Blizzard apologizes to GLBT guilds!

[Benfea]

Yay! Now I don't have to cancel my WoW subscription in disgust!

Article at BBC

Synopsis:
World of Warcraft (WoW) is the hottest selling massively multiplayer RPG in the world with some 5 million players worldwide. MMORPGs have a very strong social component to them, so interactions between players has a large impact on your playing experience.

Guilds are the primary social organization in WoW. Any group of friends can start a guild, and although guilds can help you achieve certain things in the game, the primary focus of guilds is the friendships that arise from it.

Unfortunately, in a game with this many players interacting with each other, there's a lot of homophobic language used. To Blizzard's credit, they do try to clamp down on it when it is reported, but there's simply too much of it going on and Blizzard only has so many employees monitoring this sort of thing.

Naturally, GLBTs prefer joining guilds where they know they won't have to listen to "that's so gay!" in guild chat all day long. Someone tried advertising for such a guild and was accused of "sexual harrassment." The Blizzard employee who accosted her even threatened to revoke her gaming account.

I'm sure I must have started a thread on this board somewhere because I was mad as hell when I first heard of this.

Thankfully, Blizzard did the right thing and apologized to those involved (see above link).

[Caution]

1. Sounds like it was an honest mistake with good intentions gone awry

Good for Blizzard both for attempting to clamp down on it when reported and for fixing the mistake in regard to GLBT guilds

[Benfea]

9. Sort of.

The employee who originally accosted the GLBT guild members should have known that what he or she was doing was wrong.

[jpgray]

2. Can you explain the appeal of MMO games?

I had a friend describe them once to me and it sounded like my first job, except you pay to do it. Is it mostly the social aspect? Keep in mind my gaming days bottomed out around Civilization II.

[Benfea]

3. The social aspect is what makes it addicting

Very addicting. Critics of the genre accuse the games of being glorified chat rooms, and they aren't far off the mark. The game itself merely gives you something to talk about with all the friends you make in game.

This isn't like one of those RPGs with multiplayer features tacked on. In such games, the game world only exists for the duration of your play session. The people who developed the first graphical MMORPG more correctly described the genre as "persistent world" gaming because the world is still there and things are still happening in it regardless of whether or not you happen to be logged in. This makes the world in MMORPGs feel like a real place rather than just a setting for your monster-killing rampages. The game is divided up in to "servers" (which in reality are server farms, not just one machine) or "worlds" or "shards" and each world will have thousands of people logged in simultaneously and interacting with each other. The total player population for each world (logged in or not) can be in the tens of thousands.

That's a far cry from 5-man Diablo or Quake gaming sessions (which I assume is your point of reference for online gaming).

[jpgray]

4. Sadly Diablo/Quake were just on the periphery of my experience

But I get what you're saying. :D

[Benfea]

5. PS -- if you haven't tried Civ 4 yet, do so.

Although the system requirements are steep, the game is very much worth it! Best of all, individual gaming sessions don't last as long as they did in previous Civ games, so it doesn't have to take over as much of your life as the other games did.

[jpgray]

7. I'll see if I can cadge it off someone

I still have my original NES up and running for an annual drunken Tecmo Superbowl game with my ex-roommates, so I'm no longer really on the cutting edge. :P

[EstimatedProphet]

6. Hey, is there a DU guild?

I'd like to play WoW

[Benfea]

8. I have absolutely no idea.

I was already in a guild long before I started posting at DU.