Comments on: BEP and the Goldshire Conundrum

By: Utakata

Utakata — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:05:39 +0000

It seems to me that with all Blizz’s push for social networking of late threw Facebook, Real ID, et al…there was a metaverse called Goldshire thriving right under their noses all this time. To bad they never pursued that…until things got out of control.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:03:40 +0000

I don’t think what you’re looking for is an influx of “older female players”.

Put more bluntly, it’s not the job of women gamers, who presumably log in because they want to play the game, to police trade chat or any other public channels.

Given the numbers of women that are joining games lately, even MMOs like Warcraft, I’m pretty sure there are a large number of “older women” gamers already in WoW, who aren’t doing a thing about trade chat. Trade chat exists on its own, and the people in it are there expressly to be assholes. They /want/ to be assholes, and they know they can get away with it. An individual – or even a group of people – deciding to “clean up” trade chat will get massive amounts of abuse, and have no effect on the chat in general.

Sure, they can have an effect on their guild, but so can /any player/ that would rather not sit around in a guild full of people flinging racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs at each other. I’d venture to say any guild leader, officer, or strong personality (regardless of age or gender) can have that effect, so long as they are backed up by others.

But guilds are not the same thing as global channels, and gender just doesn’t enter into it.

By: Rem

Rem — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:22:27 +0000

For the sake of hyperbole, let’s ignore that Granny probably knows more about sex than all the inhabitants of Goldshire put together.

I think this is a front-runner for the Blog-Line of the Year 2010 Award

By: Nina

Nina — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:05:05 +0000

My guild has an extremely strong contingent of old ladies (and our kids). We haven’t quite cleaned up trade chat, but anyone who raids with our guild learns to mind their speech quite soon. We do not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, or slurs against other players for intelligence, body type or the length of time they’ve been playing.

By: Longasc

Longasc — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:17:52 +0000

On german servers for various MMOs such self-proclaimed pseudo-GMs are called “Sheriffs” and they are usually not welcome.

They usually try to exploit the “trigger words” that cause GMs to react and ban. Just think of the usual list of profane words that the profanity filter usually censors with %”$%§&§.

But hey, MMOs could use some mothers in law as GMs. Or simply better GMs.

Companies, especially Blizzard, need to change their GM training and standards. -> It is incredible what you can do nowadays and still get away with temporary bans, and how often you can repeat that. How comes? “Don’t piss off the customer” is the prime directive, even if said customer takes a dump on the heads of other players and spits the GM right in the face. Blizzard assumes that a lot of their customers are actually not teens, but more likely even younger kids. But lenience is not good here.

A booming GM voice in zone chat telling people to stop the crap in Goldshire now and then could work so well!

People can use WoW exclusively to cyber if they want, but not right in the center of Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Dalaran or Goldshire. We don’t do such things in public on the market place, and neither should we in MMOs.