#jesus CHRIST tumblr makes adding alt text SO PAINFUL

[fernfernicus]

art trade i technically did with @croffee but its... an art trade with their character's character . does that mean anything to you

[wyrmguardsecrets]

To people complaining about Blood Elf RP.

**MOD NOTE: Placing this under a cut because jesus christ dude this shit was fucking long**

Dear players who continually complain about Blood Elves,

I came to Wyrmrest Accord from a dead server, completely alone, no contacts, no friends. I was elated to find a Silvermoon that actually had people in it, I moved my priest over before my main and sat on the edge of the fountain in Silvermoon while alt tabbed finishing my last night of raiding with a guild before transferring my main.

I tabbed back in to jump and noticed there were people roleplaying at me. My first roleplay experience on Wyrmrest Accord. It was a pair of Orcs who had come to Silvermoon specifically to antagonize and hate on Blood Elves. So here my dude was, sitting there minding his own business, gazing at the fountain, and being the recipient of hostility. What made so little sense about it was that they were antagonizing my character because there are too many Blood Elves in Silvermoon. I think my character gave them a look as if they were wearing their pants on their head because that’s like going to France and complaining that too many people are speaking French.

Over the years I’ve witnessed a non-stop bombardment, mostly from Orcs, Trolls, and Undead, but from everyone to a lesser extent, hating me despite not even knowing me simply because when I made a Blood Elf Paladin in Burning Crusade I found I like playing Blood Elves. I like their animations, I like their jokes, I like their voice actor who was also responsible for playing many characters I enjoyed on television when growing up. I liked their background story, being a zombie apocalypse survivor for whom the ends justify the means is really cool. What kind of pain, what kind of suffering must this character have gone through? How has he coped? How does he think, how does his experiences shape him? Who has he lost? How has he survived? That’s some nifty lore.

But this hate has come from all sides and is constant. I see it on Forums, Tumblr, Facebook when I bothered, Discord, OOC in chat channels, IC by people who have decided to come to Silvermoon just to pick on the elves. It’s everywhere and it’s inescapable. I watch as almost daily RPer bashes people for playing elves. Every. Day.

I’ve begun to just see images of indignant children shouting in shrill voices, “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE” and “STOP NOT LIKING WHAT I LIKE” when I read complaints about Blood Elves. And no, it doesn’t matter how you frame it, it’s still complaining.

You can try to frame it as a “diversity” issue but when push comes to shove you aren’t paying for anyone else’s subscription so you don’t really have a say in what they play. You could go to Blizzard and demand that they put a limit on the number of one class you can play but I can tell you right now that they will never enact such a limit. In reality we will probably see further relaxation on race/class choices as time goes on. When Blood Elves can be shamans and druids my Horde roster will consist entirely of Blood Elves.

And before you start questioning why I play Horde if I just want to be pretty, I’m going to point out that I’ve been playing Horde for a long time, probably longer than you, since November of 2003. I remember what it was like before Blood Elves, I remember the massive faction imbalance that Blood Elves helped solve. I remember how much harder it was to do things like Blackwing Lair with Shamans instead of Paladins, how we were stuck with Resto Shamans having to heal while not having the best class set allocations while having priests dispel on Baron Geddon while Alliance had their Paladins cleanse and their priests heal. I remember having to learn to stance dance to get out of fears while tanking Magmadar while Alliance had fear ward. Blood Elves and Paladins coming to the Horde was the absolute best game balancing step Blizzard has EVER taken.

I remember after Majordomo, we’d all kill our characters and corpse run back to the raid to go kill Ragnaros. Everyone would get naked and hop on domo’s hotplate. Everyone but me. I couldn’t stand the look of my main naked, so I ate a repair bill so I didn’t have to look at the shriveled hunched body of a male troll as I ran naked across the Searing Gorge. The shape of the male troll reminded me of haunting photos I had seen of emaciated people (“Muselmänner”, living corpses) rescued from Auschwitz. Even though trolls are buff, their mass compred to their length and their posture was just too uncomfortabe. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe non-blood Elves aren’t everyone’s RP style, and sometimes for very good reasons?

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Blood Elves that are homophobia driven. The males are too gay. Why yes, their voice actor is an openly gay voice acting legend, problem? Blizard actually made them ‘buffer’ than elves should be because of homophobia. To this day I think that having mildly pretty men by contrast to other men in the game triggers homophobia. Perhaps Blood Elves weren’t made for the straight male eye, perhaps they were made for the female eye. They were made for the queer eye. They were made because the Horde races lacked mass appeal, and their designs made it very hard for the average player to empathize or immerse themselves into these characters.

Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is being made to think that everyone who doesn’t play a Blood Elf hates you just because you happen to play one? Can you imagine being the recipient of hate being your very first experience on this server? Oh I know you’re going to say, “It’s just IC” except for, it isn’t really. This hatred is a constant bombardment across mediums, this is self-insertion of the author’s opinion into characters in a way that makes no sense. Stop it.

Now here’s my point: You blame Blood Elf roleplayers for there not being enough of other things, you blame Blood Elves for the dearth of good guilds or communities that center around other Horde races. What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

If this site had the ability to do pull quotes (where you take a sentence, separate it out with horizontal rules and make the text very big) I’d totally pull quote that. But I can’t so I’m going to repeat it a few times for emphasis.

What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

The popularity of Blood Elves is not taking away from the creation of other guilds, groups, and communities. The popularity of Blood Elves is not taking players away from other guilds, groups, and communities.

Blood Elves are not the problem. Would you like to know what the problem is? Take those crooked little fingers you’re pointing and rotate them 180 degrees on the horizontal axis. Where are those fingers pointing? Why they’re pointing at you. YOU are the problem.

There. I said it. You are the problem. Every single person who is blaming people who RP Blood Elves for their problems, every person passive-aggressively screaming “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE,” every person denigrating people who RP Blood Elves as shallow, uncreative, unskilled, bland, superficial, in it for the ERP, boring, or whatever. You are the problem.

One more time. You are the problem. Yes you. If you yourself haven’t engaged in this behavior, then the behavior of others around you. When was the last time you told your Belf bashing friends to shut the fuck up? I bet you don’t like blanket statements being made about you but you sit by quietly while your friends do the same damn thing.

Players of non Blood Elves are to blame for the dearth of non Blood Elf RP, not Blood Elf Roleplayers. All y'all’s actions, your behavior, and your choices are the poison that has stunted your community growth.

When you people sit there and denigtate people who RP Blood Elves, you need to understand that other people are doing it too, and that if we’re listening we find a symphony of hate from theother side. I know why you do it, you’re hoping to discourage, to pressure, to force, to make Blood Elf RPers feel bad so they will decide to stop liking what you don’t like and start liking what you like so you can have more RP partners.

Except it doesn’t actually work that way. What you’re actually doing is painting yourselves as hostile and it makes people who main Blood Elves. It makes us think that if we decide to make an alt and go play with you, that you’re going to be hostile to us the moment you find out we main a Belf. This deters us from wanting to play with you. Why would we subject ourselves to such hostility?

I had a male orc prot warrior that I played as an argent aligned male orc prot paladin, a character with all of the ferocity and strength of an orc combined with a stalwart defender who may or may not actually be able to use the light. It was a fun character. I deleted it because I realized that I could never RP it among other orcs because I main a belf. I made a pair of male blood elf hunters intended to be dark ranger bards. 80s metal wailing manshees in undead elf bodies with red eyes, big hair, and sun lutes. But I realized that while the idea is cool and fun that undead RPers would likely hate my characters for having belf models let alone being male instead of female, even though manshees were added in Legion. I repurposed the characters into something else. While these things are weird and quirky, they’re examples of some of the ideas, possibly fun ideas, that non-Belf RPers lose out on when they constantly bombard other creative people with endless hostility.

The only non-Belf groups that I’ve ever seen try to reach out and engage others has been a group of really nice Tauren. If I was going to RP something other than a Bloof, I’d probably RP a Tauren because I’ve seen that there’s at least some circles of Tauren who likely won’t shit at me for maining a Belf. They’re doing it right. Learn from them.

No one will listen to the Blood Elf RPers’ critiques of what you all need to do and change. Change must come from the inside.

If you want to see things get better you need to start being excellent to each other, you need to be the change you want to see, and you need to quit yer bitchin’. Then you need to tell the people who are being passive aggressive, or outright aggressive, to people playing Blood Elves just because they’re playing Blood Elves, to have a nice glass of shut the fuck up.

Change comes from making a stand. Let me tell you that when these people start getting bombarded by a couple dozen scoldings from their peers for being a jackass they’re going to learn that it’s uncool and stop being a jackass. Then the community healing process can start. 

When hating on players for playing Blood Elves becomes uncool, then players who have decided that all y'all are hostile may consider trying to interact with you, put alts in communities, and help you grow and nurture your own communities.