gshade is really, really fun
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Hmm… I’ve been hearing about Blizzard trying to rehabilitate their “frat boy culture” image by changing or removing WoW’s ingame depictions of women as scantily clad sex objects. (E.g. renaming the “Twin Consorts” and adding more clothes on a painting of a woman in outland)
Putting aside for now that the thing they’re in trouble for is how they treat Real Life women, not ingame women, I have to ask: are these changes in and of themselves positive ones?
Because while yes, there are huge problems with how Blizzard writes their female characters I don’t think having a lot of sexily dressed characters and immature sex jokes are biggest among those problems. If I did think that then I’d be a hypocrite for playing Final Fantasy 14 (hah, I got it back on topic eventually!)
Some here have said that the reason FF14 gets away with it is because it has almost as many sexy, scantily clad male characters as it does female, and just as many sexy glamour options for any gender. I’d agree that this is part of it, but I can’t help but feel there’s more to it than that.
What do you all think?
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FF14 does have anime parts to it and is a Japanese game with that culture. However that only a small part of it I think as well. Like sexy glam for both genders.
FF14 doesn’t try hide behind let make it feel safe. There some dialog that out right dismiss women at nothing but tools. But that dialog are from dirt bags that we usually beat up later. FF14 is all propose a fantasy game where people TALK and ACT differently to well real life.
Let take Ishgard people. Their culture is pretty raciest to anyone not from Ishgard. There a reason for that. Read their history and you’ll find out. But later on thanks to WoL and friends, they start to be less racist. FF14 devs don’t shy away from topics like that.
Yes there a line not to be cross but unlike the WoW devs whom think it thin line. It really not.
Make a villain that people hate. Be that racist or crazy or both. A villain is someone we should hate. We the player shouldn’t be the villain (sometimes… Good story telling may have the hero mislead at times but never evil).
Back to the sexiness of npcs, namely women. I as a male will admit I think Minfilia outfit quite sexy but I also think it unneeded. I don’t understand her top beside it just being a anime trope.
As Nyumbani said. There are males npc and players whom are half naked as well. I however like wearing cloths/armor on my characters even when playing as a female.
while i don’t necessarily think WoW ends up being any lesser for the removal of these innuendos, you kind of touched on the biggest reason it feels hollow: WoW has always had issues portraying female characters with any respect and with the big reveal of their gross culture it makes these changes seem less like adding inclusivity to the game and more like trying to retroactively scrub away the grime without actually understanding what makes WoW’s writing gross
some of it makes sense and is fine - i don’t really see any issues with adding sexualized male npcs to karazhan or black temple or changing a few weird paintings. but quest text innuendos alone aren’t really what’s offensive about WoW’s writing.
the lack of female characters with any serious agency and blizzard’s historical tendency to either shove major female characters to the sidelines or beat them half to death with the villain bat coupled with the game’s generally juvenile sense of humor concerning sexual topics just kind of compound into the big question: what’s the point of removing some of this stuff when we’ve been given absolutely no reason to believe they’ll address the genuine issues going forward? their writers live in a bubble and have confessed to disregarding criticism. i know the devs going through and removing this stuff probably have nothing to do with the writers, but it diminishes their efforts to sanitize the game and makes it all feel a bit out of touch
it’s why FFXIV can get away with a lot of their dirty jokes and sexual themes - the game can actually handle the topics it tackles and has a plethora of female characters with agency, and that’s without even mentioning the general equality in terms of skimpy transmog options between characters. everyone gets their ugly subligar and that’s amazing
sorry in advance for how long-winded this got. goodness gracious
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everyone gets to have a fat 2butt and i think that’s neat
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didn’t they nerf the 2butt
They’re hollow and performative. It’s the equivalent-- 'm no longer a fan of South Park, I’m really not, but they used to sometimes say useful things–it’s the equivalent of Eric Cartman putting on a nice sweater because he thinks it’s what people want from him.
It’s a weirdly frenetic but ultimately empty series of gestures, especially when the focus should be the actual women being hurt.
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it’s worth noting that while I originally thought they were weird, hollow gestures from Blizzard-as-a-whole, it’s actually apparently the employees that Blizzard has been abusing that are making these changes.
the women, the people of color, the queer employees, etc. are the ones that are doing stuff like changing voice lines, changing in-game art, adding new NPCs, renaming others, etc.
I don’t know how to feel about that, but at the very least it’s not Blizzard’s lip service.
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yeah this is fair. it’s also not like they’re advertising the changes; it’s mostly been revealed by dataminers going through and looking for changes, so i don’t necessarily doubt the sincerity so much as the effect
Yeah I definitely don’t think it means much, but it also doesn’t hurt the game in any way so I don’t care either way. The stuff they’re changing seems pointless, but that also means it’s not a negative thing.
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I had no idea this was the context of the changes! Is there somewhere I can read up about this and inform myself?
Just twitter tbh. you can see some of the devs lamenting the fact that they’re trying to do something, ANYTHING, but people think it’s Blizzard-as-a-whole trying to save face and stuff.
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yeah honestly everything that they are changing is like, within the devs’ power
everything that needs to be changed needs to come from above them which, uh, doesn’t seem very likely. it’s a very waist-deep in the hell but still gotta work kinda scenario
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They are going a bit wacky with the changes. Removing the sexual jokes I can maybe see. But the male belf joke which is literally just a reference to “Don’t cha”…what?
good for people who actually cared about the multiple tiny sexiest and homophobic stuff littered throughout the game
probably doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things but i guess small victories for the quiet people in the back? it’s not like the top brass are going to be crying tears of approval over any of these changes
makes the game more bearable to work on, is my thoughts on it
although i am going to miss ymiron swearing at you in multiple bleeps per second when you click him too much
back on track: looks at the skysteel tool crafting and gathering list for the final stage aight i don’t wanna be an omnicrafter any more
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Shadowlands is in less than two months, and the value of high level items that require skysung tools is super low due to the content lull. As a fellow omni, honestly, you don’t need to hurt yourself like that unless you feel like it. The effort won’t pay itself back from the profits.
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lmao too late i’m already 6/8 on the final skysteel crafting tools and halfway through the gathering tool gathering gobbiegoo
Did they delete the Dark Iron joke making fun of all the Night elf civilians who were burned alive by the Horde?
To be blunt, they’re worrying about the drapes while the house is burning down. While sure, these changes are coming from the devs being impacted by the behavior at Blizzard, and I’m not silly enough to believe it takes a lot of actual effort to implement them…changing a portrait or voice lines while the game has fundamentally become a moldering heap constantly bleeding out its active player base…
It’s akin to dusting the interior of a building that has been condemned. Sure, you’re making the space look/feel nice, but it doesn’t change the fact the space is at risk of not being there for too much longer.
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