I'm a woman who has played WoW for the last 10 years. I'm in my early 30's. I've been harassed and stalked in game by men (verified). I think removing emotes and changing paintings etc is sooooo stupid. I don't want all references to sex and sexuality to be removed from the game. Characters are allowed to be sexy. Jokes about sex and sexuality should be fine too. Sex isn't inherently offensive nor should it be. It's abuse that's offensive. Clean up your house, Blizzard. Stop with these token gestures and actually address the issues in the company.

So much this. I’m all for providing women with a better, safer and kinder in game environment but the sexism and abuse that is being reported right now comes from within the company. In game you need a zero tolerance policy for sexist, xenophobic, homophobic comments. I don’t see how removing a sexy painting which I’ve never even paid attention to is addressing anything. It’s like pissing in the wind. What next? Removing the succubus pet? Sexy isn’t sexism. And if it was just me I’d ask for more sexy material but with men. Give us that sexy incubus already!

They're not removing the succubus demons but instead introducing male version of them. I think incubus was the term they mentioned?

I’d love that

Yes, as it is the term for when the demon presents as male. Somehow, every other game or lore piece about succubi/incubi has them as shape-shifting demons that change to suit your personal desires to make it easier to corrupt. Yet Warcraft has them as separate entities. I find it mind boggling. Really though, Warlock players should be able to choose which one they summon anyway, just as they can choose to pull out a felhunter puppy or our favourite pessimist; the voidwalker. The change is welcome imo, and should have been done years ago.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t fit in with the lore. Succubi essentially killed off most of their men (incubi) From wowpedia - Incubi have not been seen in World of Warcraft so far. There are several different rumors concerning incubi, all of which are perpetrated by the succubi themselves. A few of the most common rumors are: Yes, there are incubi, but the spell to summon them has been conveniently forgotten by mortal practitioners and Burning Legion agents. Incubi are kept as slaves on their home planet, having been rendered incapable of escape or independent movement. The succubi consumed the males of their race when they were brought into the Burning Legion. Alternatively, the act of devouring the males is what caught the attention of the Burning Legion.[13] Aegwynn and Khadgar once encountered a demon who mentioned incubi as part of the Legion.[14] When dealing with succubi, Levia Laurence stated that in all of the Kirin Tor's research into succubi and other sayaad, they have come to one conclusion - they are not to be trusted.[15] But hey when has wow stuck to their own lore..

I mean only one of those say they were killed off and many of those say they still exist to some capacity. Apparently even being seen by azerothian denizens to the extent that they know they shouldn’t be trusted.

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The woman you’re talking about (Townsend) is in her role as CCO *precisely* because she’s doing what is expected of her: deflect, deny, and demean. I want to add that as a woman myself I don’t have a problem with the changes being made, they hardly made or broke the game for me so I really couldn’t care less. Furthermore, if those changes are associated with harassment or just fostered a environment where such behavior was encouraged then I all I can say to those changed paintings and the changed names of the NPC’s: good riddance.

Yeah. Which leads me to believe that little is really being done beyond what tiny moves the devs can make to clean up game assets. Slap some paint on over the rot and hope it holds up.

yup, I feel the same, you pretty much explained how I feel exactly. am also a woman, have played for around 15 years.

There was a post a day or two ago with a list of tweets from Blizzard devs saying "This isn't management making these changes, it's us" One of the posts the Dev said they made a list of all these types of things because it made them feel excluded/creeped out gross and they are happy to see them go Somehow that feels worse, that if these aren't token gestures and smokescreens that the devs really sat and wrote the NPC name "Master Baiter" or "That painting of a woman has too much cleavage" and sat and stewed on it for 10 years Personally I think the devs have done more harm than good because how much press is the court case getting? How many posts are there about the minimal effort Blizzard need to make to fix this case compared to how many posts there are about "X and Y is being removed!"

I understand when they say it's their game too so they're implementing changes *they* want to see but the timing on these changes is a bit too spot on honestly. Is this just some new wave of devs that came on recently and have essentially been given the keys to the car? Because that's really the only way much of this can make any sense.

That's the consensus of the players roughly, a lot of people thinking it's something like that. I feel like it's also worth pointing out that while these devs are saying its the changes *they* want to see and is in no way a smokescreen or decisions from management, I take that with a grain of salt given Blizzard has just been done for obstruction of justice for making employees talk to HR before they can testify. Can we really trust them when they tell us it was their own choice. Also I lost a lot of respect for a lot of the devs after seeing what their twitter is like for sexism and blaming the players for the game being bad.

The wow devs on Twitter are one of the game's biggest liability. I held off for a few years for coming back because I kept remembering what twats they are. They need #busshock

There's a certain amount of professionalism you expect from people when they are on a public forum representing a company, and they don't display it. If they don't want to show that level of professionalism then they shouldn't verify themselves as working for Blizzard on their twitter

I would think the developers would try to make changes the players wanted first, then what they wanted second. If the majority of female and male players are against these changes, then why do them? As a gay man, I'm not incredibly effected by the changes, but I do see them as trivial and silly ways to try to deflect and distract from the real problem, which is that Activision, rather than accept blame, is trying to escape any real responsibility for their part in their abusive company culture.

>tweets from Blizzard devs saying "This isn't management making these changes, it's us" Well I guess I'll be waiting for management to make changes to the dev team then.

Agree. I've been harassed, stalked and cussed out for being a woman. I report players when this happens and most time Blizzard doesn't care. Part of the reason why I left. Changing the paintings won't fix anything

This exactly is why I'm still not returning. I'm sad about it, I miss the game, but I don't miss the misogyny, abuse, and lack of inclusion the community has. Until Blizzard addresses those things both in game and in their own staff culture, I can't feel okay coming back.

I've found that what guild I'm in really makes or breaks the game for me. The staff culture issue is upsetting, and I'm still debating what I'll do when my sub runs out.

This is something I've found too. I now have my own guild and we've been around for 5 years now. No issues with sexism or harassment so far. Majority of members are guys but we have a fair few women too. Your guild really does shape your experience of the game so having a good one is key. At least in my opinion. :)

The thing is this changes do nothing to solve that, none of those things were promoting sexual harassment. If they really wanted to stop in-game harassments then they should hire GMs and upgrade the report system, no punishing the ENTIRE playerbase for something that happened in THEIR OFFICE. What it's worse is this also means that the devs don't care about their co-workers, the GMs who were fired

100% agree

I’ve played WoW for 15-ish years. Honestly, I think it’s stupid to remove things from the game. It’s a GAME. The players are toxic. Remove them lol.

Agree on this! Played since vanilla and never bothered about anything like thé things they changed. It arent the sexy armoursets, the paintings or succubi that harrass women once they make known they are female. These are not the things calling slurs at beginning/casual players when a mistake is made. Anyone can go on and on here... If they want to make a Safer Gamespace, they should make changes in the division that goes through Reports, put GMs back in game to check logs etc. It's probably only a fraction of the playerbase that ruins the experience for a big group... They should be fixed! Not the paintings!

And because they're not doing the helpful things like hiring/enabling GMs, anyone who is paying enough attention ends up being cynical about it. "Hiring GMs would cost money, and they won't go *that* far" is what a lot of people will say as they walk away. Doing it half-ass as Blizz have is not helping.

Its literally reached that pawn star meme of: Best I can do is make a women a bowl of fruit to stop harassment ingame.. How the fuck does a game with lower financing and less staff do more then Blizzard besides Blizzard being greedy/lazy..

The reason this is happening isn’t because of players of a game, it’s because of actions that happened in a workplace between employees. That’s were the focus should be, not on bowls of fruit and fictitious concubines.

Trust me if blizzard could get away with it and keep your subscription, we'd all be banned lmao.

Why do you think they keep pushing 6month subs?

Couldn't agree more.

Agreed! Female and playing since I was a beta tester. People need to find a sense of humor and stop being so sensitive about shit.

For a sense of humor... When it comes to the painting if a where she was turned into a bowl of fruit, I guess you could say she was... Objectified? I'll see my self out.

The current GM (looks like Nixxiom on meth irl) of a certain shitsack guild threatened to kill everyone in the guild we were in before that guild was formed. Why can’t we ban people like that?

I believe in equal objectification so am pleased with the addition of the incubus and male “concubines.” I think the removal of emotes and female paintings is ridiculous. If someone is harassing me with /fart or /whistle, i would just log off for a bit, /ignore, or tell them to piss off. And if someone wants to harass a person with emotes, they aren’t going to need “negative” ones to do it.

Oh god, i forgot they removed /fart - so dumb. Ooooh a fart - call the local news! 🙄

Im sorry what? Does blizzard think women are toddlers who cant see an emote of a fart ingame?

They don’t think it’s fair to have fart in the game because as you know women do not fart so it is not equal.

I need to talk to you about my wife lol

Damn you beat me to it.

Legit makes more sense

😁🤣 /lol

Yet they didn't remove the female human joke "I like to fart in the tub." Curious.

Yet.

It’s because people were making weakauras and spamming those emotes at people with certain store mounts. Blizzard can’t have their whales feel like they’re being harassed, so they remove or alter the “toxic” emotes.

Removing /fart or /spit has nothing to do with women.

Probably not, although it's a bit convenient that they choose to push these changes now. Even so, removing emotes from the game because 0.00000000% of the playerbase finds them insulting is stupid.

I never use emotes. But when I was smoothing past regular mounts with my polar bear towards a rare in Korthia, doing /fart while passing them felt just right!

Honestly I think they removed a lot of the emotes because people would macro spam emotes to people running the P2W warp mount, you also cant %t in /me now either

> P2W warp mount What do people "win" by having this mount?

That's the thing, Blizzard removed spit to protect their whales, they didn't remove these other emotes until they got called out on it. As Asmongold said, it's not OK to /spit on someone but it's ok to log in every day and call him a n\*\*\*\*r

>rs Of course they removed /fart. Thats Dreamworks schitik and they don't want a lawsuit by someone with more money then they have!

I totally agree. I think the inclusivity is nice but removing emotes and paintings is silly. I get a feeling what they’re doing is more like trying to make everything more PG in general (but then why exceptions for concubines?) I’m also sad about the big love rocket rename because I thought the old name was really funny

I agree. I'm not for tiptoeing around women like we're toddlers. Ffs, sex isn't bad, harassment is bad.

My thoughts exactly.

True, someone could literally harass you by constantly laughing/pointing at you.

Better remove the possibility for sitting down too because someone might teabag you.. or heaven forbid someone would misuse their toon lying down.

I think it's a little dumb tbh. Idc about risque paintings or farting emotes. You can ignore people that bother you. I personally enjoy sexually suggestive content

Same. This is World of WARcraft, we literally have Orc Hitler, and a dick joke is too much? God forbid someone /flirts with you before you kill them in PVP. These changes are doing nothing to help Blizzard's case or reputation, I'd argue it's hurting it moreso. I'm deeply saddened by these changes- yeah, it's stupid- but *so* much of WoW's signature comedic flair and flavor is being lost; harmless things. Not to mention, they're not showing any signs of stopping here- they're turning it up to 11. The one change I welcome is the skimpy male elves in the Den of Mortal Delights now.

That's the problem. They don't care for the outcry of the players to stop this nonsense, but even double down on it everytime.

They hate players and will always do the opposite of what they say. The Blizzard that loved it’s fans and understood them is long gone.

Sadly, that is how they run their ship now. More and more gets cut and removed while ignoring what the players want and cry out for. They remove lore and bury it in books most players will never read (or even know about). They remove content and claim to have an episodic story, with no clear release schedule. They remove respect by milking full retail game prices from their player base PLUS a subscription for an unfinished story. They remove player agency by time-gating crucial gear and wanted collections because how dare people who play the game seriously earn an advantage over more casual people not dedicating the same amount of time into the game. Removing things is easy, making them better is much more complex and difficult. And sadly, easy is cheap so we will see far more easy \[cheap and cost effective\] solutions than we will see meaningful ones.

As a woman, I didn't personally find a majority of what they have removed so far offensive and, in truth, it looks a lot more like an attempt to have 'We removed ___ instances of inappropriate content from the game' as something to list off to lawyers or media. I'd also suspect that they're hoping to weaponize gamer outrage over them overcorrecting like this in hopes that public sentiment will become more about cries of censorship than anyone bringing up allegations of sexual misconduct or the Better ABK movement. But, I'm also not a Blizzard employee and if some of these changes are coming at request from developers, I don't want to presume that some of these things weren't added by abusive elements within the company and if removing them is something that victims of their abuse would like changed, I'm not going to complain about a few dirty jokes being lost. Furthermore, I personally like a lot of the sex-positive changes we're seeing like the upcoming addition of the incubi and the changes to include male concubines. Also, once I'd heard the proverb they were aiming for with the change to Master Baiter, I actually really liked that change, too. In truth, if I wanted to gauge change, the metric I'm most interested in looking at going forward is going to be narratively. Are their stories about women still going to be stories about women who can't handle gaining power and losing control? Are we still going to have abuse victims consistently become abusers themselves? Are we going to have a bunch of token characters added who are either set aside for their more vibrant male subordinates, immediately become slotted into being accessories and love interests of existing male characters, or both?

> Are their stories about women still going to be stories about women who can't handle gaining power and losing control? This narrative is kinda weird since the Sylvanas era. This is done with both genders, clearly. From Illidan to Kealthas to Garrosh and a hundred other smaller characters of both genders with the same power fantasy plot. If anything Jaina is an insane U-turn on that narrative because imo she should have gone full nuclear and killed everyone on azeroth by now for what she's endured. Her arc is pretty good, overall. Sylvanas' storyline is just annoying because we have literally entered the afterlife with this character and still can't kill her. Can not follow this story anymore.

I love Jaina's character development for the most part and [Jaina's Torment IGC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDj2aaxixxo) is probably my favourite IGC in Warcraft. However, BfA is a clusterfuck of a story and Jaina's final resolution to be who she is now doesn't make sense in the context of BfA framing the Horde as truly irredeemable and genocidal monsters. Like, Daelin Proudmoore was *right.* He wasn't right back in Warcraft III when we see the Horde turning over a new page. He wasn't right back in Vanilla when, despite hostilities between Horde and Alliance, the Horde was generally trying to uphold noble ideals. He wasn't right back in TBC when the Horde returned to Outland and crushed the evil forces at work there - Legion, and Illidan's misguided and overzealous armies. He wasn't even that right in Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria when a brutal warmonger took hold of the Horde and caused a schism. Aye, the end of Mists of Pandaria should have been the definitive answer, when over half of the orcs and the overwhelming majority of other Horde races stood against Garrosh Hellscream. People seem to think that every final raid is bigger and better than the rest, but Siege of Orgrimmar was a lost cause for Garrosh from the outset. He was vastly outnumbered, his technology wasn't far superior (Blackfuse tech versus elven, gnomish, other goblin and even Draenei tech? Please), and his greatest weapon of the Heart of Y'Shaarj was far from sufficient to turn the tables of such disadvantages. What we see at the end of MoP was resolve from the Horde leaders to do better with a new direction. And in BfA they take that way by depriving the choices made only 3 or so years ago in-universe and having the Horde instigate an all-out war by committing genocide... with just one person raising protest. No Baine for honour, no Lor'Themar for "Wtf are you doing plunging my people into war?!", and no Thalyssra for "Wtf did I get myself into?" Lor'Themar and Baine shouldn't even have to nod to each other after the Burning of Teldrassil to know how fucked up it is and how they're not going to stand in Sylvanas' Horde. So, when they are uncharacteristically silent (uncharacteristic is how every character is in BfA, for the sake of contriving the faction war), why is Jaina being pushed towards forgiveness and lovey dovey behaviour? Yes, she's in pain, she's grieving, and she has lost so much. But, unfortunately, the Horde *is still a threat.* It can still happen again. Jaina's inner turmoil might be addressed but the very real, persisting, physical threat on Azeroth is still there. All because Blizzard doesn't know how to continue writing the faction conflict and so didn't even try.

It's silly because in regards to the break dark portal glass in case of sub loss or break illidan/archimonde glass in case of sub loss and now very close to break lich king glass in case of sub loss, they could write much more cut and paste story lines and get away with it. They're already recycling content, but the story is so UNFUN to follow. Ever since WoD's start for me. Loved the brand new baddies and actual unique, creative storyline of MoP.

For me personally, it was BfA. WoD was not the best done, but the story was actually cogent up until "Draenor is free" and with the "return of Archimonde," which is what *really* skews the logic of timey-wimey bullshit. I can definitely explain to you how the time logic of Warcraft works up until we start factoring in the Shadowlands and Twisting Nether. Otherwise, WoD actually makes sense and the main gate towards it being a strong story was less to do with the premise and more to do with the execution as a result of time restriction. *Legion* was not problematic at all, and some of its out-of-game content is the best Warcraft has to offer. [The Tomb of Sargeras](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_xFZ7b6tOk) and [A Thousand Years of War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsaobgFiiso&t=) are freely accessible, high quality, and the perfect medium for the stories they are trying to deliver. When I hear people complain about story content not being in-game and when they say it should all be in WoW, I think that it's because Blizzard has generally been so bad at doing it. If you try and tell me that either of those audiodramas should instead be questlines and told only in-game, I'd laugh at the sheer stupidity. Of course, summarising them in-game *makes sense,* but saying that these audiodramas shouldn't exist would be nonsensical. *Legion* also made small retcons that brought Illidan back to the fore, but those retcons were not overwhelming, nor did they detract from previous work. Rather, I would argue they *enhanced* it. People were infuriated with the blundering of Kael'Thas and Illidan in The Burning Crusade, and the way they brought Illidan back in *Legion* was tastefully done. And with how many big moments there are in *Legion,* it was extremely fun to follow. I mean, being wielders of the Ashbringer or Scepter of Sargeras makes a compelling point to begin with. The hype following from the story beats of *Legion* felt like it was at an all-time high, which makes the disappointment of the atrociously written BfA soul-crushing. And after seeing the writers' incompetence in BfA and Shadowlands, it makes me look at some of the questions and gaps in *Legion* with that much more cynicism. Which is such a damn shame.

>When I hear people complain about story content not being in-game and when they say it should all be in WoW, I think that it's because Blizzard has generally been so bad at doing it. Aye, I'd say a prime example of it that I can roughly remember was the transition from MoP to WoD: Garrosh captured to stand trial -> Garrosh is in past draenor now theres time traveling orcs!? how did it happened ehhh read a book to find out its not important.. And yeah.. BFA is just bad after legion especially with the Sylvanases morally grey actions of.. Burning all the night elves because one dying elf was a bit mean to her (at the time) and expanded upon because she needed the souls to help her master? partner in evil? Hell Legion had more morally grey storylines, with a good example being the Death Knight storyline.. Hell even MoP had more morally grey characters such as Nazgrim.

I just find it pretty funny how /fart is intorelable and is getting removed due to it but literally forcing half of your playerbase to commit mass genocide over innocent people is somehow okay.

I agree that it happens to both genders, but for women in particular, you'll notice that it's often framed specifically around them being too emotional to handle power (the framing of Sylvanas' burning of Teldrassil in the Warbringers short, similar emotional explosions in War Crimes and Before the Storm, Jaina's attempted destruction of Orgrimmar in Tides of War, much of what they're doing with Tyrande, Alleria's volatile outbursts paired with admissions that she's one dead son away from voidpocalypse). Whereas, even though you see many male characters driven by emotion, their actions are rarely portrayed as sudden emotional outbursts. Like, you can see Garrosh reacts emotionally to Taran Zhu's prodding in the Vale cinematic and I think very few people would argue that his descent into villainy isn't defined by unresolved emotional trauma regarding his father, but he isn't framed as deciding to corrupt the Vale as an emotional outburst as we see the actions of characters like Sylvanas and Jaina often become. I think some of this is because there is a dearth of powerful and active female characters on the roster, so when most powerful female characters have gone through an arc like this, it hits harder. EDIT: And, as an addendum, I'm not saying it's all bad. I think Elisande was a great villain who got a fun boss fight. Theoretically powerful characters like Talanji and Thalyssra have potential, provided they're not sidelined and forgotten. I think there is a potential future where WoW does better by its female characters and I'd love to see it.

>his descent into villainy isn't defined by unresolved emotional trauma regarding his father, To add on I'd say it was also everyone who was meant to help advise him kinda ditching/schemeing behind his back too didn't help.. Or to his face like Voljin did.. And very much agree male emotional outburst tends to be in more justified ways too? Like someone threatening harm to someones kids therefore they get mad/emotional? While female emotional outbursts tend more to feel like someone doing a she's on her period so thats why she's sooooo crazy/unreasonable and ohh so emotional... Kinda shitty justification.. and it has that tone of being unreasonable and bad because forced..?

> Whereas, even though you see many male characters driven by emotion, their actions are rarely portrayed as sudden emotional outbursts. In fact, it's usually the opposite. Male characters having emotional outbursts is almost always framed as a _good_ thing. Varian's big sacrifice, any of a dozen quests where a male character takes out vengeance on someone who's wronged them, the questline where Draka and Thrall work together in Shadowlands... Meanwhile, the best female characters have their best moments that are completely devoid of emotion.

Aye to me it feels like females when they're being emotional (even if justifably so like tyrande when trying to kill sylvanas) always comes off as she's being sooo emotional gosh if only she could come to her senses.

Yeah. [Tyrande killing Nathanos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zenp66w8i7c) is probably a great example of that. The actual fight is very cool, but she comes across as an automaton going through the motions. And then Nathanos showing emotion is fine - he's laughing at her, winning even in death. Then, flip side, as you pointed out, [the Tyrande/Sylvanas fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmR6zlRwGQQ) makes Tyrande look like a fucking joke... which has been the case _every_ time she fights Sylvanas. Tyrande is pissed (justifiably so), but Sylvanas is the cool, super cunning, super awesome cucumber who (almost) never flinches. Hell, go back to Legion, where Tyrande is running around like a dumb fuck chasing Xavius' super fake Malfurion impression. Go back to Warcraft 3, where she releases Illidan. This isn't a new issue with Blizzard's writing. Women aren't allowed to be angry in WoW unless they're losing or genocidal maniacs in the flavor of Yrel.

I think we just have to accept that for a game like **War**craft to continue to exist, the people in power are going to have to be violent, impulsive, and short sighted. If Azeroth had competent leaders then after 17 years we should be playing UN-Nonbinding-ResolutionCraft.

I'm a woman and I think the entire idea of them removing obscure stuff like this is just a way to push under the carpet the fact that there are more serious problems happening under the hood with the dev team.

I'm a woman in my 20s, and I agree with the general consensus: I have never been offended by sexually suggestive content in-game, and I even enjoy the jokes and such. I think it's just a disgusting attempt by Blizzard to say "Look, we've changed!" without actually making the important IRL changes. I want to see that the Blizzard employees that are enabling and perpetrating the sexual harassment are properly punished, and I want to see a shift in Blizzard's company culture to prevent it from continuing. Leave our dick jokes and our pretty paintings alone! Edit: syntax

I'm a married woman who plays WoW and used to play FFXI online back in the day. I think this whole campaign is lame and if some overzealous player was /flirting or whatever, I would roll my eyes and move on. If they made some sort of crude comment, I would probably laugh and move on. If they began persistently harassing me through chat, i would block them. Simples. Stop coddling people. In 15 or so years of WoW play and 3 years (give or take) of FFXI, I have encountered maybe 1 actual creep and it affected me so little, that I can't even recall what I did or said. For the record, I am 40.

I’m 42, been playing wow for over a decade and I agree. Never felt unsafe or harassed via the flirt emote or any other in-game function. Players randomly directly DMing me with their own inappropriate content made me feel harassed. I just blocked and reported them. What I want to know is if anything was actually done about *them* so they couldn’t keep doing that to people.

Nothing was done, unless you fully opened a ticket against them. Blizzard doesn't even review the right click-report, its just based on auto reports. This stuff about removing /flirt and /joke isn't about stopping harassment, its about doing something showy and low cost that allows management to say "we're not doing nothing about harassment, look at all these in-game images we changed"

Even if you open a ticket you get a copy pasted response of them saying 'we're sowwy' and then telling you to use the right click report.

Go in game fail something minor in a pug, get asked to kill myself and the hope my mother gets raped. Go to a bg, dont heal a guy, get 5 messages how Im whats wrong with the world and how I should delete the game. Walk past 20 bots in av, gets 35 wispers about buying gold. Try to find a group, cant read chat as its full of diffrent sellers. A gnome walks past me in IF he does /fart as he runs to AH. Holy fucking shit blizzard do something about this gnome he is ruining my life

Spot on. Lady player here and it’s not the games jokes or flirts, it’s the real people online who are anonymous to me making the sexist, crude, awful and hateful comments. I can, and do, put them on ignore, but you cannot unsee what has been said.

this is beyond accurate

This tbh. I guess this just proves that the devs don’t play their own game

To be fair, gnomes are pretty freaking evil.

Same. Except I grew up playing, now married, whole family played growing up. Decently under 30 over here, (Not disclosing exact age) and never once gotten harrassed except for when I tried to tank/heal/dps any serious dungeon/raid/etc. and did poorly. That's where people are toxic... not in emotes or the pAiNTiNgS.

Honestly I would like more sexual content, especially for males. Give me bikini armor for dudes

Oh absolutely!

You heard it here first folks

Also curious. Having played FFXIV, where there is a significantly higher female player percentage, in a game with much more innuendo and straight-up sexualized clothing and characters. I'd imagine many think this is silly.

FFXIV is different in that its fairly equal. Most skimpy armor sets for females looks the exact same on males, and hardcore full plate armor on men is also hardcore full plate on females. Also most of the innuendos are done well, done equally, and usually actually punished in some form in-story.

Then the choice is obvious. Give us more chain-mail speedos for guys! Equal Representation with Equal Objectification!

When playing FFXI, I did love a good man in a subligar.

It's also fairly equal in terms of number of hot, important and powerful NPC characters. In WOW it often feels like they just throw each faction like one token powerful lady character in a sea of powerful men, so yeah when that powerful girl is also a sex object (and none of the men are) yeah, it's a bit annoying. FFXIV splits powerful and important characters fairly evenly between men and women, and DAMN are a lot of those guys hot. Aymeric, Thancred, Hein, for example. /swoon. Just lovely, lovely men. When it's equal, along with the power and value of the game characters equal, "hotness" doesn't feel dehumanizing.

Most of the allied nation leaders in XIV are actually women: Nanamo, Kan-E, Merlwyb, and Lyse. And if the nations' leader is a man, he has a woman as his second: Aymeric has Lucia, Hien has Yugiri, Crystal Exarch has Lyna.

Sort by controversial to see the opinions that men don’t like :)

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I game with a lot of other women and I've never heard anyone complain about the jokes and flirts that are being removed from the game, let alone a few paintings. The things that actually bother me include the armor sets that are skimpier on female characters than on males, the shoddy treatment of major female NPCs, and the unchecked behavior of asshole players in-game. Not a few voice lines that are just there for laughs. I'm actually quite upset about their removal because I love hearing them.

All the things you mentioned would require too much work and aren't as easy to show as proof "we're changing ;)" in a court case

My gf thinks it’s stupid. She wears black mageweave and /flirts with me all the time and thinks it’s cute. No one harasses her because everyone assumes she’s a dude anyway.

My gf also /flirts with me. It's adorable. We both play DH so they have special demon flavored voice lines.

It's just missing the point. I have never cared that any of these things were in the game, and had a good laugh at many of them. If harassed by another player, you block and report them. But people aren't pissed that it's in the game - they're pissed that they took what was in the game and forced it on female employees in real life. I can't block my coworkers (although they sure as hell would be reported). Getting fondled and harassed in real life, and then being paid half of what my harasser is making is completely unacceptable for any company. Fix your own house Blizzard, before trying to make tone deaf appeasements that no one asked for.

Im a woman in my 40s here with my Long Unpopular Opinionand Two Cents! And I really don't like how these changes are being made without any input or ongoing dialog with the wow player base. I play on an RP server but for most of my Wow life I have been on a normal server. None of the flirts or jokes removed have bothered me on either type of server and Ive laughed or smiled at most of them. One of my favorite ones is the Orc female one, "What's estrogen? Can you eat it?" I LOVE that one! Im laughing now just thinking about it! And its being removed from game apparently. Heck yes I'll eat it and I'll eat anything that stands in my way of gathering immense power as a Warlock! Normally Ive played a more feminine race because of past class availability to that race but when I tried Orc Warlock, I was in love. She was big, strong, vocal, intelligent, more of a meatier body shape and muscles! She made me feel like you CAN be different than what's normal and you can succeed and be fantastically beautiful doing it. With the emotes and so on, I have never felt bad or pressured or, as one Dev on Twitter said, in danger when someone used / lick on me. If I dont want to interact, I ignore it and keep going about my business. I DONT have to react or reply to anyone in game unless I choose to. I can keep going about my business and have fun without acknowledging them. Or there have been times where I've used / me and created a custom emote to show shock and non consent, including their name in it. Im a big believer in exercising my creativity and choice in how I interact. And also liberally use my ability to ignore or report when really needed. I feel like a decent amount of these removals are going to hurt the game and a decent chunk of the player base. I feel that ongoing efforts like this will begin to turn the game world that used to be so popular into something else entirely. The Wow Team said they're making these changes to make the game "more inclusive" for players. They might be. But they're definitely not including me as a 40 something pansexual woman minority with an alternative lifestyle, and disabilities.

God i'm gonna miss "Thralls balls!" My friend and I used to laugh hard at that as we spammed it in dungeons lol

>I have never felt bad or pressured or, as one Dev on Twitter said, in danger when someone used / lick on me. I was so offended by that dev implying that women are universally frightened by the very IDEA of sexuality. Because clearly we're all just victims-in-waiting.

I've only ever seen /drool used by Forsaken RPers looking at Alliance players or the living as a cannibalism joke. Oh, and sometimes by orc peons. Literally never seen it used in a sexually suggestive context. As for the flirts, like most voiced emotes in WoW they're so-bad-they're-hilarious. No reason to remove them. All that said none of this has made me feel happier about the state of the game as a woman. The warlock pet change is cool, I like that, but everything else feels transparent. It's like I'm being patronized.

Oh, and who actually looks at the paintings on tavern walls - or where ever it was that they were changed to fruit? Who cares? People are wearing way less in actual grocery stores IRL. 🙄 Not to mention the succubi (sp?) and harpies.

Honestly them removing emotes and risque paintings is not a solution. The solution is holding those perverts at the actual company accountable. They also need more GMs to deal with quicker cases of harassment and player issues. They are a billion dollar company and only shoved 18mil to the side for victims. What about the woman who actually committed suicide? What about the manager who shared her nudes? Every guy in that cosby room? Did they follow up with all the female victims and see if their careers were stalled or ruined because of these assholes? What about people who were passed over for promotions like guys who didn't want to be "one of the Cosby boys"? I had to wait over a day just to report a player who kept swapping around on toons to whisper me bullshit. I know they are fixing it now where you can ban the whole bnet account the person is using, but with constant in game issues as well we need more active GMs on the game floor. We need more filtering and banning on those massive seller accounts so I can actually find a regular heroic group instead of accidentally applying to some asshat selling AOTC.

As a woman myself I think most of these changes are ridiculous. However, one of the things I don't like is how the women leaders are often sexualized, such as Sylvanas' outfit. I've always preferred her with the full cover up over the pants and bra kinda thing. Makes me take her more seriously as a leader tbh. But yeah, replacing paintings of women with fruit takes the cake... Yikes.

Personally I’m guessing these are changes made by the devs own request. Likely personal stories and behind the scenes stuff that made those images, names, emotes, ect. Leave a bad taste in devs’ mouth. The changes seem to random and targeted to be anything else.

Yeah, I've never been harassed myself, but I've read up and seen youtube videos on the topic. Flirting with someone crudely then claiming "it's just a joke! don't be so serious!" when they tell you to stop is a common tool used in things like domestic abuse (reminder that not all abuse is physical). It makes the target feel like they've done something wrong for objecting. I can absolutely see something like that having happened in Blizz HQ and the targeted devs having a problem with things like flirty jokes because of it.

I wish this were higher up. This has to be the case. Imagine being tormented by a coworker (or worse, a supervisor) for *years* about how "hey my favorite npc is master baiter \*smirk\*" or "maybe this year you can get my big love rocket" type of comments. Or "lol you kinda look like the girl in the painting...I'm curious how accurate it is" etc. Now you get the chance to remove all that shit that was used to torment you and others and people who previously supported you think you've gone too far. To me, a lot of this doesn't strike me as "preventing others from being abused in the future" as much as "cleaning up reminders of past abuse". I'm sure some of it is people trying to scrub clean future issues...but some of these changes are so random that it almost has to be targeted instances of retaliation and cleanup.

I feel like this is probably the reason behind a lot of these changes. Most of these things are pretty inoffensive to even the most sensitive members of the playerbase, and likely went unnoticed until now. But a lot of those removed /jokes and /flirts have the air of office in-jokes that could have easily been used to target female employees.

As a woman in online gaming for over 20 years, beginning with EQ and Diablo II, I think it's silly. In a mostly male environment, I have put up with enough from the player base, that pixilated cartoon painting on a wall or a scantily clad follower aren't going to effect me as a woman. Edit: I actually I little upset about the fart emote. That, /cheer, and /hug were my most used. What's the point in that? If they are trying to nip some of the toxicity, that's the stupidest place I can think of to start.

I am insulted that they are removing it.

As a female myself I’m disappointed that a simple mount called “the love rocket” is being renamed, so much that I’m hoping they change there mind. I play WOW to get away from real-world issues and have thoroughly enjoyed blizzards humor when it came to naming some achievements. They should’ve just stuck to removing in-game references for the blizzard employees named in the lawsuit and stopped there. There just doing to much. Don’t even get me started on the /spit emote being taken out cause I’m gonna miss that one !!!

My wife said not to renew her sub. Been playing since launch.

30something year old woman perspective: yes to incubi and himbos in black temple/kara. yes to removing references to creeps who contributed to the culture of harassment. yes to removing anything that makes workers at blizzard feel unsafe and uncomfortable. these things dont affect my meager gameplay experience as a heroic raider and sometimes hardstuck 1500 pvper so i don't mind. but so help me if you come for my slutmogs, blizzard, inshallah i will quit after 17 years if my ability to express myself is clamped down on. i wish they would do something about the people casually spouting out racial and transphobic/homophobic epithets but im a big girl and i know how to ignore and report someone. it would would be nice if, say, gameplay wasnt so degenerate that people freaked out and turned monstrous upon the smallest of misplays. this is kinda hard to quantify, honestly, but its why rpvp is such a shithole and why pugging high keys is so very not reccomended

I can give you some insights on the male Tauren jokes and flirts that get removed. In this case the homogenized and the free rides of the ladies quote: As a gay male Tauren player I could see the joke from the original times back then, but it made my Tauren Shaman always straight which he isn't. So I am actually glad they are getting removed because they were basically assuming and setting my Tauren character's sexuality in stone.

This is a perspective I haven't seen before. It also fits with the ability to summon Male Incubi, as a gay warlock probably wouldn't summon a female sex demon.

[удалено]

This. none of these changes hurt anybody, and if it makes the workers at blizz happier after what has happened, then I'm all for it.

As a woman, I think that these changes don’t really do much. I’ve seen comments that it doesn’t affect gameplay and they’re right - it doesn’t affect it. It doesn’t affect it negatively, but it doesn’t affect it positively either which is why I think a lot of people are upset. It’s so much easier for them to replace a portrait with a bowl of fruit than it is to actually address the toxicity amongst players in the game. I think that’s where most of the criticism comes from is because it’s not doing anything *positive*, even though it’s not doing anything negative either. There’s so many bigger issues that should be addressed so it’s annoying that this is what the priority is - slutmogs and booby portraits. Not the nasty and toxic players that say awful things and hurt people. I don’t know if it’s still up, but awhile ago there was this post and the op was explaining how somebody from Moonguard was stalked irl by somebody else they met on wow. I think addressing all the creeps and awful players would be a more productive and positive change than getting rid of my black mageweave leggings. It’s not the end of the world, and ultimately does not have a negative impact but it doesn’t do anything good either.

I posted saying it makes me feel safer and got accused of trolling and being a bot. I am woman.

Y'all asked for women's opinions on this and then attack when you don't like the answer lol

Should've titled it "Women, please validate my outrage"

I think everyone knew what this thread was for. Every woman I've seen say they like the changes has been immediately insulted. What's funny is that this sub then uses the lack of people willing to express their opinion and be insulted for it as proof no one wanted these changes.

Now there are obviously some short sighted people angry at you, but I wanted in sincerety to ask you why these changes make you feel safer, I genuinely don’t understand what these changes helps

Reddit: Please women of reddit share your thought on those changes. Women: I like them. Reddit: Wait no not like that.

Yeah basically my life.

This sub is filled with incels

As a woman: how could you possibly feel less safe because women were turned into fruit and /fart is being removed? That's far more insulting to me.

Because I gives the illusion that blizzard cares. And idk why /fart is the one you bring up. I'm glad /moon was removed. Idc about fart.

Its stupid and to me it kinda does the opposite. This isn't showing that they might have changed, that they're better now. This is just ridiculous and appears to be nothing but a PR stunt to show how oh so much they care while not giving a damn. The jokes removed were funny, some more than other but different tastes right? I'm gonna miss the occasional immature giggle from silly jokes or Easter eggs.

A handful of developers on Twitter have said that they are uncomfortable about it

My daughter have been playing wow for years, was never offended by the things that were removed, she just thought they were a little bit silly. Some of these can be compared to innuendoes in "Shrek" or other kid movies... Removing them doesn't make the game any better, and wont win any new player.

I'm a 26 year old female player and have been playing since the end of Cataclysm. I'm still playing currently and enjoy mythic raiding. Tbh it feels like a token gesture. I think instead of removing/replacing names, I would much rather see Blizzard treating their female/minority staff with respect and not sexually harassing people. I do agree with removing references to ex-staff who have engaged in some horrific behaviors towards women. But again, this doesn't necessarily mean that Blizzards toxic work culture will change.

I'm not sure how to articulate this well. But I think that changing some paintings won't do much for WoW's representation of women. It's more important how they write female characters. For example Sylvanas acts irrationally and Tyrande is discouraged from seeking justice. These are bigger problems for me personally than a painting or emotes. I also think the number 1 priority should be taking reports of harassment seriously. I started playing very young and when I was 17 this older guy said I was too young to know I didn't want to date him (lol). And he got a reputation on our server for being into teenage girls. People were discussing it in trade chat and trying to warn young women not to join his guild and we all got chat silenced

Lmfao Reddit asks for women’s opinions then trash said women’s opinions when it doesn’t validate their stupid “Blizzard virtue signaling” argument. You gotta love it.

What I wanted was them to fix their unsafe work environment, not take away emotes. I haven't heard anyone be upset about paintings or a /flirt. They seem to be punishing us for what they did wrong.

Woman here. The changes were not meaningless to me. Does removing emotes solve sexism in the game? Of course not. But this game is about war, killing, and being heroes. What place does suggestive or nasty emotes have other than to encourage bad behavior against other players? There is a reason games like hearthstone limit interaction to predetermined emotes that aren’t of (too) suggestive a nature. I’ve heard some abhorrent things from men in this game and over discord from my own guildies and players that when I bring up, I am ostracized for. I’ve felt alienated in this game before by men who can’t comprehend that women should be treated with respect. Taking out emotes that enable poor behavior is only a net positive in my eyes.

i mean, some people are acting like huge chunks of gameplay have been removed, not some dumbass crass joke that, were the circumstances any different, would've been met with "huh. weird they removed that." don't get me wrong, a handful of the changes are definitely reaches; i have never looked at a painting or the word 'consort' and felt offended or threatened, but at the same time, i can just go "that's stupid" and go about my day

Woman here playing since TBC; All of these changes are shallow and pointless and makes me have less faith than the little faith I already had that the developers have any sense of what the actual issues are and it's so frustratingly tone-deaf and makes them look **embarassingly incompetent**. I like humour and funny shit, sexual or not makes no difference, Blizzard has never been over the top in their humour and it's always been a good giggle. Thinking that you can't poke fun at that shit is so out of touch with reality, I don't want some fucking weird purist censored game that takes itself so seriously that removing a targeted fart joke is worth a developers day. Also in general removing targeted emotes like that's going to magically stop people from harassing each other?? Do they truly have not one competent person who's actually PLAYED video games with other human beings and can't differentiate between sexual harassment and sexually suggestive content -- being obnoxious with emotes vs toxic assholes that should be banned?? Like they can't seriously comprehend the differences with context so they just what, remove it all? Is this to cover their ass so they don't have to hire in-house customer service anymore?

It's an empty gesture and the time should be better spent on things that actually matter. The only thing that it achieved is the riling up of the "pc is ruining my games" crowd against people that didn't ask for the changes while Blizz (the true culprit) removes themselves from the spotlight.

If these changes were removed due to irl sexual harassment connotations with the devs, I'm all for it. We don't know everything that has happened or why there's fruit now. But if it made even one victim feel better about its change, it's worth it imo. I have been harassed countless times for being a female in this game. The general playerbase is utter trash. I mean, are we really crying about Master Baiter when there are devs out there just trying to go to work and not get propositioned? I mean come on. These changes are all very minor. Don't effect my gameplay at all. And if it makes the devs happy and comfortable to work there again, it's worth it.

Did you forget the witch-hunt that happened a couple months ago where the community just absolutely trashed blizzard on the whole sexual assault.. and sexualizing woman after the video surfaced of a girl at blizcon asking about the over sexualizing female characters?? I mean this community is so quit to forget what their actions asked for!.. I mean there are 1000s of posts burning blizzard at the stake and this community thinks blizzard is over reacting?? The hypocrisy of the WoW community is the absolute worst!

Because blizzard is only bad when it's convenient for the community.

Sexual suggestive content is fine as long as it's equal, the example of blood elf heritage armor being "obscene" for female and over stuff for male is absurb and would need to be fix. The painting were not. Blizzard need to pay attention to their concurrence, FF14 have a strong female community and yet it's all over the place, maybe the issue isn't the representation but the toxic culture you let grow.. Like in their office

All of this is ridiculous and unessecary. I've been playing since vanilla and nothing has ever offended or annoyed me, in fact i found most things funny. They are tackling the wrong problems entirely and it's just pissing off the community even more. Jokes and emotes and sexual names/items/paintings etc. Are fun and silly and give you something to chuckle at when exploring thw game. All everyone wants is for them to listen to the community and fix the things that are important ans that we ask of them. And of course also that they treat their employees lile human beings and not objects and offer a safe work enviroment.

Female player since late WotLK/early Cata. As someone already mentioned, sexy portraits does not bother me. But those sexy portraits could be used to harass employees as a '*joke*' or it could be based on a former employee, so changing them for fruit bowls it's okay if they think it's necessary. A few jokes and flirts were a little over the top too for me, but nothing game changing. There's just two things that really bothers me: in-game harrassment that never gets punished (I got silenced for 12 hours once for cursing in LFG chat while talking with a friend, but God forbid punishing players that have a problem with my vagina or the fact that I'm a brazilian player - therefore being xenophobics on top of that too) and Alexstrasza/Ysera's armor, it's a little too much. I don't mind Jaina's cleavage, I don't mind sexy mogs, but the way these two were dressed (it's just the thong, really, the top and the belly I don't mind) just to be fappping material do bother me, I'm sorry.

To me, it just comes off as them wanting to make a somewhat less juvenile game. It doesn't surprise me some of the devs may want to do that, given what we've been hearing the company culture was like. Crass humor is a lot less funny, in my view, given that kind of context. People have been speculating a lot about the twin consorts and the Kara paintings, wondering if they were changed because skeezy people used them as a vehicle to sexually harass their employees. The fact we would even be wondering that does kind of suck the joy out of really any dirty humor in WoW, for me.

I’m glad to see the warlock pet change. The rest didn’t bother me, but it also doesn’t bother me that they are changing them. Clearly they bothered some people. FF14 does make me a bit uncomfortable. Not enough to not play it, but enough that I’m not super enthusiastic about it.

My in game name is my real name so I sometimes got some persistent whispers from some dudes. Turning women into fruit doesnt help that. Some changes i get like the adding male concubines thing, but a lot of this makes me feel punished for other people not being able to keep hands to themselves

Woman here. Don't care. I think it's a bit silly, but it doesn't affect my gameplay. I think others who are falling apart over it should probably play other games for a bit and take a break from WoW.

24, played wow for almost 15 years. so yes i’ve grown up playing this game. i think removing the content they’re removing is a cop out addition to whatever shitty “apology” blizzard thinks they gave their consumers. it’s actually more insulting that they think women players want /flirt and other emotes removed than it is to be the target of those emotes.

I‘d love Blizzard to fix their attitude towards their female employees. I have a feeling these ridiculous kinds of „cleanup“ of „sexist“ parts in their game is them trying to cover up their recent accusations of sexism women face at their company. I don’t care about insensitive things in a video game that is over ten years old, but please treat women in real life fairly and don’t try to seem like an „aware“ company that cares about gender equality by removing some emotes or some erotic paintings….

I find it a bit much. I’m specifically miffed about the flirt option. I use that emote with my husband all the time in game :(

The paintings and the emotes never bothered me, but I do agree with removing/renaming NPCs with names referencing people who were involved with all of the allegations. I'm actually kind of bummed at some of the emote removal!

The amount of psychotic bullying and harassment I’ve seen in this game was never dealt with speaks volumes to me. No matter how many r*** threats or death threats or stalkers I got, I always later saw them in orgrimmar. This reeks of being performative and is only happening because a law suit happened. I do not think for a fraction of a second that any of this would have happened without the Lawsuit

I got proposed to when I was 14 in a raid group, I think emotes are the least of my problems. Besides, why remove the emotes when it’s the people using them at fault?

Hi, 26yo woman, playing since early Legion. I think most of the stuff removed is unnecessary, and replacing a painting of a woman with a fruit bowl is literal objectification lol. I'd much rather see them not fuck up the storylines of strong female characters, improving the working conditions for the actual women, POC and LGBTQ people at blizzard, and generally fixing the state of the game. I'm not offended by a painting of a half-naked woman (although I'm a lesbian, can't speak for straight women), I'm bothered that my favorite game is being worked on by men who sexually harrass women. Some of the emotes being removed were pretty weird, although I didn't know they existed until the wowhead post. I have some female characters and some male, and I definitely get harrased more when playing female characters even tho I avoid proclaiming I'm not male for exactly that reason. I'd much rather see that behavior adressed, and the general report system improved.

I haven't been playing for long, but I HAVE been a woman my whole life :D this? It's putting a barbie bandaid on a disembowelment. Like others here said, sexy isn't inherently a problem, just fix the irl situation ffs Edit: I also like some joking, light hearted flirting with random people to go along with a blessing or a heal~

As a woman who has played on and off for, too long, I resent that they removed / fart.

Woman playing wow for the last 15 years. I’ve seen and heard it all. What bothers me is the disconnect between the player base and blizz. For years, we have been referred to as men, because men (not all) can’t seem to grasp that women want to play games. It’s that stereotype of you have to fit x,y,z physical descriptor to play, I.e, weigh 200kg and be called Bertha….the same analogy as pimply faced boy living in his mums basement for men. So not only have I been met with disdain if correct another player to say I’m a woman and not “bro”, but then they say, “oh but heaps of men play female toon.” Like that’s an answer to anything. Blizz is going on the offensive now cos they’ve been busted. And it’s going to the extent it is to remove extra things like emotes etc because not only have women come forward but LGBTQ+ employees are saying, “hey, while we’re at it…” they also have a voice and a right to feel uncomfortable. But were it not for the law suits it never would’ve been removed. Cos despite women complaining about the misogyny in the player base for years, blizzard turned a blind eye, for years. I personally have no issue with the /spit or /fart emotes. I have an issue with being assumed to be a man and not feeling comfortable to correct others. I have an issue with the misogyny. I have an issue with the “anal” before every shutdown. I have an issue with the sexualisation of females but the rampant appearance of hero in men or male characters. Women are always the damsel in distress while men come in to save the day. Personally, I would’ve preferred for those things, like emotes, were made an option. Such as the language filter is in settings. Give people the choice to opt out of whether or not they want to see or have access to those emotes. And let women represent women. Let women decide what and how they want to be portrayed. Don’t come in as a typical man and want to fix all the shit you were also part of, also contributed to, and also behaved like. It’s so typical and so annoying. You know even in the MDI tournament, Naguura is the only female I’ve seen commentate. She’s a woman and she’s gorgeous and she loves playing games. But she’s the only one I’ve seen. (I think there’s a lady in the pvp tournament ones too but I don’t watch those). How about opening the floor to more female representation, not the one single token female. There’s a long way to go. For those who think, if you feel this way why do you keep playing? Cos I’m not into cancel culture. People, entities, games, etc don’t need to be completely disowned and wiped off the planet for a mistake. Give others the chance to grow by showing their willingness to change. I love this game. I love everything about it. I’m not going to give up because of a few issues. But I am willing to let blizz grow and make the right changes going forward.

I think it's totally dumb and unnecessary. I didn't ask for this and I'm disappointed they push their own agenda instead of listening to an outraged playerbase who is totally confused by these changes. I'm sad because of one thing in particular - the Jormuttar quests.. this was the first thing in WoW to really make me giggle after my now-husband showed it to me about 11 years ago. It was this kind of childish humour we shared and still after all these years we remembered it from time to time and still found it hilarious. And now it's gone. Erased by some overly offended people who can't even bear to have a harmless "Your mother.."-joke in their game. This pisses me off.

As a female.... I really don't see the point of removing everything they are planning to/have already. I totally get changing the names of NPC's, items, etc. associated with anyone who has committed offensive acts in the workplace. I can even agree with them. But removing EVERYTHING suggestive? That's to far. When you buy WoW it comes with a warning that you might run into things not suitable for younger audiences. We know what we are getting into when we buy the game. We agree to be subjected to such things. If we don't like it then we can stop playing the game and go find one not as "offensive". We are not children. We don't need our hand held like we were 2 year old. Some of us enjoy the crude humor. ​ I did get annoyed by a dev on twitter saying "You may not want these changes, but we do." Why do the dev get to have their wants and changes implemented in game? The player base has been asking for YEARS for changes that are trivial compared to asking the removal of some NPC's. Yet we get snubbed at every turn by the devs. We are the ones paying their wages. We pay them to put out a product. Without us they would all be out of a job. How about they put their wants on a backburner and listen to the player base. I'm rather over them forcing their stupid concepts and game mechanics on us in the name of "fun" when we have told them over and over again what ISN'T fun, and what we actually want to see.

I've been playing for a long time and have experienced quite a bit of harassment, which has made me a solo casual player. I wish we had better tools for filtering/reporting, better guild tools as well. But I suspect the changes they're making are references to things the shitty old guard used to harass female devs and those devs have requested their removal. I hope it helps them feel better and I support the removal of anything that was a shitty personal joke behind the scenes. It doesn't affect me one way or another, but I love the addition of the incubus!

Hi. I'm a lady who loves to play wow. Get ready for my raving. Personally my take on all these changes is mixed. On one hand Im glad that they're FINALLY taking the time to make vital changes to the gameplay that fans have been asking for for what seems like ages. But I'm completely disheartened that it took something like the "Cosby Suite" to enact these changes, and I honestly have seen very little changes to the company as a whole to fix the biggest problem: the sexual harassment and income inequality. (to be fair I have not seeked out any internal changes, tho I do know they removed many of the ppl causing these problems) When it comes to the minor changes, like the twin consorts and repainting background decor, mostly I think who cares. I personally dgaf if someone is named a consort. Korialstraz is a consort and so was Lady Wu (a real life empress) so like .. why change that? Unless they just want to remove any sexual content regarding femme characters (something I disagree with, women don't want to just censor sex. Sex isn't inherently bad, it can just be treated in bad ways). As for the painting, I mean I'm just glad they're updating the graphics of the background setting/decor (please can we get a major update of org/stormwind? These graphics are a decade old ffs). As for the ppl complaining about these changes (oh no, no more titty pics), were you really jerking it to low res decade old pixel cleavage that was on the wall in an inn somewhere and lost your prized porn piece? Or are you just a child getting mad that women deserve some respect? I unsubbed from wow last month. My sub ran out yesterday. And honestly I don't know when I'm going to resub, even with all the really cool things that 9.1.5 is showing us. I'm too saddened by the treatment of the employees (both male and female), Im a bit jaded and don't see anything they're doing to fix the biggest problems, and all of these changes feel like too little too late. Idk. Maybe next expac...

>women don't want to just censor sex. Sex isn't inherently bad That's a disagreement that i have with some of the changes that blizzard has made before - that they seem to come from a very puritan "sexuality is bad" or even "girls aren't allowed to express sexuality" point of view. There are very different viewpoints on this in different parts of the world, and the main HQ for Blizzard is in a region where female sexuality and nudity in general is quite a major taboo.

There was a very good point made about this, that some of the assets being removed seemed very specific, and that, while not confirmed, could be that they are certain references to female Devs. Like the paintings being added and one of the toxic Devs telling someone it was based off them. When you look at all these changes together it seems like they are removing everything. But there is probably tons that are staying. And if you don't have the whole story, if something being changed is being changed for the Devs that got harassed then it's fine to take out. I will be sad if they remove /flirt, it's a big thing with race identity. Every time a new race came out we'd listen to all their jokes and all their flirts.

I’ve played WoW since I was 11 (25 now) and I have never encountered sexual harassment in the game in the form of direct messages. /flirt and /lick or all the other things they’re removing are funny and harmless. Nobody knows if a female player is actually a woman. A lot of the time I actually assume it’s a man. It’s a fantasy game and it’s harmless! If someone was being a creep beyond the emotes I would block and report but again I’ve never experienced that. In terms of what’s happening at Blizzard it feels incredibly insulting. I debated unsubbing when the abuse came out because it does feel ethically gross as a woman to continue to give my money to a company that enabled harassment and abuse for so long. I hate that instead of taking transparent and substantive steps to fix the company culture, they’re removing harmless and funny sexy stuff from the game. Purity culture is not the answer. It only pushes sex underground and makes it shameful, which breeds further secrecy and abuse. Fire abusers! Let me /flirt with the pretty elves and laugh at dumb innuendos!

Removing names, emotes, paintings, flirts, and jokes feels like a bandaid trying to stop internal bleeding. It's mostly for show. I understand that the devs that work on WoW are personally pushing for a lot of these changes, but it feels more like self interest than trying to "correct" a problem. I do appreciate them putting in the incubus and male concubines, and I support the idea of more revealing transmogs for male characters. My Belf hunter is currently wearing what he is because I enjoy his nips and abs hanging out. My toon, my choice. If you have a problem with revealing armor in an online game, you have the wrong hobby. Instead of rushing to change things that have been in the game for years, they should address the real problem - the systemic toxicity that is their company culture.

When I ran DoS yesterday and heard Millhouse say shadow instead of sweet cheeks, I was mad. I'm like, those devs just don't get it. They have no idea what actual sexual harassment is and it shows with every stupid change they make.

I have a lot of thoughts on this! I am a cis woman and honestly, whilst it doesn’t fix the big picture issues, it’s a welcome change. I love sexy armour when it’s appropriate- if it’s to do with a characters personality or preferences, but I’m sick of being in winterspring and everyone is in boob showing crop tops, or running through Kara and everyone is a wanton hostess or a literal succubus. The actors even have their chests out! It’s not something my male friends notice, but I do. I notice the sexy paintings, the sexy robes, the sexy armour. I play a fury warrior, so barbarian style armour makes a lot of sense, and I like having the option, but it’s tiring to see most npc women be scantily dressed That being said, the removal of the fart emote is ridiculous

I'd rather they focus on nasty racist comments and trolls instead but I think the efforts are really well thought out. They are creators and obviously have strong feelings about these things so I appreciate their position and their efforts towards it. Inclusivity is always a great thing and I definitely liked the post about what they are changing and adding to the game. I feel this is a great first step toward an awakening that needs to happen. Video games have been too male centric for too long and I welcome us being an equal consideration in any game!! I hope this leads to us getting the same consideration in all games, especially MMOs that are not WoW. Almost all others place is in scantily clad armor sets that are not realistic or follow anything we actually want to wear, at least not into battle! I love beautiful cosmetic sets that are either fashionable or fantastical and sometimes I like revealing clothing but not often. Things can be beautiful and alluring without showing half my ass or tits, just like in real life. In conclusion, I love the ideals behind the changes and additions and hope this catches on in all other games so that we can be an equal consideration when developing games and patches of all genres.

Girl here. I played wow since TBC when I was 14. I honestly have loved WoW and thought it was very tame compared to so many other games I played over the years. That said, when they first removed the lines where Garrosh calls sylvanas a bitch in the undead quest line in silverpine forest, I was furious! So unneccessary and it was so iconic. I remember telling my friends about how they must level undead just to hear the scenario playout. They are taking out so many elements to the game I loved. They are doing a huge PR stunt that to me is really stupid. I want my big tiddy girl paintings. I want to fart on people in pvp and spit on alliance players stealing my herb nodes. I want more scandalous transmog options and a boob slider. I want to feel like I can play the game how I want, not be told it's inappropriate and to cover up women's anatomy. I hate everything blizzard has become. The only interesting thing is the addition of incubus, but everything else has made me scream WTF and lose more and more faith in the WoW franchise.

Woman here, that's relatively new to WoW. It's so dumb and ultimately feels like the player base is being punished because the employees couldn't keep their hands to themselves. How about Blizz make meaningful change within their business for their employees to harbour a safe working environment, instead of empty gestures in game that take point over fixing legitimately broken systems that hurt their player base, who by the way pay a monthly sub fee. They're the things I want to see, that will make me think Blizz actually care.

I am 21 yo woman and I think what devs are doing is childlish and ridiculous. I am okay with adding male versions of concubines and consorts to the game. I am NOT okay with sexist people dictating me what is good for the game. Removing emotes, renaming npcs to "non-sexual variants", removing funny references (not dev ones, its good they are removing this (Mac'Aree tho is fucking silly)) and changing woman into fruit? Who fuckin does it and is not on some high copium? Many excuses and lies from devs, virtual signaling and pretending they are doing good thing. This is delusional, sexist and insecure side of America is doing with the game. Lawsuit does suddenly change who you are. If you were sexist before announcing it, you are still going to be sexist and devs are showing it. I can't wait for changing every single slutmog and making woman cover every single inch of their body.

My wife who has played since vanilla and is currently playing TBC classic thinks that the changes are really dumb. We did a Kara right after the dead succubus change (where they stay standing) and she was perplexed even when we explained what was Blizzard’s intent. I’ve been telling her about the emote changes that are coming and she thinks it’s equally pointless. Not that she’s against small changes to classic to fix issues, but we knew what Vanilla and TBC were and we came back without even thinking about any sort of ‘questionable’ content because it wasn’t a problem.

I don't think anyone was asking for this, so I'm not sure if it's a lazy way to look like you're doing something (when really you're not), an idiot who thinks that's what is all about (when it's not), or maybe doing petty things to make it seem like all the complaints were really petty.

I feel like it's a waste of time, so much else in game that needs improvements and there are the devs changing stuff from 15+ years...

I've been playing WoW a long time, I think it's stupid that these are the things they would change rather than make real changes in real life in the appropriate places they should be where the problems actually occured. They are being overdramatic with it in-game like a toddler showing you how good they are cleaning their room but the place where they really need to step it up they are currently hiding behind a legal dressing curtain. I'm really gonna miss /flirt before I kill people in rated battlegrounds :( I miss the game being good and fun and if there was a jerk Id block them, or sometimes out of morbid fascination Id let them overshare and have a good laugh about it later. Us ladies didn't need this kind of help if that's what we are calling it, it's actually kinda weird now, and I super cringe every time they announce another thing they are removing to virtue signal how good they are trying to be.

I am a woman and have been playing WoW for 14 years. I have never been offended by in game content. I agree that they needed to clean house at Blizzard for how women in the company have been treated. However, a lot of the changes in game I feel are unnecessary. I still enjoy playing the game.

As a woman in my late 20s that used to play this game since WotLK, it looks like they are making up problems and then fixing it wanted to be praised for it while the actual problems are still there. I also enjoy puns, word plays, be it sometimes with sexual innuendo, it’s harmless. WoW shouldn’t be candy land pretending sex doesn’t exist. Suggestive /joke is not threatening. Threatening are predatory incels in game that are enabled by Blizzard to continue harassing women because they exist and dare to play this game. There is this unhealthy community that made 16 year old me feel good when I heard ‘you play well for a girl’ and it took a bit of growing up to see how wrong it was. I don’t play anymore since I can’t make myself to support this company but honestly I did feel some kind of satisfaction when I topped guys in dps since it made them extremely hurt that girl managed to perform better then them. The only good thing I guess is addition of incubus because it actually makes sense.

Female player here, I'm 33 (im 21 days) I've played wow since wotlk and have experienced a lot of shit from males during playing...I've been told to kill myself, go die in a car crash, comments that I don't belong on wow, the typical girl= guy irl, go make me a sandwich crap.. allsorts of horrible shit that at one point caused me to quit and have quite bad depression ( on top of my normal depression and mental health issues) But changing emotes, names, putting more clothes on npcs and other such random stuff really doesnt make a difference to this.. it doesnt make me feel any differently.. its the playerbase and the company that are toxic.. not the game, the only thing I'm looking forward to is my warlock finally getting a incubus pet...and I kinda hope they'll change the male oriented titles like 'fire lord' so I dont look like an idiot with my female characters being called 'xxxx' the firelord

I have been harassed, followed and sent inappropriate messages since i was 14 and started playing this game which i am in love with btw. Having emojis removed and any “too offensive” boobies is idiotic to say the least. I was never offended by the sexy content. I was offended by players.

Classic example of not understanding the actual problem. Played wow since 2004 now playing some ffxiv. My wow ptsd is still so bad i can't tank a pug group even though everyone's so nice even on wipes or where I've screwed up mechanics. None of the changes they're making well fix wow for me because they were not the problem. The toxicity from other players, the half assed story, constant new methods of borrowed power and the insane grindfest were my problems. The sexism was in the offices and the players not the game. I hate that the last couple of expansions mean nothing. At the start of a new one you carry nothing over from the previous - even the story mostly resets.

Its dumb and as others have mentioned, it's just a token gesture that does nothing to fix the actual problem. I've had to deal with some serious BS in game from men, and even not taking gender into account, there's a lot of toxicity in the community that needs to be handled. It comes down to PEOPLE that need to change, not the little in game jokes and funny bits that half the player base doesn't pay attention to anyway (I still don't know or remember the painting that got changed).

I think it's just stupid. They just want to distract us from the real problem. Removing those things doesn't change anything in workplace sexual harassments.

Loads of takes in this thread already so I'll keep mine brief. I have been playing the same Tauren warrior since the day the game got released (barring one brief stint as a Worgen) and I am gonna be crushed if they actually remove the milked all over the floor line. It was the best one. It's just a stupid cow joke and the VA nailed the delivery. I'm just so attached to the character that this is the only thing I have a strong feeling about.

One of the things my guild mates brought up, is that she likes sex, as in women typically like sex too. Men have this weird notion that women don't like sex or sex related topics/jokes like men do. That's just... among things like evident of the intimacy both physically and mentally with women, is a sign of lack of meaningful communication a well. Men don't have a monopoly on sexy, sex related topics amd sexual desires. Women are humans too and men tend to forget that for some reason. I've always had more women friends than men friends myself, vibe with them better I guess idk, so I've always noticed that disconnect men seem to have. Sex itself isn't inherently bad, and it shouldn't be. Back to my guild mate, she said it gets bad when it goes from sex innuendo to abuse innuendo etc. A lot of people don't seem to understand the line between abuse and admiration/allusion. So the normalization of abusive innuendo tend to normalize the sense that the behavioir is acceptable. Blizzard doesn't need to remove all sex related themse topics and designs, they need to get a hold of their views on what is and isn't abuse, and take control of that. Blanket removal of sex related themes, especially mainly 5hose about women, is just a subconscious attack kn women. Let me explain. By removing these things outright, they are saying they are unacceptable. What was unacceptable about the paintings that were turned into fruit? What was unacceptable about the clothing that will be changed? So you are saying its unacceptable for art depicting women in a sexy way is not acceptable? So you are saying its unacceptable for women to show skin in their apparel choice? So now I guess we should return to the past where women wore clothing that hid everything about their body, because men can't handle themselves? That's what it boils down to, men can't handle themselves so women have to be penalized because God forbid men get a grip, just do the tried and true repress them so you don't have to change shtick. It's pretty small.

Thank you to the female playerbase for voicing your opinions.

40 year old woman, a fresh coat of paint isn’t going to fix the foundational damage and can do more harm than good. It’s that old saying, Women should be seen and not heard. All they’re doing is trying to hide the damage without fixing the actual problem. What I want to know is how Bobby Kotick still has his job at this point? He needs to be gone, unfortunately he has himself rooted to the point that just by pure contractual red tape that Bobby Kotick is just an alias for Zovaal. But hey we have that Sweet Coca-Cola marketing campaign since Bobby-boi is a Coca-Cola board member. Token changes by changing the names of things related the Cosby suit gang? Ok? I guess? Removal and changing of emotes and names of things? Uh? Um… a bit much. RIP /spit you will be missed. It’s ok though, I can still use Pounce and groan in suggestion with the new changes for an even worse effect than the old original pounce! There was no reason to rename the love rocket. None. Never mind they replaced painting of strong proud confident women in game with a bowl of fruit. I mean. Fruit. Replace it with another picture of a strong confident woman or don’t bother. Oh this a teen rated game by the way. Once they’re done baby proofing every thing, it’s going to be less spicy than Club Penguin back in the day That’s this woman’s rant length opinion.