I’m leveling some alts to make use of the xp buff, and for the first time in a while I’m replaying Horde quests in Hillsbrad Foothills. I was looking forward to this. I always thought the Orcus, Dumass and Johnny Awesome quests were some of the funniest in the game.
So I get to the sludge fields and do the first few quests for Warden Stillwater, looking forward to the ones where he asks me to go look for Johnny Awesome. It’s hilarious, because Warden Stillwater mistakes Johnny for a girl. Right?
Nope. The quest he gives me is called ‘A Lost Lad’ while the quest text is roughly the same (as far as I remember).
I mean c’mon Blizz. Were you worried about hurting Johnny’s feelings? Have you met him? Does he seem insecure?
Now imagine a world where Blizzard is in charge of Netflix. All the movies would have to be edited so no one in them ever says or does anything that could hurt the feelings of anyone, including the fictional characters in the movie…
Do I sound upset? No, I’m just rolling my eyes and I thought I was doing it in fairly lighthearted way. Some characters are more memorable than others, and a lot of people remember Johnny Awesome.
I think maybe you just skimmed over the post and made assumptions about my feelings the way Blizzard made assumptions about Johnny’s feelings? (and yes, I know it wasn’t about what poor Johnny thinks, but thanks to you I remembered how easily people miss irony in a post).
Yes, I’ve met him. I’ve always thought Johnny Awesome was very insecure and trying to cover it with his behavior. Dumas, though, he’s got no insecurity at all. He’s got not much of anything going on in his head, to be honest.
Yes, people remember Johnny because of Johnny, not because of a bad throw away joke that aged poorly.
Johnny doesn’t have feelings. He’s pixels on a screen. You know who does have feelings? The people that get marginalized by that sort of bad joke. The people who are in the middle of a fight for their very existence all over the world because the politically right see them as an easy target to advance their cause. A people who might want to play a video game and not be subjected to the same tired old childish joke.
Have a little empathy, grow up a little and let that type of humor die already.
Sure, the 1950s; the Republican Joseph McCarthy held up a empty piece of paper that, he claimed, had a list. This started two decades of massive, restrictive conformity where everyone was afraid of being accused and we got tv shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Comic books could no longer have a robin or bucky (the committee had questions about their homosexual relationship). Your family had better go to a church or be questioned why.
Yeah, I can imagine a world where this might happen.
Yeah, it is horrible that all the NPCs call my character “they / them” even though they have known my character for over a year and worked closely with him and know that he is a male. This is the definition of “misgendering”.
What NPCs? I’m always champion, maw walker, commander or the like.
No. No it’s not.
Singular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs and themselves (or themself), is an epicene (gender-neutral ) third-person pronoun.
This is a pretty common gender-neutral pronoun and it can be used in the singular. In fact, “they” was voted as the Word of the Year in 2015.
‘They’ , for instance, is a third-person pronoun that is gender neutral. Other gender-neutral pronouns include ‘them’, ‘this person’, ‘everyone’, ‘Ze’, or ‘Hir’.
They/them pronouns are gender-neutral. They are not explicitly or exclusively nonbinary.
In English, we already use singular “they” all the time when the gender of a person is unknown.
This is why I always laugh when people be like “MaKe A TV ShOw BlIzZARD!” The reason other IP’s such as Cyberpunk and League of Legends can make successful TV series is they’re able to create a narrative that isn’t afraid to step on some toes. Cyberpunk reached a massive resurgence thanks to their anime which lets just say wasn’t anywhere near kid friendly.
Arcane struck a perfect balance for LoL. Featuring child murder, terrorism, torture, drugs, and other touchy subjects. Blizzard and their narrative team are only capable of making wannabe Pixar movies these days, they’ve completely lost the balance they had on quality mature story telling. Johnny Awesome being censored just shows how out of touch new Blizzard is. Based off what I played on the beta they’re only going more hardcore with this new tone, making the Dragon Isles make me feel like I just arrived in WoW Disneyland. “Oooooh, angry dragons and evil elementalists! Soooooo scary, soooo intense.”
Can’t offend anybody anymore. The story probably goes through tons of “quality checks” where anything deemed slightly inappropriate is removed. Afterall they dug so deep and found the female form itself offensive turning it to fruit. So Johnny’s situation doesn’t surprise me at this point.
I am all for blue humor and satire and down right insults just for laughs. It is not about humor dying. But these things have their place. The owner of the property has the right to decide what they want expressed by their work.
I have no problems with the jokes themselves. But if Blizzard wants to soften its edges to be more inclusive and less offensive towards marginalized people - I am OK with that. It is their product, and I did not buy this game for the comedy writing.
Especially in a Rated T Game. If they made a joke like that in an R Rated Comedy or Rated M Game, it would probably be one of the tamer things.
Chill bro, you taking it a bit far don’t you think? I would highly doubt someone was actually emotionally hurt by a World of Warcraft quest from 13 years ago.
