Thank you for removing oversexualized card art

Community Discussion
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The old Secret Keeper art and its fans have exemplified the puerile echochamber that discourages people from joining gaming communities. Whatever the reason for the change, thank you, Blizzard, for getting rid of it, and keep up the good work on that front.

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I feel like new Windfury Harpy is all like, “Yes, I look good, I work out, but right now I’m not here to flirt, I’m here to rip your face off. Catch me Saturday night and maybe I’ll feel differently.”

I like it. :wink:

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So as I understand it, you’re A-Ok with Blizzard kowtowing to a country with hideous human rights and freedoms violations just to earn more money, by covering up “offensive” human females?

Saying that “over sexualized” art is not to your liking is one thing. But trying to force your beliefs on others is quite another. Many people enjoy sexualized art. Many real life women enjoy “dressing sexy” and have fun with it.

Yes, body-shaming by holding up these images or people is flat out wrong. But saying people shouldn’t dress as they choose or draw as they choose is also flat out wrong. If they’re not harming anyone, let them be. It’s the same as forcing religious beliefs or political beliefs (either way!) down someone’s throat. Their body, they can dress as they please.

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What a sjw nothing to see here.

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Are you kidding me? This is not because of China! They already have a censored client! Stop spreading this misinformation! Or are you a Blizzard shill trying to misdirect the anger of the community?

I oppose censorship here, but I actually prefer the new Secretkeeper. Unironically. The old one has a weird angle. The new one has correct proportions. And is sexier.

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…source on that one? That seems like some wild hand-waving to me, and is making a statement I’ve never heard before. What censored client?

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Your “source” is a non-Blizzard employee reddit poster? Really?

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Ehm, NetEase have clients for WC3 and HotS, from what I know. HS doesn’t seem like a stretch.

And you are just screaming against the Chinese People’s Republic for no reason…

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Look up the Gizmodo article from this week, it details how the new rules work. Many companies, Blizzard included, are bending over backward trying to make them work. Diablo Immortal for example has a lot of enemies that don’t bleed (skeletons, golems, spiders etc). This is purely to make it work for china and their huge mobile market.

A bloodless Diablo game is a ridiculous concept, but they’ve already shown willingness to go that far. Covering up women and bloody cards in Hearthstone is almost certain to be the same.

And if you’re still doubting, why would they bother cleaning up a minor amount of blood spatter on Eviscerate and Bite if it wasn’t for China? People don’t generally get riled over PG-13 violence and it certainly isn’t going to get feminists angry?

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I’d like to know what evidence you have that Windfury Harpy really wanted to dress like she did on the old card. I admit I’m just speculating, but I’d bet that if it were up to her, she’d wear something a bit more practical for combat, and she only wore that ridiculous outfit because the game devs were into that stuff.

I mean, it’d be different if she was going out dancing, but that’s not what’s going on here.

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I was obviously referring to real life women being able to dress as they please.

As for Windfury Harpy, yes, an artist drew a sexy harpy image. Again, sexualized art which he enjoys and/or knows his audience will enjoy. Same with Shirtless Illidan images and whatnot.

Creating sexy art isn’t wrong. Forcing beliefs based on art or real life images is sure. If someone told their overweight daughter “they should be ashamed and why can’t they look like Windfury Harpy!??!” then that person is a terrible parent. But forcing censorship because you don’t like those sexy images is also wrong.

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Pretty sure they still can!

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Unless they’re in a country where they’re “censored”? That’s the whole point

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Overall I’m good with the changes. The only card art I will really, truly miss is Deadly Shot. The new Deadly Shot is markedly less deadly, and I thought the old one was sufficiently silhouetted as to make it not that graphic. Plus I like Tauren, and that one was taking it like a champ.

The new harpy is better, although her pose seems too calm/relaxed to me. The old one seemed perpetually enraged, what with all of her feathers sticking up and her claws in the air. Maybe it’s because of my time in the canyons of Durotar, but I think of harpys as being constantly angry at me.

I also dig the new Secret Keeper, except that the fire has gone out of her eyes. She is clearly keeping the secret to healthy hair though. Mayhaps the golden version will return the fire to her eyes.

I do think Headcrack was a missed opportunity to make it a boomerang… i.e. something that would return to you if thrown correctly…

And then there’s Jaina… I was honestly always a bit surprised that she launched that way, so I’m all for giving her an undershirt.

At the end of the day, I’d say the changes—taken as a whole—are a step in the right direction, so, good on ya.
(Off topic, but I’m also really enjoying the Dalaran Heist.)
/thumbs up

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If it had to change, a boomerang would have been brilliant!

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I think 80% of people will prefer the new Secret Keeper artwork as the old one was kind of an odd angle/weird design. Some of the others… ehhh… I’d say are a lot worse (especially Deadly Shot/Eviscerate)

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So they changed eviscerate and bite due to blood, but betrayal has a knife sticking out of someone’s back with blood and it was unchanged. Logic!

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It is. They removed also blood from evisecrate(?). Blood is not allowed in chinas video games or it must be recolored. Guess betrayal is next. Jaina was censored not too long ago too.

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Yes it is because of China. They wouldn’t have touched the impaled tauren, the blood from the druid cat card or the skull in another card. ALL of those things are banned in China and have nothing to do with oversexualization, but you’re free to be wrong if you want.

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So let me get this straight. Card art is changed and according to some people here this is in order to stay within the moral boundaries of a large market. (I don’t know whether this is rumor or fact; whether true or not is not relevant to the point I want to make).

So what if that is indeed true? How terrible would that be?

I just looked up Harpy on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy). At the very top of the page is an old picture of the mythological harpy that this minion is based on. She wears no clothes and the feathers cover only the lower body, so we see a full uncensored upper female torso. No big deal at all in the period and culture that this picture stems from.

Blizzard decided, for the original card art of Windfury Harpy, to give her a bikini top so that she is not bare-breasted. Why? Well, it just happened to be the case that one of the largest markets for Hearthstone, the USA, is rather uptight about showing bare breasts. Imagine what would have happened if Blizzard would have decided to include a bare breasted Windfury Harpy in the game back in 2008. It would have received “adult” ratings from reviewers. Parents would not have allowed their children to play it. On the website where you can download it, it would have had to display a mandatory warning about images that might be considered harmful for chldren. Most of the US market would effectively have been lost to Blizzard. So they censored the art. Not recently, but back in 2013 already. The only recent change is that they censored it some more.

Why are so many people so upset about the current change? Why are they calling it “caving to the Chinese government”? And why are those same people not upset about the earlier censorship, and not equally adamant about Blizzard “caving to the USA rules”?
Are they not really bothering to look into the full history and all facts? Are they just parrotting what others write? Or are they (gasp!) actually more hypocrite then they care to admit, holding their own moral standards to be “right” and those of other societies to be “wrong”?