Dear Blizzard

Dear Blizzard,

A new forum thread popped up today on the subject of favorite lore characters.  Posters were invited to name a favorite lore character of each playable race.

The thread was only four pages long when I saw it, with only 24 forms filled out, but I thought that you might find the results interesting.

The most popular choices?

Pandaren - Chen Stormstout (6 votes), Taran Zhu (4 votes)
Dwarf - Moira Bronzebeard (10 votes)
Orc - Thrall (5 votes), Varok Saurfang (6 votes)
Undead - Sylvanas Windrunner (11 votes)
Troll - Vol'jin (8 votes), Zul'jin (6 votes)
Blood Elf - Kael'thas Sunstrider (8 votes), Lor'themar Theron (9 votes)
Tauren - Cairne Bloodhoof (13 votes)
Human - Anduin Lothar (3 votes), Anduin Wrynn (3 votes)
Night Elf - Illidan Stormrage (8 votes)
Worgen - Darius Crowley (8 votes)
Draenei - Akama (4 votes), Miskha (5 votes), Velen (5 votes)
Goblin - Boss Mida (4 votes), Grizzle Gearslip (4 votes), Sassy Hardwrench (5 votes)
Gnome - Mekkatorque (2 votes), Thermaplugg (2 votes)

As you can see, in some categories one major lore figure dominated; in others, the votes were split in all directions.  Most people love Cairne Bloodhoof, you'll notice, but when it comes to humans, they like Anduin Lother, Anduin Wrynn, Arthas Menethil, Jaina, Thassarian, Uther, and more.

Looking over that list, seeing that Mekkatorque and Thermaplugg were the most popular gnomes with only 2 votes apiece, you'd guess that there are so many popular gnomes that there must be loads of other gnomes being named.

You'd be wrong.

The original poster forgot to include the Pandaren at first, and some of the posters replying directly to that post also left off Pandaren from their lists.  As a result, of 24 posts, 5 skipped Pandaren.

Some people didn't exactly forget about categories, they simply couldn't think of anyone to vote for.  They wrote in answers like "?" or left the space blank.  That should concern you.  Are players so ill-informed and so apathetic that they don't care about lore figures?  Or are your writers failing to create interesting, memorable characters?

The good news: everyone named a dwarf.  I didn't come across one person who skipped the "dwarf" category.  Orcs, too, are doing well; only one person didn't name at least one favorite orc.

How many times did someone enter a joke response ("seriously?") or skip the category altogether?

0 - dwarf
1 - orc
2 - undead, troll
3 - blood elf, tauren, human
4 - night elf
5 - worgen
7 - draenei
8 - goblin
12 - gnome

Yes, that's right.  Out of 24 questionnaires, 12 people gave either a joke answer or no answer at all on the question of "favorite gnome."  One person's favorite gnome is a forum poster, not a lore figure; if you discount that reply, only 11 out of 24 people listed a favorite gnome.

Eleven out of twenty-four.

That is not a good statistic.

Both of the people who named Thermaplugg spelled his name wrong.

Overall, the Horde looks good.  For orcs, undead, trolls, blood elves, and tauren, most posters seem pretty enthusiastic or at least can name a favorite character.  For the Alliance, it's not so great; around the worgen and draenei categories, things start to fall apart.  Goblins aren't doing very well, but that's understandable, since they've only been playable since the last expansion and don't have the rich history some of the older races enjoy.  Unfortunately, I can't use that excuse for gnomes.

Gnomes are considered a joke race, but they aren't even a very popular joke.  If your plan was to make them a laughingstock, I'd have expected you to make more memorable, funny characters.  Instead, there's nothing.  Where you could create smart, creative, inventive, witty characters, there's only an apathetic void.  You don't seem to care, and that lack of caring comes across very clearly.

On the first page of the thread alone, only four people could list a favorite gnome.  Of those four, not everyone could remember the gnome's actual name.  The other replies?

*shrug* 

The dead ones 

lolwut 

?

Your writing team needs help.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Gamers

Dear Gamers,

I saw a post today on the World of Warcraft forums from a player who had "outed" herself in real life as a gamer.  I didn't think much about it; the social stigma against gaming, whether or not exists, and how various gamers deal with it, is a topic which comes up fairly often on the forums.

And then the replies rolled in.

Here are my favorite two from the first page:

Careful, this kind of "coming out" may lead to more discrimination than the other one!
LOLS! (true though.) 

There is less stigma to being gay than there is to playing WoW. Gamers are just not normal.

The best part of that is how the poster backs off of the statement with a "lol" and then comes around again with a "true though."

Let's see.  Gamers face more discrimination than gay people, you say?  Let's look at that from the perspective of the USA, where the majority of WOW-US general forumgoers reside.

Can gamers legally marry each other in all 50 states?

Do gamers face discrimination in housing?

Can gamers legally adopt in all 50 states?  Do legal barriers prevent gamers from fostering children?

Can two gamer kids attend school functions together without facing resistance from the administration?  Can gamer kids wear gaming-related T-shirts to school without facing resistance from the administration?

How often are young gamers thrown out of their own homes by their own parents simply for liking videogames?

Do gamers have trouble getting appropriate healthcare?  Do gamers have trouble securing appropriate identification and government documentation?  For how many years were gamers barred from serving in the Armed Forces?

Job discrimination, murder rates, assault rates, legal barriers, institutional discrimination, the list goes on.  You can talk about the social stigma against gamers as much as you like, but please don't play "contrast and compare" and "who has it worse" with the gay community, or people of color, or women, or other marginalized populations.

Gamers who feel that they're facing prejudice and bigotry can, if need be, put down the controller, step away from the keyboard, or stop rolling the dice.  Trying to change or deny one's sexual orientation and sexual identity aren't comparable.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Misogynist slur ahead, "joking" reference to sexual assault.

Dear Blizzard,

It's been a lovely day on the WOW forums.

Someone started a thread called, "Phrases/Quotes that you really like."

Guess what the very first reply was?

"I'm gonna ook you in the dooker!"

Guess what also made the first page?

''Watch your clever mouth, !@#$%.'' - Garrosh Hellscream

Who's Garrosh, again?  Oh, right, the Warchief of the Horde.  He wasn't the warchief when he called Sylvanas a bitch, but I guess that's the kind of misogyny Thrall was looking for when he had to decide whom to promote.

You throw in these lines for reasons of your own, but your playerbase has a ball with them for reasons of its own.  A misogynist playerbase finds a line like that in-game and is thrilled.  You've just given them license to call Sylvanas a bitch.  The thinking may go something like this: Sure, maybe Garrosh is crude, but he's right, isn't he?  She really is a bitch.  It must be okay to call women bitches, right?  You know, if they deserve it.  Now it's up to the player to decide what kind of behavior warrants the term "bitch."  You may or may not be surprised by where each player draws the line.

As for ooking people in the dooker, ha ha ha.  Threats of sexual assault are hilarious.  Rape jokes are hilarious.  Obviously, it's perfectly cool that you no longer censor the word "rape" on the forums, because we're certainly all mature enough to handle sexual assault responsibly.

Some players brought up good lines in that thread.  Funny stuff, dramatic stuff, some moments your writers are probably very proud of.

Wouldn't you rather players look back and reminisce over "I am the lucid dream" and Medivh's farewell from WC3, than, "Watch your clever mouth, bitch?"

I hope that you would.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Use of homophobic slurs ahead.

Dear Blizzard,

Do you remember how I wrote to you a week or so ago to ask why you stopped censoring the word "rape" on the forums?

I didn't even realize, at the time, that you'd removed other words from the filter.

For example: fag.

I don't want to repeat my entire argument from last time, but here it is in short: You filtered the word in the first place because it's a disgusting, homophobic insult.  By censoring it, you discouraged your players from using it and signaled to them that it's not an appropriate word to toss around in idle or angry conversation.  By removing it from the filter, you're giving your players license to use the word whenever and however they wish.  "Never mind, go ahead and say it!  It's cool with us!"

You say that you take harassment seriously.  You claim that players aren't supposed to harass each other.  How do you imagine the word "fag" coming into the conversation in a way that isn't homophobic?  In what context do you anticipate players using that word in a sentence in a positive, friendly way?  And does that imagined context counterbalance all of the negative, nasty, homophobic uses?

I suppose that you'll suggest that if we find someone using homophobic language, we should report that person, and you'll handle it.  As usual, the onus is on the players to clean up the community, and you take a step back from responsibility.  You do realize, of course, that we were already reporting people for homophobic language.  We've been doing that all along.  Before, however, it seemed like we had your support in that; you were discouraging bad habits, censoring the most abused words, using your influence to squelch common, egregious homophobia.  Now, we're in this on our own, and if we don't report it, you won't do a thing about it.  You won't even bother to censor the words.  Remind me, again, how much effort that took on your part?

"Just report the offender," you say.  We all know, after all, how responsive and efficient the reporting system is.

I would love to understand the thought processes behind these decisions.  "It was wrong of us to discourage our players from using homophobic slurs and making rape jokes.  We should let their contempt run free!  Who cares if that makes the gaming community even more hostile to marginalized populations?  We've been using our influence to make WOW more inclusive, and that was obviously a mistake!"

The censor works automatically.  It's a "set it and forget it" sort of system.  Why not leave it alone?  Why make the decision to remove words from the filter?  Who had this idea?  Who decided what to include and what to remove?  I certainly don't want to sit down with a list of misogynist terms and racist slurs and see what makes it through the filter, but I would love to know which other delightful little words you've given your blessing lately.

With love,
Frank Lee

P.S. Again, that little problem I had?  Still a problem.

Dear Blizzard

Notice for discussion of misuse of the word "rape."

Dear Blizzard,

Anyone with a subscription to the game can post on the World of Warcraft general forums.  There's no "are you a decent human being" test to pass in order to gain posting privileges.  While the rules state that certain words and behaviors aren't allowed, you know that some posters will break those rules.  So you gave us a profanity filter.

It was one of your better ideas.  Knowing your playerbase as you do, you didn't stick to the typical curse words.  You also included words like "homosexual," because some of your players are homophobic douchebags.  You also included obvious racial slurs, because some of your players are racist douchebags.  You also included "rape."

I was glad that you chose to censor "rape."  Gamers use it often as a metaphor for general in-game violence. Putting it behind the censor indicated that you didn't want it to be used that way, that you understood that to be an inappropriate and harmful use of a word with great significance to victims and their allies.  It seemed as if you were exerting your influence against misogyny.  I appreciated the effort; it's good to discourage the use of "rape" as a win/loss metaphor.

I've played WOW for years and visited the forums for years.  "Rape" was censored to the extent that we couldn't type "grape" or "drape" or "therapist" without tripping the filter, and forum regulars knew that.  It was understood that "rape" was censored.

Suddenly, it's not.

A little while ago, I noticed that "drape" and "grape" weren't censored anymore.  Cool, I thought.  Looks like the filter's more sensitive now, and can differentiate between "rape" and other variations.

And then I read a post where someone claimed to have been "raped by tigers" in-game.

And I noticed that the word "raped" was right there, uncensored.

You removed "rape" from the filter.

I could try to interpret this generously and assume that your reasoning was, "Hey, our players are mature and sensitive people, they don't need to be censored like this, we aren't giving them enough credit."  But we both know that's not true.

No.  No, your playerbase hasn't changed.  The word "rape" hasn't changed.  Common misuse of it hasn't changed.  The only thing that's changed is your stance.

By changing your stance, you're signaling to your players that it's okay to use "rape" as a metaphor.  You're letting everyone know that there's no need to be sensitive to victims.

You were doing the right thing.  Then you stopped doing the right thing, turned around, and said, "LOL!  Never mind!  Ugh, what was up with that?!  Why be so sensitive?  Let's go rape some elves!"

You just gave forum posters your blessing to be more hostile to rape victims (and more hostile to populations already under threat of rape, like women and gay men and trans people, all of whom already deal with plenty of other hostile bullshit in the gaming community).  You just removed that minor check that might have discouraged rape jokes and made some posters and readers think twice about rape as a metaphor.  You've mentioned that only a minority of players visits the forums, but even a small percentage of people in such a popular game is a significant number of people, and those forums are busy.  Even if only a small percentage of players visits the forums, turn that around: how many people reading and posting on the forums play the game?  How will this new freedom to misuse "rape" affect conversations in-game?

It would be one thing if you'd never taken a stance at all.  Instead, you chose to take a position and then reverse it.  In that reversal, you sent a very clear message.  Maybe it wasn't the one you intended to convey.

I hope that you'll reconsider.

With love,
Frank Lee

P.S. That other little problem I have still hasn't been resolved.

Dear Blizzard

Note for racial slurs.

Dear Blizzard,

I'm having some trouble with your customer service.

The other day, I was wasting time on the World of Warcraft website.  I decided to see what was going on in the PVP world and which classes were on top.  Looking over the top-ranked teams and players, I noticed something deeply unpleasant.

I contacted customer service.  (I'll post my initial complaint in full here, in the interest of accuracy.  I'll break it up into paragraphs for easier readability.  Names in bold if you want to skim.)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/arena/rampage/3v3 

On this page, there are several arena team names which are completely inappropriate and break naming regulations. Rank #21 "iskall suk my deek" from Illidan, rank #22 "purpledrank is fo nagas" from Illidan, rank #23 "We pop Cherrys" from Kirin Tor, and rank #28 "iwnaputmybeefintourtaco" from Stormreaver. While you're posting highly ranked teams for the world to admire, please make sure that they're not a disgrace and embarrassment to the entire community. 

In the 2v2 bracket, rank #8 "shat on ur face" from Stormreaver, rank #18 "Helen Keller VS Traffic" from Stormreaver, rank #18 "cap yo shiz" from Kirin Tor, rank #24 "DAYUM DATASS" from Stormreaver, rank #35 "team nignig" from Stormreaver, and rank #44 "naga needs points" from Illidan.

In the 5v5 bracket, rank #22 "Shytsnmasterbations" from Stormreaver and rank #35 "Fandom Ruckin Comp" from Illidan.

On the "Rated Battlegrounds" page, there is #9 Jackslowfuk from Blackrock and #15 Rapiesroofie from Mannoroth, not to mention all of the player names listed which end in "LOL" or otherwise break the game's naming conventions. Please enforce your own rules for your own game.

Then I wrote this post.

My support ticket received a reply (my emphasis in bold):

Hey there! 

Sir Game Master Ranlim here. I hope this message reaches you in good spirits!  

Thank you for taking the time to submit a petition about those arena teams names. At Blizzard, we encourage and appreciate the role of the gaming community in keeping World of Warcraft a safe and enjoyable environment for all participants. ^_^ 

I want to let you know I am going to be personally investigating this mere moments from now! Following said investigation, I will take all necessary and appropriate actions to address this matter, as determined by our policies (which you can see here: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/policy).  

With the release of Patch 4.3.4 there is another way to report violation that will also provide a detail contextual report that will assist us to take appropriate action on them. This can be done by using the in-game right-click report option.  

To report bad language, a bad name, spamming, or cheating:
1. Right-click the player's name in chat.
2. Select Report Player For
3. Select the appropriate category for your report. 

To report a bad name or cheating you may also right-click report using the player's portrait. To report a player this way:
1. Right-click the player's portrait
2. Select Report Player For
3. Select the appropriate category for your report. 

Thanks again for your help! It means a lot to us. <3 

Regards,
Game Master Ranlim
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support

Great, I thought.  Ranlim's on it.  He'll take care of it.

I waited.

I checked the PVP pages again.

The names were still there.

I re-opened the ticket, keeping it simple:

They're still there.

I came back later.  The names were still there.  I checked my ticket.  (Emphasis mine.)

Helllo :) 

Once again we will need you to do this below in order to action these players as we do not take action on names like this and it needs to be sent in differently. 

Please do the following for the names bellow. 

To report bad language, a bad name, spamming, or cheating:
1. Right-click the player’s name in chat.
2. Select Report Player For
3. Select the appropriate category for your report. 

To report a bad name or cheating you may also right-click report using the player's portrait. To report a player this way:
1. Right-click the player’s portrait
2. Select Report Player For
3. Select the appropriate category for your report. 

While no response to the report will be possible, rest assured that we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the issue as they come in. 

Game Master Pyroidia
Blizzard Entertainment

"Right-click the player's name in chat?"  "Right-click report using the player's portrait?"  Those are in-game actions only; my problem is with names listed on the website.  I made that clear; my initial complaint begins with a link to the arena teams page.  At this point, I began to doubt the sincerity of that soothing "rest assured that we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the issue as they come in."  I was not assured.

Please read my initial ticket more carefully. These are names on the website. I cannot right-click to report names featured on the website; I am not in-game. The first CSR who replied to the ticket claimed to be looking into it. What happened to that?

As you can imagine, after that your customer service representatives began to read more closely and provided more accurate replies.  (Emphasis mine.)

Greetings!  

If you encounter such names in the game itself, negatively effecting your gameplay experience, please report them to us. 

We cannot accept such reports from examinations of the armory. The opinion of a realm itself, and players who encounter such names from within the game are the required impetus for our investigation into whether a name is requiring a change or is a vioaltion.  

An additional technical reason for this workflow, is the beta functionality of the armory itself. It is not updated regulary or instantly (even requiring actual characters to log into the game before an update occurs often times), meaning such reports via 'armory hunting' are at times out of date or innacurate.  

Thank you for your time and patience. Should you need further assistance, please hit the Need more help button below. For any game play questions, please consider visiting our official game forums. 

We now have a one stop shop for all your customer service needs. Ever need to review how a petition was handled? Submit one out of game? Stop by your new 'Support' section of Bnet today to see all the new features available! 

Game Master Mykyroro
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment

Oops!  No, instead, I was accused of "armory-hunting."

The link I supplied at the very beginning of my first ticket was not to the armory.  I didn't have to "hunt" through anything to see those names.  They're showcased by you in the main body of your website.  They're the top-ranked PVP teams and players featured in the PVP section under "community."  I didn't look them up; you showed them to me.  You offered them for all of the world to see as the kinds of players we should strive to emulate and overcome.

I don't blame the Game Masters specifically.  I don't blame Pyroidia or Mykyroro for their poor customer service.  I blame you and the corporate policies you set in place and the corporate culture you establish.

You should have a watchdog system set up to catch at least some of the worst names.  While I agree with encouraging the use of the "right-click to report" feature, you should allow GMs to accept other kinds of reports as well.  If someone with an atrocious name runs past me in-game and disappears or logs out before I finish right-clicking and reporting, I should still be able to report that name.  How many reports does it take to get a GM's attention?  Names with obvious racial slurs should only have to be reported once before you take action.  I don't believe that your GMs have poor reading comprehension; I believe that they're rushed, harried, overworked, and too intently focused on closing tickets to be effective at their jobs, and I can only guess that it's because you're emphasizing closed ticket rates over genuine customer service.  Do you see why that's maybe a problem?

You rely on your players to clean up the game for you instead of taking an active approach to it yourself.  You install a new feature and then won't allow any other method of communication to be used.  You set up RP naming conventions and then don't enforce them, and when we ask you to, we're ignored.

In the last GM's message to me, I was instructed to "hit the Need more help button below."  Handy advice, but that proved to be impossible.  Someone closed my ticket so that I cannot reply or re-open it.  If I want any hope of action on your part, I'll have to start all over from the beginning.  Is that really the best method of customer service?  Discouraging us until we give up?

I don't know what happened to the first GM's efforts to help.  I don't know why the conversation deteriorated to accusations of "armory hunting."

I do know that "team nignig" is still proudly listed as a highly ranked team, though.  I suppose that's not a problem, right?  According to your GMs, you need "the opinion of a realm itself" to decide whether a name's inappropriate or not, and you couldn't possibly tell, without taking a realm-wide poll, whether or not the name should be changed.

That's the worst of this.  The racist, misogynistic element of gamer culture is loud and proud.  You know that it's a problem, and I would hope that you would want to counteract it, to make cleaning it up a priority.  The more welcoming gaming is to more kinds of people, the more subscribers you'll gain, right?  But when staring proof of it right in the face, when being asked to clean it up, your employees are too busy insisting on irrelevant protocol to help.

That leaves the racism and misogyny of gamer culture featured on your website for all to see.  Because as far as you're concerned, properly filling out form 32, section B, paragraph 5 is more important than censoring racial slurs.

Or do you think that "purpledrank is fo nagas" genuinely refers to the in-game humanoid and "iwnaputmybeefintourtaco" is a compliment?

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Racial slurs to follow.

Dear Blizzard,

The "player versus player" aspect of World of Warcraft involves a large portion of the playerbase.  The game's best PVP players are involved in internationally broadcast championships.  PVP is an important enough part of the game that there's a section of the website dedicated to it.

If you click that link, it'll take you to lists of the most highly ranked PVP players and teams.

A few of the team names listed today:

iskall suk my deek
purpledrank is fo nagas
We pop Cherrys
iwnaputmybeefintourtaco
shat on ur face
Helen Keller VS Traffic
cap yo shiz
DAYUM DATASS
team nignig
naga needs points
Shytsnmasterbations
Fandom Ruckin Comp

(For anyone reading over my shoulder, "naga" is a kind of water-dwelling humanoid creature in the game.  It also just happens to sound similar to a racial slur.)

A couple of the more egregious player names:

Jackslowfuk
Rapiesroofie

I would guess that these lists are automatically generated, but it would behoove you to keep an eye on them. This is a public website, the face of World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment.

Playing on an RP server and running into characters named "Huntard" and "Monkslol" is bad enough.  Seeing "team nignig" on the game's website is a disgrace.

I wish that you respected your game enough to ensure that its rules weren't broken.

I wish that you respected WOW's community enough to help us fight this kind of behavior.

Please, at least respect your reputation enough to take action.  Add something behind the scenes to flag names with certain letter combinations.  Become more assertive about responding to reports.  Read what's posted on your own website.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear WOW Player

Dear World of Warcraft Player,

You invite someone to group with you.  For the sake of this letter, let's call her K.

K doesn't respond, because she has no idea who you are and doesn't see anyone with your name in her immediate vicinity.

You whisper an embarrassed apology, explaining that you sent the invitation by accident.

(This is odd.  The two of you weren't in the same guild, same zone, or same chat channels.  How did you invite her by accident?  By misspelling her name?  Not likely, not an unusual name during off-peak hours.  By right-clicking her name and hitting "invite" by mistake?  But why would you have had her name on-screen in the first place?  You would've had to do a /who search for people of her level or in her zone or something, and why would you have done that?  The two of you were on different zones in different continents and at different levels.)

She says that it's fine, accidents happen.

You talk about how late it is and how tired you are.  She agrees that it's late and says that she's tired, too.  You mention having a daughter.  You call K "sweety."  Since most players seem to assume that other players are male unless otherwise told, K assumes that you think she's a guy, so you must be someone who calls anyone and everyone sweety.  Since most of the straight men she knows don't call other men sweety, she goes by stereotypes and assumes that you must be a woman or a gay man.  (While she thinks that it would be terrific if straight men addressed other men as sweety, that's not part of K's experience.)

You ask her what time it is where she is.

She hesitates to reply.  After all, she knows not to give out personal information on the Net.  Still, you seem to be some friendly, chatty woman (or a friendly, chatty gay man) and it wouldn't hurt to be friendly in return just this once.  So she mentions what time it is where she is.

You ask if she has a child, too.  She says no, she has a dog.

You say that you're divorced.  You ask whether she's married.  She says that she's single.

You tell her how old you are.  You ask how old she is.  She's uncomfortable with this Q&A on personal information.  She begins to think about how much she's already told you.  You know her time zone, you assume that she lives alone (you've already made a comment about her being "lonely.")  You know that she has a dog, and that simple fact has been used against her before, when someone threatened to harm her dog.  She tells you that she's not comfortable giving out personal information on-line.

You tell her that you understand.  You refer to yourself as male.

She starts to wonder what's really going on here.  You contacted her out of the blue with an excuse she was willing to accept in good faith but which honestly seems very shaky.  You began to call her "sweet" and "sweety" far before you had any indication of her gender, which suggests that you assumed her to be female from the start, but why would you assume that about someone you accidentally contacted at random, when the overwhelming consensus among players seems to be that the default WOW player is a guy?

You began to flatter her early in the conversation, when you knew nothing more about her than that she's a human being who plays WOW, types in complete sentences, and doesn't reply to accidental invitations with, "Fuck off, n00b."

Now you begin to press for her age a second time, after she's already told you that she doesn't want to discuss it.  You push for her to admit to an age range.  When she tells you again that she's not comfortable disclosing that information, you begin to talk about hugging her, inquiring into the kinds of hugs she prefers.

Throughout this conversation, she's tried to be friendly, because she wants to be polite.  She's been told all of her life how important it is to be polite to people, especially as a woman.  She's also been told that it's her responsibility to protect herself from "stranger danger," so she's also been a bit removed, so as not to seem too encouraging.  It's a weird dance and she hasn't been happy with any of her replies; they all seem too forward or too cold.  She can't simply relax and have a good time, because if anything happens, even something so simple as you posting this chat log on-line later for everyone to have a good laugh at, it'll be her fault for not saying the right things in the right way.

She doesn't know who you are or what you want.  You claim to have contacted her by accident, but that doesn't make logical sense.  You continue to push for personal information even after she's asked you not to discuss it.  She has reason not to trust you.

Is it any surprise that she stops replying?

Here's a tip for you.  Act like you want to get to know her as a human being.  Instead of wheedling her age, gender, and location out of her, start with what you already have in common: the game you're both currently playing.  Ask how long she's been playing, if she's into raiding, if she's into pet battles, that sort of thing.  Tell her how you're enjoying the new expansion and which achievement you'll work on next.  Instead of telling her how "sweet" she is after thirty seconds of polite conversation during which you really learned nothing about her except that she's capable of pulling off decent grammar and punctuation, get to know her as a person so that you can learn whether she really is sweet, or sarcastic, or a complex human being with various personality traits which don't all fit under generic assumptions.

I don't know why you assumed her to be a woman.  Maybe it was her character's race, her class, her name?  (Maybe you're the alt of someone she knows, which makes this entire situation even slimier.)  Playing the "accidental invitation" game is conniving and starts the entire conversation off on a bad foot.  Why not be honest?  Whisper people and tell them that you're bored and sleepy and want to talk.

Don't lie to women to get them to interact with you.  Don't press for details when someone has already set boundaries.  Don't drop generic compliments so early they're meaningless.  Treat women like human beings you want to get to know.

The woman you contacted would love to have a boyfriend who plays WOW.  But it's more important to her to have a boyfriend who respects her boundaries.  If you won't respect her limits about conversation topics, she has no reason to believe you'll respect her limits about anything else.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Dear Blizzard,

I was visiting your on-line store the other day when I saw this item for sale:

World of Warcraft® Penny Arcade 3-Ring Binder 

BradyGames and Penny Arcade have created a collectible, special edition, 2 sided (Horde & Alliance) World of Warcraft binder, featuring World of Warcraft in the classic Penny Arcade style! BradyGames is constantly adding exclusive, online-only binder update content to www.bradygames.com/wow. With this binder comes a registration code allowing you easy access to the files, which you can save to your computer, print in color or black-and-white, and insert into your binder. 

Fans of World of Warcraft and Penny-Arcade.com should be sure to pick up this collectible binder while supplies last!

For half of a moment, I actually tried to tell myself that it couldn't be that Penny Arcade.  That you must mean some other Penny Arcade.

Surely you wouldn't have merchandise from that Penny Arcade on your website.  Official, trademarked merchandise on the Blizzard store?

I genuinely hope that you'll reconsider.  It's only one item, so it should be easy to remove.

Don't want to take the item down?  Perhaps you could follow an example set by others and donate the proceeds to Men Can Stop Rape.

If you're wondering why women and feminist allies have trouble with WOW, consider that you're trying to sell Penny Arcade merchandise to them.

For more reading on Penny Arcade:

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen and counting.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

This post contains discussion of rape jokes, rape threats, and sexual assault in a fictional universe.

Dear Blizzard,

Rape jokes.

You peppered Pandaland with rape jokes.

First it's Mina Mudclaw, "the farmer's daughter," who is kidnapped and raped:

Those virmen... they make me do horrible, horrible, silly things. All involving carrots. I couldn't tell you how many carrots they threw at me.
Let's not waste any more time. Get me out of here!

Later:

Dad... I never want to see another carrot again.

Then there's Zhao-Jin.

Throw these prisoners in the cages. Let the men have their way with them.

Oh, wait.  Those aren't rape jokes at all.  One is a rape threat.  The other is a description of rape.

You don't exist in a bubble.  Someone who works at Blizzard is aware, on some level, of the gaming community's hostility to women gamers.  And aware of the WOW community's hostility to women players.  And aware of the ongoing social discourse over rape jokes.  And aware of how common rape and molestation and sexual assault are in real life, including the lives of gamers.

World of Warcraft does not exist on its own.  These are not real characters in real situations.  You make them up.  They can say and do whatever you want them to say and do.  Mina Mudclaw literally could say anything, anything at all.  She can thank the hero, she can insult her kidnappers, she can insult the hero, she can talk about how awful being kidnapped is or why the sky is blue or what cheese tastes like.  Of all of the possible topics in the world, you chose rape.

WOW has always had a mixture of dark and light, humor and drama, dangerous evil and pop culture references.  Zhao-Jin, I take it, is supposed to be a bad guy.  He does bad stuff.  He says bad things.  Clearly, you're trying to communicate that he's wicked.  But there are a lot of ways to do that.  Again, Zhao-Jin is not an autonomous being with a will of his own.  You choose which words are in-game and on-screen. His dialogue could include any number of nasty messages, but you went with rape.

There are several things still in-game that I've asked you to reconsider: the "male blood elves are gay/women" jokes, the gnome-punting jokes, Garrosh calling Sylvanas a bitch, the lynching imagery, and more.  I keep contacting you because I believe that you can improve the gaming experience.  I believe that if I keep reaching out, someday you'll hear me.  I'm not alone; there are feminists in every corner of the WOW community, from the raiders to the PVPers to the casuals.  (And definitely among the RPers!  High-five!)

Blizzard reps have said repeatedly that the best kind of feedback is calm, brief, and detailed.  I understand the people who go on angry rants because they're fed up.  I understand the people who don't bother with details because they insist that Blizzard has heard it all before and knows exactly what's wrong but just won't fix it.  I shouldn't have to go into a short but detailed explanation of rape culture, and how rape and violence in our media differ, and the effect rape jokes have on the gaming community, etc.  Do you honestly not know all of this by now?  Am I supposed to believe that the feminization of Tyrande and the inclusion of rape jokes and the way your community treats female gamers and the fact that one of your early lead developers goes by the name Tigole Bitties is all a wild coincidence?

WOW is a game.  People play it for fun.  We get to hang out in a fantasy world and escape into Azeroth for a few hours.  I don't want my real-world problems to follow me in.  If I go in-game, I don't want the in-game mail to remind me to call my mother.  I don't want the in-game auction house to remind me about my overdue bills.  I don't want my in-game mount to remind me to check the oil on my real-life car.  That would be a drag, a downer, when I'm trying to relax and have a good time in this fantasy world you've built.

Surely you understand that.  Then can you also understand that I also don't want to be reminded of misogyny and rape culture?  That I don't want to be reminded of how easily and often people treat rape and sexual assault as jokes?  That I don't want to be reminded of being raped, or of my best friend being assaulted, or of that terrible, terrible story about that girl I saw on the news last night?

I like to believe that you're operating in good faith. I like to believe that you wouldn't do these things if you understood their impact.  Yet you've heard specific feedback from your players.  If that weren't enough (and why wasn't it?), the gaming community overall discusses general gaming issues and WOW-specific issues all of the time.  Your reps seem like fairly Net-savvy people, and I've noticed them claim to visit WOW fan sites and discussion forums.  You hear gamers talk about these problems.  What do you do with that feedback?  Do you discuss it and give it real consideration?  Do you laugh it off as misguided?  Do you become defensive and resentful that it's all in good fun and no one understands you?

I've said it before and I'll request it again: if you can't figure out what you're doing wrong, please hire feminist consultants.  There are plenty of smart, feminist gamers out there who would be very happy to participate.

There are some problems in WOW that would take a major overhaul of certain aspects of the game to fix.  The joyful co-opting of native themes, for example.  But the two examples I began with are simple matters of quest text and NPC dialogue, which should be easier to adjust.

You made a change in the Pandaland beta when an NPC had sexist dialogue.  You made the right move, then.  I hope that you'll do the right thing, now.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Dear Blizzard,

A server is its own community.  Each one has its own flavor, its own pace, its own rhythms.  Once you make a server your home, you get used to seeing the same guild names.  You become familiar with the tone of /trade.  You might learn some server history.  You start seeing the same people around the mailbox.

Being on a familiar server is like shopping at the neighborhood grocery store.  If you're there often enough, you start to recognize the regulars, like the cashiers, and they start to recognize you, too.  You might not know everyone in the aisles, but you assume that they live or work nearby.  You might run into them again.  You may have acquaintances in common.  You deal with many of the same idiosyncrasies of that particular neighborhood.

Enter cross-realm zones.  Suddenly I feel as if my local grocery store is gone and I'm shopping at the airport.  Who are these people?  Will I ever see them again?  There's no sense of community.  Internet anonymity is back in full force.

I settled onto a particular server after some research as well as some trial and error.  The server I escaped from was an unpleasant place to be, and I was thrilled to find a great realm like my current one.  I'm very happy with the community here, and I've done my small part to keep it a good, welcoming, positive place.  I don't want that sense of community to become fractured.  I don't want to start thinking of the toons around me as anonymous strangers in an airport.

The bonds of friendship we form with other players are a large part of what keeps many of us tethered to WOW.  That sense of community we build with each other encourages us to log in.  The sense of community and accountability is something many players have been trying to cling to in this post-LFD game.  Now it feels as if the anonymity of the dungeon finder is in almost every aspect of the game, from questing to doing dailies to standing at the mailbox.  It's bad enough to lose a quest mob or a node to someone on my server, but a complete stranger I've never heard of and will never see again?  When someone from my server does something irritating, I can look at the guild name and roll my eyes and think, "Oh, right.  That figures."  There's no opportunity for that moment of community with some random nobody from another server.  At this point, I just get a moment of frustration, instead.  People from other servers aren't community.  They're competition.  And they're cementing that sense of anonymity that I came to this realm to get away from.

I don't want a game full of complete strangers.  I don't want to disregard other players as anonymous blobs of pixels.  For me, CRZ makes WOW feel more like a single-player game, because I'm less interested in interaction with the changing parade of strangers around me.  Without CRZ, I'm more interested in the toons around me, and which guilds they're in, and whose alts they might be.  I'm more likely to be friendly and helpful.  I'm more likely to be tolerant and patient.  I'm more emotionally engaged.  With CRZ, I don't know them and they don't know me, we'll probably never encounter each other again, and I care less.  I'm less engaged.

With LFD and LFR, the convenience of the change in gameplay outweighs the impact on community.  The sacrifice is worth it.  With CRZ, it's not worth it.

With love,
Frank Lee

P.S. On another note, I'd assumed that as you merged RP realms with RP realms, you would merge EST realms with EST realms.  I expected you to match up PVP-PST realms, and PVE-CST realms, and so forth.  I don't know why you're mixing up the time zones, but please reconsider.  It affects the fishing tournaments, the Darkmoon Faire, and the coordination of events.

Dear WOW Players

Dear WOW Players,

Over many months now, we've talked a lot about Pandaland.  One of the comments I've heard over and over again is that Blizzard is "catering to Asians" with the upcoming Asian-influenced zones.  You frequently imply that only people of Asian heritage would be interested in anything inspired by Asian geography, Chinese culture, and so on.

It is very, very limited thinking to believe that something Asian or Asian-influenced would only appeal to Asian people.  "Asian things are for Asian people" is so xenophobic and racist as to be nonsensical.  It brings to mind the gender essentialism of, "Boy things are for boys!  Girl things are for girls!  Only boys can be doctors!  Only girls like pink!"

Do you expect that only Korean players roll night elves?  Do you expect that only Eastern European players roll draenei?  Only heavy drinkers roll dwarves?  While you're leveling, do you skip the entire zone of Uldum because you think that only ancient Egyptians play there?

Are you confused when you see non-Italians eat pizza?  Does it irk you to see non-Mexicans eat tacos?  How do you feel about people who aren't Japanese eating sushi?  Are you completely baffled to see someone who's Irish-American order a Greek salad?

Many people enjoy traveling to new places, learning other languages, studying the history of other cultures, getting to know a variety of people, and so on.  For many people, it's fun to dip into another culture.  The tourism industry is devoted to it.

In related news, you may be interested to know that there's no rule that an Asian person seeing something Asian-influenced will suddenly perk up with interest.

If you want to complain about an Asian-inspired expansion, complain that Blizzard isn't being creative enough.  Complain about cultural appropriation.  Complain about cultural and racist stereotypes.  There's plenty to be discussed there.

But complaining that you can't relate to an entire expansion because the new zones remind you of Asia and you aren't Asian is bizarre.  The only way it makes sense is if you're being racist.  The geography in WOW is so varied that I'd imagine that very little, if anything at all, looks like the view from your bedroom window.  Therefore, unless you're upset that you can't relate to Blade's Edge Mountains and you refuse to quest in Zangarmarsh because it's foreign to you, consider why Asian-influenced zones, specifically, bother you so much.

With love,
Frank Lee

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

Dear Blizzard

Have Group, Will Travel
Summons all raid or party members to the caster's current location. Cannot be used while in combat, and can only be cast while in the outdoor world or near the entrance of a dungeon or raid.
-Guild perk in World of Warcraft

Q: Are you happy with how guild perks worked in Cataclysm? Can you give us an example of what new content guilds should expect? New perks? Is the level cap going to be increased?

A: We are happy with some of them, but others of them went too far in some ways or were just not cool enough in other ways. My overall view of it is somewhat mixed. We do expect to introduce some new perks, even if it is just to swap out some of the ones we feel didn't work out as well. The Have Group, Will Travel was popular because it is one more thing that shrinks the world and allows players to avoid being out in the world. We are trying to put more of an emphasis on players going out into the world to do stuff, so that is one of the ones that we are going to replace with something else.
-Tom Chilton, Blizzard press tour

Dear Blizzard,

You've heard from me on this subject before, but let's go over it again.

Your perception of "Have Group, Will Travel" (HGWT) betrays a profound misunderstanding of how your players actually use this perk.

Overall, it's very useful.  If I need help, my friend can come right to me; if she needs help, I can go right to her.  Want to show someone something cool?  Need help killing something?  Need a guide?  Your friend is right there beside you in a moment.  Maybe I want a friend to help me farm old content or go on a transmog run or show me a new mount.  One summons and there she is.

My friend might want to hang out with me but might not want to take a tram and a flightpath and a mount ride the whole way out to wherever I am.  Maybe she's lazy.  Maybe she knows that the trip will take too long and someone else will get to the rare spawn first if she can't get there instantly.  Maybe her computer's old and she really wants to get to me but can't risk disconnecting.  WOW is a very social game and HGWT allows us to spend time with each other, not time checking off flight paths.

You say that it shrinks the world.  For me, it's broadened the world.  It's opened up Azeroth and allowed me to be in places I otherwise wouldn't be with people I otherwise wouldn't spend time with.

I'm an RPer and I can say with confidence that HGWT has revolutionized RP.  It's brought a lot of energy and fun to the game.

It encourages us to RP in new locations.  If I want to RP in the middle of the forest somewhere, before HGWT I would've gotten a lot of "where is it" and "how do I get there," and people would spend time deciding whether the trip's worth it or not.  Now, I can summon everyone and get the fun going in an instant.  People like convenience, and if the RP spot is one too many flight paths away or in an unfamiliar destination, apathy sets in and they won't bother.  You've made it easy to get anywhere in the world, and now we're RPing all over, everywhere, anywhere we can think of.

Sometimes people log in later than expected or don't get the news in time and want to join in an RP event already in progress.  If they have to travel the whole way there, they think that they'll be too late and end up not going at all.  If they can be summoned in as soon as they want to join us, they can catch up more quickly.

It opens up RP for low-level toons in a new way.  A lot of players might say that the real game starts at end cap, but I've never believed that and it's especially true for RPers right now.  If I'm on a low-level toon and the RP spot is in a quiet corner of a higher-level zone, my friends can HGWT me right in and I can RP along.  My low-level characters can join in RP all over Azeroth and beyond thanks to HGWT.

Not all toons can fly in Azeroth, but HGWT makes the world accessible to everyone.  Several times RP events have included stops on mountaintops we can't get to on foot or ground mount, so those who can fly summon us up.

With HGWT, I've been able to visit places and RP in spots I've never enjoyed before.  It makes the world fun and accessible for everyone.  Without it, I can see the world becoming smaller again and low-level toons being shut out again.

You want players to travel more and get out in the world again.  We are out in the world.  We RP all over Azeroth.  We might not use traditional flight paths to get there, but we're there, having a great time, arguing and laughing and dancing and fighting.  While you're making plans for new features and future expansions, please keep us in mind.  You may think that RPers are a small minority in your MMORPG, but the more accessible RP is, the more RPers there are.  With HGWT, I saw a rise in RP attendance.  I hope for more great RP in the future, but will the bulk of it be in Stormwind and other easy, obvious places?  Will the bulk of it be among level-capped characters with flying mounts, leaving new RPers behind?  As a member of the community, I take some level of responsibility for fostering accessible RP, but it gets harder to do as you remove our resources.

See you in Pandaland!

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Entertainment Industry

Dear Entertainment Industry,

We have a problem.

You've known about this problem for a long time, but let's go over it again.

People spend a lot of time watching TV.  They also spend a lot of time playing videogames.

TV, movies, and games show us a wide variety of white men and boys.  White men and boys are portrayed as heroes, villains, hotshots, nerds, athletes, homebodies, wealthy, impoverished, and on, and on, and on.  If you're a white guy, you're going to see a lot of other white guys onscreen who might look and act similarly to you, and a lot of white guys onscreen with enviable lives you wish you had.  Because white guys are often in major roles, they have more fully developed characters, so you'll see more white guys as fully rounded people.

For women and for guys of color, not so much.  They're not as often the protagonist.  Sometimes they're an obvious token character; sometimes they're nowhere to be seen.  Without as many fleshed-out roles, they're easily pigeonholed.  Women are hangers-on, love interests, eye candy, worthless if not sexually appealing.  Black men are thugs.  People of color who aren't black are adrift in a sea of whiteness.

This is not good for anyone.

If you are a white girl, a black girl or a black boy, exposure to today's electronic media in the long run tends to make you feel worse about yourself. If you're a white boy, you'll feel better, according to a new study led by an Indiana University professor.

Boys of color and all girls watch TV and play videogames and learn to feel like crap about themselves.  They're seeing images and watching stories which portray them as less-than, pigeonholed, stereotyped.

At least we can feel good about the white boys, right?  They feel great about themselves!

But how do they feel about everyone else?  They're watching the same shows as the girls, as the boys of color.  They're hearing and seeing the same messages, that girls are less-than, that boys of color fall into various stereotypes.  They're pulling in the same sexist, racist ideas.

You're making white boys feel great!  At the expense of everyone else.  Why not make everyone feel great?  Why not portray a rich array of all people?  Let's see more interesting, witty, heroic women.  More confident, intelligent, well-rounded people of color.  Let's give these boys and girls (and men and women) characters they can identify with and aspire to be.

An earlier study co-authored by her and Harrison suggests that video games "are the worst offenders when it comes to representation of ethnicity and gender."

Gaming companies, come on.  Get your shit together.  You can do better than this.  "Kids playing games" is an idea we like to associate with happy, fun times, fond memories, laughter.  Give them a good time that everyone can enjoy, not just the white guys.

With love,
Frank Lee

With thanks to Racebending.com.

Dear WOW Players

Dear WOW Players,

Sometimes you say great stuff on the general forums.  Sometimes you say insightful, witty stuff about the game.  Sometimes you say absolute garbage.

"Why can't they make female orcs sexy?" is light, as far as your usual harmful nonsense goes, but as it's part of a larger pattern, I thought that I'd address it.

This question assumes that the orc women already in the game aren't sexy.  Perhaps you're unaware that different people find different traits sexy.  Orc women are sexy, to some people.  Maybe not to you, but since WOW is an MMORPG with millions of players and not a porn video shot exclusively for you, what you find sexy is, to be honest, irrelevant.

Why are you asking about orc women?  Are orc men already as sexy as they could be?  When you look at Thrall, do you admire how hot he is?  Do you think that Blizzard should come up with a new character model for Garrosh and prove who puts the G in g-string?

There's an idea that women should be sexually appealing at all times.  There's an idea that women are decorative.  There's an idea that women's worth is tied up in their appeal to men.  Those ideas are destructive, misogynistic bullshit, and furthering them makes you sound like a harmful ass.

I understand that you like to look at women you find sexy.  You might enjoy playing orc women more if you found them hot.  It would be great, though, if you could relax and enjoy playing your characters as they are.  You can play a tauren man you don't find sexy, and you can play a tauren woman you don't find sexy, and you can have equal amounts of fun with each.

WOW is an RPG, so think of your characters as bold and brave or smart and witty or foolish and forgetful.  Think of your characters as sexy or boastful or prim.  Like men, women don't have to be sexually appealing to be interesting or fun or worthwhile, inside or outside of the game.

See you in Pandaland!

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

Dear Blizzard,

As always, thanks for WOW.

Most of us care what our characters look like.  It's nice if their armor is a matching set and not a mismatched clown suit.  Since this is an RPG, we tend to have personalities and histories for our toons, and the armor they wear can hint at that.  Now that you've introduced transmogging (thanks!), we spend even more time and effort on our gear.

We can agree that armor's important.

I haven't been playing since 2004, so some of this is guesswork on my part.  It seems to me as if early in the game, you decided to design risque armor sets for women.  I say "for women" because I'm referring to the gear which looks like a bikini bottom on women characters and like long pants on men.  The very same piece of gear can look like a midriff-baring halter top on women and like a long shirt on men.

Either you decided to make a change on your own, or you listened to complaints from players, because there seems to be less of it than there was.  WOTLK gear, for example, doesn't seem (as far as I can tell) to have the same number of gender-based pieces.

Still, the problem persists.  The double standard is complete crap.  You're treating men like fully geared heroes and women like eye candy.  The men can run off and save the day, secure in the knowledge that their armor can actually protect them, while the women can stride around looking sexy, well aware that their armor is purely decorative and serves no practical function whatsoever.

It's not always an issue of the women looking sexier.  Consider the difference in priest tier 13 gear for men and for women, for example.  On one, the mask covers the man's face completely, leaving him looking very mysterious, even menacing and creepy.  On the other, the mask leaves half of the woman's face bare, which makes her look as if she's wearing a much more simple disguise.  The half-mask isn't as mysterious and the look isn't as effective.  Why not cover both men and women's faces entirely?  Why make the women's mask smaller?  Is this an issue of stereotypical sexist nonsense about women's vanity?  Is this an issue of liking powerful men but preferring your women to be weaker?

Peruse all of your relevant armor sets and decide whether you prefer the half-naked look or the fully-covered look.  Then tackle the work of redesigning it so that it appears the same on men and on women.  If it shows a lot of thigh, it should show a lot of thigh on both men and women.  If it leaves the back exposed, it should leave both men and women's spines vulnerable, not just the women's.  If it leaves men fully covered, it should leave women fully covered as well.

Some women want to show off their flesh.  Some women don't.  Some men do.  Some men don't.  Give us the tools to dress our characters how we prefer.  Broaden our choices and make full-coverage and skimpy sets for everyone.  If you want to make some half-naked gear, fine, then make it half-naked on all toons.  And fix tier 13 gear so that women get the full mask, too, please.  That mysterious chess piece look is terrific!

With love,
Frank Lee

Three Letters

Dear Anita Sarkeesian,

I don't have enough praise for your strength and your courage.  I'm so sorry for all of the hateful attacks this misogynist world is throwing at you.  Please know that there are many of us in this fight with you.

With love,
Frank Lee


Dear Everyone Else,

Feminism isn't necessary?  Misogyny is a thing of the past?  Women have it easy?

The nasty level of hatred aimed at Anita Sarkeesian, the energy and volume of it, didn't come out of nowhere.  This is the natural product of a misogynist culture.

The reality of those attacks might frighten you, might make you want to pretend that it's not that bad, that it's just some anonymous joke that went too far, that it's just the Internet and nothing to worry about in real life, that she probably did something to deserve it.

None of that is true.  It is just that bad.  This is genuine hatred on display.  She truly is under attack, and she did nothing to deserve it.  This is real life.

Stop pretending that everything's okay when it so obviously isn't.  Help feminists to fight this, please.

With love,
Frank Lee


Dear Gamers,

You complain that women don't want to date gamers.

You say that women don't play videogames.

Those things aren't true.  But you're doing your goddamned best to make it true, aren't you?

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Blizzard

You've come to see me, <race>?  Speak and be quick, young lady.  I've no time for the formalities of your race.
-Blood elf-specific quest in World of Warcraft

Dear Blizzard,

Thank you for such a great product.  I've been playing WOW for years, and I love it.

Despite my affection for the game, I have a hell of a lot of problems with it and with you as a company.  You've heard a lot from me in the past, and I plan to use this platform to make even more noise.

Your playerbase takes a lot of its cues from you, and you know that.  I wish that you'd use that power responsibly, but you often prove yourself instead to be an enormous ass.

Let's take one obvious example: belf men.  (Translation for anyone reading over my shoulder: male blood elves, one of the playable races in World of Warcraft.)

There are two running "jokes" about belf men.
1.) They're gay.
2.) They're women.

Your first glaring error here is that you're basing these comments on stereotypes.  That's a bad idea.  It reinforces the idea that women are necessarily different from men in obvious, consistent, measurable ways.  Women are this, men are that.  This falls right into traps of gender policing and misogyny.

Also tied in here is the notion that gay men are feminine.  That gay men are women.  That gay men act in certain ways, straight men act in certain ways, and never the twain shall meet.  Again: gender policing.  Misogyny.

Now, what about belf men is so feminine?

Maybe it's their long hair.  No, men of other races have long hair and other similar hairstyles.

Maybe it's their height.  No, goblin men are short, and they're perceived as appropriately masculine.

Are their muscles not defined sharply enough?

I think that an enormous part of the stereotype is because of their surroundings.  Silvermoon is a lovely city, one of the most elegant in the game.  It's sophisticated and luxurious, most especially in comparison to the other Horde cities.  You've put a lot of the races' personalities into their cities, and Silvermoon says a lot about the belfs as a result.

And there you have it.  Their city is too pretty.  It's too comfortable.  How feminine they must be, how weak, to live in such a posh environment.

It's not bad enough that players make "jokes" about them.  You insert those "jokes" right into the game.

As a company, overall, you should be more responsible.  Reinforcing and rewarding your players' misogyny, homophobia, and general douchiness should not be part of your game design.

You're more than a faceless company, and you're well aware of it.  How many players hang on the words of Chris Metzen and Ghostcrawler alone?  They care what you think and listen to what you say.  They agonize over and inspect and repeat your words years after the fact.  You know what kind of influence you have, and you use it for this?

How can I fight the misogyny and homophobia I see among players when all they have to do is point directly at you and say, "Blizzard does it?"

If you can't figure out on your own how to design a game without this nasty crap in it, find a feminist consultant.  You do still have feminist gamers in your playerbase, despite your best efforts to drive them away.

With love,
Frank Lee

Dear Fools and Trolls on the WOW Forums

Dear Fools and Trolls on the WOW Forums,

Every once in a while (sometimes it seems like five times a day, but that may just be my perception) you start a thread to express your shock and confusion over the notion that some male gamers play female toons and/or some female gamers play male toons.

I stopped opening those threads a long time ago, and I wish that everyone else would, too, because there are much more interesting things to talk about, like those "WTF, pandas, are you kidding me?!" threads.  But you keep on creating "OH NOES GENDER!" threads, so let's hash it all out now, so we can exhaust the subject and never bring it up again.

First, let me explain why I'm so hostile to these threads in the first place.  It's because they come across as the ridiculous and immature sort of gender policing engaged in by children who've only just learned that boys and girls are different and are still trying to negotiate the boundaries the patriarchy has placed on them.  When you express surprise/dismay/confusion over "men playing female toons, oh no!" it's like you're still trying to figure out whether women can be doctors and why different people have different genitals and why Jimmy's dad cooks dinner for Jimmy's family when only women make dinner and why Heather has two mommies.  Welcome to the wide world of humanity, where different people do different things for different reasons and we don't all confine ourselves into little "boys do this" and "girls do that" boxes.

In other words, please mature.  You're embarrassing yourself.

With that said, let's look at five simple reasons people might play toons which don't strictly mirror their own gender.  (Much of this also applies to why people play non-human characters, so apply it to that and stop asking why people play elves.)

Variety!  Why play the same old thing everywhere you go?  In a lot of games, I have to play whatever the game gives me.  Sometimes I can only be a human, or only be a man, or only be a particular main character.  There aren't other options available to me.  In WOW, there are a lot of choices.  My toon can be a human!  Or a gnome!  Or an elf!  Or a troll!  Or a bull-cow-thing!  My toon can be a warlock or a priest or a warrior or a hunter!  My toon can be a man or a woman!  My toon can have long hair or short hair or pink hair or green hair or no hair at all!  It's fun to try new things and get a plethora of experiences.  Some people find it boring to play the same old thing over and over, and since you can create 50 different characters on one account, why not try something new?

Fantasy!  Guess what, WOW is a fantasy game!  In a fantasy game, I might want to have fun exploring a different existence than the one I toil through every day.  WOW gives me the chance to get creative, especially from an RP perspective.  I can be anyone I want to be, so why limit myself to mimicking the very life I already inhabit?  CREATIVITY.  IT'S FUN.

Aesthetics!  As you may have noticed, the different toons look different.  They're taller, shorter, bonier, thicker, and so on.  They have different body types and different facial features.  They have different movements.  Different casting animations.  For instance, I like the staff animations for blood elf women, and when I roll a blood elf caster, I tend to make it a woman and give her a staff instead of, say, a dagger.  I find every single one of the available faces for human men unpleasant, and so I tend not to play very many human men.

Attraction!  Yes, some people like to look at something which appeals to them sexually, even in a minor way.  Whichever toon you play, you end up looking at it a lot, so why not make something you find easier on the eyes, so to speak?  If you think that draenei women are hot, you might want to play one.  If you find belf men hot, you might be more inclined to play one of those than, say, an undead woman.

Personal choice!  The human element!  Different people like different things for different reasons.  I play what appeals to me.  Sometimes I like to play a strong, tough character.  Sometimes I like to play a cute, fun character.  Sometimes I want to play a kind character, or a sinister one, or whatever I'm in the mood for.  I might be a human woman in real life and enjoy playing human women in the game, but like most people I tend to play more than one character, so I might roll something besides a human woman just because the options are there.


In explaining why some people play a variety of toons, I don't mean to mock people who only play toons who closely mimic their own characteristics.  That's fine.  Enjoy yourself.  But stop shaming and questioning people who make different choices than you do.  Shake off those narrow boundaries the gender police have erected around you and relax.  You might enjoy it.

With love,
Frank Lee