Upcoming Shards of Domination Set Bonus Buffs, Spit Emote Removed on TBC Classic PTR

[Lionhearte0]

What's stopping people from just /spitting on the ground NEAR a person that's on the mount? I mean, it won't say "spits on X" but the context will still be there. Is Blizzard just going to remove all the meanie poo-poo bad emotes eventually?

[Bishee]

I don't understand. They remove spitting but there is mostly killing in the game and its ok. what is more...

[BrintoSFJ]

So players that buy and play games from Blizzard are responsible for the inside culture of said company? By buying wow and subbing, these players are saying its cool whats going on a blizzard? Gimme a break. No one else besides Blizzard can fix the horrendous and total shite company culture they have. No one else but them can fix it. If suddenly everyone stopped using money on Blizzard games, these very same people would just move on to other projects and be complete dickwads. In general, this is not only a Blizzard product. This is something that the gaming world struggle with everywhere.

Also - gaming culture is often, by large, a toxic shitfest. Especially when you have a broad view on it. Most people play and interact with friends, a guild/clan or the community they are active in. Everything outside of that is considered useless and people change behaviour when outside said friendcircle, guild, clan or close community. By large, gaming is often enough toxic as hell.

No, paid customers are not the problem, as I have said, the problem is the people like you who constantly support the shitfuckery of game companies and game developers. And you are still doing it.

And gaming has been "toxic" for a long time. It is the reason why I detested game until I was 17! You don't need to teach about "toxic gamers". But why suddenly now it has become a big issue? Why suddenly everybody's mommy, daddy, nanny, and granny talking about "toxic gamers"? Because the game industry is now large enough to be used for political pandering. There is nothing more to it. Gamers are no more "toxic" than others but somehow the toxic neighbor gets a pass but the "toxic gamer" needs to be purged.

Fuck off. You can fool others with your bullshit, not me. I am a "victim" of "toxic gaming culture" and what I did is just got a thicker skin and developed my brain. You know, learned to how to act like a human being. Maybe try doing that instead of becoming an npc who parrot whatever the line fed to him by a corporation or news media.

[tromage2]

Removing the spit emo hahaha.
Maybe put effort into adding content to save the game blizzard??..?? removing stuff is the last thing this game needs.

This really is a game for childeren below 12 when people cant handle a fake spit on a fantasy avatar in a fantasy setting where the gamer is behind the screen in their own safe space.
Not only are the people that cant handle the spit emo childeren, the blizzard staff that makes these choices are also people that never became adults.
In a few years you will get locked up in jail when you smile to somebody in public when these crazy people ever get more power in real life.

[mojusk]

idm /spit being removed, i always found it distasteful. however its obvious that they only did it to protect their whales in tbc, since it havnt been removed from retail. considering everything that is going on atm, its baffling that this was their highest priority. who cares about sexual harrasment that leads to suicide? dont mess with the whales / bobbys wallet!

[Necromantic]

That's fine and all but why did they need to quote Asmongold?

[RoKPaNda]

Nobody is actually spitting on anyone with the deluxe edition. That is some social media urban legend weird shit. Lol. Someone made a weakaura yeah, and some people frothed about it on Reddit for a week, but in all my playing TBC I've never seen anyone spit on anyone with the mount except for once in a BM normal group when 2 friends were teasing each other. That is 100% not the reason why they removed it, assuming it's actually an intentional change.

Edit: And for people saying that nobody ever asked for that, there have been threads going as far back as Vanilla on the official forums complaining about the existence of that emote. I personally don't care either way, but pretending that nobody asked for it and that people were going around spitting on people with deluxe mounts are both living in the land of make believe for the sake of getting outraged.

[Voidism]

To the people thinking we're complaining too much: why not complain that it's not enough?

Demand Kotick and JAB to step down. That's the only actual action that would make me believe their currently empty words. But, money wins even in abuse and rape. The higher ups enabled this or even participated to some extent.

This shallow fluff is just a play and should've be done without any fuss. The real actions should be felt to those in charge. Show that you can't enabled shit like this without severe consequences.

[crusadernero]

No, paid customers are not the problem, as I have said, the problem is the people like you who constantly support the shitfuckery of game companies and game developers. And you are still doing it.

And gaming has been "toxic" for a long time. It is the reason why I detested game until I was 17! You don't need to teach about "toxic gamers". But why suddenly now it has become a big issue? Why suddenly everybody's mommy, daddy, nanny, and granny talking about "toxic gamers"? Because the game industry is now large enough to be used for political pandering. There is nothing more to it. Gamers are no more "toxic" than others but somehow the toxic neighbor gets a pass but the "toxic gamer" needs to be purged.

Fuck off. You can fool others with your bullshit, not me. I am a "victim" of "toxic gaming culture" and what I did is just got a thicker skin and developed my brain. You know, learned to how to act like a human being. Maybe try doing that instead of becoming an npc who parrot whatever the line fed to him by a corporation or news media.

what kind of crusade are you on? What the F do you know about me? You know, I have been observing how the gaming culture/community has dwelved into the shithouse of toxicity it is today, without taking part in it. When I meet or talk to others in games, I act like a normal human being would do towards others. I dont call names, I dont scream or act in a shit way. But I do experience these kind of people regularly enough. What do I do with them? Ignore. Either leave voice chat, ignore in game chat or just carry on not bothering.

Also, I can buy and play whatever the F kind of game I want without having to take responsibility for whatever Blizzard or any other company does in the office. I can also pay and play whatever game I want no matter of a shitshow of toxicity that game(s) community got. You know why? cause there are good people in these games to, and I either play with them or run around solo.

If you are on some justice crusade boycotting companies that act bad in some way, good luck living in the western part of the world. Most companies screw people over one way or another. Sadly.

Also - how can costumers know whats going on inside a company? We rarely get to know anything. Up until now most people thought evertything was good in Blizz

[BrintoSFJ]

what kind of crusade are you on? What the F do you know about me? You know, I have been observing how the gaming culture/community has dwelved into the shithouse of toxicity it is today, without taking part in it. When I meet or talk to others in games, I act like a normal human being would do towards others. I dont call names, I dont scream or act in a shit way. But I do experience these kind of people regularly enough. What do I do with them? Ignore. Either leave voice chat, ignore in game chat or just carry on not bothering.

Also, I can buy and play whatever the F kind of game I want without having to take responsibility for whatever Blizzard or any other company does in the office. I can also pay and play whatever game I want no matter of a shitshow of toxicity that game(s) community got. You know why? cause there are good people in these games to, and I either play with them or run around solo.

If you are on some justice crusade boycotting companies that act bad in some way, good luck living in the western part of the world. Most companies screw people over one way or another. Sadly.

Also - how can costumers know whats going on inside a company? We rarely get to know anything. Up until now most people thought evertything was good in Blizz

Ok my bad, I confused you with the person whom I replied to first. However, you did come off with the same tone as him. But now you are actually talking my line! How amusing. Everything you said, is my point of view. The first guy I replied to directly blamed gamers for all the problems in the game industry.

Also, I am off from WoW because of shitty content delivery, then the current shitshow and then a creative director calling the paid customers reponsible for their shitshow. I am not coming back until I see that they have decided to respecting their paid customers.

[Vandren]

Blizzard: *Caught red-handed fostering an abusive workplace, share price and sub numbers are plummeting and start hiring union-busting legal goons.*

Also Blizzard: "Ok we removed the /spit emote as it was making people riding our store mounts sad. Did we beat toxicity yet?"

[Loveliest]

Honestly, it's a rude emote. I never understood why it existed. I don't think it's particularly defensible.

Yeah, I never liked it either. One of my guildies was always doing it on bosses and it always rubbed me the wrong way. Probably because it is considered the ultimate insult in my country. I don't think I have ever used it?

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand. They remove spitting but there is mostly killing in the game and its ok. what is more...

Spitting is insulting the player, not the character. The human behind the screen. Killing is killing pixels.
This isn't about the game being safe for children (No killing, no swearing etc), it is about limiting harassemment.

[RamGuy]

I have no issue with them removing /spit. It's a pointless and meaningless emote to begin with. It doesn't really serve and purpose. With that being said I think it's important to keep in mind that moving the goalpost on when people feel violated/diminished is a slippery slope. I fully understand why we as a society strive to become more inclusive and a part of this is to take everyone's feelings seriously.

But when I look at people growing up around me and start comparing it to when I was growing up it doesn't seem like we have been moving in any particular direction with all of this. The difference is that people growing up today is getting accustomed to the fact that they should never feel violated or diminished. Which of course is a good thing, but by changing everything going on around them they don't end up feeling less violated and diminished compared to my generation. We are simply moving the goalpost, meaning that their threshold for feeling diminished is overall lower compared to the generation before them. And as a end result nothing is really improving. We are just creating a newer generation that is capable of tolerating less before they feel uneasy and diminished compared to the generation before them.

This is where the slippery slope begins. And the same goes for /spit. I have no problem with it being removed. But at the same time should players be this affected by players in-game utilising a silly emote? There is no logical reason for people to start feeling terrible by this and there are measurements in place where players can ignore those utilising it. And it's not like people going around using /spit on everyone with a store mount is somehow becoming better persons by removing /spit. They will just move on finding other ways to express themselves and the cycle continues. In fact it might be better for players with store mounts to have /spit around as it makes it so easy for them to figure out what players are incapable of behaving themselves so they can put them directly on their ignore list to begin with.


And obviously, it comes off as an awkward time for Blizzard to prioritise something like this. When the company at large is under heavy investigation for having extremely toxic working conditions within the company and the game (both Classic and Retail) is in a rather tough spot lately with players being unhappy with the current state of the game. This seems like such a awkward focus to have. This doesn't seem like the time or place for this to take up focus from the World of WarCraft developers at this moment in time.

Where do we go from here? Is this just a isolated issue where the developers tries to shield the paying customers or are they actually begging a overhaul of the entire game trying to make it more inclusive and less toxic?

[crusadernero]

Ok my bad, I confused you with the person whom I replied to first. However, you did come off with the same tone as him. But now you are actually talking my line! How amusing. Everything you said, is my point of view. The first guy I replied to directly blamed gamers for all the problems in the game industry.

Also, I am off from WoW because of shitty content delivery, then the current shitshow and then a creative director calling the paid customers reponsible for their shitshow. I am not coming back until I see that they have decided to respecting their paid customers.

Ah okay, that happens no problem!

Of course, and as a costumer thats your right to do so! Im also letting my sub run out (in two days) and I wont return for quite a while. Due to the same reasons as you. Its more or less one of the few things we can do that actually directly affects Blizzard.

[Pendraeg]

Anti-Toxicity tech. Ah yes.

Step 1: Remove /spit
Step 2: Remove any group content
Step 3: Remove any chat functionality
Step 4: Make it a 100% single-player game

If they don't end up with Step 4 this game will always have toxicity issues. Removing the spit emote will change NOTHING.

Not necessarily. Other MMO communities don't have the same level of problems as WoW does. FFXIV as an example.

[Zalraki]

Spitting is insulting the player, not the character. The human behind the screen. Killing is killing pixels.
This isn't about the game being safe for children (No killing, no swearing etc), it is about limiting harassemment.

That's a nice assumption you made there. So you have proof that people who /spit are targeting the person behind the mount or is that your interpretation? You can't personally target someone you've never seen before and don't even know the name of.

If we're talking about limiting harassment then how about not allowing open world pvp anymore? Killing lower level characters who are trying to quest is clearly harassment.

"They turned on warmode so it's their own fault" could be an argument but so could "They bought a store mount in a game where it shouldn't exist so it's their own fault"

[Nynax]

"They turned on warmode so it's their own fault" could be an argument but so could "They bought a store mount in a game where it shouldn't exist so it's their own fault"

Problem with your argument example is that both functions exist in the game because Blizzard allows them too, so yes the store mount "should" exist because it's officially supported and not a hack. Harassment via warmode is basically sanctioned by Blizzard as a function of pvp and the existence of a store mount is also sanctioned by Blizzard because they put it there. It is players that arbitrarily decided that it "shouldn't" from a moral/ethical standpoint.

Only pointing this out because I think you can make a better argument to support your point.

[Nimin]

Not necessarily. Other MMO communities don't have the same level of problems as WoW does. FFXIV as an example.

Doesn't FFXIV permanently ban you very easily though? I'd argue that's a much more toxic environment than one where people have the freedom to be assholes or not if they want to.

[Niwes]

Not necessarily. Other MMO communities don't have the same level of problems as WoW does. FFXIV as an example.

the problem is not, what is possible in chat or what not. its Blizzards game design that heavily support a toxic community. regardless if its timed runs, pug tool, multilanguage crossrealm (we will meet never again), item level, m+ scores, the data API accessible by addons, so ppl can be blamed by this or that, the token-support driven game design to support boost grps, cause of greed (cause every token is +7 euros for blizz, for doing nothing), and and and…

this game became a super toxic ball park, solely out of Blizzards stance („we are not responsible, community forms on their own“) and their game design. the „meta“ tools and the game design heavily supports toxity. thats the reason.

the only thing they ever took their responsibility was ninja looting with master loot setting. this also created a lot toxity in the past, in pugs, and Blizz changed it. if the change itself was done by good or bad design is another discussion. at least they did anything.

but besides that…. nothing. toxcity is simply a result of wows game design.

[Eggroll]

Yeah, Muffinus. Don't talk about the condescending, toxic behavior the devs have towards the community.
The players are the problem. It's all the players fault. Got it.