The Evolution of Creative Content in World of Warcraft

[Lumy]

The Evolution of Creative Content in World of Warcraft

Over the last few weeks, artists and writers across the WoW team have updated a small number of old quests, art assets, names, and dialogue that we identified as outdated and inconsistent with our values as a team. These updates are a relatively small part of a comprehensive, company-wide effort to improve the WoW team and Blizzard as a whole, but they’re important to us as developers.

In early August, we set up internal channels where the WoW team could share feedback on content that doesn't represent who we are as a team today. During this time, we also gathered a great deal of feedback from players on practically every aspect of the game. The player feedback influenced many gameplay improvements we’re working on for patch 9.1.5, and our internal feedback identified some in-game content that is inconsistent with our goal of building an inclusive and welcoming game world.

In a game that has thousands of art elements and a word count in the millions, we recognize that these updates will amount to very few total changes overall. Nonetheless, we believe these changes are worthwhile. 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.

Goofy jokes and occasional mature innuendos are part of WoW, and probably always will be. Still, we want to remain mindful of whether certain elements of that world are welcoming to all players. In short, we want our jokes to be inclusive and not punch down.

Occasionally, when determining whether to adjust content, there can be circumstances that further complicate our decision-making. For example, some of the art that populates our world is often re-used throughout the game. To be certain that we don’t have any instances in which this art appears in a way that is not respectful, in some cases, we might opt to replace specific elements entirely. It’s important to us that we ensure Azeroth is the best place it can be for everyone, and we will continue to improve our processes when it comes to this kind of decision-making.

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. You’re going to see more of it soon in 9.1.5, and in updates to come—and where applicable, in WoW Classic as well. An example of a post-9.1.5 improvement is the creation of an incubus demon, which we can add to places where succubus models currently appear. We're also planning to make the incubus a glyphable option for Warlocks when they summon that classification of demon.

As WoW continues to evolve and grow, we’ll keep discussing, reviewing, and acting on this kind of feedback. As always, we’re immeasurably grateful for your input, and we hope you keep it coming.

-- The World of Warcraft Team

[Tyris Flare]

How long until people complain that the incubus is the glyph version rather than the succubus?

[glowpipe]

thousands of players are leaving in droves for final fantasy, and this is what the dev team for wow focuses on. Meaningless shit that will change litteraly nothing

[Orby]

Okay while its easy to be outraged here, there are some things I took away from this that I respect. Innuendo is staying and will continue to be apart of WoW that makes me happy, its not like they decided to gut the cheese from Warcraft completely they wanna keep the sense of humour while also being respectful, that's fine. Also an incubus demon option for Warlocks... That's pretty awesome.

With that said I still think the approach to some of the removal and changes, especially the emotes, to be dumb. Also if they removed those emotes to make way for some awesome animated emotes akin to FFXIV then all would be forgiven, I may not be a fan of FFXIV but their emote game is tops.

This was a thing that was done in a talk obviously many women had an issue and its gotta be changed, I cannot argue, I am not a woman and its not a company I work for, now if we don't like that we can either deal with it, because no amount of crying is going to change their mind, or we can quit. I quit back in January I don't intend to return.

[Neverlock]

With this approach everything is going to get rly bland rly quickly, unreal what their priorities are at this moment

[Yadryonych]

Anduin x Wrathion marriage when?

[BossManRoth]

it would have made sense to introduce incubus as new demons in legion and added the glyph then. but this is blatant pandering to the tumblerites who still post on the forums which blizz mistakes for "legitimate feedback"

[guisadop]

This is "selfie stick" levels of content.

[ellieg]

People that talk about humor being "inclusive" and "not punching down" are weak and deserved to be mocked. You already know what these "people" look like.

[Fixxit the Gnome]

Imagine getting angry at this.

I'm sure more substantial content is being worked on, so if the team want to spend some time to update the game to fit their current vision, that's totally fine.

[Varodoc]

To be honest, with how woke and politically correct Blizzard has become, I'm surprised they haven't added a Pronoun system yet, so that all the lovely people out there can set their pronouns as "They/Them"

Then again, I guess they are leaving this to TRP3.

[Dispirit84]

No other competitor game needed to be a WoW killer. Blizzard killed WoW all by themselves. All of this is ridiculous and no changes need to be made to WoW or WoW classic. People need to learn to develop a thicker skin.

[Mandible]

Sure ... whatever they need to tell themself is the reason they are making these changes.

Considering they talk about company values I´d like to repeat the slightly used "why haven´t they removed the WAR in warcraft then". Or is it a company value with the racism and warmongering going on in the game all the time?

[Kumorii]

Feel like they are gonna shoot themselves in the foot with this.

we want the world they see to stand as an expression of our talents and principles.

[Froggy]

Those changes are a good start. Now redo talent trees so half the specs aren't garbage.

[Fixxit the Gnome]

People that talk about humor being "inclusive" and "not punching down" are weak and deserved to be mocked. You already know what these "people" look like.

Honestly, people that like humor that punches down are weak and deserves to be mocked. Grow a pair and don't let your fee-fee's get hurt by other people being considerate.

[Starscreamer]

I'm sure more substantial content is being worked on, so if the team want to spend some time to update the game to fit their current vision, that's totally fine.

...so if the team want to spend time to update the game to weaken the blow from the lawsuit...

there I fixed it for you.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Ha were actually getting a incubus that’s awesome.

[Kralljin]

As long as they don't put in Quinton Flynns voice lines for Kael'thas back into the game, Blizzard can shove that talk about values right up their ass.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Getting the long requested incubus from this overreacting mess was certainly not what I expected