One should be honest here and call things by their name.
This shows the discussion: This is a contentious issue:
- Some say that those who criticize it are “closet racists.”
- Others say that it’s nonsense, that they simply want a “coherent” explanation: If there have always been black blood elves, where have they been all this time?
The discussion has a political component. Some people accuse Blizzard of being “woke” and deliberately opting for diversity. They criticize this. Others find it good and timely that Blizzard is bringing more diversity to World of Warcraft. Many comments on wowhead express explicit praise for the increased diversity among blood elves.
Blizzard has been trying to handle topics like diversity and sexuality more sensitively for some time. Already in November 2014, they announced that female characters would no longer be over-sexualized as they were in the past.
In the MMORPG World of Warcraft, there will be blood elves with dark skin in Shadowlands. This sparked a large discussion in Blizzard’s US forum. The Twitch streamer Asmongold defends the elves with dark skin – he apparently sees racism in the criticism. However, the critics say they are concerned about the lore.
What kind of elves are these? With the Shadowlands expansion, it will be possible to play a blood elf with dark skin in WoW.
The site wowhead has already created a preview with possible character customizations. It shows blood elves with dark skin of both sexes.
Since November 2019 and BlizzCon, it has been known that Blizzard plans to increase diversity in WoW character models. With Shadowlands, Blizzard wants to allow players to create characters that clearly align with Asian or African archetypes.
There will be neither a new class nor a new race in Shadowlands. Blizzard wants to give players the ability to change existing models more significantly.
Players want lore reason for black blood elves in WoW
This is the discussion: Even though this has been known for a while, the “dark blood elves” have now sparked a large discussion in Blizzard’s US forum. A thread on the topic has over 1200 posts and has since been closed.
The original post states: He has no problem with dark-skinned blood elves suddenly appearing, but one would need a lore explanation to justify this. How did this happen?
It didn’t take long for the discussion to take a certain direction. In the 4th response, a player said: “This happens when you’re pale. You roast as soon as you come into the sun.”
Twitch streamer Asmongold calls for honesty in the discussion
This is what Asmongold says: The Twitch streamer Asmongold, a well-known WoW figure, has spoken about the black blood elves. He finds the excitement over the black blood elf to be simply stupid.
It’s clear that this isn’t about lore. The lore in WoW is already full of holes, and many things don’t make sense at all. The subtext of the discussion is clearly political:
- Some people didn’t want any black characters in their game. The critics wanted to accuse Blizzard of adding blacks to the game for political correctness, but would not raise that accusation and instead talk about lore.
- Other people reacted overly to the criticism of black blood elves and then pretended that the others were secretly members of racist hate groups.
Ultimately, everyone is upset about something that isn’t even really there.
Asmongold says: “I play fantasy games to escape reality. But I don’t want to escape reality by seeing black people.”
One should be honest here and call things by their name.
This shows the discussion: This is a contentious issue:
- Some say that those who criticize it are “closet racists.”
- Others say that it’s nonsense, that they simply want a “coherent” explanation: If there have always been black blood elves, where have they been all this time?
The discussion has a political component. Some people accuse Blizzard of being “woke” and deliberately opting for diversity. They criticize this. Others find it good and timely that Blizzard is bringing more diversity to World of Warcraft. Many comments on wowhead express explicit praise for the increased diversity among blood elves.
Blizzard has been trying to handle topics like diversity and sexuality more sensitively for some time. Already in November 2014, they announced that female characters would no longer be over-sexualized as they were in the past.
