Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMORPG.COM News: MMORPG.com Poster in Washington Post
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas penned an interesting feature on gay gamers today. Stemming from the recent controversy in World of WarCraft, the feature examines the cross pollination of real-life concerns into online worlds.
Vargas also brings our community into the discussion with a quotation from one of the many debates that raged on our message boards. The article appears online and in the print edition. Surfers will need to register (which is free).
| Things exploded online. Lots of very heated chatter in gaming forums, gay and straight alike -- from Gaymer.org, the biggest of the online gay gaming sites, to Kotaku.com, the Wonkette for the hardcore gaming set, to Slashdot.org, the one-stop shop for geekdom, to Mmorpg.com, the go-to-site for millions of online role-playing gamers. An articulate bunch who haven't met a link they haven't sent in an e-mail, these gamers had lots to say. Word spread. Gays? In games? Gay guilds in games?
"It looks like the real world and the virtual one are growing closer together on a daily basis. Prepare to start paying your 'WoW' property taxes any day now," a gamer wisecracked on Mmorpg.com. |
Click over to the Post's site for the entirety of this article.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
I'm glad this was featured on in the news section. I'm still not happy you guys completely refused to cover the result of the whole WoW/Blizzard deal though.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I really still can't understand this issue AT ALL. peoples took offense for something that wasn't aimed at gay peoples at all IMO. To me, this whole story is like someone making a "real-life brown hairs peoples guild", its simply a non-issue in a ROLEPLAYING game.
I think cartoon-style teenager-populated medieval fantasy chats is not the place to start talking about sexual topics and thats what Blizzard tried to avoid. Would peoples not find it strange if I say I'm recruiting for a "real-life more than 20 centimeters d**** friendly guild"? Would blizzard try to stop me for harassment? Yes. Would that be discrimination against the mens who have a d*** bigger than 20 centimeters? I don't think so...This whole issue is typically American, peoples get offended by anything, fear of a multi-million dollars trial made Blizzard bow...
Oh, and I don't have it 20 centimeters long by the way and that's simply not an issue in a roleplaying game in my opinion, but it seems like some peoples don't think so...
EDIT: if Americans start to completely forget that they're playing a game and think this is the same as real life, be ready for "black peoples friendly" guilds, "hardcore music lovers friendly" guild, "ford drivers friendly guilds", "cat owners friendly guilds"....
I don't mean to generalise, but gay people tend to make things 10 times worse then they really are (yes I know gay people in real life). If someone was to make a "straight people freindly" guild, Blizzard would do the same thing because sexual preferance has no part in a MMORPG.
Does that mean Blizzard is against stright people? I think not.
I'm sorry, but this girl.....boy.....whatever, is not very smart. If you want to avoid "homophobia" (I use this term very lightly, because many people are not homophobic but religious) why the hell would you broadcast your sexuallity by creating a guild. If I didn't want to be hassled for......I don't know.....liking peanut butter on my salad, I would not go and create a guild for people who also like peanut butter on their salad.
I guess where I am going with this is, people need to shut up, and quit making a huge deal out of every little thing. I'm gonna go eat some salad now.........
Ok, lets examine this statement.
You say "if you want to avoid homophobia". This means that you agree there is homophobia in the game.
If there is homophobia in a game, then it would make sense that someone would want to play with a group of players where homophobia is non-exsistant.
So the way to do that is to recruit for a guild that is made up of people that are not homophobic. It seems pretty straight forward to me.
Now I'd also like to explain why gay people need to be so open with their sexuality. I'm gay. On a daily basis people assume I am straight. I get asked if I'm married often. I get asked if I have kids often. I get asked if I have a girlfriend often. As long as people assume I am straight I will be open with my sexuality and telling people about it.
Or to put things another way. If someone were to assume a straight man was gay, that man would correct that person so fast their head would spin. So why shouldn't a gay man correct someone when they assume he is straight?
No it isn't.
If that was the case, Blizzard should not seed so much overt sexuality into it's game: Night Elves dancing like strippers? Horrendous amount of flesh on show? The /flirt command? It's all in there, so if Blizzard didn't want it in the game they've done the worst possible job in creating an environment where it's not all around you anyway.
I find it amazingly ironic that a site that could care less about the freedom and or rights of anything or anyone not belonging to it's boys-club environment gets press from main stream media that suggests there's been some sort of open discussion regarding this extremely important topic.
About the only thing that surpaces that irony is the fact that your willing to somehow take credit for this self-congratulatory form of self promotion that nears on an ignorant air of satisfaction. Quite honestly, if nothing else proves that you've lost touch with not only your user base, present and future, but the community as a whole then I really don't know what else would.
Way to go mmorpg.com.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
I realize you're upset we did not post the news at the time. I'll try to explain why that happened.
The email arrived to us, as it did many news sites. However, rather than just run it blindly - we get all sorts of email, real and fake, accusing everyone of everything - I sought comment from Blizzard. The people I spoke to were completely unaware of the situation and promised to get back to me. Had we run the article without any confirmation and it had been false, then we are on the hook for libel.
Unfortunately, by the time I heard anything more, it was beyond old news. There was hardly any point posting a recap of the information that had already been spread days earlier when we had nothing new to offer.
I'll be the first to admit that we missed the boat on this story. But with accusations as important as these, it is not fair to run the story without first confirming its authenticity. By the time it became apparent that it was for real, that ship had long since sailed.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
edit: oh and kingnat, your answer is so obviously stupid and trollish, I won't even respond
[quote]Originally posted by Lepidus
I realize you're upset we did not post the news at the time. I'll try to explain why that happened.
The email arrived to us, as it did many news sites. However, rather than just run it blindly - we get all sorts of email, real and fake, accusing everyone of everything - I sought comment from Blizzard. The people I spoke to were completely unaware of the situation and promised to get back to me. Had we run the article without any confirmation and it had been false, then we are on the hook for libel.
Unfortunately, by the time I heard anything more, it was beyond old news. There was hardly any point posting a recap of the information that had already been spread days earlier when we had nothing new to offer.
I'll be the first to admit that we missed the boat on this story. But with accusations as important as these, it is not fair to run the story without first confirming its authenticity. By the time it became apparent that it was for real, that ship had long since sailed.[/b][/quote]
Oh no you don't. When the news of the resolution broke on the web I sent a message to one of the writers on this site. I also posted about it. The next day the post was gone and I never heard back. To say it was old news is absurd. Blizzard apoligized to Sara, they created a new chat channel for guild recruitment, and they are putting their gm's through training to make sure this does not happen again. None of that is old news no matter if you are the first or last to report it. It's VERY rare that a company turn around and not only apoligize to a player but change thier rules for gm's.
Simply put, you ignored every bit about this issue as news. Until of course you were mentioned in the Washington Post. Even then you didn't talk about the issue, you talked about the fact your site got mentioned. Even to this day mmorpg.com has not reported anything on it.
I'm going to be honest. I've been a member for a very long time. Once I looked to this site as the source for mmo news. I came here to discuss games and to learn about new ones. Over the past few months I have become more and more disappointed with this site. None of the news is really that breaking or interesting. I find out about games and what's going on in them other places.
Shae hit it on the head when she said you guys have lost touch with what this site is supposed to be about, that being the world of mmo's and all that goes on with them.
And just so you are clear on when you knew about the story. This message is in my sent folder on this site. The date is Feb 7, 2006. Nothing was ever done to report it. You in fact ignored it.
From: sleepyguyftl@mmorpg.com
To: Stradden@mmorpg.com
Sent On: 02/07/06 23:14
Subject: WoW GLBT Descrimination News
Awhile ago I posted something in the forums about WoW telling a GLBT player they couldn't recruit for a guild in the general chat. The discussion of course turned away from the subject and was eventually locked. I had hoped that mmorpg.com would pick up on it and at least follow the story. I have yet to see it mentioned again. This saddens me. This site is about MMO's and all they deal with. I don't understand why nothing has been written on this story. There have been major events too. Lambda Legal (a huge gay legal association) actually sent Blizzard a letter concerning the issue and how they were violating CA law. Blizzard has turned around and withdrew their action against the the person they originally attempted to silence. They even came out and said the ruling was an unfortunate wrong interpritation of the TOS. I've been playing MMO's for some time and for a company to come out and send a letter to a player saying a GM was wrong is HUGE.
Maybe this site wasn't aware of how really serious this has gotten. I hope that you aren't intentionally avoiding the news because it might be a bit contraversial. Here is a link to more details on the issue.
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/breaking/wow-blizzard-gets-gay-rights-warning-153075.php
I hope you do a news story soon.
Rene Rivers
Long time MMO Player
The original post was in reference to the genesis of the story. Originally, we decided not to post it because we couldn't confirm its authenticity. Sadly, that original decision stuck long after it was obviously confirmed to be legit. I cannot really explain why, but that's how it played out.
As I said before, regardless of the reasons, we missed this story and shouldn't have.
----
Now as to the site losing touch, yes we missed a story (and a big one at that), but really.. the site didn't have any real news updates a few months ago. I fail to see how going from almost no news to quite a bit of news, with one major oversight, is losing touch. Jon does a solid job on the news. Sadly, due to some miscommunication that was ultimately my fault, this story eluded us. It is a mistake we will learn from.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
All I'm going to say in response is that I hope you do learn from it.
Symptoms of a larger problem Dana, symptoms of a larger problem...
At the risk of seeming contradictive, I certainly hope you know the immense respect I have for you and what you've done in the gaming industry which of course includes mmorpg.com. Also that my comment had nothing to do with the news worthiness of mmorpg.com as a whole, in no way did I intend to imply that "missing" out on this particular story was the end all and be all of the sites credibility. The story certainly warranted more attention but as you said, miscommuncations happen, with the amount of news that comes into the site, I'm sure most of your members are more then happy to move on.
That said, I think you missunderstood what I wrote, or maybe you just don't care, who knows. It's quite propable that I'm quite simply not well written enough, as I've attested too many times before, to properly bring my point accross. Hence why the talented people do what you do, and those less fortunate of us read what you do. Sucks to be me I suppose.
As for loosing touch, well I'm sorry but the site just is, maybe it's the community going mainstream, maybe it's a sign of the business itself going mainstream or maybe it's both. I don't know for certain, but it's there. Even myself as a reader of 3+ years of the site, I've all but sworn off mmorpg.com for sites that are more accepting and involved in their communitys, especially after seeing constant double standards being handed out in the forums.
Where I used to see mmorpg.com mentioned in amazingly postive lights in the gamergirlz and fragdolls irc channels I regularly attend, I now see comments of feeling unwelcomed and dissatachment.
But either way, moving on. I'm sure none of this makes a difference and I'm sure alot of it is those that felt an attachment to the site are just making it over-personalized but life goes on as they say.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
shae,
Believe me, we appreciate people like yourself who have been on the site, building this community for years. As the site grows, that small-town feel, is going to become harder to maintain. The site has almost double in size over the last year. It's a challenge for us to make sure it maintains its spirit during a time of such rapid growth. If you see or think of anything that you feel we could do better (this applies to anyone) we want to hear it. The entire WoW story is one example.
You mentioned moderation. The mods here have done a wonderful job, especially when you consider the numbers of them vs. the numbers of posters. However, we have also noticed that over time there are different standards developed from different people. It's not their fault, we never had really clear guidelines in place. It was one of those situation that worked when we were smaller, but cannot work now. It is an issue we're addressing internally and you should see more information on this very soon.
If you have any other issues, don't hesitate to post them here or contact anyone on the site.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios