Blizzard Entertainment to Female World of Warcraft Players: Screw You

[Chovexani]

Okay, I realize that this isn't a life-threatening problem or anything, but I thought I'd draw it to your attention. For those that don't know, World of Warcraft is the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) on the market right now. MMORPGs differ from most games that you play online because it is solely online, and most of them (WoW included) charge a monthly subscription fee on top of whatever you shell out initially for the game, and for expansion packs.

Female gamers have a tough time in general with online gaming communities; sexism and homophobia are rampant, due to a combo of the relatively young ages of some of the gamers and also Gabe's Greater Internet Fuckward Theory (see: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19). So much so that I quit playing Quake online (god I'm old), and haven't played online games since then with the exception of the MUD I've been on for years. World of Warcraft is especially bad, due to the fact that the game itself is simple enough that you don't really need to be nice and group with other adventurers until you're very high level. It appeals to the lowest common denominator. I tried it, liked the game mechanics well enough but was very turned off by the "community" of the server I was on. Sexual harrassment is bad enough that many women I know that play WoW play almost exclusively male characters.

Well, the latest patch for WoW enabled an in-game voice chat option. From a mechanics standpoint, it's nice because although there are lots of third-party programs that accomplish this, having easy access to voice chat for everyone makes things better for all involved. All, except women.

See, suddenly the neanderthals who play are realizing just how many women are playing the game. There has been an insane amount of harrassment towards female players, threats of stalking, etc. And how has the Blizzard abuse team addressed the concerns of their paying female customers? By ignoring and deleting threads on their message board. Here is one compilation that is still up for now. It will make your skin crawl. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2043491485&sid=1

Of course, Blizzard is a private company and can do whatever it likes. But if this is how they're willing to treat loyal, paying customers, I will never buy anything with their logo on it again.

[ThomCat]

1. Wow. There are a lot of vicious clueless asses on that thread.

And I can pick out a few I'll bet are part of the group that harasses women.

They basically deny there's a problem, deny it's a serious problem, claim that women are whining about nothing, claim that women could very easily solve the problem by ignoring it, claim that they get harassed too so it's no big deal, etc.

I am very glad I decided against checking out WoW. x(

I'm very sorry that they're taking an official possition of doing nothing. I hope you can all raise enough of a stink to force them to do something positive. There should be an alert function, and a log of what was happening when you alerted. That would give them some concrete evidence to look at to see if people need to be banned.

Really, how hard would be?

[Chovexani]

2. My girlfriend has nearly talked me into Final Fantasy XI

It's much more female friendly, and there is a far greater spirit of cooperation because the game is a lot harder, and pretty much forces you to group with people in order to accomplish things. I've never heard tell of some of the crap that goes on in WoW happening on FFXI servers, because players pretty much police themselves. If someone's being an ass, they're punished by the community. I like that in a game.

Now that I'm finally running BootCamp on my iMac I'm going to give it a try.

[bliss_eternal]

6. If you decide to try Final Fantasy XI...

...let us know how it goes. I'm so glad you are boycotting that other company. They don't deserve a dime of your money. I wish there was a way the word would get out to women gamers, so they wouldn't support them either. :(

There's really no excuse for the rampant sexism in gaming.
I'm still not sure if the problem lays with so few women working in the gaming industry(in areas beyond graphics and art design) so no one was there to tell the game developers--girl and women gamers exist. Or if it's just like everything else--in that the assumption was always that only boys and men are gamers--so they only made an effort to target that audience. :eyes: :shrug:

I grew up playing adventure games on my Mac(Scott Adams Adventures, Zork, etc.). Yeah, I know I'm dating myself with that one. :P I played with my brother on all his platforms (yes, the ancient ones that sell for ridiculous amounts of money on ebay now as "vintage"). Because I played, I naturally assumed other girls and women played too. I was taken aback the first time a guy was "shocked" to find out I enjoy games--and not just the ones men assume women like.

Anyone that doubts gaming sexism only need to go into a gaming store with breasts. :eyes:

[ismnotwasm]

3. That pissed me off

I don't know the world of gaming, but I'm sure you have to be reasonably intelligent, and at least somewhat intuitive. Those assholes who are dismissing harassment like it's no big deal are sick in the head. Or live on another planet it than I do. The company is probably afraid of being held accountable, or losing business.

And you know what? It very well could be a life threatening problem. Any type of harassment needs to be taken seriously. Sure there are some "12 year olds" out there, but there are also some sick perverted fucks who start out harassing, that leads to stalking that leads to physical attacks.

And ANOTHER thing, while I'm at it. Why is that behavior implied as "acceptable" for 12 year olds?" It's not.

[Chovexani]

5. There have been cases of in-game harrassment leading to offline harrassment

I don't know of any specifically on WoW, but I have a friend on a text-based online game who was stalked in real life by an asshole from the game. He found out where she worked and everything.

Luckily the geeks in charge took this sort of thing very seriously and not only perma-banned him from the game, but reported his behavior to the authorities in his home county. :)

[supernova]

7. That's the way it should work IMO

Luckily the geeks in charge took this sort of thing very seriously and not only perma-banned him from the game, but reported his behavior to the authorities in his home county

Being online can be fun, but the anonymity encourages bad behavior. As an otherwise geek, I've missed the whole gaming fascination, but I understand that a lot of people enjoy it.

I wish I had better ideas for you. You might want to consider taking a printout of the thread to your police. At the very least you would get it recorded that this was behavior outside the norm of "gaming."

edit: the VOIP stuff reminds me of the early net when I would choose more feminine handles, and invariably get inundated with IMs and requests for my phone #, and to "go private," Going private was early AOL speak for using a private chat room for cybersex. They hear a female voice on the other end and think "fresh meat."

[gaspee]

4. I knew I shouldn't have read that thread

It's full of utter assholes.

Men like to say - oh, most men aren't like that!

Then why when they have the freedom to speak their minds without fear of repercussion (disapproval, ostracizing, etc) do 95% of them turn out to be utter asswipes who clearly hate women for everything except sex. And I swear, a lot of men only want sex so they can brag to their friends about it.

And hey, if you ever doubt that men hate women, just reference that thread (or a million just like it all over the internet.) It will clear up those doubts soon enough!