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Gay Guild Recruitment Disallowed From WoW?
Fireball394 wrote with a link to an article on the site 'In Newsweekly'. The article, entitled "Blizzard of GLBT gaming policy questions", discusses the application of a harassment warning on a player who was recruiting for a GLBT guild. From the article: "In her follow-up letter to the company, Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a 'GLBT friendly' guild. The response from Blizzard was, 'While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a GLBT friendly guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to be temporarily suspended from the game. However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning.' Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using 'GLBT' was inappropriate as, the company said, it may 'incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game.'"
This cannot possibly backfire in any conceivably way.
Way to go, clowns!
From what I have read, Blizzard is pretty tight on what sort of character names, etc that they allow. The decision in the article seems to be consistent with their in-game policies.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
WoW is a fantasy world and they just want to take the issues of contemporarly life out of it.
It's not like a gay couldn't play WoW, as I'm sure thousands of gay people do play, but rather that recruiting people to a gay guild is adding unnecessary tension. It's like naming a guild "republican lovers" and trying to recruit people in to that kind of guild. I'm sure many people would dislike that too and I'm almost certain Blizzard would act similarly.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why should a guild be limited to GLBT? What if someone tried to make a "whites-only" guild? The whole POINT of an online game is that you can get away from your real self and become another persona - a person's sexual orientation, race, creed, color, or taste in music has exactly jack squat to do with the game or the game world.
Let's see... because doing this MIGHT cause other players to harass and discriminate GLBT folks, Blizzard will head this all off by discriminating against GLBT folks.
So now you're allowed to go around calling other people and things gay, but refer to yourself that way, and you're in trouble.
Quality ideas here.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
So what does that even mean?
Ultima Online still has them beat with a practising S&M guild
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I wish they could come up with a better acronym. I always read it as "Gilbert", which probably isn't the intention.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
is "do they allow other guilds based on sexual orientation?" the Guild of Heterosexual Males? The Guild of White Men From America?
If so, then this decision is wrong. If not, then this is a nonissue and that's that.
Can straight people join it? If no, then it's discriminatory. If yes, then there's no point to it.
I really don't see the point of a guild like this. Sure, clubs like this at Uni are a good idea, but why should your orientation be brought into a game that has nothing to do with sex?
What it comes down to is that, Blizzard is (rightfully) concerned that going around proclaiming "gay and proud" is going to get you targeted for harrasment. Blizzard rightfully says such harassment is wrong, but they don't want to enforce their own policy. They don't want to spend the time kicking gay bashers. However I'm afraid that they're concerned that Pat Robertson will go on television and rail against the "gay satanic game World of War[sp]" and then curse them with a volcano or something.
I'm serious about that. I think they're afraid of pissing off whack jobs. Funny. Ambilence is wrong. Hate is good.
I may have something wrong here, but it seems as though the company is blaming the gay player for harassment that might come from other players. That would be like banning women from playing so that men don't harass them. It seems pretty backwards to me.
San Francisco Photographers
Christian guilds, why should other communities be blocked.
Individuals fight for Gay Rights. They fight for equal opportunities. They fight to be recognised as equals. Then they form a guild to spotlight the fact that they are different than the common society.
If you don't want to stand out in a crowd, don't call attention to yourself. There should never have been a guild in WoW that was allowed to recruit based on sexual preference. It is only a target for harassment.
Otoh, I can see how Blizzard has an express interest in keeping this sort of thing from happening. After all, the more accounts they have to ban for harassment, the less residual income they make. Although with their current numbers, tossing a few bad apples from the bunch wouldn't even make a dent.
Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
I guess you think they should sit back down and take the abuse silently like good little homosexuals... I can't believe this received a +4 Insightful on Slashdot.
They can do what they want with the game including make the rules, change the rules, and break the rules. Your options are limited to playing the game they way they want or not playing it. Accept it.
I have two questions here.
The game is rated Teen and not Mature. I imagine that the Teen rating limits the sexual content of the game, and blizzard's Terms of Service reflect that rating by also restricting people's ability to discuss sex and sexuality in game.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if your character is Gay/Straight. World of Warcraft is not supposed to be a game in which sex and sexuality is a defining aspect of a character. I wonder how you are supposed to recruit for a Gay/Lesbian guild while not being allowed to discuss sex in game?
Anyway, the "why?" is the Teen rating. Blizzard may need to work on the "how?" especially since they seem to be just pissing more people off with their current policy of "Don't ask, don't tell."
I agree with Blizzard that this is merely consistent application of their policies.
Would GLBT people object if I said "I'm recruiting for a guild, we really only want heterosexuals pls, kthx." Of course they would.
Personally, I think that's wrong headed, but I'm a freedom-of-association type myself. If I want to have a guild for blue-eyed tall people into bestiality and reject anyone else, what would be wrong with that? But no, once the formulation becomes general enough, people nevertheless excluded from the generalization declare 'victim' status and call the lawyers...
-Styopa
If we're going to start deciding what people can and cannot say, then we might as well submit to a police state. I have a right to call you a faggot, just like you have the right to call me a prude. I'm not saying it's nice to do so, and probably wouldn't result in our friendship, but it's still protected under the domain of free speech.
We're not talking about Elf-tang and the sublime exotic pleasures of inter-species love.
A reason I could see for taking exception to this is the specificity of their objection. I've seen 'all female' guilds, Hispanic guilds, Asian guilds, etc. recruiting in City chat, and as far as I know none of those folks have been warned.
I can understand why these folks would be annoyed; Blizzard is essentially saying that simply by mentioning their lifestyle they're inviting harassment. Ergo, they themselves are harassers. While your RL sexual preference has nothing to do with your ability to game, isn't everyone entitled to group with folks that share the same interests?
It's a tough question.
Not to be an ass, but freedom of speech only applies to the government. Blizzard is free to ban you for using the letter "q" if they so desire.
This has utterly nothing to do with freedom of speech.
I agree with you 100%. Online gaming is a haven for homophobia. The amount of gay-bashing that goes on in in-game chats would be considered intolerable in even the most conservative circles in the real world.
A few years back, a small online FPS game I used to play decided to extend its anti-biogtry policy to protect against gay-bashing. The backlash was severe, and many players left in protest after being repatedly kicked from the game for using offensive language.
Fortunately, the developer running the game stuck with it despite the many rumors circulated that he was gay -- I can't help but admire the fact that he never bothered to defend himself against the rumors. I think he eventually responded in an interview something to the extent of "No, I am not, but I don't feel the need to defend myself against these rumors because I find nothing offensive about it"
Gamers can be so immature. This is probably the biggest reason I no longer game online. These people give the impresion of being 13 years old, and you later learn that they're actually grown adults. Pathetic.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
All my female characters are promiscuous lesbians.
Since I haven't seen this mentioned yet, Blizzard works off a complaint based system. That is, mods are not actively seeking out policy violations on the server. Players report players. Someone took exception to the recuitment message. You got griefed!
I read the second message as, "We messed up, but we are not totally backing down from our previous position." Company policy or uppity support tech? You decide.
Finding it inappropriate for a GLBT guild to form up (reporting it) and finding it grossly offensive (thus, reporting it as well) that someone could run around screaming "Faggot!" are not mutually exclusive.
How the hell did you get a +4 Insightful?
That stuff is caught by the profanity filter, like most other obscenity. If you don't want to hear it, keep the filter on.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
There's nothing wrong with a gay guild from the perspective of total in-game immersion. Homosexuality is not something artificially created by contemporary society - it will exist in any environment where humans, and indeed other species, are present. There's no republican gene that would cause an elf to magically align his or her self to what is, compared to the number of possible outlooks on life, a relatively narrow band of thinking. However, where nature can only incline you to be attracted to one gender or a combination of the two, then probability says it is definitely going to happen.
Take a mythology with 10 races, all of whom are loosely based on humans. In total, you're going to have as many gays over all as, for example, dwarves. Your argument appears to equate homosexuality (an inherent characteristic) with any of a number of artificially defined concepts, such as religion or political alignment. If it's ok to base a guild around in game concepts, say all those who worship some in game deity, why is it not acceptable to base a guild around concepts which exist both in game and in the real world? Would it be a violation of Blizzard policy to create a race of herbivores? I think not. Why then is it wrong to differentiate between (loosely paralelled) homosexuals (herbivores), bisexuals (omnivores) and heterosexuals (carnivores)? If anything, denying the existence of homosexuality within the world of warcraft reduces its verisimilitude and only serves to alienate people further.
I suppose so. If people are staying away from overtly racey content, then I imagine that everyone will be happy.
I sleep with girls and I'm a guy, I sleep with girls and I'm a guy, I sleep with girls and I'm a guy... Now wasn't that unnecessary? So are sexual deviates screaming in public that they perform perverted acts. If you're going to live a lifestyle that is against nature, sinful and basically sick to the majority of the world then keep it to yourself and you won't have problems. I don't see bank robbers and child molesters running around making guilds or having parades...
Karma: a way in which to silence those with an unpopular viewpoint regardless if the view is correct and just.
I'm going to fill it full of gay bars, trannie bars, and the like. A core part of the game will be shopping in goth/punk/hellokitty type areas in order to equip your character with all the correct gear for their sexuality. Instead of Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic it'll have Straight-Bi-Gay-RichardSimmons... (yes, this is a joke). It'd get all the business that other games don't want.
I can understand Blizzard's POV - let's not bring these things into the game, it's a game, it's fantasy.
OTOH I can understand that some people might want to be with people who (external to the game) are like them. That's natural. It's like older gamers not wanting to play with punk 14 year olds with attitude problems.
I, for one, think Blizzard is completely off-base.
There's certainly Chinese guilds, French guilds, mature guilds, and 1337 guilds; why not a GBLT guild? Being GBLT isn't about primarily about sexuality, it's about gender roles and common culture. Just as geeks have sites like slashdot, GBLT persons have common forums, movies, and books with which they identify to create common cultural references.
Defined gender roles and attitudes toward them have an integral role in any cooperative community -- real or virtual -- and I believe that it's perfectly reasonable to use this set of common beliefs to form a guild.
(Note: I am not GBLT, but I am friends with quite a few)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Everyone who plays WoW is gay.
No, WoW just reveals latent gender-identity issues in our youth. Why else would almost all of America's male teenagers want to play a female night-elf?
all they are doing is advertising a guild where one can feel safe that:
a) a guy can say 'oops, my BF just arrived... gotta go!' in guild chat, and not be harassed or kicked from the guild
b) a glbt couple could join the guild together, and not be kicked out/harrassed
c) a straight person who's sick of and intolerant of homophobic comments would be welcomed (like me!)
d) guild members are likely not immature
it is NOT, and please please PLEASE *read* the article, it is NOT a glbt-only guild!
Remember: if you are kicked from a guild for being gay, lesbian, white, black, whatever.. Blizzard can do nothing. All guilds have the right to manage their people however, and can say anything on their own websites. That means discrimination can and does exist.. all this group was telling people is that that would not happen to them.
First of all, Blizzard's rules DO say you cannot be insulting such as calling people fags or saying something is gay, and if you do it in a channel where people COMPLAIN, you will get in trouble. In other words, if you create a guild full of potty mouths and everyone is fine with it, swear away. But do it in the public channels and have someone report you and you're in trouble. Heck, even have someone in your guild complain and you're in trouble! They are not saying she cannot form a GBLT (or whatever that acronym was) guild, they are telling her not to SPAM THE PUBLIC CHAT CHANNELS with advertising that it is a GBLT guild. I don't honestly know what GBLT people talk about, but whatever it is would be allowed in /gu chat, just keep it off the public channels. They also warn the "religious" guilds about the same thing... say what you want in /gu, keep it off the public channels. When you're in a large, multicultured environment that's just common sense, but this crusader isn't happy about it and wants to make a big deal.... lame.
And what about when people use the words "Christ" and "Jesus" as expletives in the game? The people that complain about the use of "gay" in a derogatory sense never seem to complain when the words I mentioned are abused.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
People have found ways around this in the past. I have been in a covertly gay MMORPG guild. We were gay, yeah, but ask us outright and you wouldn't get a straight answer. Sometimes closeting and ghettoisation is, pragmatically, the best option from the gay point of view, even today. A military friend of mine can attest to that.
But closeting shouldn't be enforced from above. That's utter crap.
And I don't think the hypocrisy lies in homophobic slang being permitted de facto (and don't tell me it isn't permitted - it is): I think the hypocrisy lies in the fact that straight identity roleplay is permitted in the game while LGBT roleplay is not.
On RP servers or RP-oriented servers and guilds in most MMORPGs, RPed in-game marriages are fairly common. Consequently, a similar issue arose in DAOC a few years ago when a couple players attempted to have a gay marriage in game. Straight marriages in game were, as I say, nothing new at all. I'd attended a couple. There was even a player (very good RPer) on my server who specialised in presiding over marriages there. But much hullabaloo arose over whether an RP gay marriage ceremony should be permitted by the admins. After a great deal of ambiguity and fractiousness, the ceremony was permitted. But of course it had to be. Either you permit relationship RP and you permit gay RP, or you tell people outright, "all creatures in this world are asexual and incapable of romantic association of any kind - RP it that way". And while that's an equal solution, asexual civilisation really is a little hard to take in a conventional fantasy RP contexts. At least unless you give me a little backstory.
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
Actually, you CAN be a Republican in the game. Are you telling me that you can't have a socialist guild where everyone shares depending on a preset group of rules? And yes you CAN be gay in the game. Are you telling me that there aren't "weddings", flirting, and dates in-game? Are you telling me that gay social culture is exactly the same as straight social culture, and that people act and behave the same way? That's just not true. Not all straight or gay people behave the same way, but if there were a GBLT friendly group, I would join it, just to stay away from the people who aren't. Who cares if people start harassing because of this. Then you would probably get some really good roleplaying going on. Go ahead and start the big Straight Vs Gay war. It would be hilarious (Plus, I know which side would win). At the end of the day, though, Blizzard can do whatever they want, at the expense of pissing people off.
postmodernsideshow.com
Recruit outside WoW. Use a guild website and GLBT chat rooms, etc.. dont bother oother players in game by saying "if your gay, join our guild" because the bottom line is, most players are kids, and kids talk trash, and moreso, love to talk trash about the GLBT community.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
QQ ya fuckin faggot
So I don't know what other types of player groups there are (teams? clans? I don't know, you tell me), but would this rule apply to them as well? If so, it's the same problem, no?
"While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that parking your bright red 2006 Ferrari F430 Spider is very likely to result in the theft or vandalism of a car that may not have occured otherwise. If you look at our local and state laws, you will notice the suggested penalty for parking bright red sports cars in seedy neigborhoods is to temporarily jail you. However, as you are just an arrogant, rich prick, this penalty has been reduced to parole and 1000 hours of community services."
Seriously though, this situation is ridiculous. Blizzard is punishing the wrong people here. Harassment of any player (gays, lesbians, straights, americans, canadians, jews, muslims, etc) should not be tolerated. Blizzard apparently has a "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy when it comes to diversity.
-William Brendel
So there can be no gay fantasy characters, in your opinion? I've had PnP games where gay friends have played gay characters. This is nothing new, except perhaps to America.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Simple. Report them. End of story. Blizzard is rather draconian in its policy enforcement. If someone is sitting there yelling "faggot" (or more likely "fagg0t!") report them. They won't be doing it within the next 24 hours. Blizzard only suspends those it knows about and it knows about incidents through player reports.
Report your neighbor for fun and prizes!
Bestiality is entirely sexual with no mutual romantic element. Homosexuality, despite the label, has proportionally as much to do with intercourse as speaking Italian does to do with eating pizza. It's about the ability to form relationships with a particular gender. The expression of those relationships is merely a side issue.
I have seen guilds that were advertising for members under out of game religious terms have their guilds disbanded.
Simply put, the real world has no business in the game. It is a fantasy game and is to be such within the scope they provide.
People come to these games to escape reality.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You know what's most damning against Blizzard? When that exact same question came up on their forums, it could not be answered. You know why? One of the words was censored by the profanity filter. So it said:
Gay
!$#$%!&#$
Bi
Trans
Not only do they not allow it to be public, they censor any discussion of it. Also, the CM's have been locking and deleting the vast majority of the threads about this topic. They're doing everything they can to prevent the discussion about the issue as well.
Gravy, bacon, lettuce, tomato?
Eww...
"This is considered plagiarism."
Because the alternative is playing and having to look at a male orc in a loin cloth.
Boys have gender identity issues for wanting to stare at the ass of a female elf hour after hour? I beg to differ! Forget about the character sex, it's the boys that want to stare at the ass of a tail-swinging Tauren I wonder about!
Are all neocons so philosophically unsophisticated or are you just intellectually lazy? This punishes a group that is actively harrased and demeaned in WOW 24/7 who only wished to form a safe haven from pricks like you and WOW punishes them by censoring their recruitment ingame. The story here is that pricks like you need to die off or shut up for civil rights to progress. Take your heterosexual once a week monogomous guilt sex and shove it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
to me it sounds like this person is just trying to cause undue tension. we have a girl claiming to be lesbian, but no one makes a big deal out of it - mostly because she doesn't.
i'm not saying you need to join the ranks of the immature by yelling "fag" or "gay", but you don't have to wave your flag out in front of everyone.
i don't yell "bush sucks" even though that's what i think and make it known to those i meet in real life.
Blizzard encourages players to report harrasment of any form. There aren't enough GMs to police every single chat message. They rely on player reporting.
And yes, using that type of language is against their terms of service.
So I don't believe your point is valid. If players aren't receiveing punishment it is not necessarily because Blizzard is actively deciding to let them slip by, it's because they don't have the resources to do it, and the players themselves are apathetic towards it.
This one chat message happened to have been caught. Do you think that this is the first advertisement for a GLBT group? This was a routine wrong place, wrong time, got caught language issue that has been blown out of control because so many people feel so strongly about the subject, one way or the other.
This is less about Blizzard's policy than it is about the media and militant people using this event to control their message and how it's portrayed by the media. How else are they going to get their message onto the front page of Slashdot?
-Adam
We were gay, yeah, but ask us outright and you wouldn't get a straight answer.
:-)
Well, obviously!!
P.S. - for the slow of humor that is in no way a slur against any group, and should be taken only as humor from the irony inherant in the wording of the comment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A lot of people miss the point. Thankfully, other slashdotters get it and have clarified the point in these comments. To me, it seems clear that Blizzard is trying to prevent people from fighting by preventing them from getting to know one another...but they're doing so inconsistently. "For your protection, we are not going to let you identify yourself as being gay." But not... "For your protection, we are not going to let you identify yourself as being xxxx." where xxxx is anything else that might make a person a target for harassment: Christian, Jewish, African-American, Muslim, French, female, etc. The guilds in question are not GLBT-exclusive. They don't prohibit heterosexuals from joining. They essentially have a code of conduct that they make clear in their recruitment efforts. Given the ubiquitous "ghey" and "fag" comments seen in every chat channel in the game, GLBT-Friendly translates to: "We do not tolerate harassment of GLBT people or slurs against them. If you cannot abide by this policy, don't even ask to join our guild. If this policy is acceptable, we welcome you." Why is that different from "We do not tolerate foul language in our guild channel, regardless of the built-in language filter."? It isn't about sex. It isn't about bigots. It isn't about religion. It's about Blizzard's vague and inconsistent application of their own policies in a manner that looks a heck of a lot like discrimination.
Why can't Blizzard give them their own server?
A very neat, meticulously-decorated, smartly-color-coordinated, sensitive and compassionate server?
It sounds like these players ought to give Second Life a go if they've never tried it and are looking for a massively multiplayer online world (and community) that accepts anyone, however they want to be.
Linden Lab deserve their money far more than Blizzard does - Linden have managed to cultivate fantastic diversity in their online population and to sucessfully police their community for harassment - of any sort - to other players. Their single most important community rule is to be polite to other players - and it works brilliantly.
If Linden can prevent players from abusing each other, Blizzard also ought to be able to do that. Instead Blizzard makes excuses because they can't be bothered. I'm guessing it's cheaper for them to make the GLBT guild go away than to police players to prevent abuse.
Of course Second Life isn't much of a Fantasy MMORPG (if that's what you were explicity trying to play), it's a virtual playground with diverse user-created content - although I hear there are a couple of pretty good games that players have created.
I'm generalizing, but on the whole when someone posted that they were looking for or starting a gay-friendly guild, it was either an honest post that led to a flame of harassment or a blatant troll that pretty much ended up the same way.
And any kind of discussion of "gay-friendly guilds" in public channels was more or less the same.
The sad fact is that when the word "gay" comes up on WoW, it is usually in the context of "That was so gay," or "What are you--gay?"
Rather than starting a gay-friendly guild, I think it is more effective to look for a so-called "mature" guild or to operate a guild with guidelines that encourage mature behavior.
The irony of the situation that Ms. Andrews seems to have encountered--that sexual language guidelines used to protect gay players are apparently being used only against those same players--may not be a reality. Just because she constantly hears the word "gay" being used in a derisive manner doesn't mean that Blizzard condones such use or even tolerates it. Players who use such language may in fact be getting the same warnings that Andrews received--there's no way for us to know this.
But the problem with this derisive usage is its utter prevalence in the general chat channels. I doubt that Blizzard has the human resources to handle the number of kids (and adults) who are using this kind of language. And, I suspect, they are probably reluctant to actually ban that many players. Hiring enough people to do the banning and the subsequent drop in subscriptions would probably cut into their bottom line too excessively, I'm sorry to say.
No, WoW just reveals latent gender-identity issues in our youth. Why else would almost all of America's male teenagers want to play a female night-elf?
So you are a typical teenage guy playing a game for hours on end, staring at your character on-screen the whole time.
What then is the confusion in said teenage male wanting to stare at a female night-elf for several hours instead of Fabio The Barbarian?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You seem to make an assumption that I'm on a given side. I've been beaten while marching for gay rights and have an extensive collection of lingere and corsets in my size. Check out my listed website for a hint of my hobbies. I'm also a large hairy male who is getting married to someone who isn't XX this fall.
I'm all for gays being in game -- I'd love to see a guild of gay Tauren or a guild of Amazon lesbian warriors. And the players would be a mix of men and women who are of all sexual orientation in both sides. Because, in my eyes, they may have made the right decision for the wrong reasons, but it is *still* the right decision: A guild is a group of like minded characters, not a group of like minded players.
Then you would probably get some really good roleplaying going on.
You assume that the gay players are roleplaying gay characters -- how is it good roleplaying if one character is harassing a straight character because his player is gay? Besides, what if a gay player creates a character in the GBLT guild who is intolerant of gays? You're confusing player groups and in-game character groups.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
So you don't complain about all the other players who use gay-bashing language, screaming "Faggot!" at anyone who pisses them off, and receive no punishment from Blizzard... But you claim inappropriateness when a GLBT group forms in an effort to counter this abuse?
If you report someone for that, they will get suspended, and if they are suspended three times, they get a perma ban.
I dunno but I;m a guy and I used to play a female elf rogue and cyber up other human and elf females who were of course also played by men, does this count?
Giving blacks equal rights could result in racial slurs. As such, we shall continue enslaving them to maintain the family values of the community.
Just consider the words you're putting together in a sentence - they want to keep a game called "World of Warcraft" "family safe". I know I like nothing better than a nice family outing to a battlefield on Sundays...
That said - In wonder if they would be allowed to have a "homophobe-unfriendly" guild, rather than a "GLBT-friendly" one?
Actually, I play WoW and I've seen and reporting people for calling other players 'faggots', 'niggers' and 'towel heads' (I have no clue why people use this). Most GMs will usually just blow you off for reporting this though, let alone the fact that the average wait time for a GM to respond is roughly 20 to 45 minutes. Lets not forget they censor their own official forums. Oh and last but not least, (at least on RP servers) you CANNOT talk to players on the other faction because they PURPOSELY scramble the chat (and yes, attempting to decode their filters is a bannable offense which leads to insane amounts of out of game communications and planning).
It's sad to say, but I'm pretty sure there's more close minded WoW players than gay/bi- players and it is Blizzard's job to cater to the masses.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Take your heterosexual once a week monogomous guilt sex and shove it.
Once a WEEK would be AWESOME!!!!
But on non-RP servers, I've yet to see anyone make any pretense of acting as their character, rather than as a player. People regularly discuss real-world news and sports in open channels, talk about their ages and jobs, and their timezones and local weather. When people talk about where they're from, the answer is much more likely to be "Cleveland" than "Shadowglen".
In light of that, talking about whether or not you're straight would be assumed to refer to you-the-player, just as if you had said something about whether or not you're left-handed. I don't see any good reason to ban one and not the other.
I'm sure someone will argue with me, but as I understand it, being gay basically means that you're sexually attracted to people of the same gender. The "GLBT community" is generally made up of people whose sexuality is nontraditional. Where you fit in that community has to do with your own sexual identity and the sort of sexual identity of the people you want to be sexually intimate with. You don't generally find straight people or asexual people being associated with the GLBT community.
That being said... sex (as an act) has no place in the game. Primary sexual traits (ie. male and female) are unavoidable, so it seems natural to have male and female characters. But you can be male or female without considering sexual orientation or sexual acts. You can't be a member of the GLBT without that. Otherwise, what does it mean to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender?
So, as I say, sex (as an act) has no place in the game. Therefore, anything relating to sex (as an act) should be excluded. That's not just GLBT, but ANY kind of sex-act-related topic. It would be just as inappropriate to discuss being straight or any kind of straight-sex related topics. There is no discrimination here.
I have to wonder if there aren't legalities in question here. The game is not intended to be a "dating service" and those types of services have certain legal protections that I would imagine Blizzard might be unwilling to look at. Imagine if some person's teenage son was "recruited" by such a group, I would imagine the lawsuits would focus on Blizzard... and that could get costly.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Gee, yeah, it's his fault if you can't /ignore him or behave like a freakin' adult who knows how to function in society if a kid calls you names, so you lose all self-control.
What a way to run a society.
Put this in your "Bible Gateway":/ 1853236&tid=209&tid=133
:)
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/16
From the article: "We meet under the docks in Booty Bay for a bible study every Tuesday night."
Of course, it IS from landover, but you didn't say it had to be a RELIABLE article
"Accept Jesus now and get a FREE PS2!!!11!!1"
Pardon my French, but WTF GLBT ?
It seems to me that it would be unwise to stick a tag next to (or under, or otherwise near) your name which affirmed your membership in a GLBT-friendly guild in a game which is permeated by GLBT-unfriendliness. Something like this will only generate more harassment for these people, not less as is the hope of the guild's creators. Blizzard isn't punishing anyone, they're trying to avoid the customer support nightmare that will ensue when all of the 14 year-olds start calling the "Rainbow Family" (or whatever the guild name will be) members all sorts of derogatory things, which will cause a slew of customer complaints.
If these people don't draw attention to their sexuality, they're far less likely to be insulted because of it. If they display the "Hey look at me I'm gay!" tag next to their name, they're going to be the target of much more abuse than if they did not display any such tag. Are you too intellectually lazy to realize that?
All of that aside, the manner in which one wishes to engage in sex as an act has no place in a game that itself has nothing to do with sex as an act.
The story here is, actually, that one's sexual orientation has no place in a game that has nothing to do with sex. "straight-friendly" and "gay-friendly" and "[insert any sexual orientation here]-friendly" guilds do not have a place in WoW. (I mean, not until the only way to create hybrid race characters is for night elves and gnomes to get freaky. Wouldn't that be a trip? I used to play on a MUD that had that feature.)
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Let's start by assuming that at least some of the audience of Blizzard games is young, immature, and homophobic. Sound reasonable so far? I can imagine a group of d00ds forming a sort of wolf pack, competing to see who can come up with the most hatefully homophobic comments, and slapping each other on the back each time they managed to say something even worse. Putting down the homosexual people makes them feel like they are strong and fighting for a cause. Sound believable? I know I can imagine it.
Then imagine a guild that openly advertises that all its members are homosexual.
GLBT Guild: "We want to form a guild about Gay/Lesbian acceptance, openly advertising to all the immature and homophobic internet kiddies about how gay we are."
Blizzard:"Uh..... you probably don't want to do that. You seriously, seriously don't want to do that. For your own good, please, please don't do this."
I heard their response not as "it's wrong to promote this" but more as "you guys are going to get reamed by the hordes of kiddies and doods, we can't stop them all, but they can't harass you if you don't advertise. So don't advertise.... please??"
If you do something that might cause a bunch of 13-year-old losers to sexually harass you, it's your own damn fault!
Oh and gays, no walking hand in hand, that might upset people. White and blacks kissing in public, no sorry, could lead to scenes.
What you suggest is a very slippery slope. You are giving in to the haters. How far are you prepared to give in? What race/religion/orientation can be told to keep quit before you will say enough? Or will you only cry out when it is you who is being told to behave.
No this stuff makes me sick. People like you in my eyes are worse then the open haters, I rather deal with ten neo-nazi's then with one person who says to not upset them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Blizzard made a really bad decission with this and I hope they get taken to court for this. I don't know the law in canada but in most civilised countries a move like this would be HIGHLY illegal. Imagine a bar banning a gay couple sitting hand in hand. I thought those days were behind us.
You put very clearly what this is really about, good job.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"And while that's an equal solution, asexual civilisation really is a little hard to take in a conventional fantasy RP contexts. At least unless you give me a little backstory."
Well, in the case of World of Warcraft, where no ones ages and everyone lives "forever" inspite of being killed many times... I'm not sure asexuality is any more out of whack than other mechanics. After all, WoW toons can't mate, either for pleasure or procreation, since there is not mechanism in game to allow for this.
Of course I don't play on an RP server, so I'm not sure how you RP immunity to perma-death or the killing the same bosses over and over again (I guess they have the same immunity from perma-death as everyone else).
I think from a content perspective the game is pretty sexless with the exception of some visuals (big boobies) and animations (the night elf dance). The Succubus slapping her ass and squealing is about as raunchy as it gets. Of course these few sexual elements are completely oriented to straight male players.
I don't have any problems with a GLBT guild, so long as they don't bring real life politics into the game. The same attitude I have towards any other group. I certainly wouldn't want right to lifers parading through Iron Forge declaring that abortion is murder. This doesn't have anything to do with my opinion on any of these matters, solely that they are issues and debates that shouldn't be imposed on players in general chat. I couldn't care less what anyone discusses in non-general chat though.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The very fact that people feel a need for a Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans(gender/sexual) friendly guild in World of Warcraft (just so the people confused with acronyms know what this is all about) says enough about blizzard.
It is not a very "mature" place resulting in a very intollerant atmosphere. Not just of GLBT people either. WoW is more or less anonymous and this allows people to behave in ways that in real life would earn them a few broken teeth. Rather then do something about this Blizzard instead asks there the victims of the online bullies to keep quiet and not attract attention.
Nice move. Good to see the last 100 years of liberation of the individual was all for nothing. It is still only acceptable to be a while male protestant and everyone else should just be quiet.
What next Blizzard? Women who play your game and are harrased should not tell people they are really female?
People who claim that Blizzard owns WoW and can therefore do what it wants are living in a fantasy world. A MMO is closer to a social club and the law requires clubs to be open to anyone regardless of sex/religion/race/color/sexual orientation. A club that rejects women because they claim that they want to protect the women from being harrassed by their male members would find very little sympathy from the law.
This woman (presumable lesbian) wanted to create a guild that was friendly to people of a different sexuality then heterosexual. From other comments here it is pretty clear that WoW as a whole is not very friendly to that group. She did NOT want to make a guild for GLBT people only! She did not exclude hetero's.
It is sad that this is still needed in 2006. Very sad in fact that even in a place like Amsterdam wich used to be a really open place it is again becoming necessary to make sure GLBT people can feel safe.
Rather then dealing with the haters among its subscribers Blizzard seems to prefer the "don't rock the boat" attitude that made Amsterdam into the city it is today. And paris france. Don't speak out, keep quiet and hopefully the haters will go away. They never do.
I hope canadian lawmakers are watching this and taking the legal steps to get Blizzard in court and punished to hell and back.
Just what is canadian law on this subject? I would imagine that the sport of hockey has a large proportion of homophobic fans, how is this dealt with? Can a gay player be part of a team or is he hooted of the ice?
Ofcourse the slashdot audience consisting mostly of white hetero male christians is not exactly best fit to understand why there would be a need for a special guild for people who do not fit the so-called norm.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The scene: Local church, Sunday morning. Sermon's over and everyone's milling around at the snacks table.
TheCarp: "Nice to meet you, Emily. I love your sweater!"
Emily: "Oh, this? Thanks. My husband gave it to me for Christmas."
TheCarp: "My wife would really like a sweater like that."
Emily: "Why don't you ask him where he got it? He's right over there." points
TheCarp: "Nice to meet you, Brad. Hey, that's a neat tie! I gotta get one of those for my son."
Brad: "Thank you! But you know, it's actually from my husband's wardrobe. Want me to ask him where he found it?"
TheCarp: "Oh... uh... don't you think you're going a bit too far with your openness?"
Brad: *walks away, disgusted*
Is anyone else reminded of those small towns where the football team rape some girl then the girl is pressured to drop her complaint under the grounds that, sure, rape's wrong and all but think of the harm it'd do to the community if these accusations got out? Until someone stands up to this nonsense, the football team carries on raping whoever they feel like as they know there's no consequence.
Setting up an LGBT guild, especially if you're open to non-LGBT members so long as they're not abusive, is entirely reasonable. You are in no way harassing anyone or discriminating over sexuality. To ban it simply because homophobes exist and might make even more of a nuisance of themselves is a truly disgusting example of putting profits ahead of ethics.
Guilds on non-rp servers are essentially just teams of players who have chosen to pool resources and work together.
In the case of WoW, they're mostly necessitated by the fact that most end-game contents requires groups of 20-40 players. So guilds exist to arrange which 40 players, of which mix of classes, with what equipment, supported by what crafting professions, will tackle given challenges. In larger cases, they sometimes have rigid organizational structures, ranks and rules for promotions, guild banks that lend money, and complex systems for determining in what order players get the equipment that these runs generate.
(If that sounds like a whole lot of no fun to you, we're agreed. I can't stand giant raids or giant raiding guilds. I play with a handful of real-world friends, and we only created a guild to stem the flood of people inviting us to join theirs.)
So they certainly exist in the absence of roleplaying, and they're just some combination of functional allies and friends.
Usually when people talk about wanting a gay-friendly guild, they simply want the ability to say racy things like "Sorry I can't play on Thursday, it's my boyfriend's birthday" without having to deal with 14-year-old-homophobia from their own guildmates.
Good for them.
So long as they apply it to everyone.
I'm quite gay-friendly.
Gay people have a tendency to bring their persecution down upon themselves.
"LOOK AT ME!!!!! I'M GAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Then they wonder why people think they are assholes.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Because when you're glued to a computer for 12 hours a day, and your character is running all over the place, which would you rather be staring at...a flat saggy male dwarven ass.....or a tight perky elven ass on some chick who has the rack to match?
Yeah, thats what I thought. I'd pick the dwarf too.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Blizzard is 100% correct in making this statement. Why? Anyone who joins the guild is likely to be harrassed by Blizzard for admitting they are gay. According to a post on the WOW forums, a fellow was punished by Blizzard for saying something to the effect of "I am gay" (he claimed this was just a true, matter-of-fact statement). The post was on the Blizzard forums, but has since been removed (maybe some internet wizard can find a cache of it)
I just had to delurk and suggest this: ask a civil rights entity to get involved and send a polite, scary letter to Blizzard. It worked for me once, thus:
Several years ago I played Ragnarok Online (don't bother now, it's 98% bots) and people naturally tested the boundaries of the language filters all the time. I noticed a small number of people using the word 'jew' as a pejorative.
I'm Jewish, so I would ignore them, block their speech, insult their masculinity, or whatever made me feel better. I don't want to minimize the impact or hurtfulness of racial slurs, but we've been dealing with this for a few millenia and I think I can speak for most Jews when I say we can deal with this kind of stupidity ourselves.
A few weeks later, any word containing "jew" was blacklisted, e.g. jew, Jewish, or jewel. In addition to irritating the general population by blocking some common names of dungeon loot, this angered me more than the previous idiots had. Imagine being unable to describe yourself with a term you use proudly - gay, Catholic, Australian, yiffy, AFOL, anything.
Now, International RO's greatest charm was that the GM had terrible English skills. I assumed she just didn't understand the nature of the word, so I emailed and explained with intense politeness that the word jew is not a dirty word, and that Jewish people - the ones who were affected by misuse of the word - would probably be happier if they were able to say "jew" in reference to themselves than if it were blocked as a protection. I got an auto-reply, which was more than most contacts to the GMs garnered, so I figured everything was resolved. A few months passed, and no change happened.
The next time, I posted publicly on Gravity's message board, again making sure to be as firmly polite as I could. I got a few responses from Jewish players who agreed with me. A GM replied again and said they'd look into it. A few more months of nothing.
Finally, I was fed up and emailed the Anti-Defamation League, the de facto Jewish civil rights advocate. I said, in essence, "These guys don't speak English very well, and maybe they don't understand, but..."
Two weeks later "jew" was unblocked. I'm certain ADL sent a letter to Gravity.
It's possible Blizzard just doesn't understand what they're doing, that their action hurts the GLBT community more than it protects it; if so, they need to be told they're not going about it the right way. It's also possible that they are trying to take the "easy way out" by stifling conversation about the topic; if that's true, they need to be told that this isn't acceptable. I'm sure any high-profile GLBT rights advocate would be happy to jump in.
I'm only half kidding.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
good cause it's a stupid idea anyway. how many "straight" guilds are there?
honestly, i wouldn't know cause i don't play WoW but if you ask me there doesn't need to be a "guild" for someones sexual preference, straight or gay...
fact: microsoft > linux
mod this shit up.
fact: microsoft > linux
couldn't they then just ban the word "gay" from being displayed? like in maplestory...
fact: microsoft > linux
I've read the article and all of the comments. Instead of outrage or anger, I'm just feeling hungry... Better go find myself a BLT to sate this.
It would be good as long as the harassment is ended with some pvp retribution.
As for gay users, I'm sure that it wouldn't be difficult to set up an out-game coordination system.
The only thing that stings is that Blizzard is using the same cop-out that has been used during the whole civil rights and liberation movement. "We can't let women in the workplace, they will get harrassed." On the otherhand, they do not ban gay players, nor does it even come up.
You're right, at the end of the day, it destroys the role playing to have a character targeted for a user's beliefs. It sucks that the targets are pre-emptively censored, rather than the aggressors, but in contrast to all the other problems in the world, this is fairly trivial.
postmodernsideshow.com
Yes, and we all know that everyone in MMORPGs constantly stay in character. MMORPGs are bastions of roleplaying, not at all hack and slash fests. Sheeeyiiitttt... I hope the parent was being sarcastic and I missed it.
It promotes seperation. Call it male-friendly, women-friendly, gay-friendly, black friendly, repulican-friendly,... You target a specfic group based on sex, colour, blelievs and it's totally irrelevant to the game. It's the popular way of doing "political-correct" discrimination. Just stating you'll accept others too doesn't really
change it's main purpose.
To be pedantic, it's discrimintory against players which are not as open-minded towards sexual orientation. WOW is a game. Stick to it's rules and don't try to push your unrelated agenda. This kind of guild is completely offtopic and just spoils gameplay. If you want to discriminate, create an orc-friendly guild or whatever.
I'm not naive to think that just because "WoW" is a fantasy game you can keep the RL out of it. However, anyone looking to find their soul mates on-line needs to really get off the computer and outside NOW!
Orc 1: Hi, I've really enjoyed our conversations together.
Orc 2: Yeah, I have too and I wanted you to know that I think I love you
Orc 1: Ohhh Grunk-Orgu I love you too!
Orc 2: Tinv-Jy, I am so happy! LOL!
Orc 1: Umm... So you are 18 right?
Orc 2: Well, I've been meaning to tell you... I'm 47 and I'm not a guy
Orc 1: Oh... lol I'm not a girl!
Orc 2: Umm... Well I'm not a girl either... I'm a horse
Orc 1: Oh... this could make things complicated... Well at least your not a democrat!
Orc 2: Umm... I'm actually not a horse either... I'm actually a broom.
Orc 2: and I support Ralph Nader
*Orc 1 disconnects *
Moral of the story: When RL intrudes this much into a fantasy realm and you haven't left yet -- Do yourself a favor and pick a new game... Otherwise the reason you started playing the game to begin with has already been lost...
Do you even bother to "edit" as an editor?
You just accepted another one of Roland's spam-blog stories where he just summarizes some totally inane and pointless story (from 2003, no less!). I thought Taco was adding nofollows to prevent Google from crawling submitted links?
Guess not. Guess you guys either don't (or can't) want to do your jobs or you're getting kickbacks from Piquepaille and others.
Those conservative bastards, with their personal attacks and stereotyping... :)
"Sometimes it takes more than an axe and a busload of strangers to work through your anger." -Rikk Estoban
The way I see it, Blizzard simply don't want to let sexual politics into the game - it isn't about homophobia. Keep your sex and violence separate kids and enjoy the game. You are not your character.
I remember a quote, "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation."
:P WoW is a TEEN game. And yes, plenty of teens do go around a fuck around, but really, younger kids are playing it and there has to be certain limits. If a guild is doing it in their own sandbox then fine (after all, I always had a policy in GW that if they want to do anything questionable then do it in the Guild Hall as opposed to the public areas :P ) but when it infringes in another person's bubble then it becomes a lot more suspect, I think.
What people do between themselves in a guild, or other private construct or situation is their own damn business. However, when it becomes public, the 'law' (in this case Blizzard) should be more concerned. We have to remember that the law isnt interested in changing things, promoting schools of thought, or ending discrimination, it is interested in keeping the social order (even though the social order these days isnt any less dscriminatory then before, its just veiled these days.)
Should these guilds exist? I think that if people want to make a guild for that, then go for it. You have a freedom to associate, and if thats who you want to associate with then go for it. On the other hand, people outside have their own rights too, and they shouldnt have to deal with things they dont want to. If they do not want lesbian/gay/trans people spamming their chat channel with recruitment messages, then they shouldnt have to deal with it.
The game really shouldn't be about sex. There are plenty of adult sites out there, I could point you in there direction if you wanted
Also, IANAL, but Im pretty sure there *are* legal issues by disallowing someone the right to freely associate.
Live with the fact that your politics - whether secular, religeous, sexual or a mixture - should not be imposed on every situation. One conversation I heard once was "What would Jesus do? Um, Jesus didn't drink coffee - but he'd probably go for the Latte."
Also, once Blizzard let overt politics into the game they paint a big target on their head for any political group to take cheap shots at when they are really aimed at some group they don't like who have formed in the game. Expect newspaper headlines about corruption of children by communists and pedaphiles.
I'm not a WoW player, but I still play War3 on a regular basis. I've run into a few individuals whose names are racial ephitets, and who regularly bash people who are gay, asian, black, etc.
I've reported several, mainly because I'm there to play the game not listen to some troll scream out about asian gamers, and never gotten a satifsactory response from blizzard.
But then, maybe that just applies to WoW as it is the big moneymaker right now.
you all just make a guild for FREAKS, that way, you, me, him, she, anyone can join & we all agree for some reason or another we are all might to be. Now STFU and go back to killing things. Thank you & have a nice day.:)
Is this "World of Warcraft", or "Walk on Eggshells"?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
I'd love to see a guild of gay Tauren or a guild of Amazon lesbian warriors.
I didn't know they had Amazons in the game...
You're confusing player groups and in-game character groups.
That's easy to do, as almost nobody roleplays, they just blather about Chuck Norris.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Amazons are usually a group of female human warriors with strictly roleplaying differences that make them distinct (like the Amazons of greek myth). That's why I picked them as an example. Some games and backgrounds (Marvel, for example) make them non-human or give them non-human attributes. I was referring to the "mechanics are the same, the roleplaying makes the difference" style Amazon -- a human female fighter who associates with only other human female fighters.
almost nobody roleplays
By that logic, Blizzard can just remove all stats and graphics and just become IRC-III. Just because some people are ignoring the game doesn't mean the people trying to foster the game should throw up their hands and give up.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
By that logic, Blizzard can just remove all stats and graphics and just become IRC-III. Just because some people are ignoring the game doesn't mean the people trying to foster the game should throw up their hands and give up.
What's that got to do with roleplaying? I was speaking more of the actual RP dialog, as opposed to the rampant Chuck Norris refs.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Actually, I play WoW and I've seen and reporting people for calling other players 'faggots', 'niggers' and 'towel heads' (I have no clue why people use this). Most GMs will usually just blow you off for reporting this though, let alone the fact that the average wait time for a GM to respond is roughly 20 to 45 minutes.
Yes, it may seem to you like they are blowing you off, but they do suspend the player for this if they say it. I was once in a guild where one member called another the "N" word over and over again in guild chat, and he got suspended for it. He caught a perma ban for telling another player he was going to "Jihad you like an islamist". Blizzard does ban these people, they just don't tell the person who reports it about the fact that they suspend/ban them
Oh and last but not least, (at least on RP servers) you CANNOT talk to players on the other faction because they PURPOSELY scramble the chat (and yes, attempting to decode their filters is a bannable offense which leads to insane amounts of out of game communications and planning).
Pretty much every player I've seen in BG's uses unscrambled chat to say things to one another. I do as well, and I've never been reported/suspended for it.
Imagine now, a few folks are offended by others saying 'gay' or 'fag' or a bunch of other things. Sometimes the comments are directed at PC's, other times not. Either way its on an individual basis, with no clear pointer to who to insult.
Now you create a big flag over people's heads saying 'Hey, this person is different' This person, and all people with this flag become a target to the l33t bastards that get off on bashing the different. Suddenly support is getting an assload of tells saying 'this PC is calling me a so and so' Much more so than if that flag wasnt hanging over their head. This adds up to more support costs. It is not about not being GLBT friendly or not. It is simply about support costs. The more easy it is to identify a target, the more that target is going to be hit. The more the target is hit, the more it is going to need attention.
Plain and simple. Not sure why anyone pointed that out before.
I wish I could kill you. You deserve to die.
What most majorities don't realise is that minorities need a place where they can be with others in their minority and not have to worry about the majority intruiding.
That's why a Black-only club or Latino-only club can exist but a White-only club cannot. White's have their own "club," it's called the United States.
I wish Blizzard would understand that this is also why a LBGT Guild is not discriminating against heterosexuals. You can't discriminate against hetereosexuals, there is not power structure in place to do such a thing with.
If someone is allowed to create gay only guild, then i should be allowed to create straight-only guild. And even white-only guild!
I've seen the same dude online, same nickname. His actual nick was something against Asians (which I'm not, but I've many Asian friends and I still find it offensive), which would merit an easy banning.
i mean, not a lot of people seem to see this as clearly,
but you understand wahts going on, don't you?
what morality is?
how dangerous it is?
i really hate blizzard now.
the policy against harrassment or offensive material is of course, the policy within which more people will be attracted to play WOW and become paying subscribers. that is its exact purpose, and it seems reasonable.
one woman brought up that if she complained that the large breasted female models were offensive and even damaging to all women, would blizzard address the subject? no. because of course, breasts sell, and that does more for the reason behind the harrassment policy than the enforcing of the actual harrassment policy.
meanwhile, the country's fear of homosexuality is a large part of what sold the country itself to the current regime. blizzard took its cue...
yeah, i'm really mad that blizzard is trying to cleanse their servers of homosexuality in order to maintain and attract a larger population of subscribers, and frames this policy under "protection against harrassment" as if that protection had an moral priority and not a financial priority. at least if they said "look, our financial policy is to clear the chat of any real world sensitive topics" then at least they are openly acting as the bastards they are.
but capitalism is built on lies and masks and mincing of words, isn't it?
i think the only right thing to do is stop playing, or at least, stop paying to play.
I have one character on a roleplaying server. I made her a female dwarf so she would stand out from the crowd. She joined a dwarf-only guild which has been a lot of fun, more than any of my other characters. In the past few weeks she has come to the realisation that she prefers girls to boys. She hasn't told anyone yet, but may do so when she's a bit drunk at a guild function and one of the dwarvish lads starts to flirt with her.
What I will find interesting (hopefully) is her search for other lesbian characters in a not very (it would appear) gay-friendly environment, much as the older gay men I know made their way in the 60s and 70s. Gay and lesbian people I know in RL frequently lament that the boy or girl they like is straight, and WoW I imagine will give her endeavours a higher degree of difficulty. If she meets the right person, perhaps she would get married. The RP will hopefully allow a straight boy like me to experience life from another viewpoint. Occasional discrimination I would expect to be part of the journey, but overzealous GMs would not be very realistic in RP.
I've never considered the sexual orientation of any of my non-RP characters, as they're just me with a different look.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
> But that being said, there is quite a few issues that will greatly offend many people. For me, it happens to be "same-sex marriage." Call me what you will, but my feelings on that one is religious.
I can't see a problem with that. The problem comes up when you recognize that "married" carries legal weight. You want "marriage" for heterosexuals only? No problem. But if you do you'd better damn well be ready to give up any and all legal implications of the term, so you can reserve it to religion. Nowehere in the United States can a military person enter into any kind of same-sex civil union that will confer any kind of legal recognition to their chosen partner. There are many places where a same-sex civil union partner can be excluded from medical decisions or hospital visitation rights because they aren't considered "family". Nobody in a same-sex civil union can file a federal tax return as "married".
In short, it's not the left-wingers that attached all the legal baggage to the term "marriage". You want to prevent redefinition of the term "marriage"? Then stop using it for legal language. Press your legislature to remove the legal status of your own heterosexual marriage and require everyone to get a civil union. Until and unless you do, your feelings on that one isn't religious, and if you continue to say it then you're simply a liar.
Virg