It really makes no sense.
These words are not inherently negative, and are a part of history and a staple of many fantasy worlds.
This kind of thing is just feeding the slippery slopers frothing at the mouth over all the recent changes.
Offensive stuff? Sure, toss it. We don’t need 500 jokes and innuendos about men’s dangly bits.
Consort and Damsel are not offensive unless you’re reaching so far that Stretch Armstrong would be jealous.
Maybe get an outside consultant or something to put some checks and balances on this stuff before you go so far that people start to question what’s really going on.
It’s not that the two words are offensive. The Twin Consorts also had their lore changed, and are not the Thunder King’s consorts anymore. They are likely changing the entire character of Maximillian of Northshire. I wonder what the new dialogue is going to be.
While individually this is a small and somewhat insignificant change it does not bode well for WoW down the road. If they want this game to be rated G all it does is open the door for any other company to make a M rated MMO and a large portion of WoW will jump to it. Sure the carebears and other ‘woke’ people might stay here but a lot more will not. I guess Blizzard is so scared right now they do not know what else to do but if they can not tell that making changes like this en-mass will lead to the failure of the game I do not know what else can be said.
I mean it’s nice when I consider this game will be more friendly to my kids, but the ESRB doesn’t dictate they should be playing anyway. (Nor does experience in the social environment but that’s not really the point)
I don’t know what they’re going for. I guess just assume the lowest common denominator adult has the mentality of a child.
Then why the double standard? Is the word “consort” somehow different between genders? Legitimately curious as to why a dragon having male consorts somehow makes it okay.
In my eyes, if female consorts aren’t allowed, then male consorts shouldn’t be either. Keep it consistent or the censorship is then inherently sexist, just in the opposite direction.
Ion said that the Twin Consorts specifically were created by Lei Shen to serve him. They were his sex slaves in the old lore. Alexstrasza’s consorts were never slaves. Even though Lei Shen is a villain, Blizzard doesn’t want that in the game, it seems.
All of this. I’m the kind of progressive leftie everyone loves to hate around here and even I am fed up with this puritanical nonsense. It’s just ridiculous at this point and I really want to know where it’s gonna stop.
WoW devs, if you share some of my progressive and inclusive views, awesome! I’m glad, but put those views into practice going forward with new expansions. Leave the established game, which it sounds like many of you weren’t here for or weren’t part of making, alone, (outside of egregious content, of course, but almost none of these changes would qualify as egregious by almost anyone’s scale).
I don’t necessarily agree with the removals, but I don’t think this is a blanket ban on those words/concepts from the game in their entirety. They are being changed purely based on their context.
The “twin consorts” are being renamed because they don’t want Lei Shen to be polygamous.
The “damsels” are being renamed because one of them is actually a man, and they don’t want to participate in a “effeminate man is basically a woman” joke.
That doesn’t mean consorts and damsels are inherently anathema to WoW; some of the mobs in Karazhan have been renamed to versions of consorts, for instance.
They removed Damsel, wait, why wasn’t I aware that damsel was used in WoW, lol.
Honestly though, this is going into a crappy era and I’ve seen shows years ago iirc parodying such actions and moves done by companies etc and it’s actually here. Makes me wish I was back in the 90’s.
At least back then it was small fry stuff yet people for the most part never acted like these things affected them - most of the times even laughed at it. Knew how to laugh at stuff, not let it hurt them, and laughed at themselves too.
Look at the beating ‘comedy’ is taking with legends in the comedy world speaking out about it.