Blizzard and Lvl90ETC apologies for the insults at Blizzcon

[Deleted]

As some of you might have seen, Blizzard, well Bashiok, put in a post a response from Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain:

"Thank you everyone for your feedback regarding the closing night performance at BlizzCon. While we had some other messaging worked up we were going to post, the members of band wanted to instead address it themselves:

<<Hey guys, we read and heard all the feedback from BlizzCon this year. The Corpsegrinder bit was never intended to be taken seriously. We are sorry that we offended anyone; everything at our shows is just meant in fun. Thank you all for speaking up. We’ll definitely keep this in mind for future shows.

Our humblest apologies,

Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain>>"

Some people who entered the thread said they don't know about what this was since they didn't see the thread a few days ago and didn't read further into this one so here it is. This year, at Blizzcon, the convention we all know is a place where people of all ages, cultures etc who love the Blizzard games gather, before Foo Fighters the Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain band was invited to sing. However they had a special guest, Corpsegrinder.
Now, before the concert actually started, a video of him talking about WoW was aired. In said video he was throwing some inappropiate words in the views of some people because of different reasons already discussed in thread, the first link is to Blizzcon itself and if you want to know exactly what he said in case you can't guess, the second link is about that, the full video of which, as you see, only a part was aired at Blizzcon:







I think it was good, for even though some took it as a joke, some were offended either to them or they ere offended because such things were said while minors were in the room. So this is the right way out to give apologies. Well done to Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain for giving this message and for Blizzard for posting it. I posted this for people that didn't see for I didn't see another thread. I hope this ends the hate over that issue at least.
Although I myself criticized Blizzard for that Corpsegrinder bit, the fact that they did give apologies makes it up.

So what do you think about this?


Edit: ok, think it this way, if you told the other faction was what they said at Blizzcon here or on the official forums, you'd get instantly banned. So if on the forums you can't say it, why could they say it? And before someone comes with it, the video was put at Blizzcon, payed by Blizzard, so it's like they endorsed it. So apologies were needed I think. If you don't, your problem.

Edit 2: I liked some posts so will quote them here in the first post. Now there are a lot good and intelligent responses, but after 22 pages I won't look for them since I'd have to re-read everything and my head hurts(from reading pages of people arguing for the sake of arguing) so rather not do that:

What this comes down to is a simple bad joke , in bad taste landing flat and the target of such joke not being amused with it. We can call it a joke, i'm sure alot of people recognize it for what it was, I for one know I did, however that does not mean i am REQUIRED to enjoy the joke on any level. In fact, my exact reaction to the joke was simply "Oh damn, I thought we had actually avoided the digs at Alliance this year... maybe next year Blizzard."

For the purpose of sensationalism I will put forward a joke, say.. "Your mom is an emo cocksucking stupid homo who should die, fuck her!". A person MIGHT get angry over that, a person might shrug it off, or they might simply do what the majority of the Alliance did and say "Dude, knock it off. You're not funny try again." All are acceptable responses which will undoubtibly differ from person to person, that too is acceptable that people hold different opinions on what battles are worth fighting. I think it is in bad taste for Blizzard to air the clip they aired, on all accounts of. Blizzard and Horde players have made past blizzcon's uncomfortable for Alliance player since the beginning , I have heard stories of people targeting and attacking Alliance players in person outside of convention grounds. I don't know what Blizcon should be, I do know it should NOT be hostile territory for a person looking to celebrate Blizzard products and preview upcoming titles and announcements given to them by the company, especially not when it's due to something as arbitrary as what faction you decided to roll in a game.

Alot are saying, "It's just a game, grow up, grow some thicker skin" and so on. This does not hold ground on the fact that if someone can rant and rave about a game and swear up a storm over it, players naturally have the right to say "Dude not cool." or "Grow up" to that person without retribution of "DUDE IT'S JUST A GAME, WHY CAN'T YOU TAKE A JOKE" And so on.

I think I may have injured my soul by actually reading the entire thread to date. So many people seem to be missing the point. The intelligent, credible point of offense taken stems from the fact that there are many in the community whole take the Horde vs Alliance conflict out of context and have begun acting out that conflict outside the confines of the fictional world. Alliance players, when showing their pride in their chosen faction, have been, increasingly, subjected to verbal harassment when attending Blizzcon over the past few years; while I, personally, would like to see police reports/any other kind of concrete evidence, its has gone so far that I have heard and heard reports of physical violence erupting based purely on the animosity between Horde and Alliance players.

If you want to cry "it's just a game; harden up" then the antisocial behaviour outside the context of the game world is completely unacceptable. If you want to take his words more seriously, knowing that people are stupid and are carrying this, essentially, fictitious grudge to extremes, you are, by taking the "its just a joke" point of view, essentially stating that you find it acceptable to say those sorts of things about people without it being "just a game". You can't exactly have it both ways here.

Personally; I've experienced people behaving like children because they see the Alliance pin on my laptop bag. I roll my eyes at them and move on. I watched the live feed and saw what was said; I rolled my eyes and muted it until it went away. But look around the footage at the audience; there are children present. Children, as evidenced by legal age of majority, are deemed legally incapable of making informed decisions as to what is morally right or wrong. Films have legally enforced ratings the world over to control what content minors are exposed to. Nowhere, when watching the stream, did I see so much as a suggestion that there would be content like this in it. If I'm wrong there, please show me where and I'll concede the point.

Simply put; there's a time and a place for all manner of content; be it music, comedy, film or whatever. Public forum, in the presence of children, is not the place for things like that. Societies the world over have emphatically declared that through, while somewhat varied, censorship laws being enforced to some degree. I don't care that he said what he said, I care that the forum for it was wrong. I care that there are people who don't have the emotional maturity to realise when a joke is a joke and when it is something to be emulated. I care that the game I enjoy is becoming (if even possible) even more socially stigmatised because of the antisocial behaviour of the minority.

Show your faction pride; enjoy the fictional setting, but never forget that pixels are pixels, people are people and the times and places where those collide, just exercise a little common decency between people.

Lol, I love all the stupid non-minority privilege running around in this thread.

"It didn't offend me, a straight person, so that means it shouldn't offend you either."

"I'm gay, and it didn't offend me, and naturally I'm the king/queen of gay people, so I think you should be held to my standard of what I consider offensive."

"I have a gay friend! ...got nothin'."

Seriously, I don't get it. If you look at my posting history, I'm probably one of the most foul mouthed offensive fucks around, but I never marginalize an ENTIRE GROUP because that's fucking stupid.

I hate this "DAMN YOUR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" stuff mostly because I don't really see what's so challenging about it - how hard is to just keep shit like that between your small group of buddies on voice chat and keep it away from people that may not feel OK with hearing it? Because going off statistics, I don't think all the people dropping slurs have tourettes, I think they just don't want to own up to changing.

Were they really SURPRISED that this stuff would happen given the absolute massive scope of their player base? I'm not sure how they could be, and they had TIME to plan this concert. If it was an off-the-cuff gaffe, I'd be a little more lenient.

It comes down to this: imagine you might be a young homosexual that has yet to come out and feel extremely insecure or unsafe about ever making it a major part of your life. Imagine you're standing in a crowd or sitting at home and you're familiar with the vulgarities that are being spewed as a whole. Regardless of joking intent or not, I don't think it's really out of line to believe that maybe, just maybe, there are people out there that are already not confident in their own skin because of this kind of marginalizing hate speech.

"Intent" doesn't fucking matter, the fact is that no matter how open minded and progressive minded YOU may be, or think yourself to be, people run into words like this all the time that DO have intent behind them. And to those who are gay and have killed themselves over this kind of thing, it's pretty disingenuous to say "you should just let it roll off your shoulders" when you're also being told to "slit your wrists you dumb emo cocksucker" or whatever. Again, I don't give a shit what Corpsegrinder's intent was. That shit is something Blizzard needs to think about when you're choosing to advocate a certain person on a major, pre-planned stage like an event this big.

inb4 "by quoting hate speech in a negative context you're still advocating it~" because no one has any other legitimate argument.

QED, motherfuckers. I'm glad they didn't ignore it, and I partially accept that they feel remorse and apologized, but it feels like they don't know why they needed to apologize. "It's just a joke" trivializes things.

Had that been a death metal concert and been announced as such, I'm sure the issue for most people would not be so big. Swearing and insulting is quite common there. Noone takes it seriously, noone takes offense by it.
But! I have seen lights and sound turned off, band members being pulled off the stage by the police for much less, as soon as someone apart from a fan-crowd hears/sees this.
And that was not a Deathmetal concert, it was Blizzcon. There were kids there, maybe parents too. And most parents don't react very good when someone says "they deserve to die!" about their children, because most parents don't hear "Alliance" or "Horde", they only know that this is what their children play and that people sometimes beat each other up for it (at Blizzcon). How should they know, that noone would actually go even that big step further?
And if you're a kid or any other sensitive person, much into WoW, playing Alliance and being bullied all the time for playing computer games anyway, I don't know how you shouldn't be offended. It hurts.

I saw the interview, and I did think they put it there for a good reason. The guy himself laughed at his nerdrage, calling himself a pathetic nerd about being so into the Horde. And that performance was his way to express his nerd-feelings. To me personally that is nothing to be offended about, but I do see why you could think differently about it.
If you go to a death metal concert, expect to hear some real bad words if you don't want to hear such things, just don't go there.
But again: that was Blizzcon. People don't go there and expect things like that, so the ones responsible should be at least a little careful.

I think it is good they apologized. I hope they mean it.

Blizzard's response was a non-apology, or fauxpology if you prefer. It would have been appropriate if this were just people making a stink over some particularly vulgar faction-baiting, true.

But this wasn't just vulgar faction-baiting. The guy, bleeped or no, was slinging bigotry. And Blizzard deliberately aired it.

To paraphrase what I said at the forums: was I personally offended by that Fisher asswipe's rant? Not really. I went and was somewhat less proud of having Horde toons, much less a "Sen'jin Headhunters" T-shirt...because the moment he started using those particular words, any humor that I might have found in it fell flat. (And yes, that means that if he'd kept it to just being a pottymouth, I'd probably have found it funny. Or rather, I'd have laughed at him...because here's this "hardcore" death-metal musician whining about getting ganked in Nagrand. And calling people "emo" while playing Forsaken, no less.)

But I've got a hell of a lot more sympathy for anyone who is personally offended by someone using sexual orientation as an insult than I have for the type of inconsiderate pillock who insults people for being offended by it.

Entertaining at a metal concert? Probably to almost everyone there!

Entertaining at a con full of a diverse crowd of people, and possibly their younger kids/sisters/friends? Only entertaining to the people who enjoy metal concerts...

"Entertaining" is very subjective.

Hell, most of my friends find porn entertaining... and I certainly wouldn't want to see it at Blizzcon.

It is someone's personal decision to be or not be offended. Don't judge that. You don't have the right to do so. You cannot dictate other's feelings.

So, Blizz apologized for offending people. That's good. They just didn't know that they might do so when showing that video because maybe that kind of joke is normal amond them. They learned from it. And that is even better.

[Deleted]

I dont get it, Sure if they was making fun of YOU then ya thats fine, but the joke was aimed at the toons,

Next were going to get a "were sorry guies" from Blizz about the gnome jokes.... _-.-

[Naibil]

As someone who plays strictly Alliance toons, I am confused as to what was offensive about it. I had a good chuckle at what he said.

The apology message gave me another chuckle.

[derpkitteh]

well, i guess everyone today really is a giant pansy, i feel sorry for the future...

[Skilz]

I think it's sad to see them being forced to appologize for something as silly as this. People get offended for anything these days. Frustrates the hell out of me.

[Deleted]

Then again come to think about it, the sterotype of alliance is they are played by kids and horde players are older so this would add up if it was true....

[Deleted]

I didnt take that as an insult my self seen that video before and god i laughed at it, corpse raging how he getting ganked .
if u ask me thats how wow should be lots of anger and heat and alliance VS horde, if its red its dead

I think people take this stuff way too seriously

[Fenicks]

I could probably write a short novel on the complaints since Blizzcon, I would title it "World of Whinecraft".

[Earl403]

I think the people who can't take a joke and made a big deal about it should have to apologize for being ridiculous.

[Foxhoundn]

Can anyone elaborate what happened? Thanks

[Shadowcrash Umbra]

It's horribly depressing that they were most likely encouraged to apologize by Blizzard because of this nonsense. I've played both Alliance and Horde for years now, so maybe this isn't a purely Alliance perspective, but if they had said something similar about the Horde, I would have laughed it off, just like I did in the first place.

I can't believe people are so sensitive.

[Aydinx2]

This has GOT to be the best thread ever.
First everybody QQ's about blizz insulting the alliance and favoring the horde.
Next they QQ when somebody apoligizes.

[Shadowcrash Umbra]

Can anyone elaborate what happened? Thanks

During the Corpsegrinder bit near the end of the Tauren Chieftan concert, there were a ton of insults thrown towards the Alliance, stuff like 'F$%# the Alliance" and such. It was clearly meant as a joke, but people reacted like their mothers had been beaten over the head with rocks and posted thread after thread demanding apologies.

They got it.

[Arcsecant]

Gotta love rock bands apologizing for making a few people angry. Might as well rename your band Hannah Montana.

[Bertoxxulous]

The people who get mad at this type of stuff, are who make this world a horrible place.

[seraph1337]

This has GOT to be the best thread ever.
First everybody QQ's about blizz insulting the alliance and favoring the horde.
Next they QQ when somebody apoligizes.

The real complaint - and the one that deserved an apology - had nothing to do with Horde favoritism or Alliance whining.

The real complaint was that Blizzard was tacitly endorsing a video that used hate speech against gays and encouraged people to kill themselves. While this may seem acceptable to you in a PVP environment or amongst your friends, it's quite a different thing for a company as large as Blizzard to approve a message like this. Bleeped out or not, the video was in poor taste and frankly wasn't even funny - and I'm not someone who gets offended easily. I personally took no offense as I am not gay nor Alliance, but I didn't laugh either, because a dude just stringing profanities together isn't funny.

[Deleted]

Funny, to most people that responded here... if you told me or any other poster of MMO Champion the things that they said at Blizzcon, you'd get banned.
However, this is not the point of this thread. The point is that they gave apologies for it, and wouldn't have done so if enough people wouldn't have had a problem with this. There were still young people in there, and don't know what you think but I wouldn't want if I brought someone under 14 or so to hear such things. And no, I don't care that young kids might be using similar language because... wait for it... not all do.

[Foxhoundn]

during the corpsegrinder bit near the end of the tauren chieftan concert, there were a ton of insults thrown towards the alliance, stuff like 'f$%# the alliance" and such. It was clearly meant as a joke, but people reacted like their mothers had been beaten over the head with rocks and posted thread after thread demanding apologies.

They got it.

lmfaoooooo

[chrisisvacant]

Actually, he said:

'f*** the alliance, f***ing die you f***ing emo c***suckers'

That is neither appropriate, funny, or light-hearted. It's borderline Tourette's Syndrome and at the very least it is insulting to half of the customer base (not to mention women and homosexual men far and wide).

[Kisuro]

People get worked up by the weirdest stuff. I wonder if people got equally upset by this Penny Arcade comic. I mean, it's soooo offensive to the Horde and all.