Arabic UI option

Community General Discussion
42

Well truthfully arab people are not that interested in mmorpg let alone a one that asks for a subscription . I will even go ahead and make claim that there are far more turkish people playing world of warcraft then combined arab speaking people . If the demand was in abundance for world of warcraft in arab countries then we would had a middle east server for wow by now .

Main thing is that you can make an arabic speaking or turkish speaking guild in game and that should be enough .most of the game is played with addons so if you can deal with english translated addons you should have no problem interacting with english ui either .

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Which will keep the game alive for next 30 years or so :dracthyr_a1:

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WOW i didn’t know we have so many Blizzard and videogame developers on this forum! You guys are sure good at making statements about videogame development and player numbers.
lol

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Pretty sure I know more about it than you do given that I have in fact developed video games and currently write software that gets translated into Arabic.

That right-to-left thing? Actual hell.

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Ngl, not making a great case by throwing a hissy fit like some toddler that isnt getting their way.
Dont like discussion and other opinions? Dont post on a public forum.

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47

Translating WoW would be a massive endeavor, not just to Arabic but to any language, simply due to the amount of text the game has. Then there’s the question if text is really enough or do they have to start voice acting in Arabic as well.

And since MicroActiBlizz are based in the dystopian capitalist United States of America they have to be sure there’s a profit to that investment, they’re not going to do it because they’re nice.

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Ikd, it might split player-base even more.

I’ve seen Arabs using numbers in place of missing equivalent Latin characters.
How many characters are you missing?

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There was a Dilbert comic with a joke that studies whoed made up numbers are just as good as real ones.
How many studies showed that?
62.

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could say same about you .

making a thin air argument isnt your strong point .you have come to forums but dont like opinions and facts .throw some more tantrums ,only shows your own maturity level . :smile_cat:

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what are you even trying to say? Arabic in videogames is a thing and companies have been doing it since the early days of the PS4, Meanwhile you guys are the ones talking about why “its simply not possible” :joy:

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You are typing in English, why do you need Arabic?
Im bulgarian but I hate everything bulgarian. I watch only english-language movies. I dont want to see anything bulgarian in WoW.

53

So?

If 1M Fins play WoW but only 20k arabs play WoW… then the choice is clear: Fin > Arab.

Also. WHICH arab exactly, Morrocan, Algerian, Egiptian, Syrian, Turkish ? Nobody in the arab world actually speaks standard arab. Its purpose is mainly for religion and politics. Half the words you need for WOW dont even exist in their vocabulary.

Also, many of said arab nations have a 2nd EU language. French for Morroco and Algeria, English for Egipt… ect… So WHY ?

There is. 3 main reasons :

FIRST: WOW has regions. US, EU and China (mainly) with OC for practical reasons.

The arabs would not get a language. They would get a whole region for themselves. Because, as you say, there are millions of people living there.

WHY? Because you need somewhere to put the servers in. And it would be dumb to have Egiptians sending data across the mediteranean to EU servers.

However. Turns out that the arab nations are so bad at getting along with themselves that they dont even have land lines between themselves. So the lag in that region would be horrible.

SECOND: There is way too much drama in that region. The Saudis would not be OK with offering WoW services to countries they dont aprove. The Egiptians either… it would be a mess. Dont forget, those are not democratic countries and they all have animosity with the rest of the regions.

One of those animosities is language. Some countries would not be happy to use the Standard Arab (if it was even possible) over another one. Because you have to choose: Suni or Sufi …

All in all, the drama there is too much.

The Chinese get a pass. They also have a ton of drama with their neigbours. BUT, there are so many chinese players that they get their own personal servers that justifies it. But as you might know, the “asia” servers are in Taiwan. Because Japan, Korea, and Taiwan actually get along with eachother and have really good data lines between themselves.

THIRD: In EU and US servers specifically there is a LOT of drama surrounding that culture. You can open any news and see what is going on politically with assilum seakers and deportations in EU specifically.

And adding Arab NOW will simply drag all that drama to the game. And we dont want that. Blizzard dosent want that. WoW has to be a drama-free environment.

-------- TLDR ------

What FF14 did was a PR move. Literally that.

And I gave the reasons why investing in Arab language, or in an Arab server is financial suicide. When the Arabs can manage to get along in a cyvilized way then maybe. Untill then, no arab language. I am against it because I know it would just be wasting resources in a DIA PR move instead using those resources into making the game better.

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Thank god I’m not a self hater I guess?

That’s dialect, Arabs still understand standard Arabic.

?

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That is mathematically/demographically impossible.

  1. They do learn standardized one in schools.
  2. Turks are not Arabs lmao.

Such as Alchemy, Algebra, Admiral etc, which are Arabic words to begin with?

Ok, i agree with that, and data lines.

You mean Sunni and Shia? That is ‘schism’ in Islam. Majority of Arabs are Sunni, while Shia Muslims are mostly Iranians who speak Farsi and not Arabic. (oversimplified, there are Shia Arabs as well, and vice versa)

Surely you meant: to get along in a friendly way?

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What isent? That there are more Fins playing the game than people in arab countries combined?

Why would that be impossible ? If that was the case, there would already be a dedicated regional server for them.

A) My wife learned Latin and Greek in school. She cant talk it or speak it. I have been to many Arab countries. And there is a substantial Muslim community where I live. If you speak classical Arab to them they look at you weird. They themselves explained to me what is the deal with standardized Arab.

B) So ? They belong to the same region. Hence, they would form part of the same “regional server”. Or maybe not. But you get what I was saying about “drama in the region” ? I

Imagine a regional server with Turkey, Syria and Irak. If it was anything like EU servers it would have 3 languages: Turkish, Kurd and Arabic (Syrian dialect). Do you REALLY want all that drama in a videogame ? Or watching the news is not enough ?

Those are English words. And the Arab word that makes them is taken from an old medieval version of common Arab that Muslim empires used to speak. Not from standardized Arab written in the Quran.

Friend, Work, Food and King come from Saxon. Who speaks Saxon that you know of ?

There is a whole civil war in Syria and Lebanon telling me otherwise.

The drama extends to the whole region. With the exception of ONLY Saudi and Iran. Everyone else is a mix, hence, all the drama.

Thanks but no thanks. I dont want that type of drama in my game. Sorry.

Civilized. I meant it literally.

In the EU we used to get along in a “friendly way” and got 2 World Wars as a result. Not to mention 3000 years of constant war and death.

Now we get along in a civilized way.

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You sound like an American Republican who only gets his news from Fox News and is worried about brown people across the world.
The reality is Arabs from Morroco in the far west to Qatar in the far east understand standard Arabic and 400 million people wake up everyday in MENA, Go to work and go back home. Minus a place or two where NATO/US Backed forces are always trying to destabilize the region.
:slight_smile:

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Lets boil down the “reality” you say: “400 million people understand standart arabic”. Lets see what wikipedia sais, although I could cite more in-depth literature if you want:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Standard_Arabic

There is sais, and I quote:

"There are no native speakers of Modern Standard Arabic, but a total of 332,459,000 second language speakers in the world. They add: “In most Arab countries, only the well-educated have adequate proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic.”

They add:

" In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, French is the language of higher education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while in the Gulf region it is English."

Most if not all the literature on that aspect explains what MSA is by comparing it to what Latin was in Europe. And to that I might add that Latin was taught officially in every school in Europe for millennia with out anyone speaking it, writing it, and barely understanding it (unless you had a higher education). Which is where MSA stands now.

Do you want me to go through how many people in that region actually have “higher education” to see exactly how many people have a functional understanding of MSA?

That is REALITY. Its statistics and FACTS.

You cannot put a “language” like that on par with something like Spanish or French which is the official (and native) language of many countries.

So back to the discussion at hand and I will double down on the comment you said:

And you sound like an American Democrat that anything that diverges from the DEI narrative you start throwing around (or implying) the word “racist” as if it meant something.

I got nothing against brown people. All of lating america is full of “brown people” and they are not even in this discussion.

But fact remains that MSA is not a language. Its a means of communication for the educated elites of the region. Just as Latin was.

Its just a shame that none of those countries invest in proper education and your 400M speakers goes down to just a couple of thousands.

And that is reality. And to be fair, if they get their MSA WoW, I want WoW in Latin. :slight_smile:

////////////

Plus I will double down on what I said:

An Arabic UI in EU servers is something I disagree with. There is a FR version (to name 1 example) and FR servers. Because FR is an official language in France.

As long as MSA is not an official language in any EU countries, then it should NOT be part of WoW. Because if we do include MSA in EU then I also want Catalan, Kelt, Welsh, and all other miriad of un-official and official languages in EU to be included as well.

If we are gonna be DEI with Arabs in EU, then we will be DEI with everyone.

OR… another alternative is to open an Arab branch server for WoW. Like the EU has.

And then they can figure out what languages to use (MSA or dialects) and through what internet lines all this infrastructure will go through. Their region, their problems, and their solutions.

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60

I don’t know why you’re so hung up on the version of Arabic. We already pointed out practical reasons to why it likely won’t happen, like the right to left script or just the massive amount of text there is to translate. There isn’t even a Polish translation, even though pretty much any other Blizzard game on Bnet is available in Polish.

If there are news channels that broadcast in Modern Standard Arabic then surely there are people who understand them. If a foreign company decides to put Arabic subtitles for their anime it’s going to be MSA. If I can learn in school English which isn’t even the same language family as my native tongue then Arabs can learn MSA in school which is still pretty similar to whatever version of Arabic they speak.

And the fact that you object so much to Arabic on the EU region doesn’t look good on you. Like what’s your problem, if they have their own region it’s fine but if they’re on EU they can’t have an Arabic client? I don’t live in Europe either, but I play here because those servers are still much closer to me than let’s say Taiwan, and I definitely don’t expect a localization in my language, but according to you only European languages are allowed in here.

The fact that gaming in the Middle East and Africa is miles behind what it is in Europe is no secret, and it doesn’t justify a separate region. But if that’s how people are then I say officially change the region from Eu to EMEA (that’s Europe, Middle East and Africa for you). Sure Europe, Especially the European Union and Western Europe has most of the money and thus more likely to sway Blizzard, but you don’t get to exclude those of us who don’t live in Europe. This isn’t about Blizzard doing you favors or whatever, this is about them wanting to make money.

If they could pull an Arabic client out of thin air they would, because unlike Latin or Catalan or Welsh or whatever other whataboutism you might pull out, an Arabic client might actually make them money. It’s the upfront investment that makes the endeavor unappealing.

And I can say this all because whatever you or me say will have zero effect on Blizzards decision making process in that regard. They will do their own math and decide what they want to do.

I just don’t like your gatekeeping attitude, this region isn’t about you, it’s about anyone who is willing to pay and play and this region has better latency and community for them than the other regions they can access in WoW (America and Taiwan).

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61

Trust me, if your friends don’t speak English, they are almost certainly secluded enough from… let’s just say, modern internet culture that the sheer amount of woke stuff in modern WoW will be incredibly off-putting to them.

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62

You misunderstand me. By a long shot.

Lets put it this way. Why Arabic then? Why not Hindi? There are 576M people that speak it as their mother tongue (according to google). Not some second language barely anyone uses. Plus they are all in the same country.

I have a problem with DEI things that include one particular group. I am not against DEI in general, I am just saying that by giving certain benefits to one group, by definition you take them away from others. Like the Poles, as you already mentioned.

And I alrady stated what my problem is:

And it was already pretty clear in those 2 sentences.

The only way out of the Catch 22 situation this would create is to focus ONLY on official languages. Specifically those in which the servers are in.

Why dont the Polish have a client in WoW? Because there are no servers in Poland. That is why ! They all play in UK servers. You only have the OFFICIAL languages that have a server in their country.

THAT is the most fair thing to do. The most DEI you can have with out disrespecting the other groups that are not Arabs.

And that is why in EU servers you should ONLY have EU languages. Specifically ONLY official languages (otherwise the Spanish will want WoW in Catalan and Basque, the UK will want it in Welsh… ect…).

But some people come here with this DEI narrative that I simply disagree with. Acusing me of being some Trump voter or something. And you accusing me of “not looking good” when the fact of the matter is that if you want WoW in Arab, you need servers in that region. PERIOD. Like everyone else. Just like the Poles…

Because Arabs are not more special than the Poles (for example). So I refuse to give priority to one group in particular. Either we ALL get our client in our language, or none of us do. Simple as that.