As narratives go, there are worse situations than someone going down a dark path. Them not really going anywhere, for instance.
I can and do appreciate lessons being learned and carried onwards, but to me, that came at too high a cost to the blood elves being engaging as a race. As someone else commented, there was a certain appeal in having a race that was outwardly pretty and inwardly twisted. That is no longer the blood elves.
Problem is that this dark path includes physical transformation and they are a playable race (so need to remain visually similar to their original looks).
Plus, WoW takes place over 8 years. In those 7 years since TBC, blood elves went from race that was being slowly corrupted by Fel to a race that is strongly connected to the Light (but still practices some shady magic, just look at their use of blood magic). They also went from fairly weak to pretty strong due to restoration of Sunwell and things they got from Isle of Thunder.
If you want to look at a faction that is going nowhere, just take a look at Darkspears (who don´t get any development) or orcs. Blood elves had story development and with Light/Void dynamic being pushed more and more into foreground, race that is representing Void in one faction and Light in the other has a lot to offer in future storylines.
You may not like how it happened, but you can´t deny that blood elves are one of the few races which actually changed a lot during WoW.
I think it’s only not allowed to advertise it on public chat rooms, not do /roll gamble for gold in general. They didn’t shut down the gambling addon, after all.
just because someone ERPs, they’re not necessarily bad people, and they don’t deserve to be constantly reminded that they’re doing something “that is not okay” if they’re actually following the ToS.
Unless people who ERP get passport screenshots of the people they are ERPing with (and not even then tbh), they have absolutely no idea whether or not the people with whom they are engaging in sexual content are of legal age. Every time one invites (or coerces) someone into an ERP encounter, they are potentially committing a sex crime. If that doesn’t ward you off the idea entirely I’m not sure what to tell you.
EDIT to clarify: ‘I did not know that this person was under the legal age’ is usually not considered a legal defense, for what it’s worth.
IDK why you are so married to the idea of sexual content being brought in a game designed for a 12+ audience - I have a few guesses, none of which are good for you - but it has no place in this game. Not least of which is that when ERP becomes endemic in a community then RP itself usually gets warped into just pretense for sex rather than anything actually interesting. If you’re going to introduce sex at all, a tasteful fade-to-black does all of the character development you need without any risk.
People often say ‘but what about violent emotes’ - but the thing is, there’s a difference between me describing my character causing violence (which is obviously not against any sensible code of conduct) and describing in intimate detail exactly what gruesome torture he may be inflicting. I actively avoid such things, refuse to engage in torture RP except in a very bare-bones sense and would happily report emotes that took it too far. Most people I know who are against ERP in this game have a similar attitude.
I’m not denying anything. In fact my entire opinion is formed around the changes they underwent and where that leaves them now. Which, to me, is in a rather dull place in need of shaking up.
Figured someone would go ad hominem at some point. I can only say that I do not appreciate you implying anything about me, and if you ever do find me conducting in a manner that breaches the ToS you should most definitely report me to Blizzard.
To address your other points:
I am not a jurist, nor am I educated in interpreting or communicating the law beyond a few classes at uni, but to my best knowledge, convictions are based on intent and not action.
Meaning if persona A directly asks person B about their age and is lied to prior to partaking in sexual activities with that person, then person A has committed no crime.
It actually is a legal defense, if the underaged person actively concealed their true age from the accused.
That’s a rough outline of how it works, at least in my country.
That means that no, no one has a legal obligation to obtain passport screenshots from anyone.
Do they have a moral obligation? Possibly, but that’s not for me or you to decide.
Do they have a moral obligation? Possibly, but that’s not for me or you to decide.
If I believe that they do have an obligation to check these things, and they don’t even bother doing that basic part, then I will judge them for that. In fact, admitting this torpedoes your entire point about not judging people for engaging in ERP - morality is something that, in part, I do decide.
I’m not here to engage in rhetorical fisticuffs with you Dreadbore. If you think you’re morally justified to judge others, be my guest, how can I stop you. I’m not sure that’s an argument even worth having. If my comment about you not being allowed to decide whether other people have a moral obligation to do what you want them to, then I apologize for offending you.
This was and is still my main message.
Thing is with the wording of the CoC, it doesn’t matter what you think is the right level of description, and what is too far.
If some one else decides you’ve gone too far and have offended them, then you’re in breach of it.
Which y’know in the era of the offendatron is a risky way of wording rules.
Do we have any actual lawyers here (and not some armchair wannabe lawyers) who can put up an article with examples?
No “quotes” , an actual real life lawyer who actually knows these type of cases and explains different circumstances to shut down this discussion for good.
What if it’s the 15 to 17 year olds that are the ERPers themselves?
What if someone is being deceived? Who is at fault then?
Surely there are legal failsafes so minors can’t just do what they want and everyone else has to suffer because of them.
The law is a donkey.
If two fifteen year olds in a relationship, send each other rude snaps or sext each other, they can be done for producing child pornography, in good old backwards England.
Thing is with the wording of the CoC, it doesn’t matter what you think is the right level of description, and what is too far.
If some one else decides you’ve gone too far and have offended them, then you’re in breach of it.
Which y’know in the era of the offendatron is a risky way of wording rules.
It’s a decent system for the moment - I don’t think anyone could properly answer the question of how much detail one should give in describing violence. We just know what the two extremes are - no violence at all vs graphic, uncensored violence - and muddle our way in between them. I might well have written emotes that others would consider in breach of the CoC, but the alternative of a vague code would be an arbitrary one.
I find your leniency on the topic of violent descriptions in RP interesting juxtaposed to your extreme opinions on the topic of sexual implications in RP.
You’re more than willing to allow and even partake in activity that might be breaching the CoC when it comes to descriptions of violence, but when it comes to sexual implications, you make grand and unfounded arguments that it’s criminal and make unfounded insinuations to discredit those who argue against you.
I can’t understand your standing on this, and I must admit that being the target of your insinuations, combined with you wholly ignoring counter arguments, did bother me to a degree I hadn’t thought the AD forums could.
I regret that we on AD forums aren’t able to have civil discussions about controversial matters, and I regret that going against the establishment (this time being the anti-ERP platform) is met with this disregard for the facts.
I guess you can consider yourself succesful and take pride in the fact that you rattled me, but I hope that you at least take my arguments into consideration, even if you won’t admit so on the forums.
I haven’t tried to push an agenda sanctioning my own (insinuated) illicit actions, I am actually here arguing for (what I believe is) tolerance and thoughtful behavior.
Honestly, when such questions are being asked on a forum of a MMORPG game - I start to think what turn was the wrong one
You’re more than willing to allow and even partake in activity that might be breaching the CoC when it comes to descriptions of violence, but when it comes to sexual implications, you make grand and unfounded arguments that it’s criminal and make unfounded insinuations to discredit those who argue against you.
Don’t misquote me. That’s not what I said about either issue.
I can’t understand your standing on this, and I must admit that being the target of your insinuations, combined with you wholly ignoring counter arguments, did bother me to a degree I hadn’t thought the AD forums could.
I deliberately did not insinuate anything. I said that I did not understand your motivation, and the answers I could think of to defend the behaviour of explicit sexual content on a 12+ forum as a guess were not charitable ones - which is why I didn’t guess at the answer. This was an invitation for you to explain your reasoning.
You also can’t simultaneously say
I’m not sure that’s an argument even worth having.
Alongside
I regret that we on AD forums aren’t able to have civil discussions about controversial matters
I gave my reasoning for why I judge people who engage in ERP - particularly those who don’t know or care to check they are engaging with adults, but also those trying to jam a type of roleplay into a game where it doesn’t belong. ‘This argument isn’t worth having’ isn’t actually a counter-argument to which I can really respond. It’s a dismissal of discussion, and I took it as such and moved on.
When Lavella started posting, perhaps. Might as well go with the flow and milk it for what it’s worth.
I meant on a bigger scale, but I guess that works too.
Unpopular opinion, though - spaghetti burger is actually decent, 8/10.
Well, then I misunderstood you. What did you say about these issues? - it is so easy to misunderstand eachother on this written medium. As an example, you seem to have misunderstood me when I said:
Because I very much think that the argument of whether or not ERP is in essence against the CoC is very much worth having - which is why I’ve been here partaking in the argument for a few hours.
It’s the part in bold that I don’t think is worth arguing, because it’s a silly argument that we’d never find a solution to.
I agree with you on the first bit, which I think you’d find if you read my earlier posts too. That’s not the case I’ve been arguing for.
I disagree with the other bit. What “types of roleplay” belong in this game is really a question I can’t answer; Blizzard has tried to with their ToS and CoC and grey cases are best left to be handled at their discretion.
And honestly…
Saying “I won’t insinuate anything, because the implications are bad” is very much the same as insinuating something bad about someone. Which I disapprove of. But if indeed you didn’t mean to make insinuations about me, then I guess there’s no harm done. Your insinuations wouldn’t hurt me, and I hadn’t thought they’d bother me; if I’d known I might not have taken up this argument to begin with.
I’ve tried to explain my reasoning, with the following statements:
I hope we understand eachother better now.
EDIT:
I would like to clarify, that I haven’t done this. I’ve agreed that explicit sexual content falls under the “vulgar language” clause of the CoC and agreed that it should be reported to proper authorities.
I would have hoped that that was clear from my posts today.
ERP is against the CoC if it becomes obsence or offensive language.
BUT all RP is against the CoC if it becomes obscene or offensive language.
People can rant about grooming and so on, but that’s the only rule against it.
The problem is the rule is so crazy vague that anyone can take a trip to auto-ban land no matter the intent.
Big rugged Orc guy mocking a skinny elf dude for being ‘effeminate’?
Welcome to ban town because your words offended someone for body shaming/toxic masculinity/transphobia.
Good luck getting a real CS person to look at it as well, rather than round after round of copy paste ‘you broke the CoS! Nothing we can do’ emails.
Edit:
One can go into a great deal of detail about a game of hide the pickle, without once using words that would break the CoS, give it a try open a word processor document and give it a try.
You monster.