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Religion

2021-09-06T09:47:14Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:10D3:61CE:8C8F:84C8: /* Miscellaneous Observations */

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{{topquote|Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.|Martin Luther King, Jr}}

:'''Dracula''': ''I was called here by, huuuuumans, who wish to pay me tribute!''
:'''Richter Belmont''': ''Tribute?! You steal men's souls! And make them your slaves!''
:'''Dracula''': ''Perhaps the same could be said of all religions.''
::--An excerpt from the infamous exchange that also gave us "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets" in [[Castlevania#Castlevania:_Symphony_Of_The_Night_.28Castlevania_9.29|Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.]]

Because it's important to several settings and RPG systems, particularly ones that are high-profile or relevant to /tg/, we have a religion article. Let's try and keep it focused on the directly-related-to-/tg/ stuff and not descend into the pure [[skub]] that can arise in discussions of real-life religions, okay?

==Definition of Religion==
Almost since the inception of the term, scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. While there are some belief systems that always count as religions, some have applied the term to various things such as political ideologies, or groups when they reach a certain point. There are however two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical.

The two most widely accepted are:
* "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them."
* "a comprehensive worldview or 'metaphysical moral vision' that is accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself basically true and just even if all dimensions of it cannot be either fully confirmed or refuted".

As stated before, one common element that every religion which fits the criteria has is humanity's relation to supernatural forces, as all of them have at least one [[God|god]] and/or an afterlife even where there are exceptions; Buddhism doesn't have any gods or its own idea of the cosmos' origins but has afterlives and the existence of the eternal soul (unless a persons achieves nirvana), and Taoism doesn't have an afterlife in the conventional sense but is pantheistic and has supernatural beings. Religions with a God/god/gods fall under monotheistic (one God) or polytheistic (more than one god), though some of the latter have a variant called henotheistic (multiple gods but only one of them is served). Interestingly, most polytheistic religions have an all-powerful Creator God as the supreme authority in the cosmos who also created the other gods (such as Ptah from Egyptian mythology, Brahma in Hinduism and Nyame from West African mythology for Ghana's Akan people).

Like other terms for heavily [[SJW|debated]] [[communism|subjects]], religion and religious have also been used as insults or Snarl Words in social and political discussions (especially from the 20th century and onwards) to ridicule groups openly promoting something the user disagrees with. This snarl creates a caricature of the group to smear them by association with the worst excesses/negative stereotypes of religious people (like being preachy, judgmental, irrational, hypocritical). For these reasons, the terms "fanatic" and "zealot" have also been used in snarl words this way, with the caveat of also being used against anyone who treats their religion as something other than stamp-collecting or a sport fandom.

==List of Real-Life Religions==

Too many to list, even without debates about the term, as the number goes into the thousands. In lieu of a list on this site, here are two complied lists that should cover everything that fits the bill. Otherwise, check out the [[Mythology]] page.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions Wikipedia's list of religions and spiritual traditions]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups For a simplified version from Wikipedia that focuses more on major religions]

==Religion vs. Mythology==
While [[Mythology|mythologies]] aren't religions in and of themselves, every religion has a mythology. While mythologies are merely the accounts of supernatural events, religions add rituals, practices and hierarchies that link those mythologies directly to the lives of their believers in one form or another, typically by describing how to properly serve to a god (or multiple gods, it depends) a significant role in the mythology a given religion is derived from. [[Skub|Whatever the source]], the mythology almost always predates the religion. As a result, especially since the Fantasy genre deals in supernatural beings and forces, most if not all fantasy settings have religions. Science fiction does to a lesser degree, mostly because during the Golden Age of sci-fi empiricists and secular humanists were attracted to the genre and their views often seeped into their stories. Despite this, given that most real-life societies have had religions playing a role in or since their founding, religions are still found in sci-fi.

Religions involves belief systems and practices, where an adherent can call upon the power/being the religion is focused on to give them aid in [[cleric|various]] [[Paladin|ways]], depending at the very least on the religion and the task in question. Given that religions are about people's place in the world, how it was made, ideas on how life should be lived and how humans should relate to the supernatural, they have major implications for societies. Given that people can become [[Exarch|dangerously single-minded]] about a cause, people can be become extremists about their religion, regardless of the fact that [[Heironeous|some]] are more benevolent than [[Asmodeus|others]] and in numerous cases even [[Heresy|if it involves going against the religion's teachings]]; in conjunction with the above this means religious conflicts can become widespread, long-lasting, cause carnage and also involve other elements such as politics- both in fantasy and in the real world.

==Role in Society==
{{skubby}}
While it varies depending on the society and the religion in question, at least as long as human civilization has existed, religiosity has existed and has almost always been interconnected. There is no human civilization in real-life where religion was never part of its development. Even every society that pursued secularization or [[Imperial Truth|state atheism]] started off at least mostly religious.

A person's religious beliefs (for or against) are a major factor in their worldview, often being the undercurrent for all others. This is because this belief shapes people's views on big issues such as the purpose of life, how life should be lived in relation to oneself and others and what happens to people after they die. On the upside, this often leads to teachings with the goal of unity, peace and co-operation as per the teachings of most religions (some of which also make their way into non-religious systems). On the downside, this can lead to clashes over carrying out the will of the Powers-that-be, which religion should be followed or whether or not people should follow a god or religion at all. This can involve arguments and factionalizing, or worst case scenarios like pogroms and wars. Since religions can range from an overarching element in a culture to the origin of a culture, so they often appear or are referenced in fiction.

In many societies throughout history, medicine and religion have been interconnected. In many ancient religions, the clergy were also the doctors or well-versed in medical knowledge of the time, tending to physical health as well as spiritual health. A lot of the bedrock of modern medical science was established by religious people (such as the friar Gregor Mendel who founded the scientific field of genetics, and the Christian biologist/chemist Louis Pasteur who helped pioneer vaccination and preservation of food among other things - in fact, the process of ''"pasteurization"'' is named after him). In numerous parts of the world today, numerous hospitals were based around specific religious people or founded by people from a specific religious group, and many religious charities, such as the Salvation Army, have a medical branch.

Some religions have also codified the concept of charity; in these cases, religion and charity have been inextricably entangled throughout their long history. For example, the three Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism each have doctrines that require their members to do good for others in various ways such as caring for the destitute or those in need.

Throughout history to the present day, religions have often been enshrined in law as the "state religion", giving them special privileges such as extensive influence over the government or tax exemptions. In some cases, the clergy or a religious institution ''are'' the government (usually on behalf of the Powers-that-be for the religion in question) in a system known as theocracy. Today, several theocracies exist, with the two full examples being Vatican City and Iran.

Within the last few centuries, due to events such as the French Revolution, there has also been a significant amount of anti-religious sentiment, which regards religion as at best redundant and at worst destructive (beyond historical grievances with specific groups within religions, reasons for this view and whether or not those arguments have any merit, shall not be discussed here). For the most part, a combination of people identifying more with their culture or nation than their religion and the concept that religion and functions of state should not interfere with each other has turned into more of a "live and let live" mentality that doesn't really support or oppose any one religion and only reacts when said religions begin actively defying the state or the state starts bringing the boot down on religion. Most of the world's population is religious, with the amount of piety varying from country to country, and of course there are plenty of non-religious people who don't necessarily oppose religion despite not following any themselves.

Throughout history, numerous tyrannical regimes have tried to restrict or stamp out religions. This is usually because religious teachings put the figure/object of worship before the state in a conflict of interest and most religions' teachings condemn tyranny or [[Slaanesh|the vices tyrannical leaders indulge]]. Other reasons include tyrants dislike being answerable to anyone besides themselves and a tyrant may have some form of anti-religious prejudice. While nations have usually tried to block specific religions deemed "false" (read: religions opposing the state-sponsored religion in any way), several nations have tried purge and replace religion with an atheistic system - the first avowed example in human history being Soviet Russia - with horrifying [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists results] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia#Religious_persecutions each] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism#Human_rights time], including [[Derp|practicing the traits that religion gets criticized for by its detractors]] (while Marx's "opiate of the masses" quote was just passive theory, [http://www.stephenhicks.org/2013/02/18/marxs-philosophy-and-the-necessity-of-violent-politics/ Marx flip-flopped on whether he endorsed revolutionary violence for his cause]).
Best case scenario, they sidegrade from one set of problems to another as cults of personality (commonly ones based on the ruler in charge) spring up to exploit the newly created power vacuum while believers who survive the regime try to continue their activities in secret. Worst case scenario, the society crumbles as the people degenerate into a [[Commorragh|violent, fractious and nihilistic mass]].

Aside from the aforementioned theocracies, the most religious nations are countries such as Brazil in South America or Zambia in Africa (Zambia even has a state religion alongside a law that allows for freedom of religion). China is - at the time this was written - the world's least religious and most atheistic country (followed by Japan and Sweden, the situation around North Korea is [[Skub|debatable]], since even though they violently suppress religions [https://www.foxnews.com/world/north-korea-publicly-executes-80-some-for-videos-or-bibles-report-says to the point that merely having copies of religious texts can be grounds for execution], they also have the Kim Cult blended with the Marxist-Leninist offshoot ideology Juche).

==How this impacts /tg/==
A few major ways. Since most if not every society in real-life has had religion either be the basis for its founding or play a role in it - in addition to the various roles religion continues to have in society - religion is just as involved in the backstory or current lore of settings. There are three major "modes" of /tg/ settings and related fictions:
* Purely functional use of religion as a story device. (What we might call "Functionalists")
* Endorsement of religion and/or religious people. (What we might call "Religion is Good" types)
* Criticism of religion and/or religious people. (What we might call "Religion is Bad" types)
For ease of categorization, writers who use these modes will also be called proponents, detractors or functionalists (who can be pro, anti or neutral).

===Religion as a story device/Functionalists===
Compared to the two types of writers found below, these writers are usually just attempting to model their work after real-world [[Mythology]] and are frequently attempting to keep their views of Religion separate from their work. Frequently comes in one of two subspecies:
* The [[Standard Fantasy Setting]] default: The world is ruled by an ordinary polytheistic pantheon, usually close to some admixture of Norse and Greek mythologies. Some of them also have a Top God more powerful than all the others, and maybe the in-universe creator of everything who is mostly hands-off in cosmic affairs. The gods of these religions tend to focus on specific areas (gods of [[Paladin|Justice]] and [[Druid|Nature]] are common, for subtly obvious reasons) and frequently want their followers to propagate or promote these things.
* The kind of setting they wanted to make dictated the nature of the divine. For example, in [[Exalted]] just about all the figures anybody would call a "God" (besides the Exalted) are Useless, because the Exalted (which includes the Player Characters) are the guys who were made specifically to do whatever the gods needed them to do for reasons inherent to the setting, to go with the main theme of the setting for the PCs: "You can do ''almost anything'', except '''avoid the consequences of doing that anything'''".

===Religion as a Bad Thing/Detractors===
There are several writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy that are of the opinion "Religion Is Bad", having an axe to grind (sometimes warranted, sometimes not) with either one or more specific real-life religions. This is more common in Sci-Fi than fantasy because the focus on science appeals to the naturalist, empiricist and/or humanist worldview of such writers, with the supernatural being seen as an obstacle to that. Despite that, the view is found among some fantasy authors as well, such as Philip Pullman (who wrote the "His Dark Materials" series as atheistic pushback against C.S Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" series). Whatever the genre, this comes in flavors of "The Gods are Incompetent" (more on that below), "The Gods Don't Exist" or "The Gods are Evil". Cosmic Horror also tends to use the latter two or combine them into "The Gods are actually Incomprehensible and Destructive Aliens" ([[H.P. Lovecraft]] himself was an avowed anti-religious atheist - which is why cults are recurring villains in his stories). This also has the side effect of inclining science fiction towards an atheistic perspective.

Another major component is personal issues of the author such as grievance or prejudice, but that's case-by-case and a major can of worms. A writer could resent a specific religion or even the higher power a religion reveres - opposition to a god or gods being called anti-theism - and single them out in their works due to personal bias or an agenda. Worst case scenario, the story is an anti-religious wish fulfillment story or power fantasy; two examples are Frank Miller's "Holy Terror" comic series against Islam - which Frank later admitted was a careless response to the September 11 attacks, and Garth Ennis' "Preacher" comic series against Christianity.

Whatever the motivation, writers saying this message either model their fictional religions on the worst excesses of real world religious people, distorted versions or a fictional stand-in (the former is occasionally exaggerated and the latter two are often strawmen). The most frequently targeted religions are Christianity, Islam, faiths that practiced human sacrifice such as the Aztec's and Scientology. Cults, especially those with beliefs that mainstream religions consider unorthodox or outright heretical, are especially fertile ground for this message, albeit running the risk of being misapplied to tar other groups with the same brush.

===Religion as a Good Thing/Proponents===
There are several Science Fiction and Fantasy writers who either are religious themselves and want to promote their worldview, look upon religion positively and put that into the story or both. This is more common in Fantasy than Sci-fi, partly because with the supernatural being THE fundamental element of the genre, this gives opportunities to explore many aspects of religiosity. This is less common in science-fiction, but not unheard of, such as Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" where God's signature is found in the digits of pi. These authors usually put more thought into their fictional religion plus its central figure (although they have a tendency to go all "Crystal Dragon Jesus"; that is, resemble real-life religions but with a few details changed), and try and have it be at least a somewhat good influence, although religious institutions and leaders are usually hit-and-miss affairs.

Some people make a fictional setting with figures from real-world religions, either in the real-world or [[CS Lewis|an alternate world like Narnia]]. Others use fictional religions that either visually resemble real-life religions or figures from them. Religions that often get this treatment are the Abrahamic faiths (most often Christianity), Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology (albeit often a sanitized version of the latter three). In other cases they all but abandon any form of subtlety, with the fictional religion being distinguished from the real-world religion by only a handful of minor changes. Naturally, those kinds of works tend to come off as preachy, to say the least.

Another route this uses is the route that faith itself provides the power as per "[[Belief Function|Belief Function]]" (think Morpheus' "your mind makes it real" quote, but applying at the cosmological level). In fact, Warhammer often goes the route that the gods are powered by faith as well as from their sphere of influence which has either [[Sigmar|caused some people have risen to godhood]] or [[Ynnead|caused new gods to be born in the setting]]. In fact, this has proven the greatest weapon against Chaos in every Warhammer setting (and why the Emperor's plan to starve the Chaos Gods with atheism was doomed to fail from the start).

===Somewhat special cases===

One somewhat special case is the "Religion of Evil"; in many settings, there is a religion that is explicitly capital E Evil and seeks one of the usual "Card Carrying Villain" goals of Control, Conquest, Corruption, or Destruction. Frequently has some admixture of the worst aspects of Roman Paganism, Norse practices, the Aztec, Scientology and/or the various Abrahamic religions. They also often draw from those found in the writings of H.P Lovecraft. If this cult directly worships an individual Evil God, expect whatever makes sense for that deity to be some form of destructive activity--e.g., the cult of the God of Murder demands human sacrifice on a regular basis, with a certain portion of that explicitly being not-careful-enough cultists. Regardless, Religions of Evil can show up in all three above modes, and usually has a special purpose in all three:

* All three types need bad guys. In particular, a group who by definition is Evil is always good for some no-need-to-worry-about-the-ethics-or-morality-of-killing fodder (based on the idea that everyone in its group is evil because you have to commit evil deeds to be made part of the group in the first place).
* Religion is Bad types tend to use them to say either "while they're all Bad, some are worse then others", that "Religion can be used to justify anything", use it as a strawman to tar all with the same brush or they have a personal axe to grind (either against an entire religion, a group within that religion or specific religious people the author dislikes).
* Religion is Good types or the sincerely religious tend to use them as analogies with fanaticism, criticize Real World cults, compare different beliefs or deal with negative aspects of religion (occasionally making jabs at competitive religions, or fellow believers the author disagrees with). Another approach is to have a Religion of Good fighting against a Religion of Evil - either as the heroes of the story or a valued ally - to say "there is good religion, so don't tar all with the same negative brush".
** As a side note, a lot of fantasy has moved slightly away from pure Religions of Evil, for much the same reason as [[Always Chaotic Evil]] races (questions of whether this fosters prejudice against real-life groups and audiences and authors demanding more motive for their villains). While there are still plenty of them, they usually add some reason that justify their existence (e.g. [[Ecclesiarchy|faith in the God-Emperor]], while horrible in its own right and despite all its excesses is still orders of magnitude more benign than the Chaos it keeps at bay) or makes them at least morally neutral under their own lights (if not that of the reader/protagonist). Popular options are for them to be an off-shoot/subset of another religion and/or be taking vengeance for an injustice (real or perceived, both of which have '''plenty''' of real-life precedent).

[[Urban Fantasy]] writers are another special case, since almost all Urban Fantasy is set in something that might be called "the real world with a twist", with all the usual political trouble that implies. As a result, they can take one of a few routes:
* The most common route is "there are many possible explanations" and vague things up as much as possible ([[True Faith|Faith]] being the power that repels [[Vampire]]s rather than than a cross having any actual connection to a deity is a popular one).
* The second most common route (albeit rarer outside of Cosmic Horror) is the "Religion as a Bad Thing" route. The story is straight up [[Imperial Truth|atheistic/"Religion is Bad" propaganda]] for the more preachy (pun intended) anti-religious writers. It's also frequently used by writers going for [[Edgy|"edgy"]] stories with religious subject matter; in practice, both most often target Christianity or any contemporary cults. Fictional religions or cults are usually thinly-veiled stand-ins for real-life ones and the quality of the plots themselves range from good to terrible.
* Some Urban Fantasy works with a clear correct religion exist thanks to the above mentioned sincerely religious authors, which are typically [[Chick Tracts|barely veiled proselytizing]] or [[Twilight|just straight up terrible]], though [[Monster Hunter International|there are some good ones]].
* The fourth route, taken most notably by [[Supers|DC and Marvel comics]] among others, is to take an "All Myths are True" approach: All religions are sort of true, but none have any exclusivity to the Truth, so Thor and Athena might have the Archangel Michael on speeddial when the Orochi teams up with Apep to get up to no good and start making trouble in their neighborhoods (because "Mikey really likes kicking serpent tail, and gets annoyed when we don't at least try to invite him to an evil serpent ass-kicking."). Differs from the "vague things up" route by being clearer on some details, and also much more gonzo. The Abrahamic God is the exception here: He's usually kept especially vague, albeit more powerful (and yet infinitely less accessible) than anyone else in the setting, and only referred to by some codephrase (Marvel likes "The One Above All", DC generally goes for "The Presence" or "whatever is behind the Source Wall").

===Miscellaneous Observations===

Doing the "The Gods are Incompetent" thing (the similar but different "The Gods are Insane", "The Gods Are Assholes" and "The Gods Don't Actually Do Anything" routes also falls under this umbrella) can go into any of the three modes; in a sincere monotheist's (such as Christian) work, it can be a "Take That" to polytheistic religions; in a "Religion is Bad" atheist's, it can be one to religion in general; in a Buddhist-influenced work, it can be a part of the whole "even the Gods are tied up in the Wheel of Karma" concept; and, even if the author is not pushing any religious message in any way, there's a neutral, plot-structural reason to go "Incompetent Gods": it can make the adventurers the Most Competent People Available since if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be anything for the adventurers to do.

If a work has multiple writers, (as frequently happens with RPG and Wargame settings, and quite a few popular SciFi/Fantasy ones as well) there's a tendency for the writers to try and pull the setting into one of the other two "modes" depending on their personal views. This leads to the theme changing from one side to the other as the story progresses. A recent example is [[World of Warcraft|the spate of retcons to the cosmology of the Warcraft universe]] and the morality of two of its fundamental forces the Light and the Void. If the story doesn't get focused on a pro-religion or anti-religion message, it may end up swinging back and forth between both sides (as in the TV show Babylon 5) or settle in a mid-point which doesn't take a strong stance either way.

Note that members of the "Religion is Bad" and "Religion is Good" brigades will get involved in arguments over the relative morality or "goodness" of various factions in the story and the accuracy of any messages a writer presents. Often history buffs will throw their hat into the ring as well.

==Examples of /tg/ connected fictional religions==
===Warhammer 40k===
* The [[Imperial Truth]] was originally the Emperor's plan on beliefs, which he and his servants propagated throughout the galaxy during the Great Crusade. Attempting to wean mankind away from Chaos and being a firm member of the "Religion is Bad" brigade, the Emperor proclaimed there are no gods, and religion had to be abolished willingly or by force while science or reason are to be used for explaining the universe and morality. Everything transpired according to his design, except theistic religiosity in the 40k universe is the best weapon against Chaos so Emps' interstellar state atheism policy gave them a major opening. Things went from bad to worse when people started looking up to the Emperor as a god himself, [[Exterminatus|he responded accordingly]], and the Chaos Gods got a new tool in the form of [[Lorgar]]. After the Horus Heresy and the Emperor's removal from galactic politics: the Imperial Truth was slowly shelved in favor of the Imperial Cult, to the point that espousing the teachings of the Truth is ironically considered heresy. Only a few practitioners of the Imperial Truth remain, most notably the Custodes and the Space Marines (both of whom know The Emperor better than anybody to worship him as a god. Plus, their religious autonomy.).
** The [[Imperial Cult]] is the present-day religion of the Imperium of Man, and is a mix of several Abrahamic Religions along with copious amounts of warmongering, fanaticism and xenophobia. Derived from the Lectitio Divinatus penned by [[Lorgar]] pre-HH, the Cult decrees that because the Emperor is capable of all these miracles and power: he ''must'' be a god, and why you should worship and pledge loyalty to him. Its a complete 180 from the Emperor's original teachings, and has simultaneously been responsible for damning and saving the Imperium past the clusterfuck of the Horus Heresy. It's unknown whether the Emperor still abhors godhood and religion and would abolish it the moment he could, or if he's resigned himself to becoming the very thing he fought against for mankind to persevere in these trying times. Whatever the case, he didn't want to be a god, but now he has no choice but to become one.
** The [[Adeptus Mechanicus|Cult Mechanicus]] (Machine Cult) is the religion of the Adeptus Mechanicus, placing a heavy emphasis on machines, viewing them as gifts from the Machine God called "The Omnissiah" Officially, the Omnissiah is The Emperor, which allows the Mechanicus to sidestep the more puritan pundits of the Imperial Cult (we worship The Emprah, just not how you do it). Unofficially, the Omnissiah may or may not be the C'tan god: The Void Dragon. It also has a high emphasis on the collection of knowledge, and one of the Admech's roles in the galaxy is to explore remote and uncharted regions of space to find and search for knowledge that has been lost throughout the millennia. The last of these, is guidelines on machines and knowledge. Officially, heretic(tek) and xeno works are to be abhorred and disposed of, viewing them as perversions of the holy Machine God's works. Unofficially however, more liberally-minded and higher-ranked Magos would happily hoard heretek/xeno works, seeing their potential over the more restricted and constrained works of the Mechanicus.

* Chaos is a violent and complicated henotheistic (believing in multiple gods but only worshipping one) or polytheistic religion with dozens, if not hundreds of interpretations. Even then, there's more sub-cults that worship their particular god in a specific way, either minutely or vastly different from everyone else among followers of the Big 4. And this doesn't even get into the realm of Chaos Undivided (which worships the concept of Chaos itself, instead of the individual gods) and [[Malal]]. Chaos has very little established guidelines regarding worship, apart from their patron god's/gods' general likes/dislikes, so any religious practices or rituals are either based on commands from the god/s or up to the imagination of the cult.
** Interestingly, there is a Space Marine of the Chaos faction who follows the Imperial Truth, and that is [[Fabius Bile]].

* All Greenskins worship Gork and Mork (jury's out on whether the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] do), but are too disorganized to have anything like a formal religion, though they do make effigies of Gork and Mork and call on them. The closest thing they have to tenants is that Gork favors violence, Mork favors cunning. Greenskins have gotten into fights over this, but violence is part of their nature and that of their gods. While they fight over religion, they also fight over almost any dispute anyway, and may even start a religious argument just to enjoy a good fight among themselves (though the only theological argument they can formulate is "is Gork the god of cunning or is Mork?" or vica versa). On the surface, religion does not play a big-enough role in Ork society compared to other races, being just another outlet for Orks to fight about. But if [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka|Ghazghkull]] is any indication: religion can have a great impact on Orks, with him being becoming one of the greatest Warlords in the galaxy, primarily because he thinks he's personally blessed by Gork and Mork themselves. So if you throw in the Orks' gestalt field into the mix, its likely that its not that religion doesn't matter to them, it's under-utilized.

* The Tau's creed "The [[Greater Good]]" is a specie-wide philosophy that was adopted ever since the initial unification of the Tau in the olden days. In a nutshell, the Greater Good emphasizes the co-existence of all Tau and sapient life in general into working together for a common goal to further the Tau's progress, seeing everyone's potential and hoping to utilize that for an, ahem, greater good. Personal religion isn't forbidden, but it must not contradict or override The Greater Good, and must be disregarded if it ever does so. Technically, this means Tau can be religious or non-religious, as the Greater Good is not a religion (due to lacking an afterlife and supernatural aspects, with the closest things to figures of worship being the Ethereals). This sounds all fine and dandy, but the Ethereal class, who are responsible for maintaining The Greater Good, have been shown to be less benevolent than believed and have been using their unnaturally powerful charisma to subtly oppress the Tau and use them to further their own agendas.
**The Farsight Enclaves, who have thrown off Ethereal rule, are the exception in that they have rejected The Greater Good, seeing it as the method of oppression used to keep the T'au under complete control of the ethereals. Due to this, if one considers the Greater Good a religion, The Enclaves are irreligious.
**As of the 4th Sphere Expansion disaster, Chaos Tau are starting to become a thing.
**At one point, the Earth Caste gathered Genestealer-infected Tau and studied them to see what would happen. Of course, a Genestealer cult developed and naturally they violently escaped control and surveillance. According to rumors, they've even produced a Genestealer-infected Ethereal.

* The Eldar have varying views on religiosity depending on their type. Their religion is polytheistic, with henotheistic offshoots, and Ausryan was the highest ranking god. However all of the Eldar gods were murder-raped to death by Slaanesh except for Isha (taken by Nurgle), Khaine (shattered and flung into realspace), Cegorach (hiding in the Webway) and Ynnead (born long after Slaanesh's birth). Their Pantheon's religious practices aren't fleshed out save for those of Cegorach, Isha, and Khaine, via the Harlequins and Aspect Warriors. With most of their gods out of commission, Eldar religious worship is of a deistic bent.
** Craftworlders and Exodites almost exclusively worship the original Eldar pantheon, though some engage in henotheistic worship of only one of the gods. Asuryan is more popular among Craftworlders while Isha is among Exodites, though nearly all give Khaine some tribute during war.
** Corsairs are all over the place, though Khaine is a popular choice given their more militant nature.
** Being agents of the Laughing God himself, the Harlequins' worship is centered around [[Cegorach]], whilst still paying minor tribute to the other gods.
** The new faith around Ynnead, the Ynnari, is rapidly growing but have yet to establish teachings or rituals.
** Unique among the Eldar, the Dark Eldar are irreligious for the most part and while they believe some gods exist they're too self-centered to worship them (this is canon). They're often also anti-religious to boot; a major landmark of Commorragh is a landfill of religious icons called Iconoclast's Mound, and one Wych cult - the Pain Eternal - revolves around killing religious people and destroying shrines and holy sites. The sole exception, except for Dark Eldar who stop being Dark Eldar, are the [[Incubi]] who hold [[Khaine]] in high regard.
** The Ynnari have encountered atleast one ancient Craftworld that turned into an entire Genestealer cult in a misguided attempt to avoid getting their souls consumed by Slaanesh as their ship had no infinity circuit present. We're not sure if this worked to any capacity (if at all, given the Hive Mind does not absorb souls), but they were taken down by the Ynnari for obvious reasons.
** There are numerous rumors of a very small number of Chaos Eldar, but these are barely fleshed out and heavily classified in-universe. There have been verified Nurgle-worshipping Eldar and persistent rumors that some have embraced Slaanesh without becoming soul-food. Apart from this, some Dark Eldar have been willing to summon Chaos Daemons or work with Chaos worshippers ([[Fabius Bile|or allies of Chaos]]) to further their own ends.

* While the Necrontyr had religions before certain [[C'tan|star entities]] [[Necrons|roboticizied them]], those aren't fleshed out or detailed. Its also heavily implied the C'tan co-opted the Necrontyr religion beforehand. With the change to Necrons taking the higher though processes of most of them, any Necrons who can comprehend faith and religiosity either worship the C'tan or have become irreligious.

* The Tyranids themselves are irreligious, being spehss bugs and all, but understand at least a few of the advantages of religion. [[Genestealer]]s infect people and together they establish cults on targeted worlds, such as one worshipping "Children of the Stars", a perversion of the Imperial Cult (such as one that worships a [[Swarmlord|four-armed]] version of the Emperor) or something else like "Celebrants of Nihilism" (yes, that's a canon Genestealer cult name). Psychic influence is often involved and, notably, the Genestealers do not consider themselves gods. Once the Tyranids arrive en-masse, the cult-gets assimilated along with all non-Tyranids willingly or not. An interesting tidbit is that the Hive Mind stops the Tyranids from attacking the cultists in early stages of the invasion and leads them on, only to later override the Genestealers' wills and and make them slaughter the cultists.

===Dungeons and Dragons===
* Among Dungeons and Dragons settings, [[Planescape]], [[Eberron]], and [[Pathfinder]] are notable for having some coherent things that could be called "Religions", rather then the usual generic Pantheism.
** Most of Planescape's Factions effectively count as religions, to the point they can produce [[Cleric]]s ([[Planescape: Torment#Fall-From-Grace|Atheist ones at that]]). Yes, even the Athar. (Perhaps ''especially'' the Athar.)
** Half of Eberron's religions aren't worship of deities. The [[Blood of Vol]] seeks to unlock the divinity within one's self and rejects the gods (if they even exist) and the [[Path of Inspiration]] seeks to improve their next reincarnation. The Undying Court worships not gods but their undead ancestors that make up their government. The [[Path of Light]], [[Warforged_Mysteries#The_Becoming_God|Becoming God]] and [[Warforged_Mysteries#The_Reforged|Reforged]] all seek to ''create'' a deity. Even some interpretations of the [[Sovereign Host]], like the one most common among dragons, don't worship them as deities. Due to the way divine casting works in Eberron, all of these can produce divine casters.
** There's a handful of religions on [[Golarion]] that aren't merely worship of pantheons. The most prominent (read: Actually has mechanical support) is the [[Prophecies of Kalistrade]], which is basically fantasy [[Star Trek|Ferengi]].

* [[D20 Modern]]'s [[Urban Arcana]], unusually for urban fantasy, has D&D deities bleed into reality alongside the monsters. You are still able to play a <s>cleric</s> "acolyte" of any real world deity despite this.

===Star Wars===
* [[Star Wars]] is inconsistent on if the [[The Force]] is a religion. The Jedi and the Sith ''could'' both be considered religions as they are considered monastic, but mix in several other traits such as being meritocratic (Jedi) and kraterocratic (Sith) and Lucas himself has axed at least one prototyped book for portraying them too much as a religion. On the other hand, there's the Imperial officer in ''"A New Hope"'' who disses Vader's ways as "sad devotion to ancient religion", only to get [[Meme|chided for his lack of faith with a Force choke]]. It's also notable that the Sith were former Jedi who left the Jedi path for several reasons including [[Heresy|disagreements over the teachings of that creed]]. Aside from that, religion is nearly always a non-human tradition, something noted in a culture's historical background and never seen implying its extinction, or a scam. The religiously linked "damn" and "hell" are the two real world swear words that exist in-universe, purely because Han Solo used them in the films and while a young Anakin told Padme about "angels" in the prequel film these are later revealed to be in-universe aliens, albeit mysterious and powerful ones.
** There are rare exceptions where a religion is fleshed out and explored, and the writing goes various directions for better or worse. A notable example is the aggressive polytheistic religion of the antagonistic Yuuzhan Vong from the EU (which the story gradually revealed was long ago perverted from benevolent roots, and this perverted form takes a few cues from Islam, Maori beliefs and Aztec mythology).

===Star Trek===
* Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a low opinion of religion and in his vision humanity had done away with it and was better off for it and he had no interest in adding it to the aliens. However, some of the cast and crew disagreed and occasionally references to religions found their way into the show, which increased after Roddenberry's death. The Federation's culture is distinctly humanistic (extending the concept to alien species) in its outlook, in which religion is regarded as a thing of the past.
** While there are plenty of "Godlike" entities in Star Trek, almost all are treated as Sufficiently Advanced Aliens in the Arthur C. Clarke sense--and in particular, in ST:TNG, the flip side, that Picard and his crew are frequently shown to look like Gods to sufficiently primitive aliens, is gone into in more than one episode.
** The primary religion of the Federation's main frenemies, the Klingons, is a deistic religion where a Klingon warrior killed their gods, and in their belief Klingons who live according to those tenets get to live in a pseudo-Valhalla.
** The Bajorans are a highly religious alien race, with the majority following peaceful teachings and a minority of violent extremists.
*** Of some note, the Bajoran religion is of interest because their "Gods" actually exist, and can be (somewhat incomprehensibly) talked to (a rarity outside of [[Science Fantasy]]). In other words, they were frequently a method of having some religion vs. science debates where the divine entity (A) explicitly exists, (B) is explainable as "sufficiently advanced and unusual aliens", and (C) aren't jerks, just bad at communication with those of us who experience time linearly--in other words, with a deck that wasn't quite as badly stacked. The religiosity was meant to be as a way of contrasting the Starfleet personnel with the native population and to draw a parallel between Bajorans under the Cardassian Occupation and various real world recently freed oppressed religious-slash-ethnic groups.
** <s>In the fifth Star Trek movie, ''"The Final Frontier"'', some of the crew steal the Enterprise to look for God and instead find a powerful alien being impersonating God in the center of the universe</s> '''Just like there is no live-action movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender, there is totally no Star Trek 5!'''

===World of Darkness===
* Very large books could be written about religion and [[World of Darkness]]/Chronicles of Darkness. We'll just cover a few highlights:
** From [[Vampire: The Requiem]], there's the the Lancea et Sanctum, which might be best described as "Christianity for Vampires", and the Circle of the Crone, which is "Pagan Vampires". Both have Vampire miracles on tap (pun intended).
** [[Hunter: The Vigil]] has various religious organizations among the Compacts and Conspiracies, some very similar to real world ones, others...not so much.
** [[Mage: The Ascension]] has various religious Traditions, portrayed in that highly-stereotypical and highly-depending-on-the-author way typical of old WoD.

==See also==
* [[Mythology]]
* [[True Faith]], a common mechanic to weaponize religion in [[Urban Fantasy]].

[[Category:Not related]]
[[Category:History]]

Draenei

2021-09-06T09:26:12Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:10D3:61CE:8C8F:84C8: /* Monstergirls */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:Draenei Genders.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The most famous new race to come out of [[Warcraft]].]]

'''Draenei''' are a fantasy alien race native to the [[Warcraft]] setting; originally introduced in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, they were later reintroduced and given their definitive appearance and lore in [[World of Warcraft]] with the Burning Crusade expansion pack. They are considered one of the most popular races amongst the Alliance-side players of the game, with the official reason being their fluff; they're a species of [[paladin]]s that look like [[demon]]s.

Originally described as the slaughtered native inhabitants of Draenor, the homeworld of Warcraft's [[Orc]]s, they were later retconned in WoW as being an alien race who departed from their homeworld of Argus after half of them got corrupted into daemons. What remained of the other half was rescued by the Naaru, [[angel]]-like energy beings who taught them the ways of divine magic and sought to help them fight against the demonic hordes of the Burning Legion. For an age, they crash-landed/settled upon Draenor, home of the orcs, until the Burning Legion found them again and the orcs fell to demonic corruption. The survivors fled once again, and crash-landed/settled upon Azeroth (seeing a pattern here?), where they readily joined with the Alliance in hopes of battling the Burning Legion once and for all.

In terms of appearance, draenei can only be described as "fiendish"; they resemble blue-skinned, tailed humanoids whose digitigrade legs end in large cloven hooves. There's a certain amount of sexual dimorphism; male draenei have multiple fleshy tendrils sprouting from their chins and overlapping, fan-like forehead plates on their skulls, giving them a somewhat [[Star Trek|Klingon]]-esque look, whilst female draenei have backsweeping horn-like cranial extensions and their tendrils sprout from behind their ears, giving them a sort of "[[succubus]]-[[Twi'lek]]" look. Females are also drastically shorter than males, and have smaller, more dainty tails, almost vestigial-looking in some cases.

It bears mentioning that this appearance is a retcon; when they first appeared in ''Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne'', they were depicted as baleen-mouthed, withered, [[goblin]]-like creatures. These "Lost Ones" have since been depicted as mutants who remained behind on Draenor (and, as recently discovered, Argus) and escaped the orcish/daemonic culls, but devolved in this state due to the corruptive Fel energies that have ravaged Draenor over time. Later, the "Broken" were added as an in-between state because this drastic change was too implausible.

This fiendish look has done nothing to hurt the popularity of the draenei. Indeed, part of the reason ''for'' their popularity is that they combine the "monster adventurer" appeal with membership in the Alliance, who are the more classic "good guys faction" in the eyes of many.

==Draenei Stats==
Sadly, there are no official TRPG stats for draenei out there; [[World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game]] was cancelled right after the Burning Crusade was released, and Blizzard shows no signs of licensing the setting out again. Still, the fandom gets shit done, and so there are fanmade stats for draenei in WoW D20, 4e, 5e and Pathfinder all out there on the net.

But, for comparison's sake, these are their actual stat modifiers in the WoW Videogame, which are close enough to the WoW D20 game stats that conversion would be pretty simple:
::Available Classes: Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Warrior, Death Knight, Monk
::Starting Attributes: Strength 21, Agility 17, Stamina 19, Intellect 21, Spirit 22
::Passive Racial Trait - Heroic Presence: Strength, Agility and Intellect scale by level.
::Passive Racial Trait - Gemcutting Training: +10 to Jewelcrafting skill.
::Passive Racial Trait - Shadow Resistance: Draenei have 1% Shadow Resistance.
::Racial Power - Gift of the Naaru: Instant Cast healing spell with 40 yard range and 3 min cooldown, heals the target for 20% of the caster's total health over 5 seconds.

==Controversies==
It bears mentioning that the draenei are (or rather were, as the arguments have faded over time) a huge source of [[skub]] for many /tg/ fans. The biggest and most prominent complaint is that they make absolutely no sense as a fantasy race, because they're "too science-fictiony". Anyone with their head screwed on calls this one of the stupidest arguments ever made, for two main reasons:

First, sci-fi and fantasy have cross-pollinated each other since before the very beginning of RPGs. [[Gary Gygax]] himself wrote [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]], in which an alien spaceship has crash-landed on [[Greyhawk]]; whilst [[Mystara]] was supposed to be the far-future of [[Blackmoor]]. [[Conan the Barbarian]] encountered an alien sorcerer who flew to Hyborea from another world in one of his first stories, something [[Conan the Adventurer]] gave homage to by having an episode where Conan rescued an alien ape-man wizard who travelled between worlds in a comet-like magic-fueled spaceship.

Second, [[Science Fantasy]] exists amongst the list of [[Setting Aesthetics]] for a reason. [[Star Wars]] and [[Warhammer 40,000]] are themselves examples of the Science Fantasy setting. And the draenei are perfectly suited for it; their "spaceships" are actually giant fortresses that use divine magic to propel them between worlds and planes - something that would fit right into [[Spelljammer]] or any other cosmic D&D setting.

Another argument that the draenei prompted was when 4th edition D&D was revealed, proponents of the "4e is WoW!" argument loved to point to [[tiefling]]s and assert that they were clearly made to resemble draenei. Of course, these people didn't tend to admit that the draenei look was all but identical to the [[diabolus]], a [[Mystara]]n race that came out decades earlier.

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Draenei Devolution.jpg|The three kinds of draenei; from left to right we have Uncorrupted, Broken and Lost One.
File:Draenei Male.jpg
File:Male Draenei Paladin.jpg
File:Warcraft Draenei 1.jpg
</gallery>
</center>

==Monstergirls==
{{Monstergirls}}

If you look even remotely into the draenei fandom, you'll see the females are lavished with praise, attention and affection; male draenei fans are comparatively few and far between. And, really, it's no surprise; Blizzard seems to have gone out of its way to make them enticing. Not only is the draenei female form visibly similar to the [[Warcraft]] version of the [[succubus]], giving them a classic "inhuman yet sexy" look, but there's also their canonical playful and flirty attitudes, their strong affiliation with the Light and thus a racial proclivity towards being [[Paladin]]s (why's that matter? Two words: Naughty Nuns. Want another two words? Forbidden Fruit), a certain use for female Draenei's tails and horns (built-in handlebars) and their Slavic-accented vocals from the game proper.

As a result, female draenei cheesecake and porn is pretty much everywhere. That said, collectors had best beware; for some reason, draenei [[dickgirl]]s are hugely popular in those corners of the web where [[/tg/]] and [[/d/]] meet (And they usually have horsecocks for some reason).

<center>
<gallery>
File:Draenei Female.jpg
File:Female Draenei Duo.jpg
File:Female Draenei Hunter.jpg
File:Female Draenei Mage.jpg
File:Female Draenei Netherstorm Mage.jpg
File:Female Draenei Paladin.jpg
File:Female Draenei Warrior.jpg
File:Warcraft Draenei 2.jpg
Female Draenei Priest.jpg
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category: Races]] [[Category: Roleplaying]] [[Category: Video Games]]

Warcraft

2021-09-06T08:56:32Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:10D3:61CE:8C8F:84C8:

{{/vg/}}
{{cleanup}}
{{stub}}

The Warcraft universe is a setting created by [[Blizzard]] Entertainment in 6 hours and 23 minutes way back in 1994, when (allegedly, as it has only been rumored and never proven) [[Games Workshop]] decided that [[Warhammer Fantasy]] didn't need a [[Total War: WARHAMMER|video game]] (to hear Blizzard tell it, it was a rejected fan game that GW refused to license). Thus Blizzard took the main concept of War''hammer'' and created the game War''craft''.

In actuality, it was intended by the marketing team in the middle of development to branch into other eras; then, one guy said "Why don't we just obtain the Warhammer licence?" This was highly unpopular with the development team and it was dropped. Still, myth evolved into something else. This shit is not made up. An ex-Blizzard developer came out with the truth several years ago.

The plot of the game was simple, and the artistic style was mostly drawn from the sketchy scribblings of the viking enthusiast Chris Metzen. Azeroth is the kingdom of men and knights, demon-worshiping Orcs came from a swamp one day, both sides want to wipe each other out. The plot was considered so unimportant back then that all of it was just improv by the narrator.

Regardless of whether or not Warcraft was a stillborn Warhammer game, Warcraft still borrowed their green skinned Orcs from [[Orcs & Goblins|the Warhammer greenskins]] which had been the first. Notably, unlike Warhammer which had changed their Orcs to asexual fungus apes, Warcraft still retained females as mentioned in the first game. Overall it was an okay RTS game back in the day, but it hasn't aged well thanks to limitations of the time. Blizzard hadn't yet had a hit game, so it kept them afloat and enabled them to make a sequel.
[[File:Warcraft 2.jpg|thumb|400px|right]]
In Warcraft 2, the canon turned out to be the Orcish end. Azeroth, now known as Stormwind (the continent is Azeroth), fell and most of the inhabitants were slaughtered like livestock. What few survived were lead by a man named Anduin Lothar, the champion of Stormwind, across the snows and seas to the other great human kingdom of Lordaeron, where the king named Terenas Menethil called a meeting of the world leaders. Lothar's ancestors were owed a debt by the Dwarves of the Ironforge mountain, and so the Dwarf king Magni Bronzebeard sent his brother Muradin. The wild Dwarves of the north, who rode giant gryphons, came after recognizing the threat the Horde presented. The magical kingdom of Dalaran came as well, as they also realized the danger the Orcs posed since one of their own, a powerful mage named Medivh who was the head of a secret society, had intentionally lead the Orcs to the world while under demonic control. The Elves refused to see reason, and instead hid themselves away behind their magical runes despite the General of their great armies coming to the aid of mankind. They quickly changed their tune when the Horde rampaged through their lands and slaughtered their people. The other human kingdoms were drawn in as well including Stromgarde (Lordaeron Jr.), Alterac (trade hub), Gilneas (smug isolationists), and Kul Tiras (naval).

Over the years, the setting was expanded to include [[Elf|elves]], [[Dwarf|dorfs]], [[Troll|trolls]], ogres, and all kinds of generic fantasy creatures you can think of in the game Warcraft 2. It was a lot like the last game, but hey, it was still a pretty good game. It was a 90's game: The fluff was there if you went and read the manual, and if you were too illiterate to care about the story, you were also welcome to just play the game and send out your Footmen en masse for the fun of watching the fighting, or to repeatedly click on them to listen to them say funny things.

When Blizzard employees were rich enough to afford weed instead of booze, they started to do weirder shit to the setting in Warcraft 3. Mummified spidermen and cow-people ripping off Native American culture started to roam the lands of Azeroth. Also it was the age when plot holes began to surface, but they were small and insignificant at that time, and it did put the series on track to its own distinctive lore. Units continued to have hilarious quotes. Plus, at a time when online multiplayer was still an afterthought for most games, it had solid matchmaking along with a very flexible mapmaker, which allowed for the creation of some very unique custom game mods. One of them was the unique Defence Of The Ancients map and game mode, which created the MOBA genre.

All this shit culminated into [[World of Warcraft]], which was initially planned as a spin-off, but got far more popular than the RTS games (so don't expect to ever see any more made. At this point, Warcraft 4 would likely have 26 factions and if you are curious to see what that is like, then [https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/ub-ultimate-battle-v2-20a-ai-ctd-hotfix.288646/ try this ultimate battle mod]), where time traveling immortal dragons are fighting with bugs created in the image of space bugs by an ancient deity while dimension-faring demon look-a-likes are furious that space-faring blood elves stole a creature of positive energy and are channeling its powers so that they can become paladins and so on and so on. Since the majority of the players are 14 year old blizzardfags, no one really cares that in every single content patch the previous fluff is brutally raped or that the fluff is simply stupid. Consistency, what's that?

In fact, [[World of Warcraft|WoW]] is an experiment financed by the government to find out how much shit people can take or willfully deny. <s>Speculations are that gnomish death knights will make people wonder at least a bit, but I'm much more pessimistic.</s> OLOLLOLOLOL, Wrath has come and gone and no one questioned the existence of Gnome Death Knights. Fuck you, Warcraft.

Some of many examples of Warcraft's horrific experimentation are, roughly in order;
* Tauren Paladin "Holy Cows," (whilst this was initially explained by having them draw not from The Light, but from the Sun, the writers later forgot this and had Tauren paladins worship the Light only one expansion after their introduction).
* Night Elf hippies using environmentally unsafe arcane magic that they avoid because it's addictive and served as a homing beacon for the demons threatening the world.
* Forsaken Hunters that don't have a sense of smell and can't eat what they kill.
* Blood Elf "I broke a nail!" Warriors, (because elves all fall into that stereotype. See Legolas and Drizzt for examples).
* A [[Furry|faggoty emo dragon who has a ridiculous looking jaw and acts like an obnoxious kitteh]].
* Not one, not two, but '''THREE''' furry races with the Worgen, Pandaren and Vulpera.
* Lightforged undead princess, with holy magic raising someone in an unholy form ''despite holy magic being able to resurrect people anyway''.

Over time people have started to call the devs out on their bullshit, but seriously, for all they get right, the above is the tip of the iceberg for issues.

Warcraft does have a boardgame, a tabletop RPG, and a trading card game, so it is not all /v/.

==It's kind of a big deal==

Today the Warcraft franchise towers over the world of video gaming like an Olympian god on a mountain. But it's important to remember that it got there incrementally, by stealing the best bits of other people's ideas and improving them just enough to not get sued. Warcraft II took Command and Conquer and made it bright and fantasy in contrast to C&C's drab olive maps and fifty shades of quonset hut buildings. Warcraft III took 3D and made it interesting by focusing on heroes that conveniently reduced the amount of 3D they'd have to draw on screen at any moment; it also gave birth (for better or worse) to the tower defence and MOBA genres. World of Warcraft took every original idea every other MMO ever had and did it just slightly better, leaving behind a veritable skull pile of defeated challengers, at least two of which began with the prompt "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...".

==See Also==
*[[World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game]]

[[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Roleplaying]]

Warcraft

2021-09-06T08:55:21Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:10D3:61CE:8C8F:84C8:

{{/vg/}}
{{cleanup}}
{{stub}}

The Warcraft universe is a setting created by [[Blizzard]] Entertainment in 6 hours and 23 minutes way back in 1994, when (allegedly, as it has only been rumored and never proven) [[Games Workshop]] decided that [[Warhammer Fantasy]] didn't need a [[Total War: WARHAMMER|video game]] (to hear Blizzard tell it, it was a rejected fan game that GW refused to license). Thus Blizzard took the main concept of War''hammer'' and created the game War''craft''.

In actuality, it was intended by the marketing team in the middle of development to branch into other eras; then, one guy said "Why don't we just obtain the Warhammer licence?" This was highly unpopular with the development team and it was dropped. Still, myth evolved into something else. This shit is not made up. An ex-Blizzard developer came out with the truth several years ago.

The plot of the game was simple, and the artistic style was mostly drawn from the sketchy scribblings of the viking enthusiast Chris Metzen. Azeroth is the kingdom of men and knights, demon-worshiping Orcs came from a swamp one day, both sides want to wipe each other out. The plot was considered so unimportant back then that all of it was just improv by the narrator.

Regardless of whether or not Warcraft was a stillborn Warhammer game, Warcraft still borrowed their green skinned Orcs from [[Orcs & Goblins|the Warhammer greenskins]] which had been the first. Notably, unlike Warhammer which had changed their Orcs to asexual fungus apes, Warcraft still retained females as mentioned in the first game. Overall it was an okay RTS game back in the day, but it hasn't aged well thanks to limitations of the time. Blizzard hadn't yet had a hit game, so it kept them afloat and enabled them to make a sequel.
[[File:Warcraft 2.jpg|thumb|400px|right]]
In Warcraft 2, the canon turned out to be the Orcish end. Azeroth, now known as Stormwind (the continent is Azeroth), fell and most of the inhabitants were slaughtered like livestock. What few survived were lead by a man named Anduin Lothar, the champion of Stormwind, across the snows and seas to the other great human kingdom of Lordaeron, where the king named Terenas Menethil called a meeting of the world leaders. Lothar's ancestors were owed a debt by the Dwarves of the Ironforge mountain, and so the Dwarf king Magni Bronzebeard sent his brother Muradin. The wild Dwarves of the north, who rode giant gryphons, came after recognizing the threat the Horde presented. The magical kingdom of Dalaran came as well, as they also realized the danger the Orcs posed since one of their own, a powerful mage named Medivh who was the head of a secret society, had intentionally lead the Orcs to the world while under demonic control. The Elves refused to see reason, and instead hid themselves away behind their magical runes despite the General of their great armies coming to the aid of mankind. They quickly changed their tune when the Horde rampaged through their lands and slaughtered their people. The other human kingdoms were drawn in as well including Stromgarde (Lordaeron Jr.), Alterac (trade hub), Gilneas (smug isolationists), and Kul Tiras (naval).

Over the years, the setting was expanded to include [[Elf|elves]], [[Dwarf|dorfs]], [[Troll|trolls]], ogres, and all kinds of generic fantasy creatures you can think of in the game Warcraft 2. It was a lot like the last game, but hey, it was still a pretty good game. It was a 90's game: The fluff was there if you went and read the manual, and if you were too illiterate to care about the story, you were also welcome to just play the game and send out your Footmen en masse for the fun of watching the fighting, or to repeatedly click on them to listen to them say funny things.

When Blizzard employees were rich enough to afford weed instead of booze, they started to do weirder shit to the setting in Warcraft 3. Mummified spidermen and cow-people ripping off Native American culture started to roam the lands of Azeroth. Also it was the age when plot holes began to surface, but they were small and insignificant at that time, and it did put the series on track to its own distinctive lore. Units continued to have hilarious quotes. Plus, at a time when online multiplayer was still an afterthought for most games, it had solid matchmaking along with a very flexible mapmaker, which allowed for the creation of some very unique custom game mods. One of them was the unique Defence Of The Ancients map and game mode, which created the MOBA genre.

All this shit culminated into [[World of Warcraft]], which was initially planned as a spin-off, but got far more popular than the RTS games (so don't expect to ever see any more made. At this point, Warcraft 4 would likely have 26 factions and if you are curious to see what that is like, then [https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/ub-ultimate-battle-v2-20a-ai-ctd-hotfix.288646/ try this ultimate battle mod]), where time traveling immortal dragons are fighting with bugs created in the image of space bugs by an ancient deity while dimension-faring demon look-a-likes are furious that space-faring blood elves stole a creature of positive energy and are channeling its powers so that they can become paladins and so on and so on. Since the majority of the players are 14 year old blizzardfags, no one really cares that in every single content patch the previous fluff is brutally raped or that the fluff is simply stupid. Consistency, what's that?

In fact, [[World of Warcraft|WoW]] is an experiment financed by the government to find out how much shit people can take or willfully deny. <s>Speculations are that gnomish death knights will make people wonder at least a bit, but I'm much more pessimistic.</s> OLOLLOLOLOL, Wrath has come and gone and no one questioned the existence of Gnome Death Knights. Fuck you, Warcraft.

Some of many examples of Warcraft's horrific experimentation are, roughly in order;
* Tauren Paladin "Holy Cows," (whilst this was initially explained by having them draw not from The Light, but from the Sun, the writers later forgot this and had Tauren paladins worship the Light only one expansion after their introduction).
* Night Elf hippies using environmentally unsafe arcane magic that they avoid because it's addictive and served as a homing beacon for the demons threatening the world.
* Forsaken Hunters that don't have a sense of smell and can't eat what they kill.
* Blood Elf "I broke a nail!" Warriors, (because elves all fall into that stereotype. See Legolas and Drizzt for examples).
* A [[Furry|faggoty emo dragon who has a ridiculous looking jaw and acts like an obnoxious kitteh]].
* Not one, not two, but '''THREE''' furry races with the Worgen, Pandaren and Vulpera.
* Lightforged undead princess, with holy magic raising someone in an unholy form ''despite holy magic being able to resurrect people anyway''.

Time will tell whether or not people will call the devs out on their bullshit.

Warcraft does have a boardgame, a tabletop RPG, and a trading card game, so it is not all /v/.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that Metzen looks kinda similar to a [[Matt Ward|CERTAIN SOMEONE]]? In multiple ways bearing in mind Metzen's latest [[FAIL|lore]]? (<strike>Oh yes, I went there</strike> It's not like we care. You're not special, stop flattering yourself.)

==It's kind of a big deal==

Today the Warcraft franchise towers over the world of video gaming like an Olympian god on a mountain. But it's important to remember that it got there incrementally, by stealing the best bits of other people's ideas and improving them just enough to not get sued. Warcraft II took Command and Conquer and made it bright and fantasy in contrast to C&C's drab olive maps and fifty shades of quonset hut buildings. Warcraft III took 3D and made it interesting by focusing on heroes that conveniently reduced the amount of 3D they'd have to draw on screen at any moment; it also gave birth (for better or worse) to the tower defence and MOBA genres. World of Warcraft took every original idea every other MMO ever had and did it just slightly better, leaving behind a veritable skull pile of defeated challengers, at least two of which began with the prompt "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...".

==See Also==
*[[World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game]]

[[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Roleplaying]]

Blizzard

2021-09-06T08:45:13Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:10D3:61CE:8C8F:84C8: /* Scandals */

{{/vg/}}
{{topquote|Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.|Charles C. Colton, ''Lacon: Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those Who Think''}}

{{Infobox Deity
|Name = Blizzard
|Symbol = [[File:Fluff Accurate.jpg|300px]]
|Alignment = Stupid Chaotic Evil
|Divine Rank = AAA
|Pantheon = Activision
|Portfolio =
|Domains = Greed, Falls From Grace, Bad Ideas, Terrible Writing (Formerly: Polish, Execution, Unoriginality)
|Home Plane = California
|Worshippers = Gamers,
|Favoured Weapon = Exploit worker, Union Breaker, Retcons, Virtue Signal, Weinsteinian culture, IP theft
}}

__NOTOC__
'''Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.''' is an American-owned servant of the PRC and [[/v/|video game]] developer founded in 1991. Consumed by corporate merger shenanigans in 2008, they are now a subsidiary of parent company Activision Blizzard. They are well known in the gaming community for rising to prominence by shamelessly ripping off a long list of things, the most pertinent to [[/tg/]] being the similarity between its flagship franchises and ''[[Warhammer 40k]]''. Blizzard is akin to Apple Inc.: they never ''really'' did anything original, and instead took inspiration/borrowed/stole content from other sources, marketing it as though they're pretty much posterboys of the brand, and took the credit for being "pioneers of said genre". [[Games Workshop|Let it not be said they didn't steal their business/creative practices from the best]].

While not as skubtastic as [[Kaldor Draigo|the]] [[Matt Ward|other]] [[Grey Knights|things]] [[Ultramarines|present]], it still does cause tensions in /tg/ when brought up. Especially if it concerns one of their games' [[fluff]].

While Blizzard does [[Blood Ravens|"borrow"]] other people's ideas, there's no denying marketing spends a lot of time and effort studying those ideas, figuring why they are successful, and what parts of these ideas should be improved or removed to make them better. This leads to creating a few extremely well done and successful games, in turn earning a [[Profit|LOT of money]]. While other studios may create revolutionary content, Blizzard is more about ''evolution,'' with their games becoming golden standards of quality, and "easy to learn, hard to master" learning curves. They are also responsible for creating the game-dev meme ''"when it's done,"'' which means they could literally spend a decade on mismanagement one game, probably spending too much time doing drugs in the office, and another decade to force the dev team into crunch with a shit-ton of balance patches, while management pisses off to GDC but it's to be expected, given all other major game developers are the same, if not [[EA|much, much worse]].

[[Skub|There's contention]] between the legions of GW and the hordes of Blizzard in regards to copyrights, who invented which idea first, and whether any ripping-off in fact occurred. Facts seem to lean in the direction of yes, actually. Blizzard's co founder Allen Adham wanted to get the license to the Warhammer Universe however the [https://kotaku.com/how-warcraft-was-almost-a-warhammer-game-and-how-that-5929161 business side of the deal fell through], and the team wasn't keen on working for someone else. The exaggerated features and painted art style of the table top minis was adapted for low poly games. It boggles the mind that there still hasn't been legal trouble for this, and leads many to speculate that there's an off the books deal. Fa/tg/uys tend to accuse Blizzard of ripping off most of [[Games Workshop]]'s content, and they're right. They often write long angry posts about why Blizzard an evil company, what was stolen from their precious settings, and why Blizzard games sucks so much. But this is normal operating procedure for khornporation, Ip for the Ip throne after all. This sounds hilarious when you think about Games Workshop, who does steal '''all''' of its content from other settings. Blizzard only concentrates what's awesome about James Workshop and repackages it after doing minimal rework.

If you ever meet a raging fan, crying about plagiarism, <s>ignore the fucking troll</s> [[lulz|throw oil on the fire and get a-trolling]]. Alternatively, keep raging about [[The Ultimate Necron Cheese List|Necron Flyer Lists]]/[[rage|Terran Hellion Drop]] imbalance.

'''TL;DR''': Good [[crunch]], meh fluff (their memorable humor is arguably the best part of it), they are the [[Tzeentch]]/[[Slaanesh]] to GW's [[Nurgle]].

==Scandals==

From the late 2010's onwards, the company has experienced a steadily worsening fall from grace; whereas Blizzard was usually the universally beloved grand-daddy of the gaming world, albeit with one skubby exception in the form of Diablo 3, a number of PR-fuckups, shallow cashgrabs, [[Communism|grievances of the developers that actually make the games]] and the revelation of pervasive sexual harassment of staff have all but crushed their reputation. In a funny twist of fate, when it comes to their products, Blizzard is currently making a lot of the mistakes Geedubs made before [[Kevin Rountree]] took over. Here are some of the biggest failures and crimes - yes, really - in recent times;

'''November 3, 2018:''' During Blizcon, Diablo Immortals was announced as a mobile game. Gamers were livid, with one asking if it was an out of season April fools joke. The Gamer rage made an notable impact on stock price, taking months to recover afterwards.

'''Feburary 12, 2019:''' Blizzard fired 800 employees after reporting record earning.

'''October 6, 2019:''' During a tournament, Chinese [[Hearthstone]] pro-player Blitzchung appeared wearing a gas mask and goggles in a live stream and showed support to the Hong Kong Protests. Near the end of the live stream he said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age”, a recognized slogan in the Hong Kong protest. After the interview Blizzard disqualified Blitzchung and stripped him of his prize money, and banned him for a year. Backlash was immediate, users deleted Blizzard accounts and destroyed games while #BoycottBlizzard trended with thousands retweeting.

'''October 28, 2019:''' Blizzard announced a $660,000 prize pool for their annual arena/mythic dungeon world tournaments, after previously releasing a set of promotional in-game toys, promising 1/4 of the sales would go towards said prize pool. Most fans believed the money made from the sales would be added to the $500,000 minimum that Blizzard had promised. However, after competing players confronted Blizzard officials, it was revealed that Blizzard had instead chosen to rely entirely on the sales profit for the prize pool, making off with ~$2 million themselves from the other 3/4 of the sales and contributing nothing out of their own pockets. Nerd rage ensued.

'''January 28th, 2020:''' Blizzard released the remastered version of Warcraft 3. The game came out in a notoriously unfinished, buggy and featureless state and used advertisement that borders on being fraudulent (Australian and EU authorities actually filed a lawsuit against Blizzard for misleading advertisements), was missing features the original game had ''13 years ago'', [[RAGE|'''claimed ownership of any custom content created for the game in the ToS in a really, really stupid move that is also illegal under US and EU law''' - especially since Blizzard is a US company]] and even refused to offer refunds, which prompted another lawsuit by EU authorities against them. The game also completely replaced the original Warcraft 3 on the launcher, locking players out of the original unless they have the physical discs plus disc ports and instead prompting them to download the "improved" version.

'''August 4, 2020:''' Employees shared a spreadsheet of salaries and recent pay increases showing that few were given raises after crunch, and overtime. Many employees, despite working at one of the biggest video game companies were struggling to pay rent and using the company's free coffee as an appetite suppressant as they cut meals. Apparently that 5 year service sword does not also pay rent.

'''October 16th, 2020:''' Blizzard announced that they would put Starcraft 2 into maintenance mode, ceasing any content updates in the future. This has left a lot of players angry and sad, especially since Starcraft 2 is one of the very last remaining RTS with a decently sized playerbase and competitive scene.

'''July 22nd, 2021:''' California's Department of Fair Employment filed a civil lawsuit against Activision/Blizzard for sexual harassment of numerous employees - especially female employees, some of the incidents going back years. The final catalyst was the suicide of a female employee who was one of the victims of said harassment. According to the lawsuit, the culprits are from several levels in the company (former Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi and former CTO Ben Kilgore are among them), the charges include unwanted groping and posting intimate pictures without their consent, and that other execs knew of the abuses but did nothing. The situation wasn't helped when several Blizzard employees lashed out at several high-profile WoW commentators and streamers such as Asmongold for criticizing them, trying to shift blame onto them despite those streamers having nothing to do with the company or the abuse. With morale at an all-time low and widespread stress, the development of new projects (or at least World of Warcraft) has been stopped until the situation is resolved. Sponsors have started to turn on Blizzard and executive-level employees, such as J. Allen Brack and Jesse Meschuk, have been leaving the company (unclear whether it's voluntary resignations or firings as per the standard sugar-coated dismissals for top level business execs).
* '''July 28, 2021:''' After delivering a open letter to the upper management, a portion of Blizzard staff staged a walkout protest that gained considerable news coverage. There has been increasing support for staff to unionize, with Blizzard's Board of Directors responding by consulting the same legal firm whose lawyers prevented Amazon's staff from unionizing.
* '''August 3rd, 2021''' J. Allen Brack is succeeded by "co-leaders" Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra following his departure (with accusations being leveled that Brack left to deliberately avoid being confronted over knowing about the abuses but not stopping them).
* '''August 25th, 2021''' Members of Activision Blizzard are caught interfering with the investigation by doing witness tampering - requiring employees to speak with the company ahead of contacting the DFEH, amending the complaint and even accused of destroying evidence by shredding records from the HR archives. This was added to the lawsuit, and could take the case from a civil lawsuit to a criminal lawsuit.

==Franchises relevant to /tg/==

*'''''[[Warcraft|WarCraft]]:''''' A real-time strategy (RTS) series; initially [[Orc]]s vs [[Human]]s but then later games added more races. Then it became a [[MMORPG]] with [[World of Warcraft|all kinds of crazy shit]]. Particularly notable to /tg/ because it spilled over into multiple genres: There were [[World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game|two separate editions of a ''D&D'' campaign setting]], a physical [[Card_Game#Collectible_Card_Games|trading card game]] and has its own board games too.
*'''''[[StarCraft]]:''''' RTS IN SPHESSSSS! <s>[[Space Marines]]</s> [[Imperial Guard|Terrans]] vs [[Tyranids|Zerg]] vs [[Eldar|Protoss]]. Beyond being the national sport of Korea, the ''StarCraft'' franchise has its own board game and has its own unique version of ''[[Risk]]'' which alters the rules just enough so that it isn't merely a re-skinned version of ''Risk''.
*'''''[[Diablo]]:''''' [[Grimdark]] [[Dark Fantasy]] setting involving the wars between [[Angel]]s and [[Demon]]s, and also not actually made by Blizzard. It was made instead by an outfit named Condor, which got bought out by Davidson & Associates, which also bought out a little outfit named Chaos Studios. Then, Chaos Studios got renamed '''Blizzard''', and Condor was renamed '''Blizzard North''', which is why Diablo ended up being playable on battle.net. Meanwhile, another group of guys named Synergistic Software got bought out by Sierra On-Line, which was in turn acquired by CUC International, which gobbled up Davidson & Associates, which was how the job of making Diablo's expansion pack, Hellfire, got farmed out to Synergistic. However, Condor and Blizzard both had veto power over Synergistic's ideas, and Condor, which was already working on Diablo II, didn't want anything to be in Hellfire that was also going to be in D2, which is why the Barbarian and secret cow quest had to be cut and why Hellfire couldn't be played over Battle.net even though the code totally worked. There was a [[fail|short-lived]] attempt to port the Diablo franchise into both [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons#AD&D 2nd Edition|2nd Edition]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|3rd Edition]] ''Dungeons and Dragons'', though the results were not particularly successful or well-remembered.
*'''''Hearthstone:''''' A digital collectible card game. Think ''[[Magic: The Gathering|MtG]]'' but all the depth and complexity got replaced with RNG bullshit. Also it only costs you one kidney to gather a good card collection rather than [[Forgeworld|both, one leg, one testicle, and the soul of your firstborn child]] , but Blizzard seems dedicated to catch back on that missed profit by adding more content that cannot be bought with in-game currency (gold) and going the way of the battlepass...wait, what do you mean they have two passes?

==Blizzard things that aren't (/tg/ related) rip-offs==
In 1992, they made ''Battle Chess'' for the Commodore 64 & MS-DOS, and also a ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' [[RPG]] for the Amiga. The ''LotR'' game was supposed to be just the first book, with two sequels, but they never got around to finishing it. They made ''RPM Racing'' (allegedly the first American-made SNES game) and ''Rock n' Roll Racing'' for the Super Nintendo and the Sega Megadrive but that's [[/v/]] shit. They also made a side-scrolling Superman beat 'em up and a shitty Justice League fighting game for a dose of [[/co/]] crap too. There's also their game ''The Lost Vikings'', a platforming puzzle game where you control three [[vikings]], each of them with their own special abilities (Erik the Swift can run faster and jump higher than the other two and also bash through walls with his horned helmet, Baleog the Fierce can shoot an arrow and kill enemies with his sword and Olaf the Stout can block with shield which he can also use like a hang-glider.) Since the game has vikings in it, /tg/ might be interested in it due to their [[Warriors of Chaos|viking fetish]]. A sequel was also made, ''The Lost Vikings 2'', which added two more characters, a [[werewolf]] named Fang and Scorch the [[dragon]], but it's kind of a rarity. Fast forward to more recent times, trying to cash in on the growing MOBA-craze, Blizzard developed ''Heroes of the Storm'' by throwing all their decent franchises into a blender to make one mediocre new game, which is ironic considering highly customized user-made ''StarCraft'' and ''WarCraft III'' maps pretty much spawned the MOBA genre in the first place. Blizz's most recent success is the first-person shooter ''Overwatch''. Though hilariously similar to ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' and [[Blood Ravens|drawing upon]] various sci-fi and fantasy sources, it presents a somewhat unique (albeit poorly fleshed-out) [[noblebright]] setting and characters that are mostly [[/d/|fapbait/schlickbait]].

==[[Skub|Legitimately unbiased comparison]]==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Both of the companies' products have a bevy of similarities and differences that can be factually assessed without any real bias. Beginning here is a <s>comprehensive</s> tiny list of the comparisons between popular topics of much [[RAGE|debate]].

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
===[[Orks]] vs. [[Orc#Warcraft|Orcs]]===

While it is true that the light green skin, angry porcine face with lots of tusks, and heavyset jawlines are traits shared across the two species of Orcoids, that's about where the similarities end. While [[Orks]] are brutal, fun-loving omnicidal maniacs who love the [[Dakka]] and only momentarily hesitate to shoot something if it's sufficiently green and orky, [[orcs]] in Blizzard's universe actually eventually filled the unique role of being good guys. For the most part, anyway, back when they were first through the portals they were extremely bloodthirsty but as time has gone on they've settled down nicely. This is actually a first, as no other universe is really known for having Orcs who can be described as friendly (''[[Strike Legion]]'' is a good example though as well as the elder scrolls). In fact the Orcs of Blizzard's universe are the glue of their faction, serving as the lynch-pin by which the other races come together as one Horde.

Similarly, <span style='color:green;font-size:115%'>Orkzes iz da biggest an' da strongest.</span>, with the lowly boy far more buff than your standard human and only getting taller and taller as they age. Orcs, while significantly physically imposing, are roughly the same height as average humans, and are dwarfed by their [[Minotaur|Tauren]] allies.

Though it should be noted, that at current state Orcs spawned a total of three [[BBEG]]s of the setting, including the first Lich King himself, while most other races, except dragons and (technically) draenei, have their count on one or zero. The Orks, on the other hand, ''are'' the BBEGs.

===Terran Marines vs Space Marines===

This should be somewhat obvious. Space Marines, as deigned by [[GW]], are one-man armies, raised from a young age to be killing machines and then augmented to become superhuman monstrosities. Terran Marines, by comparison, are pitiful. If we're being very generous, they're an analogue for the [[Stormtrooper|Tempestus corps.]], but with a worse track record. They are literally a case of the government or rebel faction finding every hick and criminal they can and shoving them in a brainwashing tank, slapping power armor on them, pumping them with drugs, handing them a gun, and telling them to [[Tarpit|keep shooting until it stops moving]]. And, considering everything in the ''StarCraft'' universe can pierce through tanks and [[/m/|giant mechs]], not to mention some power armor, those marines aren't likely to survive their first deployment. So, to put it simply, Terran Marines are really closer to Guardsmen or Penal Legionnaires, except with better guns and even more drugs. And like the Guard, they have really nice tanks and fantastic artillery.

===Zergs vs [[Tyranids]]===

Both are races of ravenous, rapidly evolving beasts under the control of a distant supreme intelligence, both use biotechnology instead of tools, most of their units are fast, deadly, fragile and numerous, and they even look almost the same. The last part is actually to GW's shame, since they all but copy-pasted the Zerg appearance into Tyranids in 3rd edition, mostly to capitalize on the ''StarCraft'' financial success (yes, they were that greedy and shameless even back then).

Secondly, while the Tyranids' hive mind is their collective consciousness, the Zerg have actual physical entities with emotions and personalities to rule them - from the lowly Overlords, to the Cerebrates, to the Overmind itself (or Overlords - Hive Queens - Broodmothers - The Queen of Blades after Kerrigan took over control), and with that they also get some actual character development and political struggles in their ranks - something 'Nids solely lack as their only real agenda revolves around planet-hopping towards that psychic light known as the [[Golden Throne]], all the while eating everything on the way. Even though most Cerebrates merged into the new Overmind and were killed by Kerrigan (and her puppets) during Brood War, the real reason that they never showed up again was that their hierarchy was similar enough to the 'Nids that the Cerebrates were killed off off-screen and cut from ''StarCraft II'' as a way of [http://comments.deviantart.com/1/359035454/2977652201 Blizzard playing nice with Games Workshop].

Zergs also do not eat worlds like Tyranids do - only conquer and colonize them, which automatically lowers their Eldritch Unstoppable Evil level by half.

There's also a variant of Zerg called the Primal Zerg, which have a strictly more reptilian/mammalian aesthetic and are notably individuals that operate in Packs. Despite being individuals, some with marked intelligence, they're all basically just focused on eating strong prey and surviving and have no ambitions or desires beyond that one dimension.

===Burning Legion vs [[Daemon#Warhammer_40,000|Daemons of Chaos]]===
Both are evil demons, who came from the [[Eye of Terror|dimension of magic]] and want to [[Exterminatus|destroy everything]]. The Burning Legion, however, is everything but chaotic, and is highly organized and structured, and even after their dark god Sargeras got himself killed, they managed to keep their shit together. Moreover, unlike Chaos Daemons, who are the manifestations of emotions and magic, creatures of the Legion are mostly normal sapient biological beings, transformed through overuse of fel magic, or artificial constructs, enlivened by said fel magic. Unlike [[Chaos Gods]], who want the eternal conflict just for the sake of it (which makes sense, given they are empowered by emotions, and conflicts stimulate more emotions), the Burning Legion have clear goals, which are: 1) Gather all the magic, 2) Use it to destroy the Creation, 3) Hope a new, better one comes along. 4) [[Meme|???]], 5) [[Profit|PROFIT]]!

===Protoss vs [[Eldar]]===
You fucking kidding me? OK, both are psychic race with small numbers and long lifespan, both have tech, superior to everything in their setting (save Necrons and Xel'Naga respectively), and both are quite arrogant about their superiority. And that's it. Protoss are tough as adamantium bunkers, can warp in infantry almost instantly any place with an energy field, are fast as a slime, hit like every fucking one of them is armed with a tank cannon or a [[Power Fist]] and tend to move in big unkillable all-destroying deathballs of doom, while Eldar are fast as hell, can be killed by a mean look, and tend to zoom around in small groups at mind-blowing speed, surgically shooting/cutting down priority targets before retreating to the safety of cover. Culture-wise Protoss are closer to [[Tau]] than to Eldar, with a rigid caste system and hierarchy, and the highly collectivist ideology of the Khala, which is actually almost the same as the Tau's Greater Good. From this perspective Dark Templar are basically the Farsight enclave, who told the Khala and its Ethe... I meant Judicators to fuck off and left to build their new home without that brainwashing <s>pheromones</s> psi-internet bullshit. Oh, wait, the Tau Empire was introduced 3 years after the release of ''StarCraft''... OOPS!

Both the Protoss and Eldar also fell out of their golden ages pretty hard, though that's about where the similarities end. The Eldar caused their empire's fall entirely on their own, between all the murder-fucking and general debauchery that was getting out of hand, to such a point that not only did it reduce their species' population to a pitiful fraction of what it once was, but also damned each and every Eldar soul that exists (or has yet to exist) by creating one of the four Chaos Gods responsible for a shit ton of the Grimdark in 40k. Even though the Eldar are fighting against all odds, and making ''some'' progress with the birth of Ynnead, the chance of them actually ever returning to a semblance of their former glory is about as likely as the God-Emperor of Mankind leaping from the Golden Throne and declaring the Imperium of Man a Xenos-inclusive democracy. The Protoss, on the otherhand, are only partially responsible for their fall from power, as the internal strife between the Judicator Caste and Templar Caste didn't exactly help prepare them for when the Zerg invaded their homeworld of Aiur. The surviving Protoss as a whole had to evacuate to Shakuras, where their Dark Templar kin granted them sanctuary (in that kind of arrogant "look at how cool and caring we are ''despite'' you exiling our kind" mindset). Also unlike the Eldar, the Protoss are notably reclaiming their former glory. Having made buddies with the Dark Templar, Purifiers (sentient Protoss AI), Tal'Darim (to the Protoss the way Dark Eldar are to the Craftworlders), the collective Protoss race took back Aiur and is currently rebuilding a unified homeworld for all Protoss.

</div>
</div>

'''TL;DR''': A game company with an emphasis on quality (usually), responsible for both awesome and terrible things. If you really want to know what's what, go look it up yourself from a better source than 1d4chan.