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.