Facing fears allows a person to grow and even learn to overcome them, what better place for that then a virtual environment where there is no actual danger treating everyone like coddled babies helps nobody in the end.
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Thats not many lol.
Yes it is.
That is literally higher than the population of the United States.
Even if it wasn’t a common phobia it wouldn’t matter. If Blizzard wants to add this filter because one of their devs has a kid who is afraid of spiders then they can do just that because it’s their game. No need to justify its existence past that.
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No im pretty sure the filter lets arachnophobes enjoy the game more, more so with the upcoming spider land, spider raid, spider weapons, spider pets, spider merchandise, spider hit television series and spider movie tie in.
This wonky “survival of the fittest” people have conjured up while playing a vidya game accomplishes… nothing
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Yes some people have such an intense fear of spiders that just the image of them can cause panic attacks.
And Blizzard thought that since they got a number of requests for this type of graphical change, and that it actually wouldn’t take that much effort, they decided to put this optional option in the game.
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Yeah, I honestly don’t get the mentality behind it. Telling people they can just “suck it up” and “face their fears” doesn’t work; those people who irrationally fear spiders aren’t gonna pay the box price + $15/mo to literally suffer constantly. They’d just quit.
I also think people in general just aren’t aware how prevalent arachnophobia actually is in the population. It’s… Last time I checked was around 4-6% of the population? As far as phobias go, it’s definitely one of the most common phobias.
This would be akin to me forcing somebody with a fear of heights/falling to ride on a ski lift. Sure, I might be able to strap them to the lift chair and make them ride it up, but they’re gonna hate me for it and hate their life for that minute ride up. Then you have to get them down the hill, lol. Better off just not pushing the issue with people who already are probably pretty good at avoidance tactics for things that trigger the immediate response in them. Avoidance isn’t always bad.
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Yeah thats what a lot are missing, this is a game we’re paying for to enjoy and be entertained, not to process our issues.
Less charitably, they do want a lot less people playing.
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Laughs in Australian
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A 1:1 comparison (using WoW’s latest speculated numbers and the highest estimated percentage of arachnophobes of 6%) it’s ~420k.
But we know it could be as low as 3%. So it might only be 210k.
But we also know the spiders featured prominently could have run off some arachnophobes or caused them to never try the game, being that it’s a 'uge problem.
So it could be even less than that.
Plus some of them could be in Classic or (god forbid) Wrath. So a retail filter won’t help them.
Making that number even smaller.
Isn’t it odd that the spider (Funnel-Web spiders) with the venom most deadly to primates evolved on an island that never had primates other than humans? 
Those suckers are built to kill us for some reason.
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I don’t have a phobia but they have glasses the turn everything in to little dogs can’t they do the same with crabs? Also glasses that turn everyone into bunnies would be great especially in bg PvP. Evil bunnies attacking from all sides.
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I mean being Australian Im surround by other Australians and I get it
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Dude, it’s a filter in a damn video game.
I’m not splitting hairs over this anymore, it’s ridiculous This thread even exists.
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I’m just breaking down the attempt to amplify the problem by repeating that it’s “more than the population of America” by putting things in perspective a bit.
In reality it’s probably less people affected by this (in this game) than the pop of most individual cities picked at random. Wouldn’t be surprised if there are more people in my town of ~20k than there are who could benefit from this filter in this game.
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they arent afraid of spiders in a half shell LOL
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So it seems. So it seems.
I love it!!!
Since they are opening that bag of worms, I have a fear of dragons,fix my phobia next. I want the entire dragonflight expansion cancelled.
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Does filter (Arachnophobia) works on bugs as well? Beetle family…? roaches etc?