Some Problematic Themes That Should Be Addressed..

Fair point.

Counter argument; I just can't imagine somebody writing all this unironically. Like, come on, this can't be for real, it's just too memeworthy.

 

I have to agree with you that representation is poor currently. Not to make excuses or anything like that, but Wynncraft started off very not planned out to be an elaborate world. So in the beginning things were just randomly placed without much thought.
We are aware of the lack of dark skinned people so we attempted to fix this issue with Corkus (level 80+) being the most advanced civilization with the majority being dark skinned.

However, the Villager have nothing to do with a jew stereotype. Villagers have big noses in vanilla minecraft, that's where that came from. The greed theme has always been a theme since Gavel.
We also try to show inequality and racism in Wynncraft, like villagers towards humans, elves towards villagers and dwarves towards doguns.
The iron heart thing is literally stolen from some other fantasy thing im quite sure. Grian has taken a lot of inspiration from other fantasy worlds so the connection to Judaism is a bit far fetched and definitely just a coincidence. Villagers started off as being the only intractable mob types and it just stuck, regarding bankers.

Im also not telling you that you are wrong about everything, we are aware of some problems and are attempting to fix them. So please dont be afraid to report stuff you feel uncomfortable with, we do take it seriously.

If there were any points I missed, please just repeat them and I'll attempt to answer.

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And for the rest of yall arguing here. Just because you don't take offence doesn't mean its not offensive

 

Some things in Wynn are very questionable, I agree that the skulls need to be questioned a little bit. This feedback has some points that are very good, and asks some great questions about Wynn and common fantasy tropes. Why does the tribes have skulls near the area? How does Almuj have much lighter skin than normal citizens? I'll try to answer one of these questions to the best of my ability.

Almuj being mostly light skinned actually makes sense. I assume Almuj is based off of Egypt and India (There are many references to Almuj having silk, and the black road). I've been to India, and the majority of people there were lighter skinned, because it's based off of the northern parts, such as Punjab. Same with Egypt. Eygpt had a long, long, long, history of Europe affecting the culture there. In 68 BC, it's assumed that Caesar met Cleopatra. Cleopatra fell in love with Caesar, and they became allies. This would of caused many people from Europe to come into Egypt. Many years later, Caesar was killed. Lets move a bit further, Alexander the Great, who became the leader of Rome, led many armies to take over most of Europe, and a bit of Asia and Africa.
As you can see here, Alexander went to Egypt, and took many parts of it. Now, Rome, being a very Euro-Centric Region, would bring their culture to Egypt. You can also see that they took over the Indus River Vally Civilization. This would of brang many people into those areas, and of course they would make babies. This would more or less explain why the people in Almuj are lighter skinned.

Let's also see what those two regions look like today, first India. India is known for having a voting system that includes everyone, making it the largest democracy in the world with high voter turnout. Here's a picture of one of these votes.

As you can see, this is northern India, and you might be surprised to see that most of them, are lighter skinned. This doesn't mean there aren't any darker skinned people in India, they exist, and I met many while being in India myself. Let's now see Egypt in the 21st century.

This is a demonstration in Egypt, so that would mean there shouldn't be many tourists around, so what we're seeing here is Egyptians. Notice how most of them, are well, light skinned. They're Egyptians, but they're just light skinned because they just are. It makes sense for Almuj to have lighter skin tones.

I don't want to argue don't get me wrong, you raised good points on common fantasy tropes, but I'm posting this so everyone gets educated on different cultures around the world, hopefully we all learned something new =)

 

This is ridiculous. All of these come from VANILLA MINECRAFT.

- The Villagers have big noses

- The Villagers like emeralds (banking)

- The Villagers build Iron Golems to defend them

I'm certain that An Iron Heart is not about antisemitism, it closely resembles Cybermen from the british Sci-fi series Doctor Who.

There are MANY important black characters ingame, General Graken and the similiar guy from that one AHC cutscene for example, most of Corkus too.

The Orcs do not depict black people in Wynncraft, they are basically the same thing as LoTR Orcs.

I have never even seen or heard anyone call Wynncraft a racist game, maybe small parts of it like DnD, but not in this scale.

When making Wynncraft, I'm sure the CT weren't like: "haha tribe people let's make them black because they are lower than us", they just made some random skins for Minecraft characters.

 

Ok. I'd first off like to say that I see where you are coming from.

But as for the whole "misrepresentation of black people" thing, I don't agree with you. Don't get me wrong, I can see why you think that, but honestly think about it this way. In the world of Wynn, there are good and bad white people. In the same way, there are good and bad black people (there's a dude in Bremminglar who helps you with one of the most important quests in the game). I think the reason people get muddled up over this is because its a video game. in a video game, particularly Minecraft, its hard to show emotions and motives other than through speech. Whereas in the real world that's different.

Basically what I'm saying is that Wynncraft NEEDS to split people into "group good", "group bad" and "group in-between" for the sake of both simplicity and ease of progression. In the real world its totally different. The world isn't split into three types of people.

So although I agree with some of your points and can see where you are coming from, I think that you are maybe holding Wynncraft a bit too close to the real world in terms of importance and complexity.

 

I have to agree with most of the people here- any racist implications were wholly unintentional on the part of the developers. Whether it be pastiches from other fantasy or simply default assets being used as-intended and built upon as they were.

Villagers were easier to recode as NPCs in the day, and at the time their trades were god-awful, so it was figured they could be greedy. It's not that they were intended as Jewish pastiches- if anything you'd want to blame Notch for that one.

Jungle villages and tribes in other areas were portrayed as black, just because the skin-maker made them black, rather than them intentionally being uncivilized or anything along those lines. It may be a good idea to clean up the bloody bits around Iboju to be fair, but especially considering the portrayal of the Corkians, I can't honestly believe that black people or POC are being portrayed as uncivilized. Considering quests such as Lost in the Jungle or Troubled Tribesmen characterize the native villagers as fine folks as well...

Orcs were more modeled after LOTR/generic enemy stereotypes than anything else. Basically, they were to be the "zombies" of Gavel- just enemies that you gave little thought to, but could be a bit more advanced and focused than aimless undead. There was, quite literally, no thought put into their characterization except "They eat pigs and get in fights".

While you might have a point that some fantasy pastiches are derived from bad places, it overall feels more like you're searching for reasons to be angry, and it's a little shaking to hear. We'll do our best to improve on this sort of thing regardless, but I can assure you that none of these characterizations are made out of malice, even if they end up not being totally politically correct in the end.

 

Perhaps that's because due to their inferior infrastructure, their biology decided to use black skin as it reduces the effects of sunlight on the skin.
You can call it racist and all but that's the purpose of black skin, to protect from excessive sunlight, and it makes sense that two infrastructurally underdeveloped civilizations in really hot and sunny areas are the only black people in the province.
Blame science, not the devs, as much as it hurts it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah that's because they are businessmen, they are allied because it benefits the villagers too.
Villagers would probably not care about humans if not for the fact that the Wynn province has a huge amount of riches (tons of emeralds, the crystals, etc.). Villagers are not aggressive to humans because the relationship benefits them.
Also villager greed is something that the game wants you to see with bad eyes. The entire Aldorei questline is all about "Villagers and their greed are killing the province please don't support their behaviour".

Well you are killing orcs because they are harmful to the villagers, they are species at war pretty much. Because humans are allied to the orcs, you are supposed to help your ally. Alliances do be like that.

Same as the one I said for the other black civilizations.

Developed civilization, insanely rich as proven by their bank, has more than enough resources to deal with that so their skin has no reason to generate as much melanin when they have both the clothing and infrastructure to deal with the sun.

To sum up: The ones about black civilizations being underdeveloped is because it biologically makes sense, Almuj is the exception of the civilizations in hot areas because they are rich af and have the capacity to combat the heat and the sun. Villagers are depicted as bad because their behaviour is killing the province. Orcs are bad because they are in war against villagers and villagers are your species' ally so it doesn't benefit any of the species that their ally goes against them. Humans would have gone extinct if not for villagers after all, they owe them the magic humans know. As morally fucked as villagers are, humans owe their existance to the villagers.

 

Shit, yeah. Some of these things have came up in my playthrough, specifically the Bremminglar part, where it's so obviously a "primitive" civilization with a bunch of darker-skinned people, as opposed to there being very few darker-skinned people in larger cities. First of all, all I want is variation in skin color in NPCs. It would be super cool to see that.

As for villagers: It's not Wynn's fault. It's Minecraft's. It's definitely antisemitic being villagers having large noses and are greedy, but Wynn didn't add that trope to Minecraft, the inventors of Minecraft did. Fun fact: Notch isn't a very good guy. He once tweeted that trans women were "mentally ill", and said that anyone that opposes straight pride day "deserves to be shot". So yeah. Villagers are antisemitic, but it's not Wynn's fault. Wynn is playing off of villagers being greedy, but I doubt that they are attempting to reinforce this horrible Jewish stereotype.

About orcs, many people are misunderstanding what the OP is saying. Orcs originally were based off of black people. Tolkien was racist. He modeled Orcs after a caricature of black people. It's a pretty interesting topic, actually, because the fantasy genre is so enticing, yet there have been many white supremacists claiming it as their own. Orcs weren't originally green. They were described as dark skinned in Tolkien's books. Over time, that must have changed somehow.

However, Wynn straight up using the term "Green-Skins" is really, really, really, really, really close to being really, really, really, really, really bad. Wynn is cutting it super close. With the fact that Tolkien's original monsters were modeled after black people, villagers and humans actively warring against, killing, and suppressing "Green-Skins" so that they have to live in poverty and small encampments is super questionable.

Anyway. If you ask any one of Wynn's moderators, creators, or content team members, they will say Wynn isn't trying to seem racist or antisemitic. To be honest, I think that the core root of racism like this is the fantasy genre. Of course, this has the villagers-as-Jewish-people vegetable mixed into the stew. But that's not the point. Wynn is a great server. Not many people on Wynn are mega racists. If it came to it, they would gladly change to accommodate more people. They're not going to, though, not because they aren't accepting, but because they don't really make "minor" changes. They're not going to change an NPC's skin, or fix a typo, or whatever. I really wish they would, though. There's tons of grammar errors in quests, especially in Gavel ones. Anyway, not relevant. Wynn is cool. The end

 

If you report it as a bug, they likely will.

 

Imagine the amounts of bug reports they would be getting LMFAO
I might even do another playthrough (every quest) just so I can grab every typo (mostly in the Gavel quests) and report it
but that seems like a lot of work so naaah

 

That depends on how many typos you report at a time.

Another option is to go to the wiki, create an account via Twitch if you desire, go to the relevant article, and add {{Sic}} after a typo (e.g., https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Aldorei's_Secret_Part_II?action=edit , scrolling down to the bottom of Stage 4, and adding it right after the semicolons). You can also add a explanation by doing {{Sic|Insert reason here}} if you don't think it'll be obvious what the issue is.

 

I have a wiki account, and I've edited some pages on the wiki. I don't understand what adding a {{Sic}} does at the end of a typo? Do Wynncraft staff look at the wiki?

 

Occasionally (only once since the template was added, which was three months ago), I'll remind a staff member to check https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Sic .

 

I don’t think it’s fair to blame vanilla Minecraft for this. Even if the villagers didn’t have noses or were a completely different group of people, the whole concept that some races/groups are better than others or are inherently predisposed to vices such as greed literally is racism/prejudice. Villager’s aren’t greedy in Minecraft’s lore; they may trade but we were never explicitly told they were greedy (Unlike in Wynncraft) and trading isn’t inherently greedy because players also trade with each other. Bad trades are just a reflection of Minecraft’s poor balance.

To top it all off, Wynncraft blames the Villager’s greed for ruining the world, unlike in Minecraft. The Villager’s greed is responsible for the Decay and the destruction of the light and the monsters that came as a result. Heck, the prime example of a non-greedy Villager, Mr. Caritat, was a literal Satanist, ripped his own wife’s heart out, and burned his mansion. So I would blame Grian on this one since he was the one that wrote the lore behind the Villagers, not Mojang.

That saying, I don’t think anyone on or who has been on the Wynncraft staff is racist or anti-Semitic. I don’t care if these are even issues or not or if they should be changed. I just don’t think it’s fair to blame vanilla Minecraft for it.

 

wait this is satire right? please tell me this is all satire

 

Still, I wouldn't put it past Notch to do something like that...lol

 

If it is in fact satire, then yes. Otherwise, you're taking seven thousand words of legitimate discussion and saying that none of it actually matters. Please press the yellow check mark again to confirm that this is your intention, or change your trade offer/exit out of the trading screen to not confirm this.

 

Notch hasn’t been the lead designer of Minecraft since it’s official launch in 2011 and left Mojang in 2014. He wasn’t even involved with the Village and Pillage update. In fact, Microsoft excluded Notch’s mention in Minecraft’s 10th anniversary celebration. So not only has he not had any real say in the game’s design for awhile now, Minecraft has disavowed him. So it doesn’t matter how much of a white supremacist he is.

And again, Minecraft’s portrayal of villagers isn’t problematic to begin with because they aren’t greedy since we’re never explicitly told (both in and out of game) and trading isn’t inherently greedy because players do it too. Plus the Villager’s greed is not responsible for the darkness overrunning the world or for monsters spawning in Minecraft, unlike in Wynncraft.

 

Honestly, my ExTremeLy VAluaBle oPiniOn on this is that i get where you are coming from, but most of this is unnecessary, also nice rants, it really did pass the time!

 

Ok guys, from now on the whole of Wynncraft is just going to be green and everyone is going to be a big gummy bear so that we can’t get offended anymore :DDD