The Evolution of Creative Content in World of Warcraft

[Arrashi]

To quite the late great Terry Pratchett

“Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it's not satire, it's bullying.”

Id say putting in a bunch of jokes at the expensive of woman while also having a work culture where sexual harassment is prevalent falls into his quote.

I dunno, maybe they should stop harrasing female workers then?

[meandean1216]

There is a popular saying Blizzard. Get woke go broke! Just saying.

[Xilurm]

World of Warcraft is meant to evolve over time, and every day, new players from every walk of life and every corner of the world experience our in-game content for the very first time. As a team, we want the world they see to stand as an expression of our talents and principles.

Changing a portrait of a female character that shows cleavage into one that doesn't isn't exactly representing people from all walks of life now is it? Or completely changing it to a portrait with fruits. There were plenty portraits with female characters that weren't wearing anything like that so it should've been left alone.

We also want players to be able to express themselves through their characters, so we don’t intend to change existing player looks or cosmetics. Instead, we want to ensure that we're offering a wide range of options for players to represent themselves. This work is ongoing alongside our development of new content and features.

I sincerely doubt that they are doing this considering the above quote. It's just hypocrisy. Do you remember Robes of Creation?

I bet they ain't ever gonna add something like this again.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

So they're choosing to retcon story in a fictional universe (incubi) to fit an all-inclusive narrative in the real world? Granted, inclusivity and such is a noble goal to strive for in real life, but do we need to make all our fantasy and fiction stories mimic reality?

Next they will be retconning the entirety of Dragon reproductive process lore because they have consorts not mates and somehow consort is now offensive.

Literally none of the story is being retconned they are already cannon just not in game, to quote the wowiki.

Aegwynn and Khadgar once encountered a demon who mentioned incubi as part of the Legion.[14] When dealing with succubi, Levia Laurence stated that in all of the Kirin Tor's research into succubi and other sayaad, they have come to one conclusion - they are not to be trusted.[15]

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sayaad

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I dunno, maybe they should stop harrasing female workers then?

They absolutely should but there’s no reason they can’t do that and remove old punching down jokes.

[Kazlehoff]

I wish Blizzard would/could understand that taking agency and sexuality away from females does not solve their issues.

the problems with wow and blizzard are not in the game files, and acting like they are making strides to fix their problems by changing paintings of women into baskets of fruit is just a terrible joke.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

and at the same time the more popular mmorpg has 0 problem with totaly oversexualised content in game - hell big boobied catgirls are one of selling points of it.

while wow is introducing sharia law in wow .

amazing direction you peopel take this game !

Ya this totally fits Sharia Law!

[Raetary]

So they're choosing to retcon story in a fictional universe (incubi)

It takes like 2 seconds to look up Sayaad lore on wowpedia
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sayaad

Incubi exist in lore, there just isn't a model to use.
So there aren't any in-game.

[Orby]

Ya this totally fits Sharia Law!

Damn it, sexy incubi...

[BarosanuNr1]

All these posts about minor content changes, but what about the harassment of employees? Has that ceased yet or not? If not, when?

[Irian]

Holy shit after only two decades we're finally going to gett incubi? It only took a sexual harassment scandal to get them, which is oddly kind of ironic considering the lore of succubi and incubi....

I'm genuinely relieved to hear that they don't plan on touching old sets but I hope they meant it when they say that they plan to include a variety of options. More slutmogs on males and females please, and have the existing female models also equippable by males and vice versa. There are already orc NPCs that wear "female" variants of some bikini armor, so it's not like this is a particularly hard thing for them to do, and it even fits the aesthetic of the game well considering how many dudes run around shirtless in loincloths in this game.

I still think the whole campaign of censoring revealing paintings is hugely misplaced and they'd be better off maybe trying to rethink the litany of quests that use "male elves are feminine" as the butt of a joke, which are genuinely kind of insulting to gay dudes.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Honestly it's hilarious to see the pretzel logic of "this is basically sharia law" and "the gay agenda" trying to coexist in any sort of rational manner my lord XD

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I wish Blizzard would/could understand that taking agency and sexuality away from females does not solve their issues.

Question, where has this happened?

[The One Percent]

Good thing they hid cleavage and midriffs, now how about paying their below management employees a fair wage and getting rid of crunch culture? *crickets*

Way more women play FF14 than wow, and that game has transmog that makes the sluttiest transmog in wow look like a burka (and plenty of actual real life girls wear them on their character).

[damonskye]

And, still... all of this stuff going on and there's no actual new CONTENT in the next patch. Ugh.

[Samitsu]

How about making the game actually fun? Couldn't care less about "offensive content".

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Holy shit after only two decades we're finally going to gett incubi? It only took a sexual harassment scandal to get them, which is oddly kind of ironic considering the lore of succubi and incubi....

I'm genuinely relieved to hear that they don't plan on touching old sets but I hope they meant it when they say that they plan to include a variety of options. More slutmogs on males and females please, and have the existing female models also equippable by males and vice versa. There are already orc NPCs that wear "female" variants of some bikini armor, so it's not like this is a particularly hard thing for them to do, and it even fits the aesthetic of the game well considering how many dudes run around shirtless in loincloths in this game.

I still think the whole campaign of censoring revealing paintings is hugely misplaced and they'd be better off maybe trying to rethink the litany of quests that use "male elves are feminine" as the butt of a joke, which are genuinely kind of insulting to gay dudes.

Basically this. Like some of the changes are just silly, telltale signs of being faced with an issue that's real, and not knowing exactly how to respond. The problem with innuendo within WoW is that it always leaned to one type of humor catering to a section of the audience, and no matter how many people cry and whine that it wasn't so, for a lot of players it always felt like being left out of the joke.

The problem, isn't with sexy and raunchy jokes, there's a reason why Bayonetta is one of the best characters of all time, the problem with innuendo in WoW is that it really never went beyond skimpy ladies hot, dick jokes and belves are gay.

[Akka]

PR moves bullshit.
The only real problem is the bullying culture they seemingly had inside, and replacing a demon model with another is completely pointless and unrelated. It's the definition of virtue signaling.

[kamuimac]

cant wait when people realise that spaming "anal" joke in /1 will get them banned in wow soon

[Selah]

There's an irony in all of this. Blizzard will fly the pride flag left, right, and center - which is an inherent statement about accepting all forms of sexuality, but then turn around and remove anything in their game that is the physical manifestation of said sexuality.

Not to mention all the subtle narrative uses for things like that as well. But, no one has accused Blizzard of being competent story tellers.

[Meow]

From the worst to another worst...

[phattsao]

The whole theme of this game is a war between different races. How long before they decide that THAT is "problematic"?

What about PvP? Attacking other players might "go against their values" pretty soon.

Might be time to just hang up your hat, Blizzard.