Jeremy Feasel (lead dev) on the removal of /spit

Community General Discussion
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Feasel has been with Blizzard since 2010. Here’s his recent tweet:

First, a huge thanks to the organizers of tomorrow’s movement. Have been informed that water, signage, etc. are taken care of. Great work.
Second, there’s work to do. Cleaning house, but also cleaning up toxicity in WoW. Looking towards anti-toxicity tech as a critical feature.

Sounds like another auto feature about to be implemented.

Wonder if they will remove /flirt, /kiss, /lick, /rude, and all those other emotes that are apparently the cause of toxicity in game?

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/spit

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That was his personal opinion, not something they are actually looking to do as a company. He even says so in a followup tweet.

edit:

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I remember there was a big firestorm about the last emote they removed but for the life of me I can’t remember which one it was. Are emotes huge in the RP community? I really just don’t use them much. I don’t even think I’ve heard all the /jokes from the allied races yet either :grimacing:

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#freebritany

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Are you honestly telling us that the lead dev publicly stating:

“Second, there’s work to do. Cleaning house, but also cleaning up toxicity in WoW. Looking towards anti-toxicity tech as a critical feature.”

is just a personal opinion?

He just confirmed they’re looking into a new feature and it has to do with cleaning up the toxicity in WoW–whatever that means.

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I am not, but he did.

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hope it has something to do with players’ behavior in-game, especially things like the vote kick feature. the players were the ones that caused me to stop running group content years ago, not the gameplay

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how did you get from that to “this is why /spit is being removed”

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That was my hope too. Sadly, he clarified that it was just something he will advocate them doing, not necessarily something that will actually happen.

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Yes, the lead Dev for the WoW team believes this is the correct response to their rampant workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. He’s now on a mission to clean up toxicity in WoW. It’s clearly a direct response to the removal of /spit.

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If that were the case, he wouldn’t have needed the follow-up which came because he was bombarded with comments (for and against) the initial tweet.

I mean think how you want, but your premise is shaky to begin with because spit is a) only removed in BCC and b) was done so because people were spitting on boosted characters and not some SJW agenda like you think.

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yeah i guess i just meant if this is something they end up doing, i hope that’s a part of it. they’ve let this kind of thing go for way too long in this game

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Oh yeah for sure. I hope they do, he just burst my bubble when he clarified. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Anyone else not able to overlook how much Feasel sounds like Weasel?

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Nah you guys were having too much fun spitting at each other

No fun allowed

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Who said it’s some SJW agenda? I said he’s on a mission to cleanse WoW of toxicity. He stated this in his tweet.

He is the lead dev for the WoW team. He made a tweet about removing toxicity from WoW around the same time the PTR went live for the next TBC patch. The PTR removed /spit.

He talks about some new tech. Most likely some form of automation which will definitely get abused. We all know Blizzard can’t afford actual GMs.

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If that is not what you meant by this, then I apologize.

That said, it’s not about toxicity per se. I mean it is in that it is probably considered toxic to spit on boosted players, but it is not a “aaaaaah remove all toxic emotes”. IF the BCC people start, for example, farting on boosted characters (<- that is the key) then that will probably be removed too. The easiest solution is for the BCC players to just not use emotes on characters solely because they were boosted. This was never a problem in pvp (for example), it’s just this specific scenario.

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Honestly, I don’t care if they removed it or not, but as someone did have several people use the /spit on me while riding around on my mount I got from the Dark Portal Pass, I just sat there and did /laugh at them each time they did a spit at me. I just didn’t care if people hated me for buying it it was something I wanted to buy for myself so I did it.

I am sure the reason why was because of the hate fans got for buying the Dark Portal Pass when it was released. I mean Asmongold went around looking for players who had the mount on TBC Classic and made fun of them on stream which I am sure help build some big of that toxic environment of people using that emote on others.

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I mentioned those emotes because those can be deemed inappropriate, just as /spit is now suddenly toxic after 15+ years. Feasel together with his WoW team made a statement about removing these “references that are not appropriate”:

While we turn to our team for guidance in our internal work to protect marginalized groups and hold accountable those who threaten them, we also want to take immediate action in Azeroth to remove references that are not appropriate for our world. This work has been underway, and you will be seeing several such changes to both Shadowlands and WoW Classic in the coming days.

And his tweet adds to it. They’re working on some new tech or automation feature that will filter out “toxicity”. They’re actively working to remove offensive references and they don’t need to be referencing Afrasaibi. The removal of the /spit emote is the start because players will obviously find another emote to use against boosties.

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