Races of Earth, Arda and Azeroth.

Races of Earth, Arda and Azeroth.

In the popular MMORPG game, World of Warcraft, there are two main factions each comprised of seven races with one race that can belong to either faction. At first glance, the two factions are most commonly understood as representing good and evil. In this light, the races that belong to each faction are rather telling. In the Alliance, commonly understood as the 'good' side, there are such races as the white European Humans dedicated to the Holy Light, Dwarves with a heavy Scottish accent whose female dance emote is an Irish step, Night Elves who are Celtic in religion, hierarchy, Japanese, and Greek in architecture, and Draenei who are either Turkish Muslims or Jewish. In the Horde, the 'evil' side, there are races like the barbaric Orcs, the Blood Elves who are French in appearance and Persian in architecture, the Tauren who represent Great Plains Native Americans, and the Trolls who speak with a Jamaican accent who are heavily involved in voodoo and worship in Aztec style ziggurats and temples. The only race that can choose which faction to be a part of are the Pandaren who are obviously Chinese. 

These races also draw inspiration from Tolkien, with the Dwarven starting zone named Dun Morogh in the mountains of the Khaz Modan region and Elves that represent both the haughty, arcane oriented side of elves (Blood Elves) and the nature loving archers (Night Elves). There are Great Eagles that bless hunters and ferry travelers from one flight path to the next. Even Ents are represented by the Keepers of the Grove. 

With these Tolkien-esque races there are also bound to be some Tolkien-esque racism, which is why the Faction reputations are so telling. The Alliance is predominantly White and the one race that deviates most from this established whiteness is completely devoted to a Monotheistic religion. However, one thing that Blizzard does rather well is make characters that are sympathetic. Even members of the Burning Legion , which can be seen as a parallel to the forces of Morgoth, can (and do) receive storylines that portray them as multidimensional sentient species rather than the Tolkien “Orcs are bad and only bad” model seen previously. Due to the storytelling and humanising of races that would traditionally be seen as evil like Orcs and Trolls, World of Warcraft breaks many pre-established traditions and opens up discussions about the nature of evil, breaking the standard in medievalism for a white only hero basis.The main villain in the third expansion is an inverse King Arthur, a representation of Anglo-Saxon culture. Two of the most prominent heros are an Orc Shaman who worships the elements and a Night Elf Priestess dedicated to the Goddess of the Moon. The race most players identify as the most evil are the undead who are comprised of all the races, but are for the part risen Humans or Blood Elves; stereotypically ‘good’ races under the Tolkien model. This is not to give Blizzard a pass on the blatant stereotypes used in their races, but to acknowledge their effort in crafting relatable and real personalities for every race and defying the established norms of medievalism every once and a while. This is not to imply that Tolkien doesn’t create real and relatable personalities, but rather to point out the general categorizations of race into good and evil. Coincidentally there are examples of members of good races going bad,  though they do not happen often enough to be significant and are often corrupted by an outside source (ie. the one rings or gold sickness).