Talk: Race

Is this category and the respective pages needed? There's nothing inherantly wrong with the pages but I'm inclined to delete them as:

• It is listing characters. The problem with this to my mind is that it is adding to a workload. Each time a character is added to HotS it has to be listed in three places - the template, the List of heroes article, and the article of the class it belongs to (e.g. recently added Murky to the Assassin list).

• The articles themselves don't hold any particuarly relevant info. As they stand, it's currently as "race x exists, here's a list of them." Every one of these races has a host article on its own wiki, this wiki doesn't have to repeat that info.

• It has potential for iffy overlap. Thinking ahead, but I have to ask - would Tomator (from The Lost Vikings) count as an orc? Would Sarlac (from Blackthorne) count as a demon? What about a human list? Do we make distinctions between humans and terrans? Androthi? What about all the kindreds of elves in the Warcraft series? What about sub-species like primal zerg? In the context of their own universes these distinctions are easy to make, but for list articles, and articles that are sparse at that, I feel it's entering iffy territory.

• HotS...well, let's face it, it's not a game based on lore, and any lore of note is already covered in its host articles. I admit, the Nexus is a lore based article, but is it really this wiki's job to chase after the lore of the three settings when the entire concept of lore/story in a MOBA is mocked in the game itself? Not that a MOBA can't exist without these things, but if HotS isn't embracing lore, why should the wiki?

I'll give time for this to be discussed before deletion if it comes to that.--Hawki (talk) 09:00, April 24, 2014 (UTC)

I just added races that exists in the Nexus beacause everything that exists in the Nexus shall be a part of the Heroesofthestorm Gamepedia. I just wanted the add races that covers two or more characters. I don't know (nor do I care) about the lost wikings nor Blackthorne. Nephalem and Terran should be pages. also I think that the character-info box should cover what race they are and their affiliation. If Heroesofthestorm Gamepedia have chacters that exist outside the Nexus we should include races as well. Vendanis (talk) 21:14, April 24, 2014 (UTC)

I added a little icon to all noteable Undead and Demons beacause those races are from mlutiple Franchises. Are we talking about or Zerg, Undead, Protoss and Demon? I can understad why you belive that the should be removes but all non-unique Races/Creatures that appear in the Nexus must be on this wiki. If the characters appaer on this wiki while should the races do so too. To remove the non-unique Race-pages from Heroesofthestorm Gamepedia should be just as insane as remove the characters. So if everything that appear in the Nexus arent included on this wiki this wiki woud loose it pupouse. Vendanis (talk) 21:14, April 24, 2014 (UTC)

For the above points (going back to left alignment for dot point form):

• Unfortunately for you, I do know about The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne. And Rock n' Roll Racing for that matter, to an extent. That problem isn't going to go away.

• Character boxes...race, maybe, if the articles stay around. Affiliation, no. Affiliation is more or less redundant in HotS in both gameplay (any hero can team up with any other hero) and 'lore' (such as it is), where the premise is "people fight because of...reasons." And if we're talking about affiliation in the past, it really slips into redundancy, because not only have many characters gone through multiple affiliation switches (especially in SC and WC), but it has no relevance in the context of HotS to include them. That, and it's a nightmare if we're looking at it in terms of lore - if Garrosh became playable tomorrow, before the release of WoD, would we include the Iron Horde in affiliation? WoD comes after inclusion, so did he enter the Nexus before that? Or just list every affiliation in every game up to the time of their death? Preferably, neither. Like Uther says, "you really shouldn't think too hard about these things."

• Your grammar and spelling is all over the place, but the gist I get is that either you're saying that a) any race that appears in any form should appear) or b) any race native to the Nexus should appear. Option a is what I'm against for reasons described above - it adds busywork, it's unneeded in a lore sense, it presents a host of overlap issue. Option b I could get behind if HotS had a focus on lore. Which it doesn't. The amount of individuals/creatures native to the Nexus could be counted within the fingers of both hands, if not one, and all of them pertain to gameplay purposes. There's a reason why Blackheart is in the Blackheart's Bay article rather than having his own for instance.

• All in all, still don't see a reason for the articles or category to exist. There's not enough lore to justify it, or any focus on lore for that matter. There's still the issue of overlap, and it just adds busywork. The only way I could see these articles existing is if HotS added unique lore, e.g. "demons exist native to Nexus, demons operate like this in the Nexus, etc." then create the article, then list demon heroes in the spirit of "BTW, these demons come from WC and Diablo." But I doubt that'll happen. There's just no native lore to work with. None that would justify race articles like this. It's the same reason why the Super Smash Brothers doesn't have an article for humans, even if multiple Nintendo characters are human.--Hawki (talk) 22:14, April 24, 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Hawki on the race pages themselves. If all they're going to be is a listing of what heroes are what races, there's an easier way to do that involving a lot less work on our end.

A compromise to that - for those that are merely interested in what races are represented - is to go ahead with adding a race parameter to the hero template and then allowing it to autopopulate the category. There would have to be some rules in place, though, because as Hawki pointed out, that could devolve into a messy situation. So here's my suggestion:

• Race of hero is identified by what they are called in their particular world
• Use the umbrella race rather than sub - so any elf from the Warcraft universe would be listed as "Elf" rather than "Blood elf", "Night elf", etc.
• Categories, in their description, would include a link to the parent wikia that has all the lore information. This way people can chase down that info if they are interested.

As for minions themselves, I don't think categorizing them by race is needed. I don't believe there's any cohesive lore or characteristics (besides the obvious) that binds any one group together. Categorizing them as minions is fine, because that's what their role is in the game. Affiliation also has no place in the Nexus - besides, some of those affiliation lists can be incredibly long, and there's nothing to tie them to in the game. Raylan13 (talk) 17:08, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

So, to cite an example, Abathur would be listed as "zerg" in his template, the zerg link would link to "Category: Zerg," which would include Zagara and Kerrigan, and have a link in the category description to the zerg article on the SC wiki?

I could see that compromise being made. If it's to be established though, I would like to raise the following MoS proposal:

• Races remain as categories, and only categories, unless they become creeps/minions (e.g. siege giant) or have in-universe lore (e.g. goblins - lore's old, but lore was unique to HotS itself, hence why I included it). By this argument, I could see a human article because humans do appear as background dodads in the Nexus, but then again, don't see what actual 'lore' the game has provided.

• Race categories become sub-categories for the game characters (e.g. orcs would be a sub-category for Warcraft, demons for both WC and Diablo, etc.) Same principle how every hero is listed in the heroes category, with sub-branches (e.g. Assassin) taking some of them.

• Race categories themselves use the broadest possible terms. Elves, orcs...taking it to the extreme, but I'd have a single "human" category that covers terrans (SC) and nephalem (Diablo) in it as well. Distinctions exist in their own universes, but I'd like to keep it consistent. Human is technically more of an umbrella term in SC in that it covers the terrans of the K-sector and those of Earth, whereas "terran" has only really been used to describe K-sector humans. Likewise, nephalem - the line between humans and nephalem can become very blurry in the Diablo universe, so again, I think it would be better to throw them in with humans.

• Character categorizations only apply to how they appear in HotS. E.g. Nova could become infested in Legacy of the Void, but if there's no indication of that in the game here, it shouldn't be reflected.

• Have to ask though, if we're operating by categories, do skins count? For instance, should Kerrigan be categorized as a demon due to her succubus skin?--Hawki (talk) 22:35, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

---

Point by point:

1. Races remain as categories, and only categories, unless... Agreed
2. Race categories become sub-categories for the game characters... (franchises, you meant?; if so, Agreed)
3. Race categories themselves use the broadest possible terms. Agreed And I also agree with the other sentiment in there. Not terribly familiar with SC, so I'd be more than willing to follow the route you described.
4. Character categorizations only apply to how they appear in HotS Agreed
5. Do skins count? For the sake of simplicity, we should use only the base model. This would be different if we had a page for each skin, but we don't. Raylan13 (talk) 23:18, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

1. Agreed. No race page unless HotS itself provides for it.
2. Agreed. For instance, :Category: Zerg is a sub-category of the SC category page.
3. Agreed.
4. Agreed.
5. Agreed...mostly. For Arthas, for instance, he's an undead human - should he be categorized only in an undead category, or both categories (same with Sylvanas, just replace "human" with "elf.") I'm happy to ignore variant skins, but the core skins unfortunately draw some semantics from their host universes.--Hawki (talk) 23:23, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

For those two, I'd honestly go with undead. We'll focus on keeping things as simple as possible, imho. Raylan13 (talk) 23:27, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'd like to avoid semantics too. So, in addition to the above points, there should only be one race category provided per character, with said race category reflecting the 'core essence' of their default skin (Kerrigan is zerg at her 'core', Arthas is undead at his 'core,' etc.)--Hawki (Hawki) 23:29, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

Edit: Also, race cats stem from the hero page as well, since they cover only heroes themselves. E.g. a pandaren category would be a sub-category of both Warcraft (as they're a WC race) and the heroes category (as it specifically lists pandaren heroes). Agree or disagree?--Hawki (talk) 23:34, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

Definitely only one race cat per character - core is a good way to describe it.

I see what you meant with the race cats and how they fit with the hierarchy. Yeah - they would be generated for the hero pages, but then would fit into the Franchise categories and the Heroes category. Raylan13 (talk) 23:47, April 25, 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good. Unless there's any objections, happy for this system to be implemented.--Hawki (talk) 00:16, April 26, 2014 (UTC)

Why can't each race have a proper page?? Vendanis (talk) 14:04, April 26, 2014 (UTC)

For the reasons described above. They have no lore relevance, no gameplay relevance, listing individuals is needless busywork in that manner, and they all have a host wiki on which information on said race can be found.--Hawki (talk) 14:07, April 26, 2014 (UTC)

No they have lore relevance. As I've said before everything that are present in the Nexus should have a page on this wiki. The Race pages are about what that race are doing in the Nexus, not what the races does in Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. So race pages are good for the wiki, the Protoss and Undead are even mentioned in Heroes of the Storm. Vendanis (talk) 14:19, April 26, 2014 (UTC)

And as Raylan and I have established above, we disagree. If everything in the Nexus gets a page...so, you want a pig page? Tree page? Bird page? How about an armour page? If the criteria for a page is "something exists" then you're a looking at a long list of pointless pages that would amount to nothing more than "x exists in the Nexus," which should never be the criteria for inclusion on any wiki unless there's reason to believe that it doesn't, or it's unique to that universe. So, the race pages have no lore to them bar "they exist, and have some heroes of said race." They have no gameplay relevance. There is no reason for them to be present unless one of those things change.

Seriously, just drop it, a decision was made while you were happy ignoring this talk page. If night elves are put back in the game, then you can have an elf list, because those night elves become relevant to gameplay. If Blizzard makes a blog post about how all pandaren have made their own community in the Nexus, then you can have a pandaren page, because suddenly we have lore exclusive to HotS, and is therefore relevant. But with the lack of any such thing, there's no reason to create "x exists, here's a list of them" pages.--Hawki (talk) 22:05, April 26, 2014 (UTC)

I won't drop it. The races present in Heroes of the Storm deserve their own page beacause they have a diffrent role in Heroes of the Storm. For example Pandaren have a huge culture and a lore in Warcraft. In Heroes of the Storm Pandaren have a quite diffrent role and do other stuffs, the game is not even released yet so who know what Chen and Li Li will do? I am not sure what they'll do but they will do something diffrent then in Warcraft. I am not know so much about what they have done so far. Another example the Protoss have also a diffrent role in heroes of the storm. Their backstory is to long to go into right now but their history in Heroes of the Storm is also diffrent, here they where first mentioned by Raynor and later appeared Zeratul and Tassadar here. Artanis and Selendis have been suggested for Heroes in Heroes of the Storm. This history is diffrent then in Starcraft. Also the Undead here is from multiple universes witch make the Undead story in Heroes of the Storm diffrent from Warcraft and Diablo. What shall we just add all Heroes of the Storm-exclusive informatin of the races to Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo wikis and not this wiki?! Well that sounds really stupid. Oh and seriostly "ingored" pwwft. I have other thing to do in my life then be harassed by admins. Vendanis (talk) 16:00, April 27, 2014 (UTC)

• You have offered no evidence of pandaren, protoss, or any other such culture existing in the context of the game/within the Nexus.

• The presence of heroes is irrelevant to their greater species.

• The game is non-canon to the material it draws from. Anything in HotS does not affect Blizzard's settings and vice versa. There is no reason to copy-paste material from other wikis when that material already exists, and has no lore or gameplay relevance to HotS.

• A mention/sighting is not sufficient reason for an article in of itself. If a link is needed, it can go back to one of the three host wikis.

• Your refusal to participate in debate and ignore admin directives is on you. You are welcome to try your luck at one of the other HotS wikis or create user pages. But I see no reason to create articles of "x exists, here's a list" when all that adds is busywork and irrelevancy.--Hawki (talk) 00:09, April 28, 2014 (UTC)