Wednesday, February 6, 2008

No GLBT Guild In WoW

http://www.innewsweekly.com/innews/?class_code=Ga&article_code=1172

Apparently this article has been making its rounds, but I find it interesting none the less and makes for an interesting transition from last week.

Apparently, WoW doesn't want there to be a Gay Guild on its servers and considers trying to start one a situation of violating terms of service. Obviously, the other side is say that this is flat out discrimination.

It brings up an interesting question though. Along with the article earlier about no male gamers posing as females in china, are people restricting people's right to be whoever they want to on an MMORPG. Should there be a moral standardization for characters beyond vulgarity and is this an extension of the power of companies to censor content.

Here's a somewhat poorly written, but interesting reply article.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/02/keep-politics-out-of-wow.html

Not my own personal opinions, but it's interesting to see a reply on it.

2 comments:

Steve said...

I'm not sure how I feel about this. While it seems rediculous on the face of it, I could see a 'gay guild' causing a lot of headaches for Blizzard. In this case, it seems taking action caused more trouble however.

It also raises the issue (though it doesn't apply directly in this case) of the thin line between allowing minority groups to form and allowing groups to 'decriminate.' To put it another way, why are Black or Latino scholarships generally ok when we baulk at White scholarships?

On a related note, the guild "Giant Communist Robots" had to be renamed to take out 'Communist.' Robots are ok because the Gnomes make them, I guess.

kpenn said...

I think Blizzard would lose either way. I see the points in both articles, they are probably just trying to keep trouble from starting. In my article last section I noticed their terms of service are pretty out there on a lot of subjects too. Interesting articles.