This thread has been up before and i think it would been a nice feature:
Even tho its ”fictional distances” i say this would probably been well welcomed thing to be able to choose.
Please like or write a comment and maybe Blizzard read this and implement it
And as always sorry for bad English!
Take care fellow wowers!
Seems like a feature bloat to be fair. whether you see 4 yds or 4 meter, the distance will be the same. The reason you could prefer one over the other is to get an accurate measure in distance in-game but the in-game distances are purely made up anyway so there really is no reason to add such thing. IMO
I’ve honestly never noticed the units of measure used in game so it doesn’t bother me which they use 
I’ll sign your petition though just for the sake of it if it makes someone’s in game experience happier.
Isn’t the imperial system hella scuffed though compared to the metric one?
[Editor Vulp here to add something: Just asking cause I don’t really know, I’m going off of rumors, as I use metric myself. cause I live in the EU :> ]
I’d second this since it could be labelled more or less whatever they want as a measure of distance but they just chose yards because it’s an American company and i guess they didn’t feel like going with a made up word.
The measurements could be based on pickles for all it matters, its an artificial world so it doesn’t have any impact. 40 yards would be 40 yards even if it was measured in 40 pickles. The only real difference is what the text says on the tooltip.
Blizzard and WoW are very international. And the games is played all over the world. People might not get offended but the majority uses the Metric system so i just think it would been a nice feature and it shouldnt cost that much to implement. At least to me it bothers me that i cant choose.
I never thought of the in-game yard as a real life yard, maybe because I don’t use the imperial system so I just didn’t make the connection. But I just don’t think there’s any reason to rename it, because people all over the word talk about the game and having two different words for the same thing, especially since a yard and a meter are not the same thing, doesn’t make much sense to me. It would only cause confusion.
They may be international but its base is in USA and its development team at the time, i’d wager, was largely Americans so it makes sense for them to use a unit measure familiar to them.
I generally don’t get too bothered by it since i see it as more of their choice of distance measurement. A good many fantasy universes make up their own word for it entirely while others default to yards or meters to make it easier for the reader/player.
https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info16723-Meters.html
It’s an ancient addon, and hasn’t been updated in a decade, but something similar should be trivial to write for the modern game too. Just search & replace yard with meter in tooltips, and done.
If you really want to see meters, you can do it with an addon.
A slight correction, imperial is not US, it’s UK. US also use it as former British colonies.
Its because metric is scientifically proven method of measurement.
But imperial is fictional, irrational, fitting to a fantasy game.
Metric system ftw!!!
Counting the imperial way by washing machines per pitholes have been a non-scientific, visual-practical way of measure since medieval times, which makes it fit into the WoW-universe where Orcs measures the size of Orgrimmar in decapitated heads. Atthough I expect the Draenei and the Gnomes to be using a metric system with the same principals as our scientific SI.
Didnt knew that, whats the name of the one that US use?
Not always true… for example an american pint is 16 fluid ounces, where a british pint is 20 fluid ounces (20% bigger), so the Americans get less beer. Using Metric and having 500 ml of Beer also gives you less than a Pint (A real UK Imperial pint that is), so the moral of the story is, drink your beer in British pints 
Tbh I had no idea, so I had to google it. Seems it’s called “united states customary system” but it’s based on the imperial one(although there are some significant differences as Turanya mentioned)
Good that I only drink Belgian beer xD
Now thats complicated, cant we all just use metric system?!
I think it’s only universally accepted for science. And there are still exceptions. Like the famous NASA failure
https://www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/