The childization of WoW might possibly really be the final nail to the coffin for the game

Community General Discussion
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I know, the topic is old, but I just got a video (uploaded last week, 6.10.) recommended about the removal of most flirt voice lines within patch 9.1.5 and once again someone like me has to say that removing “adult content” from an “adult game” to make it more “children fitting” is a horrible idea that will 100% backfire.

World of Warcraft came out 2004, in a year when society was much more reserved and much more innocent. Most kids played not many games and were rather busy doing stuff with friends on the school yard. Today, we have the year 2021. Society evolved (as it always does). Most kids these days play games including mild-strong violence. Sexualisation is part of most games these days. Why? Because the majority of players are still the parents and adults.

Yeah, there might be some kids playing World of Warcraft. But almost every single one of the kids has seen death, sexual content and other mature contents in Movies, other games and even Books for the youth already.

I still remember me, as a young boy, getting shown massive visual violence by my father via movies like 300 and The Soldier James Rian (the D-Day scene is still a bit horrible to watch). Did it hurt my personal development as a person? Absolutely not. Did it made it easier for me to see violence without throwing up? Absolutely.

Anyways, as I said, removing “adult content” to make a game child-fitting is a bad decision. That’s like taking the “War” out of the “World of Warcraft”.

I play since mid BfA and am a new player to this franchise compared to others. But even I know that WoW was never meant to be a “child-game” like Fortnite. Grown people these days want to see mostly mature content in video games, because it allows them to identify with the game and its characters.

If people like me would love to play a peaceful game without War or mature content, we would not play Games like GTA V, Left4Dead/Vermintide 2 or even games like DOOM and Wolfenstein. We would play peaceful games like Minecraft, Fortnite, Stardew Valley, Starbound and such games. Maybe even go down the steps and play damn FIFA.

The more you (Blizzard) cut mature content, the more you cut into your own flesh. Because the kids and young players will not be enough to keep the game floating. Your playerbase is the remaining people of the core game WoW classic from 2004 and all the grown people that joined the game later on.

Edit 1: Not even to mention that vague flirt lines won’t find any kid by accident. Kids don’t do tpye stuff like /flirt in the game chat and find this feature.

With targeting the game to a very small percentage of your overall age playerbase you are going to doom your very own game even more, possibly put it beyond the “point of no return”.

Oh and as a sidenote: Don’t even listen to the people complaining on Twitter. Twitter is a place of mostly toxic, offended people never being happy about anything at anytime. Once you make something “fit” for them they will look for the next thing to complain about.

That’s all from me for today.

Edit: For those saying WoW is a game rated 12… Final Fantasy 14 is a game rated 16 because of:

This game has received a PEGI 16 because it features sustained depictions of violence towards human characters, moderate violence and encouragement of the use of alcohol/tobacco. Not appropriate for persons below 16 years of age. ~ via PEGI Website

WoW has moments where it encourages alcohol (MoP Dungeons and Events and alcoholic drinks in general as item). WoW has moments where it encourages drugs (certain missions WoD and Shadowlands come to my mind with Fungus enemies and eatable Mushrooms that affect vision). WoW also encourages violence towards humans and human-like creatures in its story. How is that not bad for kids???

If you say stuff like “some skin shown” and references kids not really understand without the knowledge needs surely be removed, then your argument is basically the same as saying “Star Wars the Clone Wars is for kids”, ignoring all the violent deaths that happen in the series, like Clones being cut in half by lightsabers or hydraulic doors or Parasites entering their bodies…

I get it with the certain flirt lines, like the female Draenei one and the Worgen “Worgen Women have 6 (you know what follows)”. But some stuff removed is just overexaggerated and shows how much US media do encourage “being offended by the slightest things”.

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Because /spit is so grown up and edgy…
Imagine if Game of Thrones had all the spitting removed just how tame and childish it would have been.

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WoW has never been an adult game.

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I mean, should that be a goal? I think violence should make us feel bad. Raise questions and protest.

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You’re forgetting that WoW was never rated Mature/18+/whatever way you wish to name it. The game’s always showed its warlike themes in a rather tame, not too explicit manner. The select few instances where it didn’t (like the B-bomb from Garrosh) were those that stood out compared to the rest. This is why they’re getting changed.

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Sounds like a weird place. Where’s this? I know there’s always countries that are a bit behind techwise, but I have no idea where video/computer games wasn’t a big thing amongst children and teenagers in the early 2000s.

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Game has always been rated 12+ from Pegi so no not an adult game .

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It can probably be safely assumed that if spit had been removed from GoT due to age concerns than all the inappropriate material would had been as well and we would’ve had an entirely different show.

But even if they had removed specifically just spits because of age concerns or offended viewers then ye, I’d say that would had made the show very childish and tame since it shows it has no integrity or concern about the quality of the show or the realism of the setting it tries to create and instead only cares about number of viewers (aka money).

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Seem to be more doomsayers on the forums these days than the whole of the twilight cultist have had in the entirety of wow history.

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my guess is they’re cleaning up the game so nobody can accuse them of encouraging or facilitating this behavior. as long as they don’t actively go on a witch hunt for anyone who’s…moderately rude to others, I don’t care if they purify their game until all that’s left is a white background

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Compare to education games for 5 years old kid it is. Blizzard no trying to push they game for 7 years old kids that have been killing players in Fortnite, torturing pigs and villigers in Minecraft and playing Doom when parents are out of home.
I know about pornography and when I start school. In every class there was some one who got older brother who used condoms, or cjorn magasines. Kids always know about this but it was hidden in grey area. Now kids know more and don’t even hide it.

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Now this is unfortunately not true. Society has actually devolved since quite a bit since the mid-2010’s with people trying to be offended about everything and being a lot more prudish. Keep in mind, this is not even the majority of people, but almost the whole U.S. media which unfortunately shapes culture.

This is another problem. A lot of the devs left Blizzard in the Legion / BFA days, and since ActiBlizz doesn’t play well compared to other companies, it was mostly talentless hacks FROM TWITTER hired (which also explains why Shadowlands is so below average, both in terms of quality and quantity). So they are listening to themselves. These changes are not caused by complaints, but internal pressure.

Yeah, it sucks. All of it.

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Meanwhile npcs in FF14 curse a lot and use some pretty hard profanity often. Idk, but for me all this censorship, not even the emotes and the paintings, but the lack of harsher language in certain situations rly breaks the suspension of disbelief. The worst thing is it’s self imposed and nobody rly cares besides maybe 5 twitter mums that bought a sub 5 years ago.

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It’s basically Disney tier now, any mature content would offend the puritans on Twitter. Just look at the person’s Twitter who wrote the SL novel, that’s the average Blizzard employee now.

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OP’s obviously a wee boy/girl

I saw plenty sex and violence on video in the 80’s when I was a nipper

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Wow is pegi 12 . lol @ this topic
https://pegi.info/search-pegi?q=world+of+warcraft

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there can be two reasons that i can think of this might happen.

  1. activision replaced the previous team with untalented hacks.
    OR
  2. its a mega-continuation of the removal of the “bitc@” sylvanas line.
    its possible that management is trying something new. rebrand of sort.
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But >95% of the playerbase likely is.

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With RP servers was an adult game…look wow its not anymore something new…they are fight for Fortnite or whataver the name…they are not more an independt company…World of Warcraft its end…just move on…i moving on…

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Dunno how the things work in US but… Im living i the eastern part of EU and kids flirt and have fun by doing jokes to each other, sexual jokes even. Dunno whats wrong with US… no alcohol before you are an old mid aged man - 21 years old… But you can drive a car at 16…

Cant we just have 2 separate parts of the game? US version with all fruit pictures and with all removed flirt jokes and emotes like /spit , etc… and another version for EU without anything removed? Nobody in EU care about your lawsuit and shet…

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