Female dwarves are on the way? :)

[Gaming_Gal]

Yes, this post is long. I also don't have the free time right now to edit it better for at least some brevity and conciseness. I've been trying to hold back on some points as this thread wanders into already long ago dead horse whipped territory, but since we're going there again...here's my two bags of copper.

In some other threads posted long ago, I had asked for many of the things that have been most recently asked for again here about text chat and such. Subtle ways to try to keep us all happy but still within lore. I was told it was way too much work and they couldn't possibly set aside dev time for such, it would break too much already in game mechanics, et al.

To give a window of reference for folks curious about a former round of this as well as to be perfectly clear about my own interpretation of the lore:
I read both The Hobbit and LOTR early on in my life. I am not a fan of the PJ movies. I am not a lorist, but what I do know, I know well.

I tried the game, quite excited, during the first open beta weekend before the game live launched. I was really unhappy with many aspects related to the Dwarves, and adventuring Hobbits and female Race of Man folk as well. I was devastated, really, because just the handling of Dwarven matters alone was so poorly thought out in my mind. (No, I'm not getting into all that now.)

I was particularly irritated back then that the only choice at dwarf character was "MALE". Getting rid of that, as silly as it seems, was a step in the right direction. Because of many reasons, the handling of both Dwarf gender, too many short beards being offered over long, what I thought was spectacularly badly handled modeling for the Blue Mountain dwarf areas, etc. etc. I know Dwarves in many worlds where they reside get the short end of the stick, and sadly it seemed this game would be no exception.

To be clear, I had full intentions of playing a female Dwarf exactly as is in lore. I am a role player, which was the bulk of why I came back, to RP all races here. The game limited me so much as to make this completely impossible unless I only wanted to stare at the same interior of a single setting forever (Hall). There was then, as there is now, no location in game (not even current beta) where someone can do that because all areas are open to all races. (More on this later below...)

However, when MoM came out, a friend bought it for me, and I tried to live in this world again. A lot I didn't like they fixed, Moria was a lot closer to what I thought most of the early Dwarf areas should have been, and other non dwarf related things they had fixed made more sense in my mind as well. The game still had many glaring flaws, in particular with lore overall, but it was corrected enough that I could work around what I didn't like to a comfortable point. So I stayed with it, and have only taken breaks from the game when real life prevented my playing time. Yes, I also had accepted they did certain things as they did from the get go because it was easier and gave the game a better chance to make the game being embraced by a a wider audience, in particular with real life female players that might want to adventure in a male dominated world. (That topic is an entire thread of its own.)

It doesn't mean I agree with those choices in full, yet I feel it doesn't mean anyone should push things farther off the cliff than they already are. Unless SSG is willing to do what Turbine was not, and retroactively fix many, many, things just with the Dwarven matters alone, you're just beating a dead horse even more than has already been done. Worse, some of what folks are asking really is just so out of lore it's just sad. Yes, the game can be easier to have fun when you don't have to choose to be strict with the lore, but why keep making this less Middle-earth than it already is? Go play DDO.

Having said that, I should get back to explaining the history of dead horses...

We had some misguided folk then that assumed because other NON LOTR Dwarf depictions showed pink bows in hair, no beards and obvious dresses clinging around hourglass like big and busty curves as opposed to less human mammal forms cloaked in tunics or even something more mumu like (if I am to be generous with the allowance of the latter), that's what a "proper" female dwarf should be all the time in every iteration of dwarves, regardless of the actual world building behind each variant. So in their minds, they should have a right to have that capability here for the blossoming bosomed curvy dwarven lassses with warmly blushed cheeks they were so wanting to build and deck out in lots of delicate "feminine" jewels and bow their beardless heads with very Anglo European minded gender color usage that screams female to them.

The discussions, if you can call them that, back then were made worse by the "go make me a sammich" real life men and boys that kept making things worse saying that the only place for a Dwarven female was barefoot in the mines, popping out much needed babies while the manly Dwarves provided (then, as now, imposing their own view upon a very different world build). This thread is a cake walk compared to those times, thank goodness.

The almost entirely real life females posting back then didn't give a fig about the lore. A lot of them also played DDO, which is NOT based on LOTR directly, even though Gygax did claim his character models were based on the creatures in Tolkein's world. His claims doesn't make it true no matter how many times it gets repeated. Just because he took a class that Tolkien taught doesn't mean diddly. You can look into that entire drama when the Tolkien estate threatened to sue TSR back in the day. TSR won their suit because for the most part, all the creatures were longstanding folk lore creatures. There's a reason you can't roll a "hobbit" in the pen and paper, but you can have a halfling. The word hobbit was an invention of Tolkien. (And not all halflings are hole dwellers, but that's another fall down a different rabbit hole.)

There are some folks here, with wanting human boobs and curves such, for example, who are but a "light" version of such misguided thinking because they also don't care about the lore. I also suspect they lack imagination. Why else must they impose human attributes upon Dwarven females? Do they lack the ability to embrace Dwarved femininity because it really is so far removed from their human reality? The truth is they only want what they want. Think of them like the folks that pretend they have lightsaber fights outside the Pony. You will never be able to convince them nor talk them down from their high hopes.

The point is not everyone (including myself) wants female dwarves, I'm not saying they look different in the eyes of other dwaraves cause of course they do not, Male dwarf has to know what to look for to tell the differences yes! but what i suggested was only an option to make both sides pleased, i can't think of any other way then this mechanic where dwarves can only see them as female. cause some players will want proper female dwarves and not look the same as male.

But getting back to what you say, Finnberry, I am in complete agreement. There are those that don't want to be "in on the secrets of Dwarves", as it were. Nor should such be forced upon them either. I cherry picked your response because you bring up a very valid point, and I want to support that quite strongly.

Although I see MadeOfLions' points regarding where she is, and how that is different, the problem is they have NEVER used this method before, so of course it's going to get the sort of responses that are here for two reasons:

1. Those that want what they want will use Dis as an excuse to push for what they want, whether what they want is right or not.
2. This is STILL WRONG because too many non Dwarf folk can SEE HER. They have deliberately put her in a spot that any race can freely transverse.

What MadeOfLions is really hoping we assume is they are trying to fix what was long broken. The spirit of intent is good, but the process is still flawed.

Allow me to explain and reinforce some bits to those who may not have considered the following...

Turbine messed up many aspects of the Dwarf race FROM THE START before you leave the Dwarf/Elf intro area/timeline. Yes, there is a history of Dwarf and Elven overlap in areas, but not to that degree nor in that area that was written. Has already been said, Skogrim and the Petty Dwarf spin offs, the Dourhands, are entirely Turbine created, just like the evil Ale Association.

Post intro, look at all the other races that are not only allowed in Thorin's Hall, but the non Dwarf trainers and all the rest there as well. Yes, the bulk of the NPCs there are Dwarves, but there is not one single place that is a Dwarf only area except in painfully specific ways.

They didn't do it, of course, for much the same reason we have so many other lore conflicting nonsense in game. A lot of folks would have cried "UNFAIR!". How dare Turbine make an area ONLY ONE RACE can enter? Lunancy! Hopefully this starts to make some things clear about why things will always be wrong, even if the Estate still allows it for...reasons.

Still, it is what I also asked for back then--which they worked towards with places like Moria yet even that wasn't quite right--was for more Dwarven areas to actually have connections so that a Dwarf can stay within their home territory without being among others (like an underground area between the structures in Thorin's' Hall to the TH Homesteads).

Certain outposts like in the North Downs can sort of be forgiven for being so above ground structurally, even though let's be honest in seeing Othrikar for what it is, a perpetuation of the mistake made with the Thorin's Gate/Hall area. Moria was an improvement, but even then you can only explain it away because they haven't fully taken back that territory yet, and thus the females can go back to what is their way. The small Dwarf quest hub camp in Angmar is a no brainer as is. It's not even a community, just a camp. So that works with the lore just fine. Nogland is even smaller than Othrikar, so same for that. Sadly, Moria and even that one Dwarf library are handled much the same as TH was. Any race can be there all the time. The Dwarf areas up in the Misties are the same. And so on, and so on. This new area is no different in that except for the big fancy entrance, as far as I can tell, it's all below.

Instead, the Dwarf areas we have in game from the start were ridiculously above ground with no interior paths to move from, say, TH to the Silver Deep, as in the TH area of the Blue Mountains. We can't even go to our dwarves homestead from the man Hall itself without leave the mountain. There's not even one long hallway (and I mean hallway, not portal) between. How silly is that? Then we also have Moria, where there is no area set aside that only Dwarves would enter, since the Dwarves have presumably thrown their gates open to any non Dwarf willing to run their errands.

We can't get to Sarnur, we can't to any of the Dwarven outposts that also have stupidly all above ground areas from below within the Blue Mountain area. Not a one.

MoL touched on this with his distinction about "abroad", though I've always seen it as a distinction between "above" rather than abroad, being Dwarf folk prefer being below in the mountains, not perched on top like ravens in trees. It's one of the reasons it was much easier for them to defend the Lonely Mountain because you had the main entrance in, plus the secret door. THAT WAS IT. They didn't have entire outbuildings, as it were, built on the surface.

Yes, the Dwarf folk were known to do business in Dale and the like could have even had shops or what have you there. It's not the same thing. You're trying to impose a modern inter-racial melting pot where none exists. Is it uncomfortable to think about? Perhaps to most modern folks. Still, the world is as Tolkien wrote it. It is not a tale in the modern sense about racial harmony. It's a tale about a white male underdog defying all odds during terrible, terrible times with his trusty white male cook of the same race at his side. Yes, the hobbit's white male allies help him get part of the way there in terms of the traveling party, but their only joined cause was to stop evil from taking us all. The last thing on their minds back then was whether an average adventurer would ever see a female Dwarf as she would be seen in her closed community that was common at that time.

Why the break with Dis in this regard, I simply cannot understand, given they have never followed the model prior, and i have no hope at all they will retro fix what has been long in game. It's simply too large an undertaking for a race that is so often overlooked. I know the argument there is now this is the Age of Man and all that, but then why do elves get so much love? Hobbits get their own sideline, but despite being hole dwellers, they have a longer history of living near to Men folk areas, and you don't have the same gender issues as with Dwarf folk.

So because we have areas where any race can freely go about, it conflicts with the lore because the reason why the females of the race were so rarely seen by other races is because those other races had little reason to be where they are now allowed to roam freely. This is why we keep having this same discussion over and over again. How much broken is too much? How much could be fixed if devs were allowed to?

The ONLY real reason everyone can see Dis is because we already have hundreds if not thousands of Hobbit adventurers, and female Race of Man folk adventuring as well.

That doesn't mean they can just go throw everything out the window.

I wish folks would stop trying to push things further away from the lore than we already have and stop getting back to this dead horse time and again,