Gay Guild Recruitment Disallowed From WoW?

[Dominus Atheos]

Blizzard of GLBT gaming policy questions
POPULAR MAKER OF ONLINE GAME WORLD OF WARCRAFT CITES A GAMER FOR HARASSMENT FOR USING THE TERM 'GLBT'; OTHER GAY GUILDS REQUEST CLARIFICATION

Sara Andrews thought it was a big misunderstanding when she received an e-mail from a game master in Blizzard Entertainment's popular online role playing game "World of Warcraft" citing her for "Harassment - Sexual Orientation."

Andrews had posted that she was recruiting for a "GLBT friendly" guild in a general chat channel within the game.

Believing that her notice had been accidentally flagged, she e-mailed Blizzard to correct the problem. Blizzard, to Andrews' surprise, upheld the decision.

Other gay guilds have been alerted and are planning to request clarification on the policy from Blizzard.

Blizzard's policy on "Harassment - Sexual Orientation," which is set forth in the games' "Terms of Use" and cited in the e-mail to Andrews reads, "This category includes both clear and masked language which insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or other players."

A series of e-mails back and forth concerning the incident, seems to make it clear that Blizzard may be inadvertently using a policy meant to protect GLBT people as a way to discriminate against them.

In Newsweekly obtained all of Andrews' e-mails between herself and Blizzard. Numerous requests for comment from Blizzard were not returned. Here's the sequence of events:

Andrews' original posting read: "OZ [the name of her guild] is recruiting all levels ¦ We are not 'GLBT only,' but we are 'GLBT friendly'! (guilduniverse.com/oz)"

In her follow-up letter to the company, Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a "GLBT friendly" guild.

The response from Blizzard was, "While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to 'be temporarily suspended from the game.' However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning."

Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using "GLBT" was inappropriate as, the company said, it may "incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game."

Gamer John Blatzheim, who heard of Andrews' situation, e-mailed Blizzard to express his concern of a double standard that game masters would send her a warning that she could not use "GLBT" as an advertisement to express a safe place for gay gamers after an incident a few months ago where a plague occurred within the game and players yelled in general chat, "Don't get the AIDS!"

"Many people are insulted just at the word 'homosexual' or any other word referring to sexual orientation," Blizzard responded to Blatzheim in an e-mail. "Also to discriminate against other players, such as not allowing any heterosexuals into the guild simply because of their sexual orientation, could cause extreme offense to a large percentage of our players and should be avoided."

Stonewall Champions and The Spreading Taint, two large gay guilds are currently formulating a letter they plan to submit to Blizzard requesting a more detailed explanation as to the intent of this reinterpretation and execution of the sexual harassment rule. As the spirit of the harassment rule seems to have been reinterpreted from protecting GLBT players, to keeping them silent.

There are various types of servers that players can experience the game on. One of the options is to play on a role-playing server where players actually play as their characters, rather than through their characters. "We have determined that advertising sexual orientation is not appropriate for the high fantasy setting of the World of Warcraft and is therefore not permitted" was another of Blizzard's responses. Does this mean that if a player has a character on a role-playing server that they play as gay that would be violating the policy?

Sara Andrews has stated that she will not be renewing her World of Warcraft account due to Blizzards lack of support for a GLBT friendly environment, "It seems to be OK for general chat to be flooded with, 'That's so gay!' and 'I just got ganked! What a fag!' yet advertising for a GLBT friendly environment where we don't have to deal with such language is deemed inappropriate."

Is the player's character an extension of themselves in the game world or an entirely new character? Although Blizzard has made their policy regarding recruiting based on a player's real world orientation clear, what does it mean for in-game orientations within a role playing environment? Should men only play as males in the game? Should gender identity be enforced as sexual orientation is? We look forward to exploring these questions and others in a future article.

Update:

Previously, we discussed a World of Warcraft guild representative getting reprimanded for mentioning same-sex relationships while advertising their organization. The subject hasn't been dropped in the intervening days, with GamePolitics providing an update to the community's reaction. Additionally, a Cathode Tan post links to a supposed discussion with a GM that kind of wrecks their whole equal treatment statement. From that post: "[GM] Anyone can report and we will take appropriate action. While it may seem ok because they are truly a heterosexual couple in real life, in game they are two females. Please keep in mind, you need to worry about the other players. While I do understand where you are coming from, there are those who do not have the maturity"

[GuppyShark]

It is a bit stupid to allow comments like 'That's so gay!' and 'I just got ganked! What a fag!' whilst upholding a decision to warn someone not to use the legitimate, non-insulting acronym.

Clearly, they should be coming down on everybody who posts like that to General.

You'd need ten GMs just to manage Durotar

[LongVin]

It is a bit stupid to allow comments like 'That's so gay!' and 'I just got ganked! What a fag!' whilst upholding a decision to warn someone not to use the legitimate, non-insulting acronym.

Clearly, they should be coming down on everybody who posts like that to General.

You'd need ten GMs just to manage Durotar

They do go after people who say "What a fag!" but thats usually when its directed at a person individually.

My cousin got permabanned for trash talking and calling people fags. Of course he was also on the GMs shitlist as well as the shitlist of almost everyone on the server so he kinda had it coming.

He actually got his account warned on the first day because he started spamming guild invites to people and when they refused to join he would freak out and start cursing at them through tells and in general chat and bitch about how they "disrespected him" for not joining.

[Dorsk 81]

"While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to 'be temporarily suspended from the game.' However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning."

So let me get this straight. Instead of warnning or banning the players that would have harrassed members of a GLBT guild, they'll simply stop one from forming, and warn or suspend people who try to create one?

"Many people are insulted just at the word 'homosexual'

And I can guess just what kind of people they are the "OMFG!!111 G4Y SINN3R!!!111" fucknuts.

or any other word referring to sexual orientation,"

Well when it's used as an insult as in "'I just got ganked! What a fag!", just what the fuck do they expect?

[namdoolb]

It's a bit of a dilemma, but I think they may have made a sensible option in disallowing it.

It's easy to defend the underdog, but what if the shoe was on the other foot, and someone decided to create a Heterosexual only guild? If they'd set a precedent by allowing a GLBT guild, they'd be hard pressed to refuse the formation of a heterosexual guild, and I'm pretty sure that many members of the GBLT community would be pretty offended at it's mere existence.

IMO keeping it out of the game altogether is better.

[Stark]

The article says it's not GLBT only. It's just GLBT 'friendly', which given the average player age of 16 could simply mean that they don't jam the guild chat with 'that's how you got shit on your dick' and such.

[Netko]

Interestingly enough, I've never seen the various fag, gay and similar insults on the English European servers, nor have I seen or heard of any guilds forming for stuff like sexual orientation, race etc (actualy, there was one guild which had a neonazi sounding name which got it forcibly changed). I wonder if the reason for it is a lack of language skills (lets face it, most of the people playing the game on English servers don't speak it as a mother tongue, which caused some problems that, in turn, caused some servers to get nicknames like "Spainbreaker" and "Sovjet Warsong") or something else?

On the other hand, I've seen harassment based on nationality (especialy on the unofficial national servers), however that was very rare and it always came from obviusly retarded "l33t" teenagers which got stamped out pretty regularly.

Anyway, while I don't agree with them, I can see from where Blizzard is coming from. Sexuality, nationality, race, hell even your actual sex shouldnt have much to do with your activities in the game. However, they should be focusing on stamping out the racist/homofobic/etc. morons that create the atmosphere where non-heterosexual people feel a need to create a guild based on that characteristic just to shield themselves from harassment, instead of, basicly, going "Lalalalalala! There is no problem! Don't create a problem by bringing it up!" and thus leaving the root cause for the creation of such guilds unresolved.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Or you know, they could actually try and defend LGBT groups and say "Yeah, anyone who rags on these guys will get a can o Whoopass!" Instead of going
"Oh noes! We don't want people fightning, I guess we will ban the groups from forming so no one can make fun of them."

God this makes me sick,

[Dorsk 81]

Gay rights win in Warcraft world

The maker of the hugely popular online game, World of Warcraft, has changed its policy on gay teams following an outcry from many players.

Blizzard was accused of being heavy-handed by threatening to expel a player for advertising a gay-friendly team or guild.

Blizzard has officially apologised to the guild recruiter, saying the warning should never have been issued.

More than five million people regularly play World of Warcraft worldwide.

Team play

Warcraft involves players taking a character adventuring so they become more experienced in their chosen class of warrior, mage, rogue, druid, hunter, shaman, warlock, priest or paladin.

The row blew up around Warcraft player Sara Andrews, who plays a high-level mage called Shimmre on the Shadow Moon server. Each server runs a separate duplicate of the Warcraft world.

Warcraft players are spread out across the realms to make sure the game worlds do not get too crowded.

When adventuring, many players join "guilds" to get help from other players in regions filled with dangerous monsters, get quick access to good magical items and, just as importantly, so they can stay in touch with friends and make new ones.

Many guilds use Warcraft's text chat channels to recruit new members.

In late January, Sara Andrews used these channels to say that the guild she helps run, called Oz, was set up to be gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender "friendly".

But an in-game administrator issued a warning saying that such talk was a breach of Warcraft's terms of service.

She was threatened with being banned from the game if she continued to advertise the Oz guild using such language.

Ms Andrews challenged the warning and the claim that it broke the terms of service. She said many players used homophobic language in the game that went unchallenged.

To publicise her plight, Ms Andrews visited many discussion sites and forums where Warcraft players gather. The debate that followed largely criticised Blizzard for its heavy-handed treatment.

Many pointed out that Warcraft has a thriving community of gay players, or gaymers, and that it made no sense to censor talk about players' sexuality outside Azeroth.

Gay pride marches are known to have taken place in Warcraft and there are many other guilds in the game that are known to be friendly toward the gay community.

Two such guilds, Stonewall Champions and The Spreading Taint wrote an open letter to Blizzard criticising its policy.

Sensitive areaThe uproar has prompted Blizzard to officially apologise to Ms Andrews. It said that her comments should not have produced a warning.

In an e-mail to Ms Andrews, Thor Biafore, senior manager of Blizzard's customer service, said: "Please accept our apologies for the way our staff characterized your conduct, and rest assured that your account will not be penalized in any way for this occurrence."

The 1,000 or so in-game administrators Blizzard uses to police Azeroth are also to get training to help them deal more sensitively with such issues.

Blizzard defended itself by saying that information about players' real lives can lead to harassment in the game and its warning was only intended to limit such harassment.

The game firm also said that it would create a separate chat channel in the game that guilds can use to advertise themselves and look for recruits.