Ok so here’s the deal, this is not a troll post or trying to prove some stupid political point, but I have two kids (10 and 12 years old) that play WoW, Hearthstone, and Overwatch, and as a parent I am badly struggling to explain to them what the hell is going on. When all the lawsuits started, I was able to explain that stuff alright - I doubt my kids totally understand sexual harrassment at their ages but they generally understand the concept well enough that they get why they’re changing Jesse McCree in overwatch, and the various NPCs in WoW named after fired employees. But I could use help with:
Big Love Rocket! This is my son’s favorite mount (literally got it on his first kill when I’ve been farming it 15 years now with no luck…), so he’s pretty upset about this one changing. How do I explain what the hell this has to do with sexual harrassment lawsuits? I have no idea what to say.
Finkle Einhorn. They know this one mostly from Heathstone, but saw it on wowhead today. They have seen Ace Ventura so understand the reference to Ray Finkle / Lois Einhorn, but I really don’t know what to say about why this is being changed.
Turning women into fruit. No one has ever seen the actual paintings being changed but this meme is all over the internet so everyone has heard of it. Seriously what is this even about? I honestly don’t think anyone understand this one
Bros before Ho Ho Hos, Sack is Gigantique, Master Baiter, Case of Crabs, Odin’s “spear” reference quests, all the various Flirt lines being removed. Actually when they were asking about these I think I explained these well enough that they get why they’re being changed - but I really hope someone at Blizzard understands how immensely awkward these conversations are and how much I hate you for forcing me to explain these to a 10 year old. Like honestly please put some consideration into how much pain you are inflicting on parents by making changes versus how little difference it makes to just leave old obscure things in the game.
There’s a whole bunch more things that are being changed but everything else either wasn’t on their radar (yet?) or was pretty easy to explain why it should be removed (goblin unzipping pants emote… ugh)
Honestly this is a very valid point. Blizz is actually bringing attention to these things by making these changes. It’s a very sticky situation. Hell, I’m 35 years of age and I honestly never even noticed the Hodirs Spear quest name references despite having done that rep grind like 2 or 3 times until Blizz put them all neatly in a list saying what they were being renamed to. After seeing them in a list it became blatantly obvious.
Humor that flew in the early 2000s don’t fly anymore now. Granted, some of the things that were socially acceptable were kinda inappropriate. Just look at any reality show during that time period and observe what was allowed to fly back then compared to today.
We’re now being held to higher standards, but the issue is that when you look back at the past through a 2021 lens, it’s easy to reinterpret things to seem more malicious than it was originally intended. This is why we have a bunch of cases where people dig through old tweets/videos and try to start a witch-hunt and tear other people down based on things that were okay in 2005.
So I think the main issue here is whether it’s right to edit the past to reflect a modern narrative. I’d usually say no because I think that there is value in preserving history for what it is. Even if it is bad, or immoral.
However WoW isn’t like other art forms like movies/books/single players where it’s a one and done deal. It’s constantly being updated, patched, and maintained. So I think this is why it’s not that easy to come up with an answer for this situation.
The funniest thing about that one is someone made a forum post on that, then was actually laughing in the thread when Blizzard changed it in utter disbelief they were dumb enough to go forward with it with a lot of people in the thread saying “Slippery Slope Fallacy.”
Slippery Slope Fallacy quits being a fallacy when it’s only proven to be correct time and time again.
I disagree, we are not being held to higher standards. We are being held to radically different standards. Higher standards would be like “Okay, this is kind of bad but don’t get out of line with the behavior and there won’t be a problem.” Or expecting people who are LEGAL ADULTS to act like it and not act like 12 year olds despite being in their 20s and 30s. Now the standards are removing everything because idiots project their lack of self control on everyone else.
Higher standards would be things like we expect someone to consistently be above average and doing just passably gets you terminated. As in they expect exceptional output on a consistent basis.
This is just idiots getting hung up on really petty and frankly moronic things and exaggerating them like they’re the worst thing ever because they have absolutely zero frame of reference on anything and just go for exaggerated conclusions. Like the same idiots that call detention centers as “concentration camps” despite not even being the same sport let alone being in the same league.
You can tell your children that none of these changes have anything to do with the lawsuits, because they don’t have anything to do with them.
All of these changes are being made for the developers, because they’re not comfortable with those things being in the game. They started this process in August, where they started gathering data internally after removing many of the abusers that either forced these things to be added in the first place, or vetoed their removal in the past. To address the specifics though:
The Big Love Rocket is a male genitalia reference, which is kind of obvious when you look at the icon they used for it, which is phallic. That’s one of the most direct forms of game innuendo that exists in WoW.
If your children have been taught about trans people, then telling them that Finkle Einhorn was a reference to a scene that punched down on trans people and pushed the idea that they were disgusting/sickening, which is unacceptable in any context.
The paintings were, if the current rumour is to be believed, created by some of the abusers at the company and directly referenced some of their victims. While replacing it with a bowl of fruit is admittedly meme worthy, the intent behind the change is sincere and important.
Yeah sounds like you already know why these were being changed, really don’t know why you’re blaming Blizzard for ‘forcing’ you to explain these things to your children. You didn’t have to do that and could have easily said that the developers think these things are unacceptable until they were older and you were able to explain it more easily.
I especially love when people use the children as an argument, because kids nowadays are 1000% more understanding and compassionate than a lot of adults.
We’re now being held to higher different standards
Corrected it for you. Standards are not higher, the rules just keep getting rewritten. Lately though they change almost daily so there is always somebody unhappy who then needs to be appeased.
I was just about to reply to your other post about how there are people who comb through movies made in the 70s for anything they find offensive.
I just feel kinda off when people edit existing pieces of art to reflect their views instead of creating new forms of art. Even if it’s for an arguably good cause… is this really the path we want to tread on? Idk I’m not 100% sure how I feel about it yet.
And yeah, I mean I feel like it’s good to have a baseline respect for any community out there. But we’re seeing cases where people start to pile on and morally chastise others if they don’t fully subscribe to their views. So this is where I find people stretching out definitions of words and try to win in any way they possibly can.
The art in question isn’t being changed. No one, to look at the Finkle Einhorn reference specifically, is going back and demanding that Ace Ventura be altered to have that scene removed. No one is calling for Ace Ventura to be banned.
But clearly the folks at Blizzard have decided that glorifying that specific scene in the movie, within their own video game, is not acceptable, and honestly I agree. It’s not acceptable. That reference should have never made it into the game in the first place. Just because it did, doesn’t mean it should stay there forever either.
Bad employees past and bad employees present is the answer. The days of being dedicated to your job are long gone. Excuses and blame game are what’s in style.
Lol that’s the job of HR to make the company worth working for. you know the ones that they fired for being grossly and incompetent. It is not the developers job to do any of that stuff their job is to produce content that I’m paying for and so far they are failing miserably at that.
Personally I don’t think we should just because the amount of things people can learn observing behaviors and history as an objective is far too valuable to give up. It also gives you a point to look back upon and notice visible change you can be proud of.
It’s like that old “If I could go back in time and change this mistake I made I would”, but why would you? That error clearly influenced you to becoming the person you are today and you can look back on that mistake you made and be happy you don’t repeat it similarly. You notice your own personal growth as a person based on events and can take pride in how different those things have made you. Society is much of the same way. Nobody looks favorably upon the slavery period of the United States, but we look at it as a “Look at how far we’ve come” sort of thing.
Like even though I view it as a very dark stain on my personal life that I bought into the social justice warrior, critical race theory, socialism is king BS I wouldn’t change that part about myself. Having to engage with the sheer lunacy that takes place in those fields of thought are what ultimately influenced me to deviate from them and find a much better path through life as I noticed the increasing amount of logical inconsistencies piling up as I struggled to maintain very conflicting beliefs that other people around me didn’t notice glaring flaws within. It was probably the biggest turning point of my life and even if I hate that it happened, I can’t fight with the results of it.
I said before in the past that it’s remarkable how in the 90s we were arguing with the Religious Right trying to censor everything. Now we’re dealing with the Far Left wanting to do the same thing for different reasons but similar principles.
Those who feel it necessary to view their own morality as the quintessential way to think are a blight upon the world. Or rather, it’s one thing to think your beliefs are the best but keeping them to yourself. It becomes a problem when you try to forcibly impose them upon other people and this behavior needs to be curbed.
What’s more likely to happen though is it’ll rubberband. People will get sick of this and lash out defiantly out of spite. Then in the future when we have genuinely problematic things and people complain it won’t be taken seriously because “Didn’t you learn this lesson 10 years ago?” In all honesty though, I think when this inevitably runs its course and dies out, these very people are going to act like the parents post-Columbine who campaigned for banning video games and music because “THIS WAS THE CAUSE!” and pretend they were on the polar opposite side. My aunt being one of these people who now says that she never made any of those claims despite confiscating my gameboy cartridges at her house because “Pokemon is encouraging virtual dogfighting” and she thinks I’ve forgotten that.
Nobody threatens to kill people in real life on wow, and if they do that’s a crime, sadly objectifying a woman for example is often a lot more subtle and not as obvious, but it can still be very damaging.
