Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Community Spotlight
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at a forum thread that asks the question: "Does WoW teach children racism"?
This week on the forums, poster Vinzent posed an interesting question to the MMORPG.com audience: Does WoW teach children racism? "If you look at the gameplay mechanics, there is definitely racism there. Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Tauren are evil if you're with the Alliance. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes are evil if you're with the Hoarde. Good and evil is being determined by race, not by values. You have to admit that's pretty racist."
"I don't think that they see each other as 'evil'" Novaseeker points out. "It's more of a political dispute between the two sides." As Tithrielle pointed out later in the thread, Blood Elves used to be Alliance and are now hoarde - and are related to the Alliance's Night Elves.
Read the whole column here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Well then, my first post at the forums, and the first at the topic too I think.
To me the thing is pretty simple is the char user the one that make the conflict a racial one. When I was playing WoW didn{t choose one or other faction because they´re good or evil, was just because I like the class attributes.
About the war, I think of it more as an armed conflict between two different cultures, not about racism. The other faction don´t understand my point of view of the world, I don´t get their´s either, so I brake others ppl bones to make them understand. Simple and pretty usefull when they try no talk u off the fight
.
Similar things happens in other games when guilds are made. For example, at a private L2 server some time ago, there where two major factions, u could be either one or the other and each guild treated the aother one like some sort of "there to kill" mob. There was other choice, being neutral, so both factions can kick the h** out of u
.
But well I believe that at some point all MMO´s are pretty similar in that aspect whether there is pre- designed factions or not.
i'll be the first to admit it... having played a gnome lock on wow, i now hate orcs and trolls with a passion.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
When there is discussion around the water cooler about Horde (Evil) and Alliance (Good) I quickly point out that wow is really not about good vs evil. It is about Horde vs Alliance. It is the way you approach each side. Personally when I play Horde I think the Alliance is very evil. Of course I believe the Imperial are the good guys in SWG. As a side note I do think it would be cool to defect like you can in EQ2.
Is wow racist? Heck No!
I would think it would actually do the opposite. Here you can have black, white, asian, latino kids all playing together without knowing each others' skin color or gender. They judge each other solely on personality and in game ability. Which is exaclty what equal rights people have always wanted isn't it?
Also everyone can change races, gender and sides at will. While they may call Horde or Alliance evil within the fiction of the world, they may be the other side tomorrow. I think most players side-swap from time to time just to see what it is like. This is a healthy thing in my opinion.
There is some concern I guess with racial stereotypes in game (dwarves strong, gnomes smart etc.) but I think that most people see past this and relize that character race is just another layer of the character class system.
<sipping from the water cooler> Good Point!!! <sip, sip>
I don't feel WOW catters to rasism, but in another way i think some games do that but not in the way this topic was ment. I meself am mixed (half black/white) and must say that i feel more comforteble when i play as a human character that sort of is a virtual me, now many games, atleast to those games i'm atracted to, ignore that and mostly you are able to play a white male, mostly when thats the case with a mmo/rpg i tend to take some of the other none human races. And its strange that i then am more comforteble playing a none human race then playing a white human. Games like SWG or most recently Vanguard give me a change to have a sort of cloned virtual me. It isn't a issue for me and i keep having fun either way but just wondering if there are more that subconsiously take a none human character over a white human character if they are coloured themselfs?
and more back to topic, like Damian7 said most hate in games is from passion for the game, example i was a rebel in SWG and had rl friends who choose the darkside, if you saw us playing you would never think that you saw a couple of best friends in rl playing. Its the story of the game that should be played/ acted, thats not rasism, that the story of how the world works in a game, is it Horde Alliance then they should hate (in a fun way) eachother in the game.
is this serious?
as in is this a serious topic of debate? a serious question?
racism?
are people that desperate to tear down the "King" of MMO's they make up this kind of BS?
I can't even begin to imagine how much PCP the OP was on when he seriously thought WoW was racist or promoting the idea of racial conflict as "acceptable" behavior or not.
It's a game. Every MMO (pretty much) has races. Every MMO (pretty much) has pvp. If it's not ALL out free for all PVP then there has to be different "sides" to a conflict. Are people REALLY that concerned about being politically correct that they extend their twisted notions of inequality/racial tension to video games?
Get over it! As in the real world, race exists. Racial tension exists. Inequality, racism, prejudice exist... Discrimination exists. Bigotry. Reverse-racism...
It's not a perfect world. Get over it. Do what you can to not add to the mess. Unlike this post....
Any game based on players competing against each other is going to result in an “us versus them” mentality. It’s human nature, whether it’s a MMORPG or a football game. In WOW, it might be based on a character’s race, but in another game it might be something else. Why is it good or bad if it’s based on race? The fact remains that games are not real life. A hatred of Orcs in WOW is not going to translate to RL unless you happen to meet an Orc walking around the shopping mall.
Must have been a slow day for news lol
I don''t really know when Humankind will die out but i''m guessing about 6 years before WOW.
-BarCrow
This site is becoming a joke. How can they expect to have any kind of credibility publishing when they put up such a contrived subject matter. Who is the person that approved this article?
Second and most important they are at war. I hate to tell people about this, but most of the time people dehumanize, make morally wrong, ie evil the other side in a war. It is very hard for a sane person to hurt and kill other people. It is a tiny bit easier if you feel you are right and even better if you think your foe is somehow less than you. You want the orcs or the humans to go around saying, "Yeah the X are decont people and I have nothing against them. I see their point and believe their cause is just. Now excuse me while I go to battle and attempt to kill them."
The game and others to that matter to me does promote racism, well not promoting it but it puts the mentallity of hatred based on race. This could also be seen as class discrimination. For example class discrimination is looking at everyone below you as inferior. If you see a lower level you automatically assume they are inferior and so you slaughter them, and you can't deny this doesn't happen, with ganking, and camping and so forth. On the other hand the incident where if you see a different race then you you automatically associate all the bad experiences you had in confrontation with other players of that race (no mater how many people of that race helped you before) you associate them as being evil or bad and dirrect your anger towards that particular person. Also this you can't say isn't true because theres so many times ive seen people playing and then get killed and start swearing about the other faction. They don't have hostility towards the person that did it but towards the faction as a whole. As in Fing horde or fing Alliance. where games that preset some races as evil vs good doesn't imply this. This will lead the person to be associating that either they are good and there against evil or vise versa. Where games that have race vs. race leads the individual in thinking ethnocentricly and thinking the others are evil. It lets teh player associate which ever race they want with being evil. and no mater what they are playing as being good.
Now of coarse this isn't going to be taken out into the real world and applyed directly. But in allowing games like this to have race vs. race and not good vs. evil. It does inhearently teach the person that judging someone by their race is okay. For some people this might be a counsious thing but for most of the majority is unconsious learning. It's not going to teach then to hate a certain real life race but it will allow them to understand that associating all the people of a race together with one another is acceptable.
For games teaching racism is a longer streach i think a more viable concept is that these types of games teach ethnocentrism or egocentrism. This is a problem in that it makes the person think they are the best, that everyone else is inferior. Or that their culture or race is inferior to everyones elses. You can easily see it displayed in the wow community where the alliance thinks they are better then horde and horde thinks they are better then alliance. This is a cut and dry example of ethnocentrism. Learning ethno centrism will also be a subconsious learning and no its not picked up rigth away. As to say you play wow for an hour and you are ethnocentric but over a longer period of time it can take effect. If people don't believe ethnocentrism is a problem in todays societies they should just look at the news.
This conversation is by far the extream but you have to consider that for some people these games are their life, and people think of the game for more then just a game. Just like people that believe alot of tv shows or reality shows are real life. The mind is a very adaptable thing, it will believe what ever you tell it to believe.
Don't get me wrong im not anti games or anti violence in video games or anti anything like that, I am a gamer, and a mmorpg player. I just think that there is a problem and it should be openly disscussed and brought forth. If it continues to be ignored or denyed that its happening then thats when you get the problems. By openly talking about it and to understand it and be able to actively converse about the issues and break them down and defend them, if we don't then people are going to believe whatever they hear coming out of the media and/or jack thompson. Because if we deny they are happening and people don't talk about it others like jack thompson will be the only one to step up and voice his opinion and no will be able to defy his points. Don't let jack thompson kill games.
Edit: yes if you don't think ethnocentrisim is a problem look at the US, I am a citizen of the US and looking through a cultural relativity point of view the US is very ethnocentric. Were the best, Were number one, Our way of life is the only way of life, if you don't abopt our way of life we will force it on you. This is very wrong it it hurts to have a leader now that also is very ethnocentric. If you dissagree that the US is not ethnocentric I can start another topic thread to show you all the stats that the US is not number one. In fact the US is very low down the list when compared to the other top 23 industrialized nations. But I won't post all that here.
When someone hands you a orange,
make a screwdriver
I say...who cares !!! People can find racisim in anything. In fact..there are few such prominant black leaders whose entire job depends on finding racisim. Without racisim some folks wouldn't have a job anymore..they do in fact find and create racisim to protect their livelyhood...but thats a topic for an entirely different forum...
I say...good grief...who cares! It's a video game for starters. Sure it's racism...lets not let the pussification of America and it's twisted and hipicritical ( sp?) politics influence the fact that orcs hate humans and humans hate orcs...just because. That is how it is suppose to be. Leave it alone.
I say...if someone can't handle it ..then they just need to dig a hole somewhere and stay there...or at least stop playing fantasy mmo's.
Thats what I say
and I'll say it again..anytime
I don't know what games teach. I don't learn anything from them myself. I just play for fun. I play most races except dark elf. That is a personal choice. Mainly I don't want to be like Drizzt and the games don't truly give the options of being how I think of that race. EQ has a few I did not play for that reason as well. Just be thankful can't really do what the Iksar would with other races. Racism is not something I think about though I do the good and evil thing because I love reading and most of it has a good and evil side. I don't think anything about the ones who play what I think are evil. It is meant for fun.
The post about US not being #1 is something true and I agree to a degree but there are some things we do that not all the countries do. I do know our schooling is not tops but we are one of the few countries that educate everyone and it is not a competition to stay in school. There might be problems but we do try at least.
It really IS that simple - WAY too many people take every little thing WAY too seriously - when will we be able to stop the "Mothers" and their loyal zombie followers , who know so much more of what is better for us than we do ?
" The dungeon master told me to ! " - that is why I ate the puppies in the garage!
Wait until Warhammer comes out , if it is even somewhat faithful to the table-top version ...
So what you are saying is that people are no longer allowed to decide for themselves when they are offended. They are all part of some vast left-wing conspiracy led by a "Mother".
And everybody has different priorities. What is a little thing for you (evidently racism is a little thing) may not be a little thing for everyone else. For some people abortion is a little thing, for others its murder.
For the record I don't think that WoW contributes to racism, but I think that having a discussion about it is totally appropriate.
Let's get this straight: only the undead and the gnomes are evil; everyone else is just opinionated.
Remember Austin Powers Sr:
"There are only two kinds of people in the world that I hate:
People who are intolerant of other races and nationalities.....
And The DUTCH!"
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
Personally, anyone who really thinks this topic is just out of whack, should contact all the advertisers at this site and try to get them to drop their ads. This is just the most embarrassing article today and surely a sign that this site is losing it.
What's next? Game rating false reporting with a little under the table payola?