OP thinks twink as a term was used to describe hyper-optimized underleveled characters as an insult. It was not. It was a term they self-adopted and was used back in the Ultima/Everquest/Asheron’s Call generation that WoW’s devs were drawn from. And even back in 2004 it was very well known where twink came from. The comparison thrived as the biggest bracket for twinking was the Level 10 to 19 bracket.
The entire post is some rambling nonsense where the OP seems to believe that WoW’s inclusive elements are the result of either individuals or an LLM AI seeing the word ‘twink’ and being ‘confused’ about the WoW demo and thus ‘mistakenly’ catering to us. They believe that WoW has historically been desperate for ideas and use as evidence some coincidental similarities between Destiny and WoW.
This is very funny because Blizzard being desperate for popular ideas in WoW is a known issue – look up Josh Sawyer’s interview for a position at Blizzard – but the cited examples are terrible and unconvincing.
OP does not appear to be intentionally bigoted but also for some reason has decided that the Worldsoul Saga is aimed exclusively at gay people, which is… a lot to unpack, and I’m not paid for this.
It started out about twinks and then became a bizarre stream of consciousness rant. OP, Blizzard knows what twinks are in and out of the game and don’t care. Neither did those of us playing them.
I mean op could just be off their rocker thinking typing a lot = more of a point. There is no way to prove one way or the other.
Tbh I never really said it was ai, someone mentioned it and I agreed its possible with how poorly layed out the entire post is.
And him not even attempting to correlate everything hints at it not being his idea.
Its like when someone copies someones homework. They can’t explain what they wrote and why since all they did was copy it. Idk. Its a theory that makes sense with the lack of thought throughout all their posts.
1 - You honestly don’t believe the player base back then would call each other twinks out of frustration in battlegrounds as an insult? Because i specifically remember worse being said. I’m not encouraging the behavior, but I’m also not trying to rewrite history here. Both can be true.
2 - Regardless to if you think its rambling nonsense or not you do at least recognize that they were struggling for thematic choices which was the point of even bringing up the comparisons, you’ll notice I never claimed to have any fact or even sources outside of mentioning a population graph in a reply, otherwise it all is speculation of hypothetical situations that maybe could have taken place to start a discussion.
3 - I’m not bigoted, or even unintentionally bigoted, I think exclusion of any kind in any way is harmful to the world around you and makes living in it worse than it needs to be. I also think people with a history of being attacked online, are too eager to write people off when a genuine opinion is trying to be communicated. Stacking the deck in the opposite direction isn’t equality.
I don’t hate either expansion, some bits are hard to stomach and in my opinion could have been done better, but that just means the journey isn’t for me.
Twink (disgusted descriptor/scapegoat) rather than Twink (insult) was the overwhelming majority of what I saw.
I believe the majority of why you’re being attacked is that your post was entirely unclear and you’ve mostly done a poor job of communicating.
You can decide the current direction isn’t your cup of tea, very reasonably, but people are going to find it suspect when the best case interpretation of your post is that you think it’s targeted specifically and primarily at queer people. It’d be untrue to say that WoW hasn’t tried to do more inclusion, but it’s by no means the focus.
I think in layman’s terms, twink used to be regarded as a bad slur against the LGBTQA for the past I don’t know…I want to say 20 or so years. But since then it seems to have been reclaimed.
I think the OP is saying that twink again used to be a slur for a long time and is confused as to why it’s being so openly again. And honestly, I’m more or less surprised myself. Cause again twink was on the same level as the f word. Maybe not as bad sounding but…eh. What do I know.
Nah the post isn’t really about it. They’re trying to use the phrase and its unique place in WoW/MMO history as like, a tangential framing device for the discussion they’re trying to have but it’s not actually key to that discussion.
But like, it’s also not a good discussion, even translated.
Wait, what? Like I’m not saying you’re lying, but I am astonished if that’s true. I and the majority of my friends are queer. I live like 10 minutes from my city’s gay village. I never knew “twink” was a slur, and definitely not on that level. Like, at worst, I’ve heard older men use it sliiiightly contemptuously, but that’s more out of low key envy because no one buys them drinks anymore XD
Contemptuous as the lower bound sounds right to my experience. Most of the time I’ve seen it used in really hurtful ways it’s with the kind of cruel sneer that could turn perfectly neutral words to venom.
Twink-twunk relationships are actually the meta. Have you not watched Heartstopper? Or that one with the English prince? Or Young Avengers? Or Merlin? Or like any of the things where a skinny dark haired boy falls in love with a taller, fairer, broader guy? XD
okay, well, that feeds into my philosophy that words are, to some degree, inherently neutral, and can always used for good or ill, which is why we have the futility of the euphemism treadmill