Dear Blizzard

Dear Blizzard,

Congratulations on your new toys!  I hope that they sell well.

I realize that this is only the initial launch and that more sets and figures will be released in the future.  Even so, you may have overlooked a few things.

Like women.

In the 13 sets and 19 characters available, there are no women.

You're also missing a few of the races.  You got most of the important ones in, like the default races (human and orc), the shiny new races (worgen and goblin) and so on.  No gnomes yet, of course.  (You and I are long overdue for a talk about gnomes.)

Maybe I'm not being fair, but it's easy to draw a parallel.  You got the default in, right?  You got the important one: men.  Women are, you know, the extra, the add-on, the one you'll get to later.  You'll get around to adding them in eventually.  What's important is that we have lots of men!  Important men from lore!  Men riding gryphons!  Men standing around looking important!

You know this is a problem.  You've heard from us for years about how you marginalize women.  Oh, we hope for the best.  We imagine that somewhere on your end, someone's trying to fix the problem.  And then you launch a new project with 19 characters and no women, and we feel like fools for ever giving you the benefit of the doubt.

We want to be on your side.  We want to enjoy your game and have fun with you.  We're passionate, paying customers.  We put up with a lot of shit from misogynistic gamer guys to stick with you, so we aren't that thrilled to get shit from you, too.  And the more crap you pull, the more encouragement and permission the players have for their behavior, too.  Again: you know this is a problem, and you continue to contribute to it.

Ideally, your 19 characters would be an even split, 10 women and 9 men or 10 men and 9 women.  If you want to marginalize us, you could make it 15 men and 4 women.  For a token 10%, you could have 2 women.  Maybe one?  Just one?  Just one woman?  No?

Was this a deliberate choice?  Did you think that having the option to buy a woman on a gryphon instead of a man on a gryphon would upset your player base?  Did you think that people shopping in Toys 'R' Us would see your products and get excited, and then notice a woman character among the men and be turned off enough not to try your game?  Or did you put no thought into this at all?  Did it never even occur to you to include women?

Congratulations on your new toys.  I hope that they sell well.  I won't be buying any of them.

With love,
Frank Lee