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WoW and Blizzard lack of support for GLBT players.
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Great. Make a gay guild so you become a target of abuse on the server and get poor people banned for channel mistakes. thats smart.
/account cancelled
There are far too many MMORPG's out there to support companies with this kind of attitude.
_________________________________
JonMichael
Currently: AION, an MMO Beta under NDA
Played: WAR, LOTRO, Hellgate: London, CoX, GW, SotNW, DAOC, EQ2, SWG, WoW, AO, Horizons, Second Life, There, TSO
Beta'd: There, Second Life, EQ2, DAOC:LotM, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate: London, Requiem:Bloodymare, AoC, WAR, DDO, Fallen Earth
OH NOEZ! YOU BROUGHT DOWN THE INDUSTRY!
now the chinas will starve. HOPE YOUR HAPPY! YOUR KILLING BABIES! BABIES WHO DESPERATLEY NEED EGGROLLS!
Good, don't come back.
And stop making new accounts here to support your original statement.
Clearly some people aren't evne paying attention to this very thread or to what they are reading. Goes back to what I said before about reading and understanding what your are reading and not adding in your own words. It wasn't a glbt guild, just a friendly one. You know a guild of people that can be friends but where negative comments about calling someone gay or comments like "don't be a fag", etc are not found. Lets be honest, listen to the general chat in World of Warcraft and that's exactly what you hear a LOT. So this crap about not having this kind of guild around kids is bullshit I feel. You hear far worse and actually bad talk in the general chat on a daily basis in World of Warcraft. Gay friendly doesn't mean gay only. Hell one doesn't even have to be gay to join. Personally I get sick of all the negative homophoic or just plain idoitc comments I hear everyday in game and out of it and I'm hetero (though have known people in college that weren't). Sure you could turn off the general chat or ignore certain users but that doesn't help since just different people start with the comments and why should you have to turn general off in a multiplayer game. Grouping other then questing and instances is out so you'd be completely alone if you did that.
I saw a guild like this being advertised in Guild Wars yesterday, almost the same way that the one in this post was advertised. Name didn't even suggest what it was. Just said they have a guild hall, will be doing guild pvp a lot but was glbt friendly. Not a single person seem offended by it in chat.
Then again this could be due to what I've seen is that people in World of Warcraft on an average basis seems to be less mature then those on Guild Wars and one would think GW would have more since it's free but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Making a guild like this isn't 100% a good thing. Like said it does tend to isolate them from the rest of the server but that can be said about any other guild that sticks to themselves. Those that would abuse said guild cause they are glbt friendly aren't worth the time anyway and they would be the ones that should get in trouble for harassing other players which is against all mmorpg tos/tou. Sure others can talk about other guilds that can be made. Someone brought up a "white only" guild. One has to look at the intent in a situation like this. I personally think the intent is quite clear and a positive one. This isn't an only guild but a friendly one in game where you constantly see negative and crude comments and insults using gay, fag, lesbo, etc words on a daily basis. This guild isn't exluding anyone but making it clear of what is acceptable for their guild up front. Like everything in this world, it's about intent and context. Don't just ignore these things. This isn't about race at all. Words hurt at times and why should anyone that is paying the same money as everyone else have to listen to crap that offends them (just listen to general chat for a while and you'll see) and be denied the right to find like minded players of their own (that are't prompting hate or seperation) to talk to and listen to.
I suppose Gooney's right too. This is not where any battles will be won. I, for one, doubt I won anybody over to my views by posting here. I simply read to the point where I got very, very full of my own opinion.
However, the problem that lies at the base of this is real. Only: It goes beyond the virtual world of MMORPGs and right into our very real lives.
As for the particular game, promoting general tolerance in a guild should do the trick.
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
That without a doubt takes the cake as the dumbest thing I have read in a very long time. By that same logic, I don't mind cats, so I must be one of them.
I think this gets down to a really basic issue in MMORPGs-- why do people join guilds at all? For me, I see it as a club of RL people who happen to play the same game, and I take an interest in what's going on in my guildies' lives. Naturally, I am going to like some of them more and some of them less, but I won't usually join a guild *just* to accomplish in-game goals, and I *never* join a guild to roleplay. I am making honest-to-goodness social connections through the game. I can fully understand why someone would want to be in a guild friendly to the kind of person they are.
It's not discrimination to ask upfront if a person supports the goals of your group. It's called 'screening potential applicants'. You're looking to create a cohesive group that works well together, after all. Imagine the surprise of the person who joins such a guild and finds out afterward that many or most of his/her guildmates are (GLBT/Lithuanian/Left-handed/35 year old housewives in love with Johnny Depp). Now imagine being a GLBT/Lithuanian/Left-handed/35 year old person looking for a guild of people who won't make you feel lost, unwanted, and out of place... where do you start looking?
I will say that I think that recruiting via websites and not so much through general channels in game would save a lot of conflict... But I think that's true across the board. It's just tacky to shout for members, even in a plain old vanilla guild. Just to answer everyone in every game who is at this moment shouting "Would anyone like to join my guild?", NO. Noone wants to join your guild, so SHUT UP ALREADY.
Sexual orientation isn't any more sexual in my mind than mentioning which biological gender you are IRL. Why advertise to the whole virtual world what you're hiding in your pants? To be fair, I often don't reveal my RL gender, and I have been playing male characters more and more often... But if it is a fantasy roleplaying game, as so many others have suggested, and I should leave my RL sexuality out of it, then what business is it of anyone else's that I am not really a guy? People should leave that stuff out of the game!
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
[quote]Originally posted by Shimmre
Yes, the ToS that you virtually sign when you log onto WoW. And yes he did read their EULA. . . he's also a WoW subscriber.
He said that they are in violation of their contract for punishing me, because nothing in their language as posted says that I can't use words that are inoffensive. They mean only offensive words. He says that I can EASILY argue in a court of law that my words were inoffensive and thus does not fall under the restraint of my contract with Blizzard. THUS, they are in violation of the contract for punishing me. He says that case could stand easily and that they would have the weaker ground.[/b][/quote]
Well, nothing is "easy" about going to court. In this case, it is not worth it for anyone and let's face it, will not happen.
If Blizzard's lawyers felt like actually litigating such a case, they would say: the subscriber used the term GLBT in public. GLBT stands for "gay lesbian bisexual and transgender." We have determined that GLBT is "offensive." The EULA says we can do this "in our sole discretion."
The argument against is that there is an implied requirement that a "reasonable" person would consider the term "GLBT" offensive. The "reasonable person" is a bit of lawyer make-believe, and comes down to "the judge decides."
Blizzard is located in Irvine, California - a suburb of Los Angeles. It is probably a "California" corporation, governed by California law. It is extremely unlikely (though never impossible) that a California judge living in Los Angeles would consider it "reasonable" to say the term "GLBT" is offensive. So it is entirely possible (and even probable) that a judge would find that Blizzard breached its EULA by punishing someone for using the term GLBT.
When there is a breach of contract, the court looks for a "remedy."
The idea is to make the person who did not breach as well off as that person would have been if the breach didn't happen. If the account was suspended for a few days because Blizzard decided that using the term GLBT was "offensive," then the fix would be to refund the charges for the days that were lost. It would cost more than that to pay the fees to file the case, even if the lawyer was working for free. If Blizzard cancelled the account, you could argue that to be made as well off as you would have been without the breach, you should be refunded all charges paid since you started your account. Still, not worth it.
Because this is so obvious, it would never "go to trial." If the account has not been suspended or cancelled, there are no "damages." Therefore, there is nothing to "fix." As a result, the case would be thrown out by the judge: there's nothing for him to fix, so there's no sense arguing about it. If there was a suspension, Blizzard's lawyers would tell accounting to credit the account for the days lost, or to refund the fees paid to date and cancel the account. There would be nothing to fix, and the case would also be thrown out.
It is possible to try and get "fancy" by adding in things like "emotional distress." In order to do that, it would be necessary to say that a "reasonable person" would think Blizzard's behavior was the equivalent of repeated death threats. That's not going to fly.
The way to go is to tell news organizations that are sympathetic to GLBT issues what happened, so other members of the GLBT community know not to get involved with WoW, and to just walk away from the game. Not every game has to be designed for every person. WoW favors the playing style of certain teenage subcultures, and there are better games for GLBT-friendly guilds: EverQuest II and Final Fantasy XI come to mind.
This situation is just an example of "political correctness" gone bad: an angry minority somewhere finds the term GLBT "offensive," and so the default response is to tell people not to use the term. One GM didn't think too carefully, and customer service responded defensively. Happens all the bloody time. Upper management at Blizzard/Universal/Vivendi has no idea about any of it. Given that Blizzard itself is a California software company that is owned by a "Hollywood" conglomerate, it is extremely likely that it has very GLBT-positive human resource policies and quite a few GLBT employees. It is almost certainly not a den of homophobic fundamentalists.