I don’t really have anything to add to the actual topic itself since everything has pretty much been said by now, but I am curious about one particular thing that people have been bringing up a good few times here.
If this particular set of rules is also expected to count for RP:
"When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others.
Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions."
Then would this not also make any racial hate speech between the Alliance and Horde against the rules? Say, a night elf spouting hate speech towards the orcs and Forsaken for what happened in the War of Thorns. Or perhaps a troll verbally threatening a dwarf on the battlefield or when happening to run into each other somewhere.
I think with this in particular, it gets a pass due to it being fictional races, which I don’t think is covered as Hate Speech by diffrent country’s laws, where as things like a IRL religion, skin-colour, sexual identity etc is covered.
What about hate speech between humans or directed towards humans? Say, between Scarlet Crusade and Gilneans. To me it feels a little like people are cherry picking the aforementioned rules and that they shouldn’t necessarily affect role-play as it isn’t speech directed towards the players themselves (not to say that people should spout homophobic or overtly offensive things regardless).
Personally, I don’t see it much of cherry-picking as I don’t think we shouldn’t break the chat policies at all for the sake of roleplay, they are there for a reason.
But I also think that they don’t cover the things that are entierly fictional(which for example skin colour, gender or sexual identity etc arent, they also exist in the real world)
That once again comes down to lore basis, though. Perhaps by Blizzards own ToS that should be stopped as well, but to follow your specific example that’s already been established as actually being a thing.
So in theory… People should be fine to Roleplay that from that perspective. Perhaps a more grey area in terms of how it should be policed, there. Since Blizz establishes it as being used in game, but we can’t by their rules if we take them as law.
It are all fictional races in a fictional setting…
Also… the IC is IC and OOC is OOC arugment?
Yeah, go ahead but don’t go nuts OOC for the treatment you get IC.
also the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” line from the footman from wc3 is just a random quote before that one is brought up (which maybe the closest thing to homophobia in WoW) doesn’t count due to it being a reference.
I’m not really a human RPer, but I haven’t heard any NPC, Scarlet or Gilnean or Kul Tiran, throw OOC types of racial insults / hate speech in actual speech - at least I haven’t heard any n-words or their derivatives in the game yet. I also haven’t seen anyone comment on skin colour either.
Mainlanders etc. are all in-universe insults that do not really apply for OOC hate speech IMO and are completely fine to go with.
Another thing to account for is expectation. I, as a worgen player, don’t expect to recieve friendly treatment from forsaken, nor necessarily from lordaeroneon characters. The same could be said for any number of races or nationalities present in-game. There is an expectation however that real life biases and world views will be left at the log-in screen.
So long as human-on-human hatred doesn’t include skin colour (would be weird since every kingdom is white + black + Asian, even Wastewanders), I doubt anyone will mind. The Kingdoms have never exactly been on friendly terms anyway. Skin-based racism between humans is not lore friendly + idk why you’d want to RP that out.
It would be like if my fellow pandas started hating on me for being red-furred. Imho skin colour in WoW is just a gradient/slider, it’s rarely indicative of any geographic-evolution or culture. There are white Wastewander NPCs, there are black Gilnean NPCs; some orcs are yellow, some humans are brown.
Exactly, though religious and racial differences do exist and have been explicitly referenced in lore.
Skin colour in WoW is one of the most inconsistent and boring things to focus in on. It is however amusing that 90% of human rpers I have seen with darker skin either have their character from a ethno-stereotypical environment i.e Tanaris/Stranglethorn (where the settlement of humans has actually been tenuous at best) or conveniently leave it unknown despite what we all know is going on in their heads.
Not to mention all sorts of horribly orientalist cultural stereotypes (i mean slave traders, really?)
Yet i see far less outrage for this than say your blond haired blue eyed human paladins who like to use certain niches of roleplay (Scarlets, Stromgarde weirdly enough and generally Lordaeron centric) as a barely concealed dog-whistle for some of the most horrific types of people to blight the 20th century.
low-key very mature and realistic way something like that could be dealt with, but unfortunately i’ve seen too often that LGBT characters must strictly have no relationships with the opposite sex, as if it was a “betrayal” of their identity.
Bi erasure is a really disgusting habit that happens within the LGBT+ community and outside of it. Bisexuality means that you like both sexes. Bi people don’t owe the world a homosexual relationship, and seeing it outlined here is really disheartening.
Edit: This is aimed at the people you describe here rather than yourself.
Boring + weirdly fetishist. My human’s from Kul Tiras cos it’s the cool nation, and he still gets called a Tanari human as if that’s even a thing. Also dunno why people think Middle Eastern = the same as black, but that’s a whole separate topic.
Reminder that the best character in fiction, Makasa Flintwill, lives in Booty Bay but has ancestors from Stromgarde. The “Stranglethorn is the black nation” is really weird and really wrong. https://wow.gamepedia.com/Makasa_Flintwill
They still remained good friends of course, they just were never really in love due to the arranged marriage aspect and conflicting sexualities. Both found someone they were happy with while contributing to the upbringing of their shared child who would one day advance the noble bloodline further.
Was just curious about the views on the rest of the rules rather than advocating skin-based racism (which admittedly would feel very out of place).
Ultimately it is unfortunate and a little saddening that it would even be needed to refer to a game’s rules to get people to act with some decency and respect towards their fellow players.
