This idea that the game should reflect company values is absurd. This is a fictional creation of a fantasy world for people to experience things that are explicitly NOT a reflection of reality. This idea from the Blizzard team that they are making changes in game to better reflect their real world values is insane. The title of the game is World of WARcraft. Do the devs support wanton murder, slaughter of innocents, warfare, robbery, etc etc etc? Of course they don’t, it would be idiotic to assume they did just because they are in the fantasy world. All of these things are in the game, and often performed by the player character. To sanitize the game of racism, sexism, evil, murder, theft, etc is to make the game setting boring, the characters bland, the villains laughable (Worse than they already are if you can imagine it, imagine if Garrosh was not a xenophobic racist megolomaniac? He wouldn’t even have been a villain)
I don’t believe the changes made have some great impact on current gameplay, but they are a reflection of what we can expect moving forward. A bland, boring, Disneyfied fictional setting. The NPCS will be everybody loving cookie cutter copies of each other, the villains will be carebears who snuck a cookie from the cookie jar.
I want racial tensions between horde and alliance, even between races within the factions. It creates conflict, and is thus interesting. I could go on, but I think I have made my point.
The developers should feel comfortable working on the game, just as much as they should be comfortable working at the workplace. If you’re not comfortable doing something, it’s going to be a struggle engaging in that thing.
So let’s look at WoW as a great example.
If you’re not comfortable with the content in the game. If seeing certain pieces of content is a constant reminder of something that happened to you, then you’re not going to want to play. Not playing the game can lead to you not being fully aware of the problems with the game, which can lead to developers being ‘out of touch’ with the community.
If you’re not comfortable with the content in the game. If seeing certain pieces of content is a constant reminder of something that happened to you, then you’re not going to put your best foot forward when designing the game. You’re going to want to get your work done as fast as possible, which means taking shortcuts, which could potentially lead to bugs remaining in the game that could have been fixed, or major issues being overlooked. That’s bad news all around.
When someone is comfortable working on a product they will put their best foot forward when making things for that product and that’s what we want right? We want WoW to be better?
So ask yourself, is it really such a horrible price to pay, to lose a few emotes that you probably never used anyway, to lose some joke/flirt lines that you never heard often enough to care about, to not see some references and art that you never cared for until they were changed, all so the developers can be comfortable making the game better for us? I think it is. If it makes WoW a better product overall as we move forward with Shadowlands content, I’m all for it.
So you believe that NPCS in game should be incapable of racism? You want 1 dimensional characters? Also why do you believe war is ok in the game but racism is not? Am I to understand that you believe that racism is worse than murder and genocide? I’m glad though that you agree that the game should not reflect company values, else we would need to remove the “war” part.
it makes you wonder what kind of lives they have - world pandemic raging, millions people are dying, countries putting themselves into so much debt they will never pay it off and risk default on, they are probably killing themselves with what they eat and all they are concerned with is changes to a game that don’t affect their enjoyment of it.
It won’t, it will make it a worse product. Sanitization does not make for better fictional settings. I’m sorry if some thing in game triggers someone, but not everything is for everyone. Why would you apply to work at a company and a game if you aren’t comfortable working on said product? These things have been in the game since its inception. If you aren’t capable of working on the product the customers want, you shouldn’t have applied to work for the company that makes said product. There are plenty of devs out there, find ones who want to work on World of Warcraft, not ones who want alter and change the spirit of the game.
You actually buy this? It had nothing to do with GW. Also clearly you didn’t read my post, if they remove past racism, there will be no future racism. I like that all these fantasy races don’t get along, and I want that to continue going forward.
Ah yes the old “nobody can complain about anything because somewhere somebody has it worse” By this very argument, why are the devs complaining about some /fart emotes when people are literally dying in the world?
I just don’t understand why someone would buy a game knowing the history has always been about racism. The Orcs hated humans, and humans enslaved orcs. It’s the entire premise of the entire game. But yeah people buy it then demand it be changed. It’s weird. It’s like joining a basketball game then demanding not to have a basket and instead of a court, it should be in water.
It’s cute how you think one word removes xenophobia in the game.
They’re doing their job and working and trying to fix a lawsuit issue and revamping a toxic environment their employees dealt with for years. You’re just whining about stuff that doesn’t affect your actual gameplay.
