Originally posted by Arudanel
Well, the blacks in Conan films (the lore most folks familiar with, though I've read many comics as well) shows the Stygians as dark skinned. Some are shown as actual blacks others as 'browns' or mixed breeds. If I recall weren't the higher ups the blacks, with the 'mongrels' making up the working class? Been years since I read those comics, time to dig em out I'm guessing. PS not being racist here, those the terms I remember them using in the comics for them.

Here's a quote from one of the lore websites on Stygian society for those that might be curious:

"Contemporary Stygians are a mysterious people whose society is strictly organized in a class system dependant, by and large, upon physical types. The royalty and the most ancient nobles are relatively tall people with black hair and fair skin. Below these, the ruling elite of aristocrats and a powerful middle class are dusky-skinned, hawk-nosed men, haughty of mien. The lowest classes are peasants and slaves of hybrid stock, a mixture of Kushite, Shemite, Hyborian, and Stygian ancestry."

Originally posted by cyann

Well,  I was reading these comments and have to add few things. Yup, in Hyperborean Age , blah, blah, World of Conan there were a black people. In example Yuma, friend of Conan, guy with a bit too big axe. Do you remember "Wakonga Matusi"? I was talking about this guy. He was black like a .... somethin black.

Second thing, Conan was a WOMAN !!! Everyone should know it.  Probably was a gay too but people still arguing over this, some talking he was a Women but it is a too h-c version of this story.

Ok, thats all.

 

 

Uhh do you play a black guy in virtual worlds to make up for a lack of something in the real world??  There was a study somewhere that showed black people who actually play MMO's play with this priority of character creation:

1. Evil/Monsterous race (Orc WoW, Galka FFXI, Troll/Ogre EQ)

2. White Female Human (Nice...)

3. Male Human (Mix of white/black.. Hard to be accurate since not all games give the chance to be black)

This was a study done on minority gamers mainly aimed at females, but it took into account all demographics.  Some other interesting points was stuff like males under the age of 18 priority was playing female characters, and married men like to play a character that resembles them as close as possible.  Interesting stuff.

Anyway the black people i've met while gaming have always been white female chars, or human males with the word black in the name (Blackheart, Deepblack, Sirblackus, etc.) .

In the end white chicks are the number one played character, followed by sexy mythical chick characters.  They are played by black dudes, white dudes, chicks, gay guys, lesbians, and almost any other demographic besides married men. 

(If you read all of this then I am sorry but I just made all of this up based on personal experience.  It sounded pretty good though..  I bet I am pretty close to accurate also.  Maybe.)

You Win.

I would think that if there are black NPCs then you may can make a black toon.

Originally posted by Nomatica

Because if i remember correctly conan universe had black people in it and i think black barbarians? I cant remember correctly but i was wondering if it will be possible to black a black guy with actual features to hair, facial features etc that actually make me look like a black guy as seen in vanguard SOH and Guildwars or will it be just a white guy where you can change the skin color from white to tan dark.

I dont know why... lazy or they dont think about it. I was surprised when they made a Dance Hip-Hop game/MMO and NOOO black people. I was like, but its Hip-Hop? I posted it on the forums and alot people agree'd. I think it kind of shook the Dev's heads a little bit.

They later added the option for a black or african-american char but you had to BUY it lol. Now that was wrong.. i dont know WHAT they were thinking on that one.

But yeah, as back to my earlier comment, I dont know what these game makers be thinking... i mean its 2008 and the world is and HAS always been mixed with 100's of cultures and we all play games. It's a bit disappointing when you look at it all. Might be a good topic to poke at later on.

James Earl Jones

Originally posted by Rollotamasi

Originally posted by Zech4

Not to sound racist, but.....Who cares?

I mean yeah it should have black people but its not a big deal.

They get football and basketball so we get Age of Conan.

Actually, we get pretty much everything but hockey.  And as soon as they figure out how to make a heated hockey rink we are taking that over to.

Didnt some eastern euro country beat the crap out of the NBA* dream team some time ago? Blacks dont rule basketball anymore...sry pal ;)

*edited NFL to NBA thx to Thornwolf

Originally posted by axe_hero

 

Originally posted by Zech4

Not to sound racist, but.....Who cares?

I mean yeah it should have black people but its not a big deal.

They get football and basketball so we get Age of Conan.

This is seriously a very racist comment and I am not joking one bit when I say this. Not only did you put a big stereotypical label on African-Americans, but you referred to a group of people as just "they". Seriously, you may not think much of it, but labels and comments like this are just precursors to much more serious acts of racism, all the way down the road genocide. Think about what you say before you say it, we are supposed to be moving away from statements like this in this day and age.

 

P.S. It doesn't matter if you were only joking if that is your excuse.

I think you're overly sensitive and politically correct on the whole thing? If someone refers to a group of people I'm in as "they", I won't go shouting around that they are racist or anything....  Also, why do you call black people African-American? Not all black people are born in Africa and not all of them live in America... Implying that what the OP said is a road to genocide is quite silly as well btw., hardly an argument for internet boards dedicated to MMO gaming. Chill out :)

Originally posted by Krulos

Originally posted by Rollotamasi

Originally posted by Zech4

Not to sound racist, but.....Who cares?

I mean yeah it should have black people but its not a big deal.

They get football and basketball so we get Age of Conan.

Actually, we get pretty much everything but hockey.  And as soon as they figure out how to make a heated hockey rink we are taking that over to.

Didnt some eastern euro country beat the crap out of the NFL dream team some time ago? Blacks dont rule basketball anymore...sry pal ;)

Um... NFL stands for National Football League. So USA basketball failing to capture the gold medal in recent Olympics and qualifying tournaments has nothing to do with it. The NBA now that is something else entirely. That said... the United States has not been sending it's best players to these things for quite some time, and our system was flawed or not as good as other countries in preparation.

We made mistakes and took a lot for granted.

That said this years senior national team Defeated Argentina to Claim Gold at the FIBA Americas Championship, and look poised to continue their success abroad. We are sending better and better athletes to compete (read: not the b and c list stars) and have embraced a long term team concept instead of just slapping people together with a few weeks of practice. The world has certainly closed the gap in basketball skill for a number of reasons but it is not like our country is not right there.

As to Conan I think you should make racial allowances within the existing lore. It seems that this has been done to best of my knowledge. As to the comments on these forums some are inappropriate, some are in good humor. Personally I support accepting we are all people first and leaving color out of it. The more you point out how different we are in areas that don't count the more easily you over look the things that do. We are all people.

Well I am mixed latino/european and I usually play tanned males. Hell if you look at my eq2 roster they are all tanned, gnomes and all. Add that to your stats ProfRed.

Anyway I think they do have to consider, if they are going for WoW type success, that significantly more of the typical public population are familiar with the films. And the films had Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain and James Earl Jones.

Problem is everyone knows the films weren't exactly dead on to the IP.

I don't see why most players would have a problem with the devs adding more color skin options despite the IP. LOTRO did it to an extent and we all know Middle Earth's only darker skinned characters were the bad guys.

with all the respects.

lol what kind of post is this? pretty uselles to know how much black can you be!

Geez, we are past the times...Although some people need to realize it. With that being said....

 I played quite a few games with options to be dark skinned(Black) characters but if your refering to those asian mmo's you should realise they obsess over white people... even their anime characters are white with the greatest implants on this side of 90210. Most Major Market games have a pastel of skin colors to choose.  For a game like Age of Conan i'm pretty positive you'll be able ot play it and look the way you'd want.

I hope you'll be able to do this in the game. This has been a really annoying thing about mmorpgs for me for a long time. Some are pretty good about giving you the option of making a character with brown to dark brown or even black skin. I just hope if they do included it that they don't screw it up the way Turbine did when it came to DDO. The closest thing they had was a color that end up looking like purple or some other weird color. Something that annoyed me even more.

Originally posted by Nomatica

Because if i remember correctly conan universe had black people in it and i think black barbarians? I cant remember correctly but i was wondering if it will be possible to black a black guy with actual features to hair, facial features etc that actually make me look like a black guy as seen in vanguard SOH and Guildwars or will it be just a white guy where you can change the skin color from white to tan dark.

Kesh is supposed to correspond with what was once called Nubia, which would be racially be sub-sarharan africans.  There were of course other african analogs in Howard imagining but Kesh being Nubia is by far the most prominent.  Nubia having been an important part of Egypt even with a few pharohs.

Keshians are not going to be one of the options at release, although they did show up in the books at various points.

Stygians are supposed to essentially be Egyptian.  Most likely they will at best resemble modern day Egyptians.  If you think is "white guys with a tan" I dunno. 

Guild Wars never had african features until nightfall or east asian features until factions.  Because that is how they do their geography/campaigns.  The first GW had northern european guys and polynesians.  

So if you want Conan to follow GW's example you should at least be consistent enough to give them an expansion or so to add Keshians.  Especially since what is currently in the game is certainly the most prominent countries/groups, considering Conan is king of Aquilonia and of course Stygia being the main font of evil sorcerors.

If you want them to have 3 huge continents at release like Vanguard then i think that is simply not reasonable.

Yes, you can be black in Age of Conan. The Stygian people are almost all black.

Damn, I want to black!

I felt confused after reading some of the posts in this thread. I think that had to with me mixing up IRL definitions with definitions we are used to see in games. Thus, I had to clearify things for myself and this is what I came up with:

=IRL=

Here we use the term 'species' to distinct between apples and pears, cats and dogs, humans and monkeys etc.
A common definition of a species is that a species is a group of  interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.

Then we have the terms 'subspecies' or 'race' to tell, for example, a sheperd-dog from a bulldog. In order to say that two subjects from the same species belong to different subspecies there has to be a certain degree of genetic differences between the two. Within the species Homo Sapien (human) there are no subspecies nor races. Simply because the genetic differences aren't big enough. Here we have seen examples of confusion when people mix up the term 'ethnic-group' with subspecies or race.

=FANTASY, FICTION, GAMING=

In this category, none of the above applies. Because this is fiction. Here we use the term race to distinct between how our in-game avatar looks. Or what in-game continent/part of the world they are from. Stygians and Aquilonians seems to be two different races just as much as an orc and a human are examples of two different races in other games.

Personally I see no problem with using the term 'race' to distinct between different types of avatars. It's simple and easy as long as we don't blend in the IRL-stuff mentioned above. One could argue that orcs and humans are different species, but then you'd have to consider that there are Half-Orcs in some universes. Alas, the definition of a species isn't applicable here

=MY POINT?=

Call em races when you are referring to in-game races but stop making similes like Stygians = Egyptians and so on. The terms used IRL arn't always easy to transfer to alternate unviverses.

I dont think its about racisim. They chose 3 nations to put into the game the main 3 nations most readily recoginized and the most promiment in the world of Hyboria. Aquilonia a pseudo European/roman culture. Cimmeria a northern mountain barbarian culture, and Stygia a pseudo Egyptian culture (stygians arent black they are more like egyptians). None of the 3 cultuers are predominatly black cultures, however I would not be surprised if they added Kushite and Kush as a playable nation in an expansion as theres alot that does take place in Kush.

This is basically the same as the other racist troll posted in the warhammer forums.

Point A) If they add "black" people, it'll be when and if they choose, not before.

Point B) If they add these people, they will be in keeping with the game's lore.

Point C) It's a game, not reality. It's meant to escape reality.

Point D) People who are so obsessed with race are usually racists themselves.

The end.