I didn’t mention this before when I brought up WC3 in another thread on the games sublemmy, but the horde are explicitly colonizing new lands, and one of the things you’re told about are the indigenous races you need to wipe out who are conveniently violent and monstrous.

Additionally I’m watching some story about the Zul’amani trolls, and they get into a war with medieval europe themed elves who are there to colonize their lands and lose, and it’s the trolls who are portrayed as the villains who you get to raid to defeat. The elves are also portrayed as being desperate for land to live on as though they’re victims and are forced to do this, and apparently now both see the lands in the area as their ancestral home.

I’ve played other games as well (that I can’t recall off the top of my head) that also seemed to play the whole helping colonizers clear out the local populations, and the local populations are conveniently violent, monstrous, and unwilling to cooperate or coexist.

Being told to kill off indigenous races/populations really leaves a disgusting feeling; this whole cowboys and indians thing really runs deep doesn’t it? Gary Gygax seems to have been of that sort as well, saying of some genocidal general in the past that he ‘observed’ that ‘nits make lice’ in regards to slaughtering every man, woman and child in a nearby native American settlement (again, referring to it as ‘observed’ rather than it being his opinion, as though it was a fact), and apparently his son had made some disgusting comments in regards to native Americans as well.

  • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    28 days ago

    Yeah, I remember finding that dynamic really interesting in classic/tbc/wotlk. Always felt like the alliance were, if anything, closer to being the bad guys than the horde. I suspect that’s mostly just because they didn’t want a player faction to be actively evil so they toned them way down, but it made a more interesting dynamic for sure.

    • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      28 days ago

      Add to that that the Defias Brotherhood is a labor revolt made up of the former members of the Stormwind Mason’s Guild after the king stiffed and bankrupted them.