User talk:Baalqliphoth

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Trolls

Heya, you changed "species" to "group", but especially in The Last Guardian paragraph, the term species is actually used in the book. The same goes for the paragraphs cited with RPG books (which, honestly, don't need to have their wording changed because they are their own thing). Quickly looking at Chronicle, it uses the term group in references to tribes and empires of trolls and not troll races. What are your thoughts exactly on this? -- Mordecay (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Chronicles is using the term groups and tribes in reference to the various offshoots as a whole and to their adaptation to different regions. Chronicles explicitly avoids using the term subspecies for any of the race offshoots, trolls included, likely for real-world discourse reasons of how we talk about these various peoples based upon real-world peoples. Chronicles is very clear that these are a singular race that became various tribes. User:Baalqliphoth(talk) 10:55, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Yea, I was referring to the same page in Chronicle. It says: "Among the first and most prolific were the trolls, a race of..." Then, "the most powerful group of trolls was called the Zandalar tribe.", "the Zandalari convinced the most power-hungry troll factions to establish... Chief among these groups were the Amani, Gurubashi, and Drakkari."

Since it specifically mentions the factions of Amani, Gurubashi, and Drakkari it refers to the groups specifically, not to troll races. Don't think there is really any issue with the word species, since the troll races specifically are described with the term in The Last Guardian. Just because Chronicle didn't refer to jungle / forest / ice / trolls specifically (but described their tribes and empires) doesn't mean previous sources are not to be used.

And again, you changed all wording in the Last Guardian and RPG sections. I did not touch the meta-text in the first half of the troll article that you changed, I just corrected paragraphs sourced with books that actually use the word species. -- Mordecay (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

I think if the last source to be used that says the word species was 2004, and all the contemporary sources that were intended to serve as a sort of "refined canon" for understand the game's dynamics avoids the terms species, is semantics. Subrace and subspecies and tribe are not synonymous terms, and species is only used IRL for animals, and in-game has only ever been used for Trolls.

The fact of the matter is, the use of the term "subspecies" to refer to the various Troll tribes in early WoW was a product of its time and the imaginations of the story team of the time. Subspecies as a term is a taxonomic classification to refer to geographic distributions of animals. We do not use "subspecies" ('nor did Blizzard') for the Tauren (e.g. Taunka are not a subspecies of Tauren), for the Elves (*gestures to that mess*, even with the phenotypic variations from the onset that would require the term "subspecies"), for the Humans (Kul Tirans are not a subspecies of Gilneans, even though there are phenotypic deviations), for the Vrykul (e.g. Drust are not a subspecies of Vrykul). The only race in the whole game for which the term species was originally used was trolls, and with Chronicles, that term was quite literally purged from blizzard's vocabulary for the sentient races.

More to the point, using a term of 'animal classification' for a sentient, playable race, and that this was previously in early lore THE ONLY sentient race with this language, and 'TODAY' Blizzard has actively chosen 'not to use the term "subspecies"' for Trolls in the latest (messy) lore bible, is problematic, especially given contemporary optics on the reality that Trolls as a race are a composite of Southern Amerindigenous, African, and Caribbean peoples.

Trolls, and the people they represent, are not animals and the 'latest official expression of how we should think of these things considers them one race with multiple tribes'. Insisting on clinging to a previous iteration of Blizzard's narrative expression that brings a dehumanizing angle to the Trolls, when the more recent narrative expression seeks to humanize them using language that is more cognizant of these realities, is not the way to go.

wrt the books, my bad will fix User:Baalqliphoth(talk) 11:31, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

IMHO, the fact blizzard used to call them species should be just a note in the notes section. User:Baalqliphoth(talk) 12:20, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I can see the term "species" used in Chronicles and in quests, albeit vaguely, so Blizz still uses it and for different things other than trolls.

I agree with "Subrace and subspecies and tribe are not synonymous terms" and yeah we shouldn't use the terms subrace and subspecies.

But yeah, Chronicle is a bit messy in the troll regards, so maybe we could actually explain the matter in the Notes section - like what happened in lore development and its changes, basically how The Last Guardian and Chronicle define the troll race(s). -- Mordecay (talk) 12:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Where is "species" used for a sentient mortal race in Chronicle?

But yeah elaborating on the point in notes sounds good to me. I'll type something up right now, nothing too elaborate, but yeah.User:Baalqliphoth(talk) 12:29, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

They used the term for proto-dragons and dragons, not for mortals. -- Mordecay (talk) 14:18, 14 March 2021 (UTC)