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So, I have no idea why they gave the Witch Doctor a pot belly. There are a few reasons he would have one though. So I did some searching on the internet and found this on Wikipedia:
1. Kwashiorkor, a type of malnutrition caused by insufficient protein intake.
Symptoms include a swollen abdomen known as a pot belly, as well as alternating bands of pale and dark hair and weight loss.
2. Liver problems
3. Full bowels (ew)
4. He just has a beer gut from drinking too much
I'm betting on Kwashiorkor. I seriously think they wanted to make the Witch Doctor look malnourished.
It's possible Blizzard is going for what Valve did for Team Fortress 2: unique silhouettes. Valve wanted each class to have a unique shape so users could immediately identify their opponent/teammate and their role.
The Witch Doctor's hunched posture (and belly) contrast pretty sharply with the Barb and Wizard. Going even further off my tangent, if think of the character shapes as animals the WD is vaguely crab-shaped with his arms curled in front of him. The Wizard reminded me a little of a dragonfly since her robes seem to flap all over the place whenever she was firing off a spell in her gameplay video. As for Barb...well I guess my animal comparison fails there, he's just a big bowling ball of muscle.
The Witch Doctor's hunched posture (and belly) contrast pretty sharply with the Barb and Wizard.
Only the male seems to have these distinguishing features. They are curiously absent from the female.
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Witch Doctor = top half of a Flayer Shaman = cracked-out, grass-wearing, jungle hobo = bobbing clown who vomits leaves a.k.a. Bobo the clowning village idiot. And people thought Necromancers had an image problem.
Only the male seems to have these distinguishing features. They are curiously absent from the female.
I strongly disagree there. In my opinion, they are visibly different. To begin, the Wizard looks like the typical fantasy female; slim, slender and 'feminine' with an additional 'distinguishing' feature of appearing Asian. The Barbarian, on the other hand, looks taller than the Wizard as well as appearing more 'masculine', in that she has broad shoulders and thicker limbs (particularly the thighs). Finally, let's take a look at the Witch Doctor. To simply put it, she has broader hips relative to torso (compared to both, the Wizard and Barbarian) as well as what appears to be sagging breasts.
Allow me to rephrase my answer. When comparing the male WD with the female WD, it appears as though the distinguishing marks for a WD (hunched posture and belly) are only present on the male.
I agree that you can tell the various avatars apart very easily and even between male and female form, I just find it odd that although the female Barb is huge and muscular (just like the male) the female WD doesn't seem to be sharing the same characteristics as the male WD.
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Witch Doctor = top half of a Flayer Shaman = cracked-out, grass-wearing, jungle hobo = bobbing clown who vomits leaves a.k.a. Bobo the clowning village idiot. And people thought Necromancers had an image problem.
But it's not Kwashiorkor. This I know for sure. I hate organic chemistry, but it is helpful in this situation, so here is what the textbook says:
The body can perform all kinds of transormations on organic substances. Fats can be converted to water and carbon dioxide, and energy of course. Sugars can be turned into fat. Protiens can be built up from amino acids via peptide bonds. When the body is depleted of other energy souces, it can cleave peptide bonds (catabolizing protiens) to obtain free amino acids. Some of the amino acids can then be used to produce energy sources. This process is called kwashiorkor.
It is basically the breakdown of protien structures to obtain energy in very desperate times of prolonged malnurishment. Kwashiorkor is not what happens when someone is merely hungry or malnurished for a few days. Kwashiorkor occurs after there is no adipose (fat) storage remaining to draw energy from, and involves ireversable loss of tissues. That is, once someone loses muscle tissues from kwashiorkor, they never get it back; they remain emaciated until they die.
So if the WD had this process going on, he would not have the energy to run around let alone gain levels and improve his skills. He would be a skeletonized immobile heap on the floor like what you see in starving villages. Plus, he would never recover from kwashiorkor.
Some children you see in UNICEF commercials and such have pot bellies, but these are far more pronounced than what the WD has. These children are starving, though kwashiorkor has not started depleting their tissues much so they can still stand. The pot bellies here are from accumulation of gastric juices in the GI tract. Normally, these juices are used up to break down ingested food.
So that leaves us with the question remaining as to why the WD has a pot belly. Well, I don't notice much of a bulge there. Some people have pot bellies even though they are thin everywhere else. This can occur from long term high stress and poor exercise.
I think the reason the WD has this characteristic is to make him look more like he is from the East, to separate him further from the other classes as mentioned above. Maybe it is supposed to make him look scarier; well look how scary the barb is. I think Blizzard is "getting real" with the chrs, adding scars, grey hair, stress, posture problems and (I suppose) the pot belly to make them more realistic and human looking.
Edit: I'd like to change my answer. You can push your tummy out just as you can suck your tummy in. So I think the WD is pushing his tummy out to further add to his ridiculously terrible posture. Picture the Blizzard Boss looking at the first WD artwork and saying "No, no, make him MORE bent up and hunched over..." The artwork guy does so. The Boss says "No, make it over-the-top. Make him hunching over like a monkey." Artwork guy holds his breath and does as he's told. The Boss says, "Not there yet. We have a scale of 1-10 for noticably bad posture. Make his bad posture 12 or so. The Artwork guy rolls his eyes, swallows his pride and makes the changes. The Boss says, "Ok, make it more like a cartoon caveman. I want his head bent down there where his xiphoid is." The artwork guy sighs loudly and makes the change. The Boss says "Well, it still needs to be louder. Can you add a giant piano-key tie around his neck and show it scuffing along on the ground some 4 feet in front of his toes?" The artwork guy turns to punch out his boss. The boss throws his hands up and says, "Ok Ok!! Just give him a pot belly then. Make his mask bigger than the rest of him too."
So, so far, the reasons for the pot belly have less to do with the Witch Doctor's story and more to do with the art direction, whether it be to distinguish him from other classes or to make him look as if he is trying to intimidate others through his bad posture.
I'd like to change my answer. You can push your tummy out just as you can suck your tummy in. So I think the WD is pushing his tummy out to further add to his ridiculously terrible posture. Picture the Blizzard Boss looking at the first WD artwork and saying "No, no, make him MORE bent up and hunched over..." The artwork guy does so. The Boss says "No, make it over-the-top. Make him hunching over like a monkey." Artwork guy holds his breath and does as he's told. The Boss says, "Not there yet. We have a scale of 1-10 for noticably bad posture. Make his bad posture 12 or so. The Artwork guy rolls his eyes, swallows his pride and makes the changes. The Boss says, "Ok, make it more like a cartoon caveman. I want his head bent down there where his xiphoid is." The artwork guy sighs loudly and makes the change. The Boss says "Well, it still needs to be louder. Can you add a giant piano-key tie around his neck and show it scuffing along on the ground some 4 feet in front of his toes?" The artwork guy turns to punch out his boss. The boss throws his hands up and says, "Ok Ok!! Just give him a pot belly then. Make his mask bigger than the rest of him too."
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