I recently joined an EU guild on the WoW Classic server. While I was playing and reading the chat, everyone started telling jokes. The jokes escalated to a racist joke.
The guild members, including the guild leader, were literally laughing about black people hanging from a tree, and encouraging the joke. I have all the screenshots of the chat. I have been trying my best to report this via Blizzard’s in-game ticket system but it literally does not allow you to report guilds, only individual players.
I normally stay away from people and guilds when something like this happens, but just to see a group of people defend this joke deeply disturbed me, and they continued to defend it even when they were called out for it. There are kids playing this game! This guild is literally setting up an environment to encourage blatant racism and there is no sure way to report it from what I could find.
I feel like this article and situation are most likely going to be swept under the rug… I see people defending racism like this on all the forums by saying “It’s the internet, get used to it”, or “Just leave and ignore them”. I feel this is the wrong approach. We should stand together against racists. We can’t continue to ignore this behavior. It’s only going to give them the idea that they can get away with hate speech and continue to jeopardize our WoW Classic experience.
For the safety of WoW and the young people playing, I really feel that Blizzard should take situations like this seriously.
you are absolutely correct these opinions should not be allowed. however it doesn’t stop there.
i’d argue environmentalists should be treated much more harshly as they commit treason by definition of their cause in some countries. for example CO2 emissions are a massive positive to northern nations. anyone who actively works against it and is part of a northern nation is guilty of treason
This is exactly what I’m talking about. There is an inherent issue with public racism in online gaming, and I can tell by what you just said proves my point that people are ignorant or sometimes passive of the fact that this behavior is encouraged. This was said on a guild chat with 1000 active members and 100 online members. If blatant hate speech is reported in a large chat, it should be investigated in my opinion. I’m pretty sure whispers are investigated by admins involving problem players. So, sorry, what you said doesn’t really make sense to me.
Except it’s not public, it’s private, which is why it is fine. People in private are free to do whatever they want and you being hurt about it doesn’t change anything to that.
A whsiper is private, speaking in that way openly in a guild chat is not private, nobody knows what race/gender/religion etc are sitting behind the computer screens. Either way, private or not, it doesn’t make it an acceptable thing to do/say.
It is private by definition because you have to be invited into this community to participate. And weither it’s acceptable or not is irrelevant, you want to enforce people to act according to your ethics in private.
Censorship in private because of personal ethics doesn’t make it fine because you think it’s “morally good”.
So they were joking around and you decided you gotta censor them?Would you say anything if you were 100% sure they were black and made same joke?Its either ok to joke about everything or nothing at all.Because in the end if we listened to peoples opinions there would be nothing left to joke about,someone would always find something they dont like.
There is clear line someone just messing around and racism…just because someone is opposite race when making a joke it doesnt make them racist…
Theres so much stuff going on and this is what you have problem with…
My WoW Classic experience wasn’t impacted by your story at all.
Personally I’ve never seen anything like what you describe in public channels.
What people say in their private guild chat, in their family dinners, in their own minds, is none of my business nor do I believe it should be regulated.
OP if you haven’t already, go read Orwell’s “1984”. Is that the world you want? Because that’s the world we’ll get if we start trying to regulate private speech and thought.
I strongly dislike this, who decides what is hate speech? What makes one thing hate speech while another is just fine?
Take for instance the use of the N-word, if a white person says it, it is the most horrible thing ever, but when a person of colour says it, it is fine.
That kind of hypocrisy is the worst, it is either bad or not, you can’t have it both ways whenever it is convenient!
I am 100% against ALL censorship, that which gets pushed into the dark is allowed to fester and grow.
Not really, it can be to anyone, for humans get their humanity because of the empathy they have for each other… a joke has an intend to be funny, regardless of it’s content and has never had a goal of being racist.
Looking at everyone defend this “joke” is greatly disturbing and shows exactly where most of you stand… something that’s said like this should not be allowed, especially it it offends others. Just because it didn’t offend you, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t offend others. That is a bad statement imho.
I live in Africa. We deal with extreme and violent racism on a daily basis originating from all races. I mostly try my best ignore most racist remarks in online gaming and real life but this particular case deeply disturbed me… I think if you stayed in my environment you would understand how this affected me and people that come from similar backgrounds. If you don’t, its easy to sit behind the screen and comment with NRFL.
You can literally do harm to others with words and invoke volatile unpleasant emotions that prevent some from returning to the game. When this behavior is guarded, it is similar to bullying people into censorship, which is the same as what happened here by just saying “It’s just a joke”. That’s the same as saying, “It’s just a prank bro”. I don’t think most people grasp this concept these days.
It’s time to stop defending racist “jokes” and the people that motivate them. Wake up.
Listen to what you are saying… You yourself are okay with people speaking like this if it is in private and even if it harms other’s experiences? And speaking in a guild chat with over 100+ active members is not private to me. Let’s try not to be delusional here.
Though we can go back and forth with semantics for the rest of this post and it is not going to get us anywhere. I mainly want to find out how to report this. I can’t find a way to get in touch with someone from Blizzard that will listen to my report. If someone from Blizzard tells me it is what it is, then I will leave the situation with a sour taste in my mouth and find another way to follow up.
Someone’s always going to be offended by what you say.
I’m an atheist, should I be silenced when I speak about it because I might be offensive to some religious people? Not according to me.
The potential for offense should never be a factor when talking about free speech. To me it’s an absurd argument.
You keep bringing up the number of people in the guild, that’s irrelevant. A private space isn’t defined by the number of participants, it’s defined by the way information flows in and out of the space.
Go read my edit in my previous post. Turns out I agree with you that WoW guild chats are not technically private spaces. Although not for the same reasons as you.
I understand what you are saying. The way that the chat for a guild is used makes a lot more sense when you define what its purpose is and how it is used.
In this case, this is a guild that actively invites random people on a daily basis and kicks inactive members after 7 days. In my mind, if you are inviting people from a public space into a private space on a daily basis, it does not make this particular space 100% private I would say. The chat is often used for LFG and FAQ by new and random players.
In my mind, that seems like it is more of a public guild than an actual private guild if what I say makes sense. There are private aspects of the guild, but if you want to tell risqué jokes and be edgy, then something like Discord would be more “private” for these types of players, and not WoW.