Decoding Dragons

[Cataclysm] Bitch? I am disappoint, Blizzard (now with added Goblin)

Updated with commentary on the Goblin /silly and /flirt emotes

The NDA being lifted has unleashed (c wat i did thar) a new wave of information on the slobbering masses eager for a peak at our next fix of content. One of the things that caught my eye was recordings of the worgen/flirt and /silly emotes.

You can listen to the videos over here at wow.com

The male ones make me laugh, and I like that they have a ‘transformed’ voice that is obviously for worgen form. I imagine, after LDW and Sindragosa, they are a little wary of making a female voice sound anything BUT sexy/inviting. Some of the names Sindragosa gets called, partially due to her voice, makes me wince. Blood Queen Lana’thel doesn’t get nearly as much criticism for her voice. Is it just because the acting for Sindragosa is ‘bad’? Personally I think it’s because her voice reaches higher octaves, for me the similarity with my mum’s angry voice (and also my own) is a very easy comparison to make.

And thus, even for me, it is easy to brush off as ‘histrionic’. I certainly dismissed my mother enough when she used ‘that’ voice, and I reckon my partner occasionally stops listening when my own voice reaches a certain note.

Out of curiousity I went hunting for more female boss voices. The voices that aren’t trying to be sexy tend to have an artificial deepness to them (not that a lot of the male voices don’t have artificial effects to them either, I mean these are all creatures many times the size of your average human.)

So, what’s wrong with the female Worgen /flirts ?

Well, I’m not going to say there is anything wrong with them persay. A woman being sexual is not a problem for me (and the six nipples comment DID make me giggle.) The bacon joke made me laugh, although it did seem to carry on a tad long. And I LIKE the English voice. What with being British myself. I hope all the Gilnean voice emotes are with English accents, although the female voice accent sounds a bit odd.

The following emotes are the ones I have a problem with:

“Being bitchy is in my blood, don’t pretend you don’t like it.”

Did we really need to use the word bitch here? The word has a whole load of uses that are really not okay. (Edit: This discusses ‘bitch’ where the other article discusses the C-word. I find this joke problematic because it is not just referring to a female dog=bitch *obvious* but because to be funny it has to refer to the misogynistic use of the word that calls an assertive woman a bitch. ‘Bitchy’ also refers to being catty or mean, but it is a very gendered way to say it.)

“I just want someone to pat me on the head and tell me I’m a good girl.”

I’m in two minds about this one in particular, because on the one hand it is again – the female ‘bitch’ that needs taming/really wants to be submissive trope. On the other hand sexuality is such a complicated thing and it is not my place to get all prudish about what another woman likes in bed.

“You can take me home, I’m house broke”

Another ‘submissive’ emote? ‘Broke’? A bit of me just feels a bit disappointed that a woman has to refer to herself as ‘broken’ in /flirt. I don’t have a problem with the aggressive sexuality in these lines, just that the male voice doesn’t have an equivelant ‘submissive’ line.

These are minor niggles – as I said there is a whole can of sexuality worms wriggling around in my objections to those two /flirts. As this is Beta/Alpha, we are unlikely to see all of these make in to the live servers (just as the Draenei and blood elf ones were cleaned up in order to help Blizzard keep their Teen rating.) The /silly emotes aren’t problematic to me – bone jokes are a-okay with me!

The male flirts make me laugh because they sound like the ridiculously over the top, joke chat up lines AND they’re in an English accent.

Misogyny and Misandry in WoW

WoW is a product of prevalent, mainstream white geek culture. And by prevalent I mean male. I’m not going to get angry and yell that Blizzard is woman-hating and needs to employ more womenz. I love this game, I love the fun of the world and the details I am still discovering, but occasionally little things like this pull me out of the game. Instead of fun, I feel disappointment. This is nothing new to a female geek. This happens a lot, and I don’t have an illusions that one day we’ll all be race/able/sexist free (because really denying differences is just as bad as only catering to the privilieged.)

At the same time just because we can’t beat it, that is no reason to stop calling out the times we feel under represented or ignored. I am utterly sick of people who think that being offended at being called an -ist trumps any offence they may genuinely have caused.

If you want some further reading, take a look at this Dissertation by Christopher Ritter:

Why the Humans are White: Fantasy, Modernity, and the Rhetorics of Racism in World of Warcraft

It isn’t on gender issues, but it IS interesting reading and his analysis of the races of wow turns up some interesting observations e.g.

I’m just saying that the Horde females (except the BEs) are purposely designed to fail our society’s mainstream definitions of beauty and femininity, and that we’re supposed to notice it. (Conversely, how many of the male characters’ /silly jokes refer to their attractiveness, or to their appearance at all?)

- (C. Ritter, from Comments on Topography)

EDIT: And now with added Goblin

I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have waited until the Goblin /silly/flirt previews came out. A lot of the individual jokes I adore, the very sexual ones included, but there are a couple (and the entire picture) that just have me making a sadface.

Jokes I did not like

“You told me to tie her up, and do whatever I wanted to her. So I took her stereo.” – Male Goblin /silly

As ‘benign’ as this joke ends, it is a RAPE JOKE. Not okay blizzard. DO NOT WANT.

EDIT: Other people tell me that it sounds like ‘She told’ and I sincerely hope this is the case – I’d rather think I’ve misheard than that Blizz actually thought this was okay to publish – in which case I apologise! I have no problem with the joke as it started ‘She told me…’.

I also did not enjoy the female goblin /flirt as a whole. One of the ‘golddigger’ style jokes would have been okay (e.g. the first one riffing on a Beyonce song, and I understand the female goblin dance is ‘Single Ladies’). On the other hand we also have the male goblin saying ‘oh just give me the money’, which I did not notice on first listen. Goblins=equal opportunity golddiggers (and silver and copper) after all. I need to listen to it some more, and figure out whether this is something that is ‘debasing’ female characters in the game. Or whether I’m objecting because of the close nature of money and sex in the flirts.

But. yeah. Just going to quote one comment from wow.com that illustrates my worry.

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA female Goblins will be the local horde hooker..I can already see it. Sitting in Org…Tauren District to be exact…and these Goblins workin on making money…lol. this game is hilarious.”

Normally I wouldn’t worry about a random guy on the internet, but I can see this is how the jokes will end up being ‘read’ by a lot of the player base. And yes, they’ll read that the female Goblin is selling herself, while the male goblin is just money obsessed. This just leads to so many…argh. Is my objection slut shaming on my part, or objectification on Blizzards part?

Jokes I did like

The female goblin ‘bondage’ joke. There is how you joke about a sexual preference without debasing the woman.

“I don’t like being tied down. Oh. You mean literally? Oh no, TOTALLY in to that.”

“Lets get together and compare figures”

I made the mistake of commenting at wow.com with my objections and have already been told to get off my high horse and had my comments voted down. I should have guessed that would happen. There is nothing wrong with sexual jokes, but objecting to something I find somewhat questionable is somehow worse than a joke about rape. Yay!

And yes – most/many of these jokes will vanish in the actual release, but I suspect we will see the ‘sweet profit’ and ‘compare figures’ ones stay in, as will the Single Ladies reference.

[Cataclysm] Bitch? I am disappoint, Blizzard (now with added Goblin) was published on July 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 34 comments on this article so far.

Real ID Implementation Is Not Good Enough

One of the features I was most looking forward to with battle.net integration was being able to chat with cross-server friends while in World of Warcraft, and ignore an entire account if someone was harassing me. Not that it happens often, but I can imagine most people get tired of ignoring level 1 alts when they’re being harassed by an arsehat.

A few clarifications

  1. I am on Facebook and yes I do add long-time guildies that I have known for years. I use the many privacy options where I can, and I don’t associate email addresses, websites or nicknames with my real name on Facebook itself.
  2. I have been cyberstalked/harassed in the past, as it were, and have in my time received a death threat. This came out of a) The guild meet being held at my house and b) a mentally ill individual who reacted badly to being asked to leave the guild. Since then I’ve been a lot more careful with personal information.
  3. So I take a medium approach to ‘security’. I don’t give out login names or passwords, I use different email addresses for my battle.net account. I limit use of my real name in association with my blogging and warcrafting.

You can read the Real ID FAQ in full here, and I am going to pick up on some pros and cons of Blizzard the Gaming Company moving into Blizzard the Social Media Company.

What is the Real ID System?

The Real ID system is an optional layer of identity (i.e. you the player as opposed to you the character) and will allow battle.net members to communicate across games, servers and factions. Instead of asking you to pick a player pseudonym, it will use the REAL name that is listed on your battle.net account – so your ‘friendlist’ will read much like a facebook friend list, as opposed to a xfire buddylist. They are, in essence, making battle.net into a full social networking system that happens to be connected to a computer game.

What Information do my Real ID friends get?

  1. Your real name
  2. The real names of all your friends.
  3. Your battle.net email. Even though it is not displayed, the initial contact with people is made by sending a real ID request by knowing each other’s email address.
  4. A list of all your battle.net characters in all games. Yes. All of them. No, you can’t hide any of them.
  5. Rich presence information – What character you are playing, what you are doing on any battle.net game
  6. Sending and viewing ‘broadcast messages’. Blizzard describes this as a ‘corkboard’.
  7. The ability to chat cross faction, cross server and cross game.

And if I don’t use Real ID? Can I get any functionality?

According to the FAQ you can still add characters to your friends list in the current fashion of a World of Warcraft buddy list, but it doesn’t work cross game, there are no cross-server/faction chat functions, and all you will be able to see is their on/offline status. I’m not even sure if that works cross server/faction either.

So what’s the real issue? It’s only my name.

And to friend someone in the first place, you need to know their battle.net email address. For internet security you should never need to pass your login out to anyone. While the amount of information that can be seen as far less intrusive than the amount of information that Facebook now gives out with default privacy settings, you only opt in or out. There are no granulated privacy settings. Even on Facebook it is possible to use a nickname if you’re really that concerned. I am on facebook and utilise the privacy features heavily because I have no wish to share all my information with my entire friendslist.

I have no idea whether I will use this service yet. I suspect there are one or two people I will share it with, but my ‘real friends and family’ either don’t play the game, or have my phone number/facebook/IMs to contact me by. One person I might share it with sits NEXT TO ME WHILE I PLAY. I don’t need real ID to communicate with people I already know well, I need something similar to communicate with acquaintances that I might not also want to give my real name and phone number to.

A very basic, intrusive Social Networking Site

If a Social Networking Site is going to be created, give us the same controls that a social networking site gives us. I have no problem using such a thing, but give us more control over our privacy. The ability to shield certain or most characters from it, use a pseudonym or a different email address to the one we use to login to the account with. I all I really want is my ‘friends’ to know that I’m online, not that I’m idling in Dalaran or base-jumping in Nagrand. I don’t want or need them to know the name of my Bank Alt, or my ‘get away from it all Alt’ on another server.

It is opt-in or opt-out (and parents will be able to prevent their youngsters from using it, but this requires the parents being informed enough to do so.) No granularity and with such features that many people will start using it without thinking twice about the privacy and account security implications.

An upside – Accountability

Currently the internet makes one anonymous. We can all act like arsehats and say heinous stuff without that much of a repercussion. If you act like an idiot on one character, you can log on as another and be viewed as a paragon of the realm community. Now? Anyone with your real ID will be able to see that it is you trolling trade chat and spouting homophobic garbage. Anyone with your real ID will be able to see that YOU are the notorious ninja of the server.

There will be the option to permanently block someone from contacting you. I don’t know if this involves knowing their real ID, or simply a secondary ignore function that will cover all their future characters, thus preventing harassers and abusers from trying to circumvent the /ignore feature. This would be a great step, especially if it doesn’t need Real ID for implementation.

Guild Security

I’ve seen a few guilds where management requires you to get our your Core Hound Pup to prove you have an authenticator – what impact could Real ID have on top level raid guilds? Will we see sharing your Real ID with the GM or Officers become a requirement for joining a top level guild?

I know of several women in top 100 guilds who are unlikely to want to share their real name with anyone, due to the amount of harassment they already receive in game. All it would need is for one person on a woman’s Real ID friendlist to have an arsehat on their Real ID friendlist, and that woman’s name could be leaked for all the trolls to see (and there is a never ending stream of anonymous players who are happy to call top level female players all kinds of names that a male player will rarely have to fear.)

There is a lot to explore, I think.

Aren’t you overreacting?

No, I don’t think so. If you completely trust everyone you share your Real ID with, more power to you. Be educated and understand that you are sharing the personal information of your current friends list whenever you add a new person to your friendslist.

I’m just somewhat worried, because the Facebook Integration was announced alongside the Real ID details.  Facebook started out as a small and somewhat closed system, and look at what it is now – a global medium for sharing personal information, used by millions of people who don’t quite understand what they’re doing.  The concern about battle.net is not about where it starts out, with the minor thing of sharing your game activities without filter and your real name with friends of your friends; it is about where it could possibly end up.

Conclusion

If you have nothing to fear, have never been stalked or harassed online, have never been hacked or had credit card details stolen, you’re very very lucky. The more information that you give out, the more possibility there is for it. Don’t dismiss people with privacy concerns as being paranoid just because you’re not worried. They might actually have a point.

Make sure you really read and understand the Real ID documentation before you use it. And make sure you don’t have any reason for the trolls to come after you. And make sure all the people you friend take the same precautions.

Real ID Implementation Is Not Good Enough was published on May 10th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 23 comments on this article so far.

Identity is not a static thing

I’m somewhat fed up with seeing people complain about losing class or spec uniqueness. In The Burning Crusade I played a niche class, and was one of the only raiders who did so. I played on a crap computer and this caused my guild to take me along despite poor DPS, and a very low frame rate that caused me to have problems seeing stuff that was going to kill me. When the Replenishment mechanic was spread around the classes, I QQed because it was the only thing saving my raid spot.

Then I got over it. No more guilt for denying my guild a needed ability when I needed a night off. As a Shadow Priest I was no longer just about utility, and because of that I was able to contribute to DPS in my own shadowy way, and not as a mere supplemental warm body. Blizzard talks about iconic abilities so much, but I think we often make the mistake of confusing abilities for identity. A Shaman is more than their Heroism/Bloodlust. They do not lose their ability just because Mages are allowed to DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY.

Matticus points this out nicely with reference to healing, and healer identities. A single ability is not the backbone of class identity, and as the WoW community changes and grows over the years, the niche of a spec changes. Remember the time when BM was the joke of the whole community, it was the levelling spec and nowt more? And then BRK and some other bloggers came along and showed us what it was capable of and the identity of BM hunters changed.

Remember when Discipline was for PvP? Hell, when Shadow was for PvP? The players change the classes as much as the developers do, because they figure out what they want from a spec and use it that way, and the developers respond. These are complimenting strengths and specs that are growing out of what the player base enjoys doing. The way we see ourselves as a class changes over time. Shadow Priests have not turned into Warlocks. Warlocks are not really mages. Any change that enables a group of people to adapt and play what they want to play, without being forced to bring a certain composition is a good thing.

[quote]We are scaling back the magnitude of some of the buffs, as we did with Sunder Armor. We want you to feel awesome when you have strong good synergy, but we don’t want the buffs to overwhelm say your gear or skill. We’re also planning on getting rid of any talent that buffs a buff. Any buff that is earned solely by talent needs to have a selfish component thrown in so that you don’t feel like you should respec if someone else with that buff comes along.[/quote]

The above was posted by Ghostcrawler, of course, and is a good indicator what utility is really going to mean in Cataclysm. Instead of ‘utility’ being the identity for a given spec, such as it was at one time for discipline and the shaman class as a whole, utility is something everyone can bring. Identity is buried instead in play style and not a single all-encompassing thing like ‘utility’. Elemental has identity rooted in fire and lightning, in turret style play with great burst damage and sustained DPS. Enhancement is quick-hitting, a real dazzling whirlwind of shocks and spirits. Restoration is the power of the spirits replenishing and spreading through allies.

What we think our class is about, lore wise, is not always what the Devs see. All the grumbling over Shamans losing their ability to remove poisons and diseases was answered with this snippet. I’ve underlined what I feel is relevant.

[quote]It’s dangerous territory trying to defend game changes (or arguing against game changes) for lore reasons. While we take the lore very seriously, it’s a slippery thing that can be used to justify opposite points of view. For example, in our minds the mystical, yet perhaps provincial nature of druids and shaman make them well-suited for focusing on healing afflictions of the spirit (curses). Meanwhile, priests and paladins have a connection to urbanized society and advanced medicine (relative to a medieval / Renaissance / fantasy time period anyway), and are therefore more qualified to heal afflictions of the body (disease). Druids have a strong connection to animals and plants, so perhaps understanding the nature of toxins and venom makes sense. While shaman have an affinity for elements and spirits, you can stretch that too far and say that because they are tribal healers they should be capable of removing any malady that might strike down their people. It’s all very malleable stuff. We’re also not above evolving the lore when we think it’s absolutely necessary.[/quote]

I made the mistake of connecting Shamans too closely with nature, and priests with the mind. I still think that Priests with all their will and spirit focused spells are better for curing the spirit, but arguing with Blizzard’s interpretation is fruitless at this stage. They’ve taken one angle on the identity of shaman, and stuck to it. And I’m not displeased – it is so easy to confuse the Elements with Nature that more distinction between Druidic Identity and Shamanic Identity. This is a re-evaluation!

Edit: It seems like the mages are also tired of the QQ.

Identity is not a static thing was published on April 13th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.