Yes, I have an ignore list. My server is huge. I can’t possibly preemptively ignore everyone in case they’ll say something disgusting to me.

That said, I was unbothered by the bunny ears thing. Easter tends to have a lot of rabbit symbolism, Playboy has rabbit symbolism, I’m actually kind of surprised they didn’t do this earlier.

In playing MMOs, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two distinct approaches people take to playing the game. One approach is the one you describe–role playing an avatar, and “what happens in Azeroth stays in Azeroth”. The other, equally valid approach, is to play your character as an extension of yourself into the virtual world. The first time I noticed these distinct styles of play was in the perennial controversy of males playing female characters and vice versa. People who are merely roleplaying see nothing unusual about it. People who are projecting themselves into the game find it peculiar that someone would pick a character with a different gender.

This is an excellent point. In the past I have played my avatars both ways. Sometimes when I create a character of my own gender I am apt to bring my own gender specific traits to bolster the person of my avatar because being a male in real life gives me lots of natural foundational material for how my male avatar acts.

While it is legitimate for people to identify their avatars with themselves I wonder if it slightly cheating and somewhat contrary to the intent of existing and role-playing in a virtual world?

This seems to be arguing the exact opposite of the point made earlier. If players are merely playing avatars in a game, nothing done in the context of the game should have any real life consequences whatsoever. How can you be offended by harassment or profanity, when it’s just an avatar doing that to another avatar? There aren’t any real people involved here, right?

I did qualify my point by noting that offense can be taken if players violate the immersion by importing real life racial slurs, swear words, etc. That kind of language is no longer one avatar speaking to another avatar rather it’s the person at one computer speaking to another person at a computer. The intent is to wound, disrupt and grief the other person.

From a practical point of view there is no way a commercial MMO company can allow players to constantly yell out real life racial slurs without damaging the play experience of other players.

Now if I’m playing a dwarf and a night elf comes up to me and calls me a “no good, rotten, filthy dwarf” or that “all dwarves are short, greedy and stupid” it’s perfectly fine as it’s within the context of the game as it has no real world connection that could be seen as inflammatory.

While races in a fantasy world can be completely unique, the tricky issue is that gender exists both in the real world and in virtual worlds. But we also have to realize that perhaps Azeroth isn’t the 21 century Earth. Azeroth still has the classism of the monarchy with Kings and Queens along with other medieval and feudal underpinings. Maybe the people of Azeroth have not yet evolved or progressed to overcome sexism.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that people are wrong to project themselves onto their characters and at the same time claim that people are right to be offended by some things that happen in the context of the game.

I do understand your point. Again I think the problem is when certain players shatter the Magic Circle (which Raph Koster and Tesh talked about at Raph’s site) and destroy the immersion of the world by bringing in real world insults, issues, politics, etc. with them.

In the case of Blizzard, they shattered the Magic Circle of WoW by making the Playboy inference. While I think the charge of sexism could apply to Blizzard’s bungling here I feel it’s somewhat overblown. I think the positive thing is that it’s got folks talking about the importance of avatars and the integrity of the wall of immersion that MMOs and virtual worlds need to have to shield themselves from the real world.

“Are you as a real life woman really hurt by the treatment of your female avatar in a role-playing MMO? If the answer is yes, then you are not really role-playing in a MMO — you are playing your real life self which is not how WoW is intended to be played. When all is said and done WoW *is* a role-playing MMO. If a player decides to play herself and then claims to the outside world to be a victim of perceived sexism inside the game then I do not feel sorry for them.”

In playing MMOs, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two distinct approaches people take to playing the game. One approach is the one you describe–role playing an avatar, and “what happens in Azeroth stays in Azeroth”. The other, equally valid approach, is to play your character as an extension of yourself into the virtual world. The first time I noticed these distinct styles of play was in the perennial controversy of males playing female characters and vice versa. People who are merely roleplaying see nothing unusual about it. People who are projecting themselves into the game find it peculiar that someone would pick a character with a different gender.

Quite a lot of people play these games this way, and nobody really has the right to tell them they’re playing the game wrong. If they want to treat the game as a virtual environment, and their character as a representation of themself in that environment, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It does lead to sticky situations where a real person can be offended by something done by a virtual character.

I think this point is easiest to see where the article says:

“It goes without saying that any kind of harassment and unwanted advances are wrong even in virtual worlds and thankfully there are customer service policies to deal with it. I’ve been the victim of it myself in WoW. Hazing and foul language in public chat channels is wrong as well.”

This seems to be arguing the exact opposite of the point made earlier. If players are merely playing avatars in a game, nothing done in the context of the game should have any real life consequences whatsoever. How can you be offended by harassment or profanity, when it’s just an avatar doing that to another avatar? There aren’t any real people involved here, right?

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that people are wrong to project themselves onto their characters and at the same time claim that people are right to be offended by some things that happen in the context of the game.

For my part, I actually like the suggestion:

“Jack wishes to (hug, kiss, flirt) you. Do you wish to accept this emote? Yes or No.

If we accept this kind of safety valve then it has other ramifications. Do we want to create an ultra safe world where every kind of player communication is restricted and filtered?”

We have those options in the real world. When someone goes in to hug or kiss you , you can step back and prevent it happening. One of the things that always bothered me in WoW was the /spit emote. I just found it distasteful and disgusting, and I really didn’t want it to be part of my experience of the game. It may seem like a small, silly thing, but why shouldn’t I be able to enjoy the game in a context that’s free of things I find distasteful?

Of course it becomes unwieldy to let everyone impose their own filters on the world, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean game designers shouldn’t strive to make their games more pleasant for more users.

I applaud Female Gamer for her common sense and her ability to recognize a true issue from one that stems from nothing more than a lack of something to bitch about. Of course, I also thank blizzard because without their careless programming, many of US would have nothing to bitch about

But if she only chose to dance for Male Humans, Draenei, and Night Elves, then that would not only be sexual discrimination against women characters, but racial discrimination against Gnomes and Dwarves. It could also be considered Heightest, and perhaps even Hordest.