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Male Blood Elves Get Pumped Up
Kotaku reports that the Male Blood Elves, from the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Burning Crusade, have been made more masculine by their Blizzard overseers. Which totally makes sense, because when I think elves I think paragons of masculinity. From the article: "You changed it because your constituency is a bunch of capslock-riding asshats who are threatened by bishy player characters. The reason Blood Elves were Horde in the first place is because everyone was whining about all the Horde races being ugly juggernauts. The point of Blood Elves was to inject some swish into a very physically intimidating set of races. They're not exactly chunky now, and I do not begrudge a game company making prerelease aesthetic changes, but their reasons for doing so are pathetic. " Before and after photos are available in their post.
you've taken characters that were previously more like sensitive, artsy types and made them look like hulk hogan in drag. bravo.
So a bunch of whiny pansies are bitching about Blizzard giving in to a bunch of whiny pansies? Will that make them change it back?
"Bishy"?
Are we reading the rantings of some crazed slash-fiction writer? This has to be the most mind-numbingly stupid objection to a change that I've ever heard.
Canthros
There is a presumption that the BEs were being added because players wanted a less physically intimidating race or a less ugly race or both. I disagree. I think they are being added because they were an obvious choice from the existing Warcraft storyline, and the contrast of elves with the magic-adiction-fueled willingness to do anything to restore their place in the world is a fairly decent intro for a new horde race.
The look is rather arbitrary, but I'm overall pleased that a BE warrior won't look like a string-bean in a trash-can. The armor graphics would look pretty silly on the old model.
That's the sound of the WoW playerbase not giving a damn and picking whatever race gives them the best bonuses for their class. While I love Kotaku, this honestly strikes me as one of the whiniest posts I've ever read on there. Boo hoo, Blizzard "nerfed" the character model by making it buffer. While I think its high time Blizzard enable characters to alter more of their physical appearance similar to City of Heroes, I have to wonder...is this really worth posting on the front page of Slashdot?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Some of us were not blocked with a wide-open office connection. Can someone rehost these slanderous pictures in a websense-friendly domain? Thanks a million!
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
I thought they were trying to make them look more masculine. The hair on the new one looks a lot more feminine than the old one to me!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
That's an interesting euphemism for "customers".
I read Usenet for the articles.
I hate the way WoW only has one body shape per race/gender. All of the males are over muscled. I suppose that's fine for a warrior but why should a mage have biceps like Ahnold? The same goes for rogues, you can't make a slender male thief.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
THOSE BASTARDS!
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
They are no worse then the Night Elves. Personally, I do not find it that big of a deal. I personally liked the fact that the Horde were "uglier" or more "brutish." I always thought it meant we had more players who cared less about character aesthetics and more about substance. Of course, I do not play anymore, so the attitude might have changed greatly. Personally, I liked playing what amounted to a bull walking upright...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I don't know, but one of the things I'd like to see improved in WoW is the "everyone has the same body type" thing, maybe sliders for how thin/muscular/fat/tall/short you want someone (with limits, of course, so that humans are always taller than dwarves, for example).
I just think it would help set characters apart from everyone else, so you could play (for example) a fat priest like friar tuck on Robin Hood, or a thin tall albino guy like Elric of Melniboné. No idea how hard would it be to implement that, though. I'm still rather new to the game, probably would be problems scaling the armor that are actual models (instead of just different textures) when they're on the characters.
This is a non-story. And it's rather insulting that it made it ANYWHERE let alone a major news/blog/whatever site. Who is the source? Oh, that's right, some random "offended" person at http://gaygamer.net/index.php?id=1632 who is complaining that the team behind a currently-in-production game made an art decision.
I so expected something along the lines of "The bloodelves are now all male homosexuals!" when I read that headline..
Especially since TFA has its source at gaygamer.com... O_o
I feel that the female blood elves wear far too much clothing. This expresses an extreme imbalance in the WoW gameplay. It is completely unfair that male night elves may go topless, while female night elves cannot. This imbalance in gameplay must be addressed, or else i will cancel my subscription.
Sincerely,
Whiny Blizzard Customer
Cut. Print. Gay.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
So I guess Bruce Lee was queer then, because he's skinny, right? How retarded. If they put the male elf in a ball gown, then fine, change it to some pants or whatever. If they feel like any arm diameter beneath 25" scale is too effeminate, I'm sure there are plenty of UFC fighters who are smaller than that, who happily contest otherwise, on a regular basis, for money, in the ring.
stuff |
Every male already plays as a Human female, anyway...
I thought that Star Wars Galaxies had the best customization I've seen. WoW is a bunch of the same looking people wandering around wearing similar clothing.
SWG had a much more diverse feel.
My mom says I'm cool.
(WTF? - that page makes my browser slow to a crawl, almost as bad as myspace.)
Method of processing duck feet
It just goes to show how superheroically drawn the characters are drawn when the "femme" version is more muscular than most men in the real world. I know I wish I had pecs and biceps like that... Couple more before/after pics here.
I REALLY wish wow had better options for customizing the build/appearance of the players. I get so tired of seeing the same old faces and same old bodies. But I guess there's just no money in it.
So, that is why the expansion was delayed until 2007! Just to fix up the male Blood Elves. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"Let me tell ya something...brother...the Hulkster doesn't appreciate his likeness being used without permission. Blizzard, I'm calling you out right now. You hear me? You and me, in the ring, Smackdown..."
You're missing the point, they're bloody american elves!
Take it easy on the burgers, boys, willya?
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
right down to the beer-gut. Hell yeah... that's customization.
Wow. I can totally see these new Blood Elves spending all their time in the woods, lifting trees, spotting each other, getting into the shower together after a long workout and having hot, sweaty se--um, yeah.
You gotta feel sorry for the Blood Elf women though; they can look, they can dream, but they know in their hearts that it can never be. To make things worse, they don't have the nice human gentlemen callers to fall back on; that ship sailed more than 4 years ago.
Procedural Generation.
They no longer have any excuse.
The problem with your idea is that it makes sense.
Oh dear God...
Has SlashDot actually run out of newsworthy things to post?! The only thing less newsworthy than this pointless article is worrying about the weather on the Moon.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Hmmm, "Lovecraft" a new MMORPG where you build a custom avatar (male, female, andro, or herma), dress it from our selection of fashionable apparel...
...and then blow your first d100 roll and have your new character run screaming into the night to be devoured in a pit of Dark Young.
Thanks for playing!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
OMG!
Male fantasy character stupidly over-muscled, film at 11.
-or-
Trivial aspect of cult game tweaked, hardcore fans up in arms, continue paying monthly fees.
From the "who gives a shit?" department.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Forget those guys. I'd rather be playing hello kitty island adventures.
February 12, 2007
As more ripped-looking male elves have not tilted the highly female-favored Night Elf and Blood Elf populations, Blizzard is now announcing a visual change to the female elf models and textures, adding a perceived 60 pounds of body weight.
Players have quickly labeled this the "sexy-nerf."
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I think I speak for everyone when I say "GET A LIFE!"
your constituency is a bunch of capslock-riding asshats
I laughed out loud. I really did.
Valve announced today that the wood texture on the AK-47 in Counterstrike will be made slightly darker.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
Getting upset over this is just absurd.
They wil most likely be casters, which means they will be wearing ball gowns consistantly.
And the porportions are based on fantasy, not reality. So withing this contect, a 25" are diameter is girly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Way to be a child Blizzard. Just because you guys are not comfortable with your own sexuality, doesn't mean you have to compensate for it in your video game. Act your age!
that allowde me to get a glimpse of the stats Blizzard tracks.
75% of all hard core gamers play horde
this means there is a huge skill imbalance between the two factions.
They determined that more casual gamers chose allience for the looks. Hence the addition of a 'pretty' race.
I would love to analoze all of Blizards data. I bet there is a lot of information just waiting to get out.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Kotaku reader gets girlfriend!!!
One-eyed python rumoured to have got "pumped up"!!!
More news at eleven!!!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So? Who cares? I'm making a female bloodelf paladin anyway.
There were male blood elves?
Company ignores customer complaint: "They're not listening to their player base!"
Company responds to and rectifies customer complaint: "They don't have spines! They're caving to the masses!"
To match the "pumped-up" right arms of all the teenage male Kotaku reading WoW players?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Look at the Dark Elves in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. My character is like a twig. He has less muscle mass then me in real life and that is saying something.
Hard to believe that I'm the only Slashdot reader who saw a series of films called "The Lord of the Rings".
Legolas the Elf was probably the #1 badass in those films.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
the Blood Elves' frailty was used (in part) to justify why Blood Elf characters could not play as Warriors (See WoWWiki for further details). Now that they're being "pumped up" to look stronger, maybe Blizzard revert their class-restrictions and make it possible for players to roll Blood Elf Warriors again..
Best regards, A.C.
"They just look like regular humans now."
If I looked like that I'd see a fuckin doctor, pronto.
You. Insensitive. Clods!
... and then they built the supercollider.
The male humans look far too much like roided up linebackers.
What's really going to piss off a lot of Warcraft fans is that the new elves look nothing like the old elves, and the Blood Elves aren't new to World of Warcraft. In Warcraft III, they did, in fact, look like pansies.
But they were totally badass anyway. I can't believe people are so insecure about their badassery that they were concerned with the muscles of their online avatars.
Man, it's pathetic that Blizzard bowed to all the players concerned about the sizes of their e-peens. In fact, I'm surprised the change was demanded at all given the popularity of Japanese games and their effeminate male characters.
And regardless, looking at that screenshot I feel the original version had some character and certainly was elf-like. The new one looks like a generic human with long ears. This just goes to show why so many games are the same old generic crap.
The single largest group of players is lower middle aged women(seriously)
Women who have been married to someone who has become less like the adonis gods they were in college.
Clearly they are the group the has the time and motive to complain about this...
Or maybe it was a request by some of the moms of the dev team.
Mom: Deary, your father has been less then.....functional.
Developer: MOM!
Mom: I was just wondering if you could muscle up those blodd elves?
Developer: Sure, but never mention dads lack of...functionality to me again....ever.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, this sounds like about the maturity level one would expect from a 15-year-old.
Also, the phrase "capslock-riding asshats" is great. I'm going to use that one at every possible opportunity today.
0 1 - just my two bits
is a way to check your in game post from gmail.
Man, I'm dying to know if I sold that stuff on auction!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
this is why I never sign on to slashdot in public when there is the chance that someone might look over my shoulder.
ôó
That thinks this constant stream of blizzard/wow news is getting a little annoying on slashdot???
Granted, I've played and occaisionally play wow today, but when at work and when on slashdot, I'm not really that interested in that game. Maybe I'm just old or something.
All the worlds a stage, and I'm the guy running the lights...
The real reason behind this probably has little to do with player demands. Wow has always been plagued with horrible clipping and armor fitting problems. Many of the issues are still around from release. Most likely Blizz realized geting the male armor models to fit the extremely skinny blood elves correctly was going to be difficult. Male BE are now almost identical to male Night elves. I actually support the change, however, because Warcraft elves (before and after their change to blood elves) were thinner then normal humans but never the impossibly thin elves of some fantasy worlds. The new elves look a lot more like the elves in warcraft 3 imo.
The guy is obviously a roaring fag who is looking for a cause to rant about; how his whiney lil subset of the larger gay community (which includes me :) needs to feel oppressed by everything.
:)
Bishy? I mean.. jeez. That's not a word I would use in an article. He could have at least used the real Japanese word and not his abbreviation
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A Doctor a day, keeps the 'Apple' away!!
Eclipse PDE and Me
Who cares?
I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
And you will find out that when you're facing off (or possibly facing over) a gnome, a codpiece might have been a very good idea after all.
Weebles the gnome.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Was I the only one that thought: Aha! They now made elves really gay characters! Or is that just me and my totally sick and disturbed mind?
Splut.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Everyone who is bitching about this article making the front page needs to look at the sheer volume of replies to it. Obviously all this Blizz/WOW squabbling is something that people want to read about. After all isn't that the point of slashdot? To, through a community of readers, display the articles that are, for lack of a better word, "hot" at the moment.
Looks like the gamer term "twink" (c.f. the urban dictionary, definition #1)and the porn term "twink" (same link, def #2) are set to converge :)
The tacit homophobia behind this change is sad, but the irony of the change making the characters possibly even more gay-coded is delicious. Possibly even fabulous.
From the article: WoW Overwhelmed By Homophobes, Make Blood Elves Less "Feminine" So, how is making male characters look more male than female is somehow homophobic?