lore anon! hear me out on this extremely long ask- been looking at the area where the main troll city is, and it's got so much rock, huge mountains and gorgeous landscape. i think it's be amazing to see like.. a very heavy arts culture for trolls, with them so often being in places with clay, dyes, metals.... i think sculpture as a large art form is amazing. also, i love the bright colours they have- taking away the cultural appropriation, i think dedication to bright colours, clothing, and vividly coloured brick in their architecture would be something good to keep. (also, rock climbing as a sport of choice. you gotta get around somehow, why not make it a game?)
i think in the city design itself, taking away the gold but keeping the warm, earthy colours would be good. it's more practical, and isn't representative of what you get when you google "big aztec temple fancy".
i think because pyramids are very universal and have been prevalent in so many ancient cultures, keeping a pyramid palace is an option, but if i were to redo the city entirely i might not keep it. i think something far cooler is to have the palace built into the mountain it's built on.
a lot of my ancient civilization knowledge is very early egypt and greece, so i'm pulling from there in design sketches, with simpler colours and ornately designed armor over cloth toga and tunics (because, looking at the guards.... ow. that's bare skin.) the emblems of the art you see on walls and armor would likely be winding, reminiscent of the trees that grow around the city. that's mostly because i like the idea of a civilization taking artistic influence from the landscape around them, because that happens so often in real life and you barely see it in WoW.
i'm trying to take influence from early civilizations withoutcreating an analogue for one specific reigonal group, because especially with the history of trolls in fiction, it's too easy to accidentally fall on stereotypes or pull insensitively, and i'm not a member of an indigenous group or a historian, just someone who likes ancient civ.
also, inspired by that gorgeously modeled rotating... disk... thing in the city, i think having a steampunk-y (not victorian england, just the like. gear-and-piston technology style and steam power) type of technology where it's built into a lot of the city, and maybe the patrollers of the city are statues that have had that technology crafted onto them. a fusion of art and science, because i love how they hold onto their culture and past so well as well as continuing to advance and develop new things.
a lot of this is just a dump of influences and ideas, ones that are going to get polished a lot more as i do research and build. i also want to build on the different troll groups and how they interact and subcultures, because i want them to be more than "hate each other fight in identical settlements". i'm frustrated by blizzard, and my writing and worldbuilding isn't perfect, but by god i am rollign up my sleeves and trying to make something half decent. trolls deserve better.
HI LORE ANON SORRY I DIDNT RESPOND FOR SO LONG!!!!! i wish i had something smart to say in response to this but id really love to see what youve cooked up so far since you sent this, if you have anything ^-^
trolls absolutely deserve better theyre one of my favorites. it is genuinely a shame that a lot of their earlier presence (and what im most familiar with to be transparent as im not much of a Lore Guy and i mostly just absorbed what ive seen and heard over 15 years, naturally im more familiar with the earlier days) is mostly just. "haha funny racist stereotype, point and laugh at the jamaican accent". i think bfa did a lot to improve upon the foundations of trolls in general but it obviously wasnt perfect
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