Huh. They took out the "Two tents" human male joke. That's gonna be missed. I always enjoyed it.
I find it odd that so many things about the game is changed because the company messed up.
Jokes were in the game for years and years, it was fine, it was never the problem.
The problem is Blizzard and some of the people who work/worked for them.
Making changes like these in light of recent developments just comes across as placating the public, if they truly cared about their
workers, change would have happened many years ago.
Better late than never but it feels hollow.
It's complicated though. Let's forget the real world context.
Let's just focus on the realistic nature of this, or lack thereof, inside the game.
I mean, take the male pandaren quote - most male pandaren even inside the game seem to be laid-back, relaxed, all about harmony and nature, kind of like the Zen Buddhist monk archetype, NOT someone who casually makes flirtatious and suggestions jokes about pandaren females out in the open, can you imagine Taran Zhu suddenly making that kind of statement out of the blue, for example? Or even the likes of Ji Firepaw and Aysa making those statements to each other while laughing? The same for tauren and night elves - both their cultures are actually pretty conservative and traditional, seemingly frowning on these kind of open flirtations, I don't think Tyrande and Malfurion have even hugged each other once in the game, let alone kiss or show any public affection, or made any such jokes.
Of course, maybe that was the intention -- breaking the Fourth Wall, or something -- but from a certain perspective, it is still a bit out of character and sync, like pushing believability, all things considered. I would think that even if this was 2012 (when Pandaria was first released).
"You see, there is balance in all things. Wisdom etched in our very fur: Black and white. Darkness and light. When the last emperor hid our land from the rest of the world, he also preserved...our ancient enemy, the mantid. So it is with your Alliance and your Horde. They are not strong despite one another; they are strong BECAUSE of one another. You mistake your greatest strength for weakness. Do you see this?"
Surely /hug and /kiss are next on the chopping block for these degenerate twitter devs.
/hug and /kiss could be perceived as harassment. I'm amazed they're letting it go at this point
What folk need to really understand is that these changes are being permitted not because Blizzard agrees with the underlying sentiment to 'clean up the game'. They're just looking for a cynical quick win that will help wash the dirt off their hands for the actual issues plaguing the company. It's the same issue with Disney. People keep screaming 'emergerd woke Disney woke politics go woke go broke'. Disney don't give a damn about progressive politics. They just want to get rich. And they're doing it using a really half-assed attempt at being progressive and inclusive, because it's about as much as they need to do to rake in the dollars. It's not actually 'woke'. It's just a new form of tokenism.
This video hits the nail on the head perfectly. These companies across the world don't give a damn about anything but their bottom line.
But those NPCs do not do that, because its out of character, us players do. Pandaren as such, sure some might be the zen monastic type but the vast majority has to bump uglies eventually and continue the species, and apparently in this setting this is how the average pandaren would flirt.
Again, its us players using these emotes and jokes, not the persons who put this stuff in game. So even if there was supposedly some malicious intent behind adding these lines, I use them to have fun with my guildies / friends. And yes you would be surprised how much /pick and /fart and /flirt goes on in there. Whats next? Removing sitting because people teabag?
People weirdly see companies almost in the same light they do friendship or perhaps what religion used to be. The scandal didn't really hurt blizzard in the sense people who really enjoyed aspects of the game quit. It hurt those who use wow more as a chat room then a video game. Suddenly they saw the company they "loved" in a harsh light. In a single move blizzard lost the majority of its audience that shilled and defended it. I know it sounds trivial and petty but its a blow that honestly has them staggering harder then anything else I can recall in recent memory.
You should probably learn what freedom of speech actually entails. Wowhead is not a department of the government and its not against the law to post comments on wowhead.
But I guess understanding facts isn't high on a virtue-signaler's priority list, is it?
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Out of curiosity, what position do you hold at Blizzard? Clearly you have first hand knowledge of how they are thinking and the reasons they are doing things, or so you imply.
"higher-ups in power do something wrong and it's regular folks who are going to pay the price" -the historical calling card of 'revolutionaries'
I wish they'd also add new shit instead of removing. It would probably make this feel a lot less like a regression and honestly it would not be particularly hard to do, just get similar enough sounding voices.
Wait seriously? That was unironically my favorite joke in the entire game and I'm devastated now. I didn't even get it until a few years after I started playing and I've never stopped making tent puns ever since.
Game's ruined, go home guys.
All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth.
I've been trying to pin down why their recent "cleaning up the game" stuff annoys me and this is it 100%. Personally I don't care either way about the spit emote, or the jokes, although they should be prepared to get the VA's to add new ones first. But anyways bad jokes or insulting emotes aren't the problem, but they sure want it to look like it, because it's an easy/lazy change, compared with getting rid of the rot from within and restructuring the company.
Blizzard (or at least WoW) lacks good leadership, and has for some time. When you see this level of dysfunction -- both on the gameplay level, and on the "being decent humans to each other" level, that seems to always be the cause. But the ones guilty of steering their ship into disaster over and over again -- the negligent and weak leadership -- aren't going to fire themselves.
I'm not sure how you fix it besides letting it eventually just fail on its own. But I do know a new coat of paint doesn't fix a rotten foundation.
Bingo. Emotes and off-colour jokes in the game aren't the reason why bad behaviour is an issue amongst gamers or the within the company itself.
The problems are far more deep rooted, and this is just some lazy mea culpa towards it all. Folk within the community going after the gender or sexual orientation of the devs 'responsible for this' is just another example of said bad behaviour.
And it's not like they'll dislike LGBTQ folk any less if the jokes are kept in the game. Some people are just straight up douchebags.