They need to do something in this game to cut down on toxic players. Just had a game where after 6 minutes our Nova (complete with master skin and piggy) decides he'd had enough of this game, cursed us all out and spent the next 15 minutes feeding towers.
The other 4 of us weren't even doing bad. We were still making kills and keeping waves pushed, but you don't stand a chance when you're 4v5 for every fight.
We all reported him, but I don't feel like that does anything.
Okay so this is gonna be a talk about ethnic diversity in the characters in the game and stuff, so if you're not into this kind of meta level social justice in media discussion and just wanna talk about mechanics, that's cool, you do you and all. But it's something that's been sincerely bugging me, so, I'mma stick it under a spoiler so I don't gum up all the legit talk about mechanics and all.
It's sincerely started to bug me about how very white the cast lineup is. And I mean okay, thanks Seraph slash TealDeer, way to spend too much time on Tumblr! But sincerely...
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
Just started using Nazeebo. I've had him from the very start but he never really clicked.
I kind of get him now and am enjoying it.
He's kind of aggro but not aggro.
I'm hitting the majority of my walls so that's good.
Always cast just a wee behind them so they run into it ^_^'
I haven't played him since his changes, haven't played a lot since then, but with wall don't forget you don't need to trap them in it for it to be useful. Early I like to use it to block the gate either keeping them inside their base, or out of it depending on the situation. Can keep them from getting xp early if you harass well enough. Also, don't forget your passive, poison everything, get stacks. I like to even do drive bys with my abilities as it can clear a wave and refill health/mana.
Okay so this is gonna be a talk about ethnic diversity in the characters in the game and stuff, so if you're not into this kind of meta level social justice in media discussion and just wanna talk about mechanics, that's cool, you do you and all. But it's something that's been sincerely bugging me, so, I'mma stick it under a spoiler so I don't gum up all the legit talk about mechanics and all.
It's sincerely started to bug me about how very white the cast lineup is. And I mean okay, thanks Seraph slash TealDeer, way to spend too much time on Tumblr! But sincerely...
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
I've been kind of hoping they would introduce Tosh from SC2 particularly because he's an established and relevant character who is not white. Unfortunately he is also into voodoo despite being from the space-future... because... Blizzard...
I am unsure of how likely he is though, since he would have permanent cloaking as well. Though he should really be more of a mage than a single target ganker like Nova.
Okay so this is gonna be a talk about ethnic diversity in the characters in the game and stuff, so if you're not into this kind of meta level social justice in media discussion and just wanna talk about mechanics, that's cool, you do you and all. But it's something that's been sincerely bugging me, so, I'mma stick it under a spoiler so I don't gum up all the legit talk about mechanics and all.
It's sincerely started to bug me about how very white the cast lineup is. And I mean okay, thanks Seraph slash TealDeer, way to spend too much time on Tumblr! But sincerely...
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
The HotS team is sort of stuck because they can't exactly just make up new characters left and right, it defeats the purpose. SC units are their only real excuse to do that for humans and I don't think we'll get many more of those since they'll always use an established character if they can. Blizzard's cast of characters to date is not very ethnically diverse though, true enough.
Okay so this is gonna be a talk about ethnic diversity in the characters in the game and stuff, so if you're not into this kind of meta level social justice in media discussion and just wanna talk about mechanics, that's cool, you do you and all. But it's something that's been sincerely bugging me, so, I'mma stick it under a spoiler so I don't gum up all the legit talk about mechanics and all.
It's sincerely started to bug me about how very white the cast lineup is. And I mean okay, thanks Seraph slash TealDeer, way to spend too much time on Tumblr! But sincerely...
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
Tyreal isn't even 'black' as much as he is an Angel in the HotS incarnation. It is only after the fact that he took off his wings did he become human who happens to be a black male in D3. So, in terms of HotS, he's not even human to begin with. Similarly, the immortals in the Battlefield of Eternity are either Angel or Demons.
You can say the same with all the other D3 Nephalem. Why can't some shoe maker be a Nephalem??? It is just not interesting at all. Besides, Witch doctors are cool.
Also, all the Terrans/Humans in Starcraft are exiled humans (Space Australia basically). They typically have the Southern accent as a play on the whole space cowboy / frontier theme in Starcraft 1.
As far as I can tell, Korea doesn't really care about having a Korean hero in a Blizzard game. Pretty sure once in the localized version they are playing, it is easy to consider all the characters in SC as Korean.
Or I guess Blizzard could follow the other MOBA/DOTAs and put a Monkey King in the game and call it a day.
Yeah I felt like I was doing alright. I would hop around the map and get people out of there but I just couldn't keep people from being people I guess.
i thought you were playing fine. part of the issue was comp. part was i started playing terrible when i switched.
The Diablo 3 Wizards are canonically Asian, and they are both incredibly smug assholes.
This is still a major issue for Blizzard as a whole, especially since every dwarf and gnome are also white. Oh wait, except for the Dark Irons who are the sneaky, normally evil dwarves. Er...moving on!
Heroes is a collection of Blizzard's characters, and the sad reality is that their collection is extremely white.
Yeah I felt like I was doing alright. I would hop around the map and get people out of there but I just couldn't keep people from being people I guess.
i thought you were playing fine. part of the issue was comp. part was i started playing terrible when i switched.
My roommate was still playing like he would be against the AI and making really bad choices (chasing after someone with 10% as Jaina while they're covered by Azmodan and there's a Nova on the field). It seems Murky is the go-to guy for Ab to hat? Mainly since you can basically die and come back immediately and have a quick escape? I think you were doing alright as Murky. We were just overpowered.
Would having more black humans in SC really be a compliment considering they're all descendants of convicts?
As someone who knows a couple ACLU activists and attorneys and have talked to them about their work...
Social progress and equality is achieved via the long and not immediately rewarding or satisfying slog of litigation and on the ground activism.
All of them roll their eyes when asked about online activism and social media campaigns, and all have reacted with dropped jaws when asked if having more minority characters in movies and video games would solve it. No Xbox Live kiddie is going to stop shouting the N word if they reveal John Spartan as black. If you can find me one single former racist who changed his mind after playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, or a homophobe who stopped hating after being given the option to sex up Iron Bull in Dragon Age, I will completely reverse my opinion.
If you want to affect social change, take all the time you would have spent petitioning video game companies to write the exact same characters but with darker skin tones, and instead volunteer or donate to the ACLU. Contact your representative (call or physical letter, emails don't mean squat). Do anything in the real world that matters.
Well, yes, that's kind of the thing about privilege. You never notice that sort of thing until it's explicitly pointed out.
+1
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The Diablo 3 Wizards are canonically Asian, and they are both incredibly smug assholes.
This is still a major issue for Blizzard as a whole, especially since every dwarf and gnome are also white. Oh wait, except for the Dark Irons who are the sneaky, normally evil dwarves. Er...moving on!
Heroes is a collection of Blizzard's characters, and the sad reality is that their collection is extremely white.
Well, Nordic, European, and non-human.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
The Diablo 3 Wizards are canonically Asian, and they are both incredibly smug assholes.
This is still a major issue for Blizzard as a whole, especially since every dwarf and gnome are also white. Oh wait, except for the Dark Irons who are the sneaky, normally evil dwarves. Er...moving on!
Heroes is a collection of Blizzard's characters, and the sad reality is that their collection is extremely white.
Dark Iron Dwarves aren't black. They are grey to dark grey.
This is still a major issue for Blizzard as a whole, especially since every dwarf and gnome are also white. Oh wait, except for the Dark Irons who are the sneaky, normally evil dwarves. Er...moving on!
Yeah! Damn those Dark Night Elves too. stupid sexy night elves
Okay so this is gonna be a talk about ethnic diversity in the characters in the game and stuff, so if you're not into this kind of meta level social justice in media discussion and just wanna talk about mechanics, that's cool, you do you and all. But it's something that's been sincerely bugging me, so, I'mma stick it under a spoiler so I don't gum up all the legit talk about mechanics and all.
It's sincerely started to bug me about how very white the cast lineup is. And I mean okay, thanks Seraph slash TealDeer, way to spend too much time on Tumblr! But sincerely...
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
Regarding Zagara's Luxoria skin, I strongly suspect they were influenced by depictions of Cleopatra since that's usually the first Egyptian female ruler people think about (plus she has associations with poisonous creatures) who, as a Ptolemy, would have been Greek in ancestry and features. Egyptian inspired characters tend to get kind of weird in terms of features due to the most famous female Egyptian being from a Macedonian dynasty that adopted the Egyptian royal practice of marrying siblings so outside blood didn't really get into the line of succession. The most famous males being Tut and Ramses II, male characters tend to look more North African.
With existing properties, they still have Diablo characters they could use for diversity but fitting them into a niche could be tougher. Diablo 2's paladin was black but has to be made distinct from Tyrael, Johanna, and Uther. Ditto with the black Diablo 1 mage. I believe the Diablo 2 assassin and sorceress were Asian too but didn't spend much time with those classes. And they do seem to want to put Warfield from Starcraft 2 in in some form.
We're more likely to see iconic non-white characters from future franchises as opposed to ones that have had a ton of time to have their lore fossilize. Overwatch has a quarter of its announced, human characters from non-white ethnicities plus we don't know what some of them look like under their heavy armor. And the Buddhist monk robot obviously has a lot of Asian influences.
That said, Blizzard sometimes seems to go more for cultural diversity beyond just racial diversity. Outside of Warcraft, there's often white characters from Eastern or Northern European cultures as opposed to the standard Anglo-American mold. As an example, Hammer is one of a handful of Polish characters we see in non-WWII related games. It's a lot more obvious in Overwatch where they can assign exact countries of origin to characters as opposed to Starcraft's weird Space Australia.
blizzard's racial diversity has always been really weird to me just because of how much of their audience is overseas
like when league of legends started to get big in china and korea and the like they started immediately working on characters that represented those regions, because shocker people identify with characters that look like them
considering ever since starcraft one they've been big over there it's really weird, like if i was there i would be all "LET'S MAKE A WHOLE FACTION OF THE TERRANS KOREAN AND GET THAT MONEY" evil businessman
In case the link doesn't work, watch from 1h34m onward. It's a short watch but holy goddamn that's funny.
Shit like this caused the Smite devs to pull a god entirely from the game and dismantle her kit into something completely different. If he doesn't get a drastic change to his talents I would be shocked.
The main problem here isn't necessarily his trait alone, it's the fact that Leoric has several talents which significantly lower his death timer. Like, maybe 15 second death timer. With Consume Vitality (Skeletal Swing healing talent), hitting that on a full creep wave will already chunk a large portion of your death timer down (10% health max). Then you have Ossein Renewal which gives you 20% health. 30% health so far, plus the regen from Reanimation, PLUS Fealty Unto Death giving you 1% health for every minion that dies nearby.
Like it wasn't uncommon to see ZPs cheating 30-45 seconds off his death timer.
I think his Trait in general is fine. It's very strong, the ability to res ON THE SPOT is huge, but overall I think it's fine. The issue is when you combine all this other crap that it gets out of hand, especially when you decide to ignore everything else and play Let's Kill The Keeps instead.
It is a problem, though. Yeah, sure, it's less of an issue without an Abathur, but it's still an issue period.
I'm not sure how they fix it without completely redoing a lot of his talents.
You're overthinking things! Just Thrall him and get started on the next fotm.
blizzard's racial diversity has always been really weird to me just because of how much of their audience is overseas
like when league of legends started to get big in china and korea and the like they started immediately working on characters that represented those regions, because shocker people identify with characters that look like them
considering ever since starcraft one they've been big over there it's really weird, like if i was there i would be all "LET'S MAKE A WHOLE FACTION OF THE TERRANS KOREAN AND GET THAT MONEY" evil businessman
Why would you though when you already have all the Korean money?
Blizzard has always just done their thing with their heads down in their work in a mindlessly-biased way. Probably nobody even thought about it.
Recently they've apparently been made aware of the issue and they have been legitimately making efforts at diversification. It's tough for HOTS though because almost every human-esque character came pre-defined with a character. That's what the entire game is built on marketing-wise.
When they've had the opportunity they've tried to do what they can like with Hammer or with choosing the Female Crusader or the like.
I've got one more assassin match to wrap up a daily and I need to find an assassin I'm happy playing... I'm gonna give valla another go and try this build out...
/nervousness intensifies
Awesome! Let me know how it goes. Your mileage may vary. That's just the build that works best for me.
Well after one match I don't know that I'm proficient, but it certainly went a hell of a lot better than last time I played valla... didn't top dps, siege or xp but I went 24-4 with the best k/d ratio of the team (spider queen). I got caught out by their zeratul a couple of times but I skillshot his shimmer more than enough to get him to leave me alone most of the match. Also had a couple of clinch RoV's that secured triple kills for our side... earned us three forts between the two triples.
I really like tumble with puncturing arrow... snagged a couple of kills on fleeing opponents by dumping a few arrows on them then getting back to the back line.
Starcraft 1 came out then Korea got obsessed with it.
Terrans in SC1, though SC2 seems to have lost some of this feeling, are space hicks. Not just space Australia though that is part of it. They are specifically space White Trash. In fact I think I remember one of the videos had some Terrans with the confederate battle flag to show their hickatude.
Now there are some of the non-hicks like the headphones dude in the BW opening cinematic and Tosh. But really this is your standard Terran.
They are a joke.
Now the Terrans from BW are Russian for some reason. But it was a mostly I think because they were all Battlecruisers.
SC2 you get some more diversity not a lot though.
Warcraft is fantasy Europe from its development on in the 1990's. So again makes sense from its development.
They should try harder and I think in the long run they will. Overwatch looks a bit better. But for HoTS it is off a lot of games from a period when this wasn't even a thought so we work with what we have.
blizzard's racial diversity has always been really weird to me just because of how much of their audience is overseas
like when league of legends started to get big in china and korea and the like they started immediately working on characters that represented those regions, because shocker people identify with characters that look like them
considering ever since starcraft one they've been big over there it's really weird, like if i was there i would be all "LET'S MAKE A WHOLE FACTION OF THE TERRANS KOREAN AND GET THAT MONEY" evil businessman
It is not weird because Blizzard's games became popular due to the fact that they are good games rather than the fact that there are Asian characters in them. WoW already did well in China despite being behind the international release for expansions for a long period of time. Before that, competitive WC3 was HUGE in China.
What Blizzard does relatively well is the fact that they release games internationally together with the US release in a small timeframe and they do their localization well compared to other big AAA releases.
Well, yes, that's kind of the thing about privilege. You never notice that sort of thing until it's explicitly pointed out.
Or people don't immediately relate non-humans to human ethnicity without very deliberate attempts on the part of the authors to imbue them with said traits?
"Privilege is having imaginary creatures that vaguely share a color palette like you" isn't even in the realm of reasonableness.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
There isn't much I am going to say on this subject,
but I most certainly do NOT play characters I identify with. Its the complete opposite.
And I kind of thought that was normal? Don't most people get into fantasy things because they want to be something they are not?
Well, yes, that's kind of the thing about privilege. You never notice that sort of thing until it's explicitly pointed out.
Or people don't immediately relate non-humans to human ethnicity without very deliberate attempts on the part of the authors to imbue them with said traits?
"Privilege is having imaginary creatures that vaguely share a color palette like you" isn't even in the realm of reasonableness.
Considering how long a history the U.S. has with using fake races as stand ins for humans I an going to say you are wrong here. Star Trek was doing it 50 years ago. Mutants came to marvel about the same time. Calling them dwarves rather than Klingons doesn't really change a really old story telling trick.
There isn't much I am going to say on this subject,
but I most certainly do NOT play characters I identify with. Its the complete opposite.
And I kind of thought that was normal? Don't most people get into fantasy things because they want to be something they are not?
It varies but for most people that seems to not be the norm. It's not uncommon to play something quite different especially if it's a game where you tend to wind up with multiple characters but people tend to insert at least a bit of themselves into their fantasy characters if they're not PvP veterans.
blizzard's racial diversity has always been really weird to me just because of how much of their audience is overseas
like when league of legends started to get big in china and korea and the like they started immediately working on characters that represented those regions, because shocker people identify with characters that look like them
considering ever since starcraft one they've been big over there it's really weird, like if i was there i would be all "LET'S MAKE A WHOLE FACTION OF THE TERRANS KOREAN AND GET THAT MONEY" evil businessman
It's likely not quite as huge a thing when the rest of the media in Korea is probably pushing Korean characters heavily.
Blizzard does a more lowkey approach with events, skins, etc. based on the Lunar New Year on a pretty regular basis.
fantasy is about playing a human male and imagining yourself getting it on with that super hot blue lady with horns
and here I was thinking it was about imaging yourself as a super hot blue lady with horns getting it on with that other super hot blue lady with horns
my first WoW character was, in fact, a female draenei
also, speaking of diversity on HotS, can we get a Draenei hero? Nevermind adding in things blizzard has never been good at, we don't even have proper representation of the races blizz themselves created
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited July 2015
And chances are that super hot blue lady with horns is a dude like me
i think Yrel is both the most likely paladin hero for hots and the second-most likely alternate paladin skin for Hearthstone (toss-up between her and lady liadrin)
They could do Yrel. (I had to look that up) The female pally from Warlords. Maybe make her a Ret pally?
Yeah, generally I've seen people say Yrel or Velen. Velen's kinda funky though since he'd probably be yet another Warcraft support. Maraad is also possibly an option? Though they'd probably go with Yrel over him since they'd probably fill similar roles.
Yrel would probably be a warrior, as she is constantly running around with a sword and board and we don't have a pro paladin in the game yet. It's also more in flavor with Paladins being defenders (although Maraad could serve as an assassin if they wanted ALL THE PALADINS).
Dark Iron Dwarves aren't black. They are grey to dark grey.
Noticed how I didn't say the Dark Irons were anything except "not white"?
Hmmmmm
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Also, speaking of Paladins, Uther is pretty sweet. His lockdown is pretty crazy (benediction on HoJ is super mean if you don't need the machine-gun heals). Tough to choose; he would have been my next purchase easy, but they've suddenly started releasing heroes I like and I now want him, Jo, Kael and Leoric
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The other 4 of us weren't even doing bad. We were still making kills and keeping waves pushed, but you don't stand a chance when you're 4v5 for every fight.
We all reported him, but I don't feel like that does anything.
Of all the humanoid characters, we only have two who aren't white -- Nazeebo and Tyrael. For both of them, all their skins cover their faces with masks or deep hoods, so it's hard to tell. Nazeebo also covers a kind of uncomfortable stereotype of the witch doctor.
I get that most of the characters are from established properties and many of those properties are pretty old and from a Before Time when we didn't even TALK about diversity in games. And I AM glad that Blizzard has been doing a bang-up job of including female characters of a pretty wide variety of body types (from generic sexy elves to HOT BEEFCAKE WARRIORS for Sonya and Hammer to chubby adorable fatties in LiLi). But at the same time, many of the Starcraft and Diablo characters aren't established, pre-existing characters, they're new characters meant to represent units or character types from those franchises. And it's like... why NOT include more people who ain't white?
You can talk all you want about how in lore most of the Starcraft humans are apparently from the South and former convicts (forgive me, I haven't played Starcraft, but people who have informed me that this is the case), but have you been to the south? There's a lot of black people there, as it turns out. And (unfortunately, because America is racist) a lot of convicts happen to be black. Also, there's lots of Asians there too! Iirc Austin has a huge Vietnamese population. Basically, it comes down to, "Why is Sgt. Hammer white?" It's honestly a kind of arbitrary choice when you think about it too hard.
Also, surely EVERYONE from Nazeebo's country isn't a witch doctor? Are there no hunters, warriors, barbarians, scholars, etc? From what little I know of the Diablo franchise, I think there's a Southeast Asian / Central Asian type place, and an East Asian type place too? What about characters from those countries? I have heard the Wizard will be Asian when s/he is released, so I hope so, and I hope s/he isn't a stereotype.
Something that I think would be super cool, and would make a TON of sense: introduce a Korean Starcraft hero. Korea practically INVENTED the ESports genre THROUGH STARCRAFT, they love MOBAs, this would be a no-brainer for Blizzard to do as a hey thank you to the Korean fanbase. In fact, let me break it down... Starcraft is short on Support characters right now, there's only Tassadar, who is... not the ideal support guy right now as he stands. Why not have a melee support human combat medic? Something like a tough, built fireplug, in power armor, the kind of woman* who is trained to get out on the battlefield under heavy fire and administer medical aid on the field. Maybe her mechanic is that she drops bandages and medpacks for people to pick up, I don't know, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Make her Korean, have her toss off common Korean Starcraft gaming catchphrases, and give her a professional Korean ESports skin. Bam! We have a cool new character who fills an empty role who happens to not be yet another white person.
*why woman? I flipped a coin, *shrug*
The thing that irks me the most is probably Zagara's Luxoria skin. Luxoria is EXPLICITLY based on a cartoony version of Ancient Egypt, and iirc the Spider Queen has North African features (sorta) (I mean she's a spider). Zagara has no canon human appearance (afaik) and yet for her Luxoria skin they make her human parts... a white woman? There's literally no reason to do that whatsoever. Like, why, exactly, did you make the NORTH AFRICAN THEMED SKIN of a character with no canon human appearance white, and not Middle Eastern or African?
I know this is all basically just social justice warrior nitpicking but it still bugs me. Diversity in human characters also gives room for diversity in character themes, skins, appearances, and voice actors, which is always a fun and good thing, so it's really perplexing to me that Blizzard isn't taking advantage of the opportunity.
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I kind of get him now and am enjoying it.
He's kind of aggro but not aggro.
I'm hitting the majority of my walls so that's good.
Always cast just a wee behind them so they run into it ^_^'
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wra
I haven't played him since his changes, haven't played a lot since then, but with wall don't forget you don't need to trap them in it for it to be useful. Early I like to use it to block the gate either keeping them inside their base, or out of it depending on the situation. Can keep them from getting xp early if you harass well enough. Also, don't forget your passive, poison everything, get stacks. I like to even do drive bys with my abilities as it can clear a wave and refill health/mana.
I've been kind of hoping they would introduce Tosh from SC2 particularly because he's an established and relevant character who is not white. Unfortunately he is also into voodoo despite being from the space-future... because... Blizzard...
I am unsure of how likely he is though, since he would have permanent cloaking as well. Though he should really be more of a mage than a single target ganker like Nova.
The HotS team is sort of stuck because they can't exactly just make up new characters left and right, it defeats the purpose. SC units are their only real excuse to do that for humans and I don't think we'll get many more of those since they'll always use an established character if they can. Blizzard's cast of characters to date is not very ethnically diverse though, true enough.
You can say the same with all the other D3 Nephalem. Why can't some shoe maker be a Nephalem??? It is just not interesting at all. Besides, Witch doctors are cool.
Also, all the Terrans/Humans in Starcraft are exiled humans (Space Australia basically). They typically have the Southern accent as a play on the whole space cowboy / frontier theme in Starcraft 1.
As far as I can tell, Korea doesn't really care about having a Korean hero in a Blizzard game. Pretty sure once in the localized version they are playing, it is easy to consider all the characters in SC as Korean.
Or I guess Blizzard could follow the other MOBA/DOTAs and put a Monkey King in the game and call it a day.
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i thought you were playing fine. part of the issue was comp. part was i started playing terrible when i switched.
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This is still a major issue for Blizzard as a whole, especially since every dwarf and gnome are also white. Oh wait, except for the Dark Irons who are the sneaky, normally evil dwarves. Er...moving on!
Heroes is a collection of Blizzard's characters, and the sad reality is that their collection is extremely white.
My roommate was still playing like he would be against the AI and making really bad choices (chasing after someone with 10% as Jaina while they're covered by Azmodan and there's a Nova on the field). It seems Murky is the go-to guy for Ab to hat? Mainly since you can basically die and come back immediately and have a quick escape? I think you were doing alright as Murky. We were just overpowered.
As someone who knows a couple ACLU activists and attorneys and have talked to them about their work...
All of them roll their eyes when asked about online activism and social media campaigns, and all have reacted with dropped jaws when asked if having more minority characters in movies and video games would solve it. No Xbox Live kiddie is going to stop shouting the N word if they reveal John Spartan as black. If you can find me one single former racist who changed his mind after playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, or a homophobe who stopped hating after being given the option to sex up Iron Bull in Dragon Age, I will completely reverse my opinion.
If you want to affect social change, take all the time you would have spent petitioning video game companies to write the exact same characters but with darker skin tones, and instead volunteer or donate to the ACLU. Contact your representative (call or physical letter, emails don't mean squat). Do anything in the real world that matters.
Well, Nordic, European, and non-human.
Dark Iron Dwarves aren't black. They are grey to dark grey.
Yeah! Damn those Dark Night Elves too. stupid sexy night elves
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Regarding Zagara's Luxoria skin, I strongly suspect they were influenced by depictions of Cleopatra since that's usually the first Egyptian female ruler people think about (plus she has associations with poisonous creatures) who, as a Ptolemy, would have been Greek in ancestry and features. Egyptian inspired characters tend to get kind of weird in terms of features due to the most famous female Egyptian being from a Macedonian dynasty that adopted the Egyptian royal practice of marrying siblings so outside blood didn't really get into the line of succession. The most famous males being Tut and Ramses II, male characters tend to look more North African.
With existing properties, they still have Diablo characters they could use for diversity but fitting them into a niche could be tougher. Diablo 2's paladin was black but has to be made distinct from Tyrael, Johanna, and Uther. Ditto with the black Diablo 1 mage. I believe the Diablo 2 assassin and sorceress were Asian too but didn't spend much time with those classes. And they do seem to want to put Warfield from Starcraft 2 in in some form.
We're more likely to see iconic non-white characters from future franchises as opposed to ones that have had a ton of time to have their lore fossilize. Overwatch has a quarter of its announced, human characters from non-white ethnicities plus we don't know what some of them look like under their heavy armor. And the Buddhist monk robot obviously has a lot of Asian influences.
That said, Blizzard sometimes seems to go more for cultural diversity beyond just racial diversity. Outside of Warcraft, there's often white characters from Eastern or Northern European cultures as opposed to the standard Anglo-American mold. As an example, Hammer is one of a handful of Polish characters we see in non-WWII related games. It's a lot more obvious in Overwatch where they can assign exact countries of origin to characters as opposed to Starcraft's weird Space Australia.
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like when league of legends started to get big in china and korea and the like they started immediately working on characters that represented those regions, because shocker people identify with characters that look like them
considering ever since starcraft one they've been big over there it's really weird, like if i was there i would be all "LET'S MAKE A WHOLE FACTION OF THE TERRANS KOREAN AND GET THAT MONEY" evil businessman
Why would you though when you already have all the Korean money?
Blizzard has always just done their thing with their heads down in their work in a mindlessly-biased way. Probably nobody even thought about it.
Recently they've apparently been made aware of the issue and they have been legitimately making efforts at diversification. It's tough for HOTS though because almost every human-esque character came pre-defined with a character. That's what the entire game is built on marketing-wise.
When they've had the opportunity they've tried to do what they can like with Hammer or with choosing the Female Crusader or the like.
Well after one match I don't know that I'm proficient, but it certainly went a hell of a lot better than last time I played valla... didn't top dps, siege or xp but I went 24-4 with the best k/d ratio of the team (spider queen). I got caught out by their zeratul a couple of times but I skillshot his shimmer more than enough to get him to leave me alone most of the match. Also had a couple of clinch RoV's that secured triple kills for our side... earned us three forts between the two triples.
I really like tumble with puncturing arrow... snagged a couple of kills on fleeing opponents by dumping a few arrows on them then getting back to the back line.
4/5 will pick again.
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Starcraft 1 came out then Korea got obsessed with it.
Terrans in SC1, though SC2 seems to have lost some of this feeling, are space hicks. Not just space Australia though that is part of it. They are specifically space White Trash. In fact I think I remember one of the videos had some Terrans with the confederate battle flag to show their hickatude.
Now there are some of the non-hicks like the headphones dude in the BW opening cinematic and Tosh. But really this is your standard Terran.
They are a joke.
Now the Terrans from BW are Russian for some reason. But it was a mostly I think because they were all Battlecruisers.
SC2 you get some more diversity not a lot though.
Warcraft is fantasy Europe from its development on in the 1990's. So again makes sense from its development.
They should try harder and I think in the long run they will. Overwatch looks a bit better. But for HoTS it is off a lot of games from a period when this wasn't even a thought so we work with what we have.
God the SC1 Terrans were super hicks.
It is not weird because Blizzard's games became popular due to the fact that they are good games rather than the fact that there are Asian characters in them. WoW already did well in China despite being behind the international release for expansions for a long period of time. Before that, competitive WC3 was HUGE in China.
What Blizzard does relatively well is the fact that they release games internationally together with the US release in a small timeframe and they do their localization well compared to other big AAA releases.
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To be fair the mythology that inspired this stuff is all European.
Or people don't immediately relate non-humans to human ethnicity without very deliberate attempts on the part of the authors to imbue them with said traits?
"Privilege is having imaginary creatures that vaguely share a color palette like you" isn't even in the realm of reasonableness.
but I most certainly do NOT play characters I identify with. Its the complete opposite.
And I kind of thought that was normal? Don't most people get into fantasy things because they want to be something they are not?
the most commonly played race in MMOs is almost always human male
Blizz has already pointed out that it's trying to add diversity. They explicitly said it during their Overwatch PAX panel.
SC1 came out in 1998.
I think the only "diverse" game back then was probably Age of Empires.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Considering how long a history the U.S. has with using fake races as stand ins for humans I an going to say you are wrong here. Star Trek was doing it 50 years ago. Mutants came to marvel about the same time. Calling them dwarves rather than Klingons doesn't really change a really old story telling trick.
It varies but for most people that seems to not be the norm. It's not uncommon to play something quite different especially if it's a game where you tend to wind up with multiple characters but people tend to insert at least a bit of themselves into their fantasy characters if they're not PvP veterans.
It's likely not quite as huge a thing when the rest of the media in Korea is probably pushing Korean characters heavily.
Blizzard does a more lowkey approach with events, skins, etc. based on the Lunar New Year on a pretty regular basis.
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and here I was thinking it was about imaging yourself as a super hot blue lady with horns getting it on with that other super hot blue lady with horns
also, speaking of diversity on HotS, can we get a Draenei hero? Nevermind adding in things blizzard has never been good at, we don't even have proper representation of the races blizz themselves created
Edit: too slow, point still made
Yeah, generally I've seen people say Yrel or Velen. Velen's kinda funky though since he'd probably be yet another Warcraft support. Maraad is also possibly an option? Though they'd probably go with Yrel over him since they'd probably fill similar roles.
Noticed how I didn't say the Dark Irons were anything except "not white"?
Hmmmmm
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Got him!