I’m not sure I agree with his take on what feminists take issue with when it comes to video games, but I like some of what he says and thought I would pass it along to you.

I buy your claim that high fantasy wants to use “race” as a metaphor for certain ideas or characteristics that may not sync perfectly with real-world conceptions of “race.” Actually, that notion explains really well why the the Alliance races and the Blood Elves represent various stereotypes of whiteness (which I talk about it in more detail in the conclusion of my “Representations” chapter). About the Humans, however, I would say that it’s not how white they are compared to the other races that’s important; it’s that such an obviously representationally white race gets the name Human. And I’m not saying that there’s racism in the racials; I’m saying there’s racial essentialism there – a particular way of defining “race,” featured in WoW and other high fantasy texts, that has historically enabled all kinds of racism.

I think you’re getting at the central conundrum of MMOs, warfare, and identity: the player has to have some enemy to identify himself against, so the game can either present NPC monsters that are threats to all players, or divide its players somehow so they can fight each other. WoW does both; but in the case of player division, Blizzard has chosen to use racism (and nationalism) as the skins for that division, the cultural templates that make sense of it for us. And of course, those templates are standard parts of the larger genre template of high fantasy.

What you’ve got me wondering about is whether there could be a fantasy MMO that represented identity and conflict another way. Or an SF MMO. Or an MMO in any setting. Or I guess, I’m not wondering whether such a game could exist, but what it would look like.

I almost wrote a longish rant about paladin identities and stereotypes in the game, but I deleted it because it felt a bit pointless. So I’ll try with another angle – did you read any of the Warcraft books?

In the game, equal opportunity is needed to keep it balanced, but the lore itself (and the books are considered canonical) has no such restrictions.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, “Blood and Honor” (written by Metzen himself) was truly a truly horrific read for me. Ignoring how badly it was written overall for a moment, consider that the hero is cast out of the Order of the Silver Hand and cut of from the Light because he dares to consider not exterminating a lone old orc on sight.

In “Day of the Dragon”, Rhonin seems to barely avoid inquisition by those pesky paladins again (my favorite class to play, but…) just because he’s a mage. The hot nelf huntress saves the day multiple times just because she’s hot (and of course, the protagonist gets her in the end).

“Lord of the Clans” describes Thrall’s rise from a slave to warchief, so it shows orc abuse aplenty, but the treatment of women shown in that book is almost as bad.

“The Last Guardian” is a bit better – what with the tolerance of mages (both Medvih and the protagonist), Garona the half-orc, etc. Except it turns out it would have been better not to trust either of them (Medvih opens the portal to Draenor, Garona murders the king). So it’s a bit strange how tolerance backfires even there…

I haven’t read the “War of the Ancients”, but I imagine the old world it shows is not much better.

The fact is, the whole world-building in WoW and around it is based on xenophobic premises – humans show (as you pointed out) medieval levels of ignorance and intolerance, and other “races” / backgrounds are not much better.

If the world was full of enlightened, tolerant, open-minded friendly people – it would look significantly different, and would be called… PeaceCraft? But it’s full of prejudice and xenophobia of any kind you care to name. Or, it’s shown as such, because all the friendly, trusting, tolerant people have been exterminated in wars past and present.

And if a certain level of tolerance develops (Jaina and Thrall, Garona and the king, …), things are considered “boring”. If characters have been shown as tolerant, then external “evil influences” (demons, old gods, …) are used to destroy it. Or new intolerant characters are brought in (as seen recently with Garrosh and his counterpart) and given the spotlight – exactly because the world “needs” to be in the state of constant warfare. Not to get to philosophical, but there’s only so much evil you can attribute to external influences – in the end you need evil or considered-evil groups, organizations, “races”… And players can participate in those.

Others have said it better in recent and old gender discussions, but the status of women in the game is not much better than what you have shown here. Obvious by looking at female NPCs and male heroes with named fathers and side-lined mothers. Sometimes I think the only reason female PCs are tolerated is because of their powers – and really, isn’t it true for all PCs? Maybe NPCs are friendly to us because we’re soldiers fighting for them (i.e. we’re useful), and if we were playing non-combat roles, we would see how the society really functions?

My impression is that the average inhabitant of Azeroth is prejudiced against other “races”, systems of belief, genders – you name it. A thin layer of political correctness is added by the game mechanics regarding balance, and certain saccharine moments in the books/lore.

If we consider Tolkienesque high fantasy to be an escape from confusing modern progress into simpler “golden ages” of old (which were simpler in large part because… women, immigrants, atheists etc. “knew their place” or were insignificant), Warcraft is simply playing genre cards.

But even if it was an SF game set in a highly advanced future, where gender/species/belief equality has reached asymptotic levels – there would still be enemies / “the others”, if there was combat in the game. And if there was PvP combat, you can bet that the lore/game system would be set up to lead players down the path of conflict. Even if the lore shows <somebody else> to be worth respecting and looking up to, what does it matter if players can kill them and spit on their corpse? And if they can’t, what gameplay choices are they given?

I didn’t set out to write an essay or stop at this particular conclusion, but apparently I’m setting out to write a non-combat cooperative game

Baldur’s Gate was never a MMORPG. Just sayin’.

Until I started PvP. Then I got jealous of the Horde for being so much better, and so when my best friend and brother switched factions to join some server first guild, I went with them and changed from an NE to an Orc. I dig him – he’s all tough and shit – and the change of scenery. The people seem the same, just going about their WoW lives. We win more at PvP, I guess, but not by as much as I thought it would be. Though there does seem to be more confidence, come to think of it. So my main is Horde but my alts are still Alliance. ($30 bucks a pop – damn, Blizz.) It’s just as well – I dunno if I’ll like Goblins or Worgen more when Cataclysm comes out. And I’d love to hear your take on the Trolls, as I think they’re the most problematic of the game’s races.

Regarding your comment about “African American Language” vs. “African American Vernacular English,” I meant no offense. But your comment made me wonder if I’d been lazy with my terms, which are important, and rightfully so. AAL was the term used by my grad professors in rhetoric and composition at Washington State, and my understanding was that it was a more inclusive and up-to-date term than AAVE. This is born out in a definition by Geneva Smitherman:

African American Language (AAL) is characterized not only by patterns of grammar and pronunciation, but also by distinctive words and styles of speaking shared by African Americans from all walks of life. Further, many of AAL’s words and phrases have crossed over into mainstream use and enrich the language of all Americans.

So AAL exists, in the lexicon of Afican American Studies scholars. Now, you could argue that, given this definition, I was using the term AAL incorrectly in my work here, as I am looking solely at grammar, and not “distinctive words and styles of speaking,” in the way Smitherman eloquently goes on to define it. I was pretty much doing some light linguistics. So I wanted to be right.

I did some digging today and found that some linguists, like H. Samy Alim, use “African American Language” but acknowledge its other associated, if not equal, names in the common parlance: “Ebonics,” “Black English,” “African American English,” and “African American Vernacular English.” But most linguists do define each of these terms a little differently. The clearest explanation I found was from Peter L. Patrick:

One reason linguists don’t use the term “Ebonics” very happily is that it is very vague, and so such questions are hard to answer. We generally use the term “African American Vernacular English”, or AAVE, instead to mean the kinds of speech characteristically spoken by working-class U.S. African Americans, within their community, at occasions calling for intimacy or informality.

Linguists know very well that there are African Americans who cannot speak this dialect with native fluency; that there are some non-African Americans who can (though very few); and that almost all African Americans have some command of other forms of English, including Standard American English. In fact, there are characteristically African American ways of speaking the latter – which means there is a Standard African American English, too. A very large number of African American adults are perfectly at home with both AAVE and Standard American English, and are skilled at using each in the appropriate circumstances.

It seems sensible, then, to speak of a generalized family of dialects – AAE, or African American English – which includes all the various ways of speaking characteristic of African Americans: standard and vernacular, working- and middle-class, in settings formal and professional or informal and intimate. It is sensible, also, to use the term AAVE for a particular branch of AAE. When people say “Ebonics,” they often refer to this system, which linguists have studied the most.

These seem like solid and well-thought-out distinctions, and they would say that I’m definitely talking about AAVE, not AAL. So I’ve changed the terminology in the chapter.

Thanks for your perceptive correction on my terms. You were right: the sources were out there.

Oh, and: The Man did in fact come from Stormwind.