there isn't really much 'roleplaying'. There's no good/evil mechanic, however crude, there are essentially no decisions, every character can expect to complete every quest and the only distinction of note is Horde/Alliance and even then not always. Heck, Warcraft 3 treats the subject with more nuance. Not much, but some. On some level it really is 'yeah this isn't that deep', the monster races are the way they are because of gameplay needs, but that's a limitation of the game, not really an... advantage. But yeah Warcraft lore is fucked up, it's very much a setting where the default relation between races is 'genocide'. You could do more with that, maybe even something like the TTRPGs could do more with that (and they kinda do), but WoW as a game is... simply incapable of such nuance.

Darkspawn from Dragon Age.

Great points about a certain mean-spiritedness. It's nothing new for sure with quest writers. The BFA starting quest zones in Drustvar Gallywix orders you to foment a revolution through murder and intimidation and bribery to overthrow and exterminate the Leader of this village. He then rewards you with a bottle of "Century Sauce". If you take the year BFA released and go back 100 years, you're looking at the Bolshevik Revolution, which did just that to Russia, mutating it into the largest crime syndicate in human history - the Soviet Empire. If you know the specific history of the who's involved in funding and fomenting the Bolshevik Revolution and who were responsible for ensuring its expansion, and you also know what and whom the race of Goblins is satirizing, than you know that quest and it's reward and it's subtext were not at all coincidental. Not too many WOW players are versed in the historical record, of course, so this is not picked up on by most players and the one's that can, sure as sht don't spend time reading massive blocks of quest text. overall, the thematic and archetypical subtext of both the macro and micro major beats of the wow universe and lore are adapted references to mythological traditions and and notable beings and figures in human history in addition to containing many cryptic metaphors for both known and hidden realities.

Well, let me try playing devil's advocate here: instead of proclaiming "they should do better!" - go on and give an example of HOW exactly they should do. Because writing a believable and consistent story is a lot harder than many people think. Lets take humans for example. WC humans were always shown to be greedy, pushy racists with an ego the size of a whole planet. So? Show me any sentient civilization that wasn't like that on the start of its journey. EVERYONE start as greedy, brutal and xenophobic, its only when your nation gets comfy with resources than you'd be able to afford kindness. Otherwise - try to explain your starving, sick and dying people why they should be compassionate towards those neighboring tribes. I'd love to see how far your effort would go. And yes, I heard you saying that it's okay to have a dark and brutal story, but it's not okay to encourage it. Well, who exactly should it be to make player question their actions, if everyone in the nation share this "divide and conquer" mindset? That would be an equivalent of expecting compassion from a crew of pirates (real ones). Why would they question their actions if that's how they lived all their lives up to this point? Same goes for people of WC - why would anyone have doubts about killing other races if such killings are glorified and encouraged by their very culture? In order for there to be compassion there first needs to be abundance of resources, not necessary an OVERabundance, but at least enough for daily question to transition from "will I even see another day?" to "what I'm gonna eat tomorrow?". And in a war-torn world... yeah, not happening.

Pointless slaughter in world of "war" "craft"... Hmmmmm 🤔