Comments on: In which I have a golden ticket. And are bunny ears sexist?

By: spinks

spinks — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:04:34 +0000

Awesome Did they answer?

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:51:02 +0000

so, silly tickets:

on the night obama was inaugurated, I had to submit a ticket because on that night blizzard asked me to commit assassination.

http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=850

true story

>.<

By: Tesh

Tesh — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:36:02 +0000

Silly pop culture references I can live with. Casual sexism is annoying. Blizzard does a lot of things well, but they really don’t seem to understand people all that well, especially if they *aren’t* 18-35 raging hormone males.

It’s not a huge surprise; I’m not the only one that’s noted they make great games but don’t really get the whole “virtual world” bit, which includes psychology.

By: Bo

Bo — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:20:44 +0000

Let’s see what happens with Childrens week then and taking your orphan into an effective warzone or jamming your face full of crap while letting the poor little bugger starve as you eat all his sweeties. Politically correct, it isn’t!

By: Kiryn

Kiryn — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:10:30 +0000

I see the level 18 requirement as a way to stop people from just making level 1 dwarf female alts and summoning them to dalaran — it’s a level that is non-trivial to get a character to, so you’d be better off finding someone who’s already at that level. I’m not going to lie and say they chose 18 instead of say, 20, for any reason other than a playboy reference.

But at the same time, I just don’t see it as offensive or objectifying (and yes, I am a girl). I kinda chuckled a little to myself when I saw it. I don’t know why. I don’t see why people are getting all worked up about this. What’s so bad about having bunny ears on your in-game character? A lot of the people with female characters aren’t even females in real life anyway.

I have yet to encounter anyone who acted like they actually cared about the bunny ears — everyone I’ve done it to either ignored it or was actively clicking it off to help other people get the achievement.

By: Hatch

Hatch — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:27:17 +0000

Yep, casual sexism. I’m a guy, and it still annoys me when WoW does stuff like this (spinks also just mentioned the midriff-baring tendencies of female armor, etc). On the one hand, it’s a miracle that the game is as feminist as it is: female avatars are as powerful as males, there is at least some variety in the female avatars that starts to match their race (though in some cases the gender dimorphism does get to be a bit much), and they don’t have to wear pink bikinis all the time. Blood elves may be impossibly skinny, but at least they don’t also have giant fake gravity-defying boobs (that’s reserved for the human females, who are more realistically curvy overall). That makes it all the more annoying when something sexist slips through.

There’s so much ingrained casual sexism in the world that it’s just going to come out eventually, I guess.

The really lame part of this achievement is actually how it’s brought out the usually-hidden sexism of the playerbase. There are tons of decent people out there, but there are also a surprising number of immature, insecure jackass boys who feel the need to make comments in trade about some female races being ugly and even start threads on the official forums about how, and I quote, “Female dwarves need to be more attractive”.

BECAUSE THE ONLY PURPOSE OF A FEMALE IS TO BE AN OBJECT OF YOUR ATTRACTION. How DARE they make an avatar choice that forces you to actually look at a female that isn’t a porn star barbie doll? So what if you are a fat, hairy, greasy, pimple-faced geeky kid in a cheeto-stained shoryuken t-shirt? THEY MUST LOOK PRETTY FOR YOU! THAT IS THEIR FUNCTION!

Whoa, sorry, raged out there for a second. Too many women in my life I care about and seen hurt by the casual sexism of others.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:01:41 +0000

I don’t see ‘shake your bunny-maker’ as a core game mechanic. It’s just occasionally they don’t /think/ about diversity. It’s the same reason that the achievement requires over 18s. In the UK the age of consent is 16 (I get the joke but I wonder if they meant it to be US-centric or just didn’t think… I’d put money on the latter.)

Most of the time, I’d say WoW is pretty good about being universal in its appeal. But there are parts where it isn’t which are mostly cosmetic, such as the stupidness of having identical armour look skimpy on female models and more badass on males, and the incredibly dumb night elf female dance and idle animation. Also, the lack of dark skinned options for humans (I guess you can just say there are no dark skinned humans in Azeroth but it still grates.)

It’s a good question though.

By: Veneretio

Veneretio — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Let’s all just keep in mind that this is the same game which at it’s very foundation is killing people that are a different race than you. For that reason when approaching any of this, we have to understand that this isn’t just a game, it’s a fantasy game. Perhaps, the larger issue is it’s too much a male-oriented fantasy game.

To which I ask the question…

What would a female-oriented fantasy game be like?
Can a fantasy game exist that is both male-oriented and a female-oriented?

By: Tarsus

Tarsus — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:01:50 +0000

I know what you mean. But what can you do when your faction leader is the most eligible bachelor in Azeroth? It raises standards.

By: Longasc

Longasc — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:25:26 +0000

It is nothing to get worked up about too much, but Lum also got the same impression I had: Blizzard is often so thoughtless. See the armory issue, some people did not want others to check their gear from the armory. Blizzard posted the link to the tinfoil hat page, they are about as thoughtless as most people are with “casual sexism” and similar issues. Then there is also the double standards issue that Lum already mentioned.

Also related, why do all achievement systems sooner or later get more and more ridiculous achievements for basically every bullshit. There are websites that provide generators for achievement names/titles, I just wait for the moment when Blizzard finally adds an achievement for using the /sit command or pressing X.