No Room for Negative Characters in WoW?

There has been a lot of controversy in the MoP beta over Ji Firepaw and his dialogue. More specifically something said to female characters.

To Males he greeted them with:

“Hello, friend! You’ve got a strong look to you! I bet you’re all the rage with the ladies! Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!”

To Females he said:

“Hello, friend! You’re some kind of gorgeous, aren’t you? I bet you can’t keep the men off of you! Join me!”

This upset some people and the line has been changed. I have to say was pretty creepy, but then I think the male version was too. My take on it was he was trying to flatter either gender into joining him but getting it wrong and going waaaaaay too far. I’m not sure what it’s been changed to, not having played in the beta. And I’m not against the changes.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about. It got me thinking though.

Is there no room for ‘offensive’ characterisation in games any more?

I’m not sure I worded it right there so I’ll try and explain.

For example a dev wants to write a new character for the game. This character needs its own personality, and that may depend on what part of the storyline it fits into. Let’s say he is a member of a faction you have to deal with to gain acceptance. But this guy, well, it turns out he really doesn’t like women. And says so. Possibly in vocal terms. And part of the storyline is about you overcoming that. Either he gets cut down to size, or you change his opinion, whatever. My question is this.

Would people allow this to remain in game?

Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Oh, sure, the quest line may make my blood boil, but in the end, as long as the over all message isn’t “Hurr hurr, wimenz are useless” and finishes up with only male characters getting passed it, I’m not going to demand it changed. Shit like this exists in real life, and I hate that, I really do, but I feel removing all traces of offensive subjects from the media would harm rather than help. Show it being challenged. Show it bring overcome. But please don’t act like it never happens, because if people don’t know it does then how can it be beaten.

Another example:

A new game comes out. In this game female toons can only take the cooking profession and their level cap is 5 levels lower than a male toons.

Now THAT I’d have a major problem with. It doesn’t highlight any issues other than the devs are assholes, and can influence young males into thinking of women as inferior.

Im not saying that it’s ok to have a character do a sudden about turn in personality and abuse someone out of the blue. I’m not saying it’s ok to have offensive content for the sake of the ‘lols’ or to troll users. But I am saying that in my opinion content shouldn’t be sanitised too much.

I hope this makes sense, as it did in my head, but on print I’m not so sure!

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I’m a Bad, BAD Morrigu

I’m guessing a few people may have noticed I’ve been a bad blogger this month and not updated much. I must apologise, I’ve been a bit preoccupied with other things.

First off though, I got my Druid, Pinkamena to 85 yesterday! Yay! And I suck at feral kitty DPSing! Boo! Maybe it’s just my gear, I bought her the VP boots and bracers but I still have a lot of greens. Shame I hate the boomkin form, or I might have tried out balance. Roll on MoP and the glyph to change boomkin to spirit form!

But I won’t have much time to gear her up til next week as me and G are off to the Isle of Man for a well deserved holiday this weekend. I really can’t wait! The downside is G won’t let me practice driving in the Saxo as we can’t risk me dinging it, but it’s only this week. On Thursday we get on a ferry at Heysham and it’s off we go, camping. Hey, I’m not a ‘home comforts’ girl, I don’t mind 🙂

Did have a bit of a disaster though. At the beginning of the month my PS3 died and took with it my Mass Effect 3 saves. And my Skyrim saves. Well all my saves actually. So yeah, I’ve replaced the PS3 but all my games have been lost. ME3 hurts the most. And I had 50+ hours on Skyrim I can’t be bothered to replay. Shame.

In other news, Operation: Easter Snake is still ongoing. Some eggs are duds but there are 4 or 5 that look healthy and appear to be growing. We have a friend taking care of them over the holiday 🙂

Operation: Easter Snake

I’ve been a wee bit quiet, and have fallen behind in the whole 20 Days of WoW thing, but it’s been a bit mad, combined with mild burnout. And an Easter surprise I really didn’t expect.

Well, the Easter surprise will explain the title so I’ll talk about that first. As some may know I’m a Crazy Snake Lady. I have three pet snakes: Two Corn Snakes and a Western Hognose. Well, I had noticed over the last few weeks my bigger Corn Snake looked a bit chubby, but it was a total surprise when it laid 12 eggs yesterday. One sadly was bad but the rest seem fertile, and after ascertaining I will be able to find a home for them, I’m now incubating the rest. So Morrigu is gonna be a Grandma, if all goes according to plan anyway. It may not happen yet, hatching eggs isn’t easy, but here is hoping. Takes about 60 days, which means they should hatch around my birthday in June.

So yeah, burnout… I still enjoy raiding DS but most of the other stuff doesn’t interest me. I’m having fun levelling Pinkamena as I have mogging plans for her, but other than that, it’s all a bit ‘meh’.

So what else am I doing? Well, a friend of mine has convinced me to give SW:TOR a try again, and I have found myself messing around on Everquest 2 again, despite the fact I never get passed level 30 before cancelling my sub.

Roll on MoP I guess…