Thoughts On The Criticism of AU!Draenei Direction
As the fallout from the revelations of the Mag’har Allied Race scenario continues to spread through the fanbase, I’ve seen plenty of good reasons why the decision to turn the AU!Draenor Draenei evil was a terrible one: it’s illogical, it invalidates the entirety of the Warlords of Draenor storyline, it’s a weak-ass excuse to set the Mag’har against a threat they need help with that they couldn’t get from the AU!Draenei that also completely ignores all the other nonsense going on like the crazy plants in Gorgrond, it’s the latest in the increasingly shameful exhibit of how Blizzard doesn’t know how to write female characters, it’s a pathetically lazy attempt to peddle the ‘both sides are evil’ narrative even though the AU@Draenei are not and have never actually been part of the Alliance, it’s just bad fucking writing, etc. It is an awful decision for all those reasons listed.
I have seen one that doesn’t work, though, and it’s been written a number of different ways:
“Draenei don’t/can’t work as oppressors because they’ve always been oppressed.”
“Draenei are victim-coded, so making them evil is wrong.”
“I can’t/don’t feel sorry for the Mag’har because they treated the Draenei so horribly in the past.”
It all basically boils down to this: Draenei, as villains, are impossible. Frankly, I don’t buy it.
“Draenei don’t/can’t work as oppressors because they’ve always been oppressed.”
Being oppressed or conquered in the past, whether as an individual or a group, doesn’t prevent an individual or a group from being oppressors or conquerors in the future. There’s no Ron Swanson-style card they get to hold up that says “I can do what I want.” What it does mean is that, having been treated in this awful way, they should know better than to turn around and do it to someone else. Unfortunately, you can look at the entire history of Azeroth to see how that lesson’s taken hold in others - or hasn’t, in most cases.
To the more severe version of the idea, that Draenei can’t be oppressors - that they are physically and morally incapable of the act on an objective scale, no matter the actual results of their actions - because of how they’ve been treated in the past, I also say bollocks. The ability to dominate and conquer is directly related to the power wielded by a person/faction; when we left AU!Draenor at the end of Warlords, the AU!Draenei were still on the back-foot (back-hoof?), but when we come back to AU!Draenor, even though we don’t have exact specifics yet, we can infer that they’ve grown in size and strength enough not just to challenge the Mag’har, but to become the dominant species/faction on the planet.
Whatever power of the Mag’har/Iron Horde wielded in the past, it’s now passed to the AU!Draenei. They have the power, and they’re happily using it to convert, enslave, and wipe out the Mag’har. When a faction starts outnumbering and enslaving other races, they don’t get to hold onto that ‘oppressed’ title. As Garrosh Hellscream himself said:
“Draenei are victim-coded, so making them evil is wrong.”
This variation holds the most water for me, although I’d still argue it’s inaccurate. Is turning the AU!Draenei ‘evil’ morally wrong? No. Is it distasteful? Arguably. Is it a poor idea at this point in World of Warcraft’s story? Absolutely.
To a certain extent, I think I see what Blizzard is attempting to do: they’re pulling an ‘Arthas,’ showcasing how dire a threat is by showing that even the best and brightest can be turned into moustache-twirling villains by its influence. I think that Blizzard hopes that in doing so, not only will they add a huge amount of weight to Xe’ra’s actions in Legion, they’ll also be adding a huge amount of weight to the concept that the Light can be just as dangerous as the Void, which has, up until the Xe’ra stuff, seemed more like trite ‘all things in moderation’ philosophy than something concrete.
Xe’ra’s extremist approach was easy enough to pass off as a fluke for a number of reasons: because of existing in a fragmented state for so long, her sanity was questionable (wow, another insane female character, real original Blizz), she was ancient beyond reckoning, coming from a time and place far divorced from Azeroth (and Azerothian ideas about good and evil), etc. Xe’ra was really the first true instance of a Light-aligned character doing some really questionable stuff in the name of the Light; there have been other characters in similar circumstances (Arthas, the Scarlet Crusade, etc.) but all of those were shown to be ultimately under the control or direction of more nefarious forces. There’s no question what Xe’ra is up to. Xe’ra can’t be discounted as a rogue agent anymore. She isn’t the exception, she’s the harbinger, and the AU!Draenei (and potentially more characters in the future) are what she is heralding.
As to whether turning a ‘victim-coded’ race into conquerors is ‘wrong’...I guess I don’t even really understand that concept, that once a race/faction has been established as more likely to give ground than hold or take, then they’ll never, ever do anything but that, and that changing or reversing that behavior is morally incorrect on the behalf of the writers. Honestly, I addressed most of that in the first section. Yes, the Draenei have been shown to be naturally peaceful, and retreating from a fight or attempting to negotiate is their first instinct. However, they’ve also been shown to be easily swayed to drastic action when their faith is appealed to, something both Sargeras and K’ure took advantage of in the past, though for different reasons. A running theme in the Warcraft games is how absolute power corrupts, and there’s no good reason why any faction should be immune from that, no matter what they’ve been through. Dealing with shit in the past earns you nothing on a cosmic scale, which the World of Warcraft writers seem to enjoy reminding us a lot of lately.
That still doesn’t make the decision to have the AU!Draenei go Crusades on Draenor any better. It’s certainly in poor taste. The people of AU!Draenor got about as happy an ending as World of Warcraft affords: the bad guys were defeated, and everybody was pledged to a brighter future because, down at brass tacks, that’s what they all wanted. Then we come back years later - from the clues in the broadcast text, I’m assuming the Mag’har scenario takes place about 20-30 years after the events of Warlords - and find that literally everything is ruined. Nothing the players did really mattered at all; even though the Legion is no longer in the picture, Draenor is still in the hands of tyrants, it’s just religious fanatics instead of savage warriors this time. Who knows what’s happened to the Arakkoa. They were probably first on the AU!Draenei’s ‘to-smite’ list. It’s such an absolutely bitter pill that it almost defies belief. I joked about it in a post a while back, but Blizzard really did make Warlords somehow worse.
“I can’t/don’t feel sorry for the Mag’har because they treated the Draenei so horribly in the past.”
I call this the ‘Killmonger problem,’ because the folks who feel this way don’t assign an intrinsic negative value to certain actions/practices, but rather base their approval of those actions/practices purely on who’s performing them. In other words, they don’t have a problem with objectively evil actions like conquering and/or enslaving, but only as long as they’re the ones doing it or it’s happening to someone they don’t like.
Because the Mag’har were awful to the AU!Draenei in the past, there’s a tacit approval on some of the players’ parts of the idea that now the AU!Draenei should be able to be as awful as they want to the Mag’har. That’s not a perspective concerned with justice, but with vengeance, with ‘getting even.’ I’m not denying that the Iron Horde did some heinous things in the past, but visiting those horrors back on them does nothing but continue the cycle of violence.
Look, if the writers fail to elicit sympathy for the Mag’har, that’s partially on them. The way they’ve botched this entire thing, I’m not surprised. I’m having a hard time myself, although I suspect that’s mostly because I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the AU!Draenei could’ve possibly gone this bad in the first place. But I think the whole scenario also challenges us as an audience to look at this once completely sympathetic faction and what they’re doing now, and ask ourselves “Am I okay/not okay with this, and why? Am I getting a vicarious thrill out of seeing Draenei finally beat some Orc ass after years and years of oppression?” If the answer is yes, then own it, but don’t pretend like you’ve got the moral high ground to criticize story direction when you’re the one condoning or at least complicit with the faction that’s killing people for worshiping the wrong god. Glass houses and all that.
There is one more variation I’ve seen - not listed above - that explicitly has to do with how certain races in World of Warcraft are tied to real world equivalents, but that’s a complete can of worms that’s not really ever worth opening. Once we start talking about how certain factions are (insert race/religion)-coded, we project biases and opinions from the real world onto situations and people in completely different contexts, and we start debating about both as if they’re one, and they’re really not. Every race and faction in WoW is a mishmash of influences from multiple cultures, and trying to superimpose real world history over a fictional universe that exists as such leads directly to The Yawning, Dark Cavern That Nothing Good Ever Comes Out Of.
Sorry if this entire post has come off as completely bonkers. I’ve been drafting and rewriting it over the course of a couple of days, so I know it’s not the most coherent thing in the world, but, for whatever reason, whenever I saw justifications like this for hating on the Mag’har scenario, it just really ground my gears. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the direction that Blizzard has chosen to go with AU!Draenei, but I also feel pretty strongly that there are valid, logical reasons for disliking something, and then there’s just pseudo-socio-political nonsense. Feels kind of like people giving a politician a hard time about his/her looks or clothing choices when they're an abhorrent human being with no morals and terrible politics. If you're gonna go after a problem, go after it for the right reasons.
