Shadowlands - An Update on Pelagos' Pronouns

[arandomuser]

Watch out everyone. We're about to see an influx of the gaming community's worst hot takes with totally respectful and mature responses.

lol yeah

[Sorshen]

Baine, without a doubt.

Oof, hitting home with that one!

[arandomuser]

gender changing has been in the game for a while
there is multiple toys that transform you into chars of different sexes
and this potion in wod https://wow.gamepedia.com/Transmorph...%20Tincture%5D.

but the gamer youtube network is gonna be SUPER salty, lol first to do a video on it will probably be bellular

[Cavox]

Yet, here you are.

The same way I would enjoy watching monkeys throwing poop at each other at a ZOO.

[AcidicSyn]

Neat. I mean, this does have some notable lore ramifications for the Shadowlands and helps underline that your manifestation within is about your self-visualization, which also explains why some souls manifest in, say, Ardenweald in animal form, especially if they have strong connections with that animal. I don't know it's worth an announcement, but I'm also not overly bothered by Pelagos and I've definitely seen stranger things in Warcraft lore than a female-to-male trans person who manifests as male in the afterlife.

Oooo that actually brings up a question. Do we die when we go to the Shadowlands? Or are we going there as our still-living selves?

If its the former, will we need to go through another character creator for our shadowlands selves? I mean I know we won't, but wouldn't it be cool if Bastion people (bastion covenant pickers I mean) were able to pick their bastion forms like Pelagos is?

[DargorDraconis]

they actually had a left handed alliance soldier on the legion loading screen.

while mine was a joke is a background unnamed npc soldier wich appear only in a loading screen. Not a character

[Raetary]

oh for christ sakes... can we have ANYTHING....ANY..FUCKING..THING.. without political correctness or "inclusiveness" rammed into it?

Show us where the evil evil pronouns have hurt you.

- - - Updated - - -

Oooo that actually brings up a question. Do we die when we go to the Shadowlands? Or are we going there as our still-living selves?

We go in alive.

[Nachturnal]

The same way I would enjoy watching monkeys throwing poop at each other at a ZOO.

While slinging poo yourself just to be a part of the show.

[Eapoe]

Ngl, if people start forgiving Blizzard because of lame small "look at us we care" things like this even after all the shit they've pulled over the last couple of years then they seriously need to set their priorities straight.

And the people in that thread who are like "thanks blizzard <3" need to stop being so naive because they literally got played. But tbh the reason they are so naive is because they are most likely afraid of opening their front door without getting offended.

You do realize that Blizzard did just happen to make a character that people datamined and found out was gay because of dialogue. Blizzard didn’t put a giant glowing arrow over their head or anything.
After finding out about them, Blizzard then decided to go a step further with the character and use a bit of lore they are setting up to do it. The announcement simply was to handle any confusion or potential upset for why it’s been changed.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

while mine was a joke is a background unnamed npc soldier wich appear only in a loading screen. Not a character

True I suppose but they still got alot more exposure then this npc will as you saw constantly while playing legion.

[AcidicSyn]

Oh boy, 1 character out of every 1000 is lgbtq. The sky is falling. What they should do in actuality is make it at least 1 in 10 that are lgbtq, because thats much closer to real life.

Maybe 1 in 10 are lgbtq, and just 1 in 100 of those are/were in an environment where they were able to or allowed to come out, also like real life.

[StillMcfuu]

They couldn't have just figured out a way to do this in-game? Establish the lore that your Kyrian form isn't linked to your old form. Establish the character, and then eventually find out they were something else in their previous life, so we can have an "ah ha" moment.

This cheapens the character, and worse yet makes them look equal parts incompetent at their jobs of storytelling.

[Xilurm]

You do realize that Blizzard did just happen to make a character that people datamined and found out was gay because of dialogue. Blizzard didn’t put a giant glowing arrow over their head or anything.
After finding out about them, Blizzard then decided to go a step further with the character and use a bit of lore they are setting up to do it. The announcement simply was to handle any confusion or potential upset for why it’s been changed.

Yeah, in order to seem nice lol. I bet they're extra cautious after the Hong Kong thing.

[Eapoe]

They couldn't have just figured out a way to do this in-game? Establish the lore that your Kyrian form isn't linked to your old form. Establish the character, and then eventually find out they were something else in their previous life, so we can have an "ah ha" moment.

This cheapens the character, and worse yet makes them look equal parts incompetent at their jobs of storytelling.

Fun fact, it IS in the game and is discoverable by players without an announcement. People would have no idea who he is except for all the stuff about a gay character being talked about on YouTube and forums.

[exochaft]

Nice, but what is the point of this? The character is using a male model. So everyone is gonna call him "him" anyway. If they left it as "they" it would bring more attention to this character. Not everyone is gonna read the quest text anyway.

That's kind of the point in general when it comes to this entire situation: what is the point? Everything comes down to intent, and the blue post kind of sheds light on the intent.

Aspirants being able to change their forms compared to their previous life? Cool, it's a fantasy game, I can dig that. However, the blue post response indicates either there's a disconnect between developers/PR staff, or this actually is just pandering (especially considering their recent history of blue posting). The blue post actually undermines its own argument, by projecting 2020 human political standards on a fantasy race by entertaining what would be "respectful" to the NPC. That screams the intent is to virtual signal, as Blizz is admitting such a projection where in the fantasy realm it'd be not only pointless but stupid. If this was not the intent, Blizz could've just had faith in their storytelling and kept their mouths shut instead of making an issue out of a supposedly non-issue if this character's situation makes logical sense and is important to the story.

Fantasy races changing genders is nothing new, and I haven't seen any backlash about those things because of several factors. First of all, the gender swapping is either common or a defining characteristic of the race while being important to the story. If Aspirants can literally choose any physical form they want, I'd expect to see more than one 'token' example, even if changing from your previous form isn't common. Furthermore, there's more to a physical form than just gender... so there better be some radically changed/augmented forms, maybe not even humanoid.

My gut suspicion is that this will likely be a 'token' example, so the only question left is why. Is this gender swap important to the story? Does this have some unforeseen consequences? While I can't say for certain at this point, you can color me skeptical as the current 'popular' trend in media is just to virtue signal, and this could easily just be someone using gender-swapping character to say how woke they are. Keyword here is using: it's less (or nothing) about the individual character/person, more (or everything) about the cause, aka the individual is being used as a tool, not a person.

That's probably what drives me and many others nuts, as it just doesn't get vocalized well: the way such politically woke topics tend to get handled is that the cause is above everything, at the expense of the individuals. The individuals will get weaponized while being balkanized into one stereotype that's just insulting and dehumanizing... and what's worse is that people cheer on this type of behavior as 'stunning and brave!' It's so painfully obvious when people are all about the cause and not the individuals, especially when they champion the causes at the expense of the individuals who are supposed to be benefiting from the cause. THAT is why many people, myself included, are tired of this political virtue signaling.

[Depakote]

oh for christ sakes... can we have ANYTHING....ANY..FUCKING..THING.. without political correctness or "inclusiveness" rammed into it?

no.
10/chars

[Mehrunes]

You don't have to be respectful to made up, fictional, non-existing characters, because they DON'T EXIST. Let's call it what it is - pandering and virtue signaling to the mental.... oh I'm sorry - I meant to the LGBT crowd.
Not like I care, you couldn't make me come back to this trash even if you paid me.

I wonder, do you feel the same way about Nier: Automata given how Yoko Taro confirmed in an interview that Emil is gay?

[Cavox]

While slinging poo yourself just to be a part of the show.

I consider Activision-Blizzard devs to be the monkeys in this analogy, not the comment section on mmo-champion. I'm explaining why I'm here, on a WoW news site. I'm having a laugh at Blizzard's expense, not people who comment on it.

[qwerty123456]

Baine, without a doubt.

Just because he 's smart and would bone a human doesn't mean he would want to be one.

[StillMcfuu]

Fun fact, it IS in the game and is discoverable by players without an announcement. People would have no idea who he is except for all the stuff about a gay character being talked about on YouTube and forums.

Are you talking about the other characters that are gay? Or just this person that was a woman and now as a Kyrian they are a man (or vice versa, I avoid lore in Alpha/Beta cycles)?

And that gets straight to my point, they can't allow the character to stand on their own within the game, so they think they are "heading off" by highlighting the character.

If the character stands on their own, allow them to. If the character doesn't, and you have to be spoon fed info about them outside of normal channels. Go back and do your job and fix the character.