2 - Discrimination in World of Warcraft

     Now, what would a world be without discrimination? Based on my own understanding, Discrimination is the distinguishing treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a particular group or category, such as their age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, skin color and other characteristics.

     There's a lot of discrimination in the world right now, though a lot of people are actually fighting against it, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about a different world.

     Like the actual world, World of Warcraft has a lot of discrimination as well. I came across this article from January 2006, that was entitled, It's racist, it's sexist, it's virtual: welcome to Azeroth!, which was written by Aleks Krotoski. It talks about how discrimination is being portrayed in the game. Here's a quote from that article.

"Much has been made of the internet as a panacea in which people can interact without the lead weights of real-world race, class and gender dragging them into socially constructed categories. Of course, such idealism has been refuted after almost two decades of social science research, so it's not surprising that the world's largest online world is witnessing some rather crude social discrimination"

     With a population of more than five million people (in 2006), for a world that doesn't actually exist, physically that is, the game has a lot of dedicated followers scattered all over the globe,boasting over 2.5 million users in North America and 1.5 million in China and the other accounts are scattered around Europe, South America, Africa and Asia (2006 statistics), giving it a diverse and culture-mixed population. So, I guess, it's  because of this huge population of different cultures that causes discrimination. I mean, the game is like a melting pot of people who have their own moral sensibilities, beliefs and whatnot. Just like in the real world, they get along better with people who share the same beliefs and stuff like that, and if you don't "fit in" in their group, then most probably you will be the outcast or discriminated.

     In another article I stumbled upon, that was also from January 2006, I found out that during that time, apparently, discrimination was becoming a problem in World of Warcraft, because some players were refusing to accept other players into their group unless they can chat in perfect, unbroken English. This phenomenon was being blamed on a widespread backlash against the practice of gold farming, which was unfairly associated with all non-English speakers in general. In the article the writer said:

"There is nothing new to this. The particulars might be unique, but the basis for this behavior has always been there, lying just under the surface of all multiplayer video games. I will never forget the first time I logged onto a multiplayer server and saw one game session entitled “NO JEWS”. I joined the session, of course (in addition to all our other faults, we Jews can’t follow directions.) I thought I might learn something from the experience, but after 20 very sad minutes, all I’d discovered was a strong correlation between bigotry and the use of foul language."

      Even in the virtual world, the players who enter it continue to reflect their own cultural mores and stuff. Despite all the discrimination though, through time, there wasn't really that much of stereotyping that emerged, instead, it integrated the populations from different places around the globe, in ways that would never be possible in the real world.

1 - Racism in World of Warcraft

     Well, Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups, races, and that members of a certain group share the same attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.

     I read some articles about racism in World of Warcraft, apparently there are a lot of players who think that there is actually a lot of racism going on in the game.

     This topic popped up numerous times in a lot of articles and forums, about WORGENS. Now, for those of you who don't know, Worgens are wolf-like creatures, very much similar to the werewolf. A lot of people had conspiracies about this part of the game is racist. Why? Because if you spell WORGEN backwards, you'll get NEGROW, and some players actually thought that this was a reference to African Americans or something. But, it doesn't end there, there's a place in the game called Shadowfang Keep, which is run by a White Guy, who has worgens as slaves and when you loot a worgen corpse they drop Snapvine Watermelon and Chicken Legs.

     When I saw this, I was like, "Oh. yeaaah. I did not notice that." I mean, why not name the race werewolf or lycan, they do look the same. Why name it something like Worgen? I did some research and I found out where the name Worgen isn't a reference to the term "negro". In fact, the 'worg' from WoW stems from Tolkien's world, which stemmed from varg (Swedish for wolf) and wargaz (German for 'strangler' which leads to criminal or outcast). The modern German term for wargaz is würgen. So yeah, just to clarify things, the name Worgen is not a racist reference.

     Of course, it did stir up an argument and some players thought that the people who think that there's racism in the game are just over-thinking things, that they're just being paranoid or something. A player named Neotaeo said this in of his posts in his blog, "How in the wide wide world of sports could a game be racist?  It is based in a fake world where fake events happen based on fake evolutions/ intergalactic nudging or evolution or species and how they interact with the world around them. To say that anything in a game such as WoW is, in my opinion, racist is completely absurd. People create things by taking elements from the world around them.  If you look at every character in WoW, you can see a mixing of cultures in each race. They all have good sides and dark pasts, this is what gives things in the game a bit more depth. But to sit back and say that the troll race represents 1 specific race here in the real world is ludicrous at best.  Why does it have to be about race in everything?  Why? Picking it apart only ruins and destroys a part of the game that you can never get back.  Once you go down the path of picking things apart, you will not be able to look at the fun world you play in the same way again."

     There was a lot more racism going on in the game than I initially thought, but then again, it always depends on how a person perceives it. If he finds it offensive or not. Everyone is entitled to there own opinion, some are sensitive to these kinds of things some are not.