If you think Ji Firepaw didn’t need to be changed, you are the problem

This is a very angry post.  It is not a rant, because rant implies that you are angry about nothing.  I am angry about something very important.

For this history behind this take a look at the WoW Insider article.  I’m going to start assuming you’ve read it or the original complaint thread.

My own reaction
I played a panda through the section in question on the beta realms.  I’m just going to document my reaction here.  Very simply I thought: OMG what a creep, never rolling a Horde panda ever.

Now that was my reaction as a long term WoW player.   I immediately decided not to play any part of the game that would bring me into contact with Ji Firepaw.  Imagine if I was a new player? I would have stopped playing right there and then.  No, thats not an exaggeration.

Why games should not reflect real life
Back when I was at University I used to go to this club (this was while I was studying in the US and hence it was NOT a reflection on the University itself at all).  The club had what I called the ‘creepy guys’.  There was one guy who would sidle up behind women, grab them from behind, and start dancing with them.  For some reason I can never fathom, most of those women didn’t respond with an elbow to the stomach.  I sure as hell responded that way.  Despite that, he came back and tried again later!  I wasn’t targeted due to any stunning good looks – I was targeted because I was seemingly unattached.  I went to the club with friends, and not a partner.  Ji Firepaw went straight into the category with the creepy guys.

Now in real life I had two choices.  I could stop going to the club, stop having fun with friends.  It was the only club in town.  Or I could deal with the creepy guys as and when needed.  They eventually got the message.  But WoW is not real life.  I could never ‘deal with’ Ji Firepaw.  A sexist NPC is always a sexist NPC.  I can’t do the in game equivalent of chasing him off.  I am forced to be a passive recipient of his sexism if I want to play the game.

Other reasons the line needed to go
There are a dozen other reasons for this change quite aside from those I’ve already discussed:

• That kind of comment is against Blizzard’s own Terms and Conditions.  If a player made that comment to another player and a complaint was raised, it would be dealt with as a harassment complaint.  And Ji is making this comment to EVERY SINGLE FEMALE TOON HE ENCOUNTERS.  It makes it very hard for Blizzard to police its playerbase if its doing something it tries to police in the game itself.
• Discrimination against women is illegal in many countries.  No matter how small the chance, one lawsuit would do irreparable damage to Blizzard’s reputation and would be seized on by the kind of right wing anti-gaming facists who would ban Harry Potter and the Teletubbies.  Unfortunately, that faction is well represented in US politics (which is where it would hit Blizzard hardest).
• The line was particularly ill thought out because it comes from a faction leader in the first few minutes of playing.  New players may well see this as part of their very first encounter with WoW.  It doesn’t really make a great impression.

What this ‘debate’ has taught me
Another argument against the change is that this is making ‘a mountain out of a mole-hill’.  However, if its so insignificant why do players feel the need to argue so strongly against the change?  The feminists who asked for the change do NOT feel its insignificant.  But the defenders will claim it is insignificant in one breath, before writing an epic about why it NEEDS to stay the same.  The only reason I can think of for this is that somehow having Blizzard’s NPCs espouse their own ideals gave them some feeling of validation.  Some game developers, instead of attempting to be inclusive, actively rejected female gamers for a very long time.  In a capitalist society you would think that attempts would have been made earlier to tap the market that female gamers represented – it wasn’t.  So gaming remained a place where sexism could thrive.  Now Blizzard has rejected sexism and that means it is rejecting these people.

Eight years ago I wrote my MA thesis about sexism and gaming.  The fact that this line even made it as far as the beta just goes to show very little has changed.  I was extremely disappointed in Blizzard when they wrote that.  They should be having a serious think about how that line was ever allowed to appear.

And the biggest reason of all why feminism is still relevant and why gaming is a battleground
Just as this ‘debate’ was calming down I read this post detailing the double standards for women who post controversial material on the internet.  And as I read it I got mad.  Because I don’t want my daughter to grow up in this world.  She is going to grow up in a time when the internet is a part of her everyday life.  Why should she have to be exposed to this kind of rubbish?

If you don’t think the Ji Firepaw line should have been changed, I don’t give a damn what you think.  Because you are the problem.  Because every little bit of sexist crap should be stamped out.  It doesn’t enhance the game by making it more immersive.  It only serves to validate your own vile attitudes and they is why you are defending it.  Think carefully about your daughters or your sisters.  Would you want some random stranger to say that to them? Someone who might be in a position of power over them?  Would you like guys to sleaze over them and have no recourse to defend themselves?  If you think thats fine, then you are the problem.  If you don’t then why do you think thats okay in a computer game?

Disc Priest Education – Get guilds and pugs to take you seriously(addons)

“Your not a good healer, look you’re at the bottom of the healing meters with 1.1k HPS and all the other healers have 3k. You fail”

Every heard that one before? I have. Mostly from a pug’s or a guild’s who has not trained their members to understand Discipline priest healing.

Well do not panic, you are not doing anything wrong. Actually you’re doing your job right. If a disc priest is high in healing and above other healers for HPS, then either the other healers are VERY bad or the disc priest is not shielding. (which is bad times)

Your first way of dealing with the problem of people not knowing or not reading up about Disc priests are to download an addon from www.curse.com called RecountGussedAbsorbed and /w it if someone comments on your healing/lack of healing. You will need to already have Recount addon for this to work. It will make a new page of information on shield/bubble absorbed healing. Alternatively make an account on worldoflogs.com and upload your raid information into that and it will also show your total healing and absorbed healing together.

This is your first line of defense to actually get a guild or group to take you seriously if need be.  Also it will help you to see how well you are doing compared to other healers within the group/raid.

In My next Blog i will be making a post which you can pass onto your guild members to show what we bring to a raid. This will start to educate people who have not come into contact with a pve disc priest before.

I hope this will start to help people who i see post a lot on discpriest.com, saying that guilds wont take them serious and are trying to push them into holy spec.  I guess i am just very lucky that i came into a guild who actually was using disc priests as an offspec so they knew what they where all about and what they contributed to a raid.

Noela Out

Hello

WHAT WAS THAT I HERD YOU SAY? Disc is a worthy PVE healer? 
 
Well as you bring that up i guess i will introduce myself. I am Noeal a pve disc priest. I’ve been playing disc for little over a year and was introduced to this blog by morrighan. I will be here from now on going threw the in’s and outs of disc healers and what is needed to be able to blow the socks of healing/absorbed meters and make all your other raid healers scratch their heads in confusion at this new type of healing. 
 
Before you point it out, yes disc PVE Priests have been out since back in the old days of outlands. Since WotLK they have came into their own as a well polished and powerful addition to a raid. 
 
Also i will be doing blogs on how to make gold and general but interesting blogs about world of warcraft.  
 
Well that is my intro done, hope to be see you soon.

Noela

Of Noblegarden Bunnies and Female Officers

This is my first stab at an opinion post so I’ve decided to go for something nice and controversial!

Shake Your Bunny-Maker
Both Larisa at The Pink Pig Tail Inn and Green Armadillo at Player versus Developer posted last week about the Noblegarden Achievement Shake Your Bunny-Maker. The achievement requires you to use an item called Spring Flowers to put bunny ears on a female player of each race (10 in total) over level 18.

Use item X to do something to a set number of class/race/gender/level combinations is a pretty common achievement in most WoW holidays. So the basic mechanic is hardly original. What is different in this case is the pop culture reference. Basically a player chases women about and turns them into Playboy bunnies. This is reinforced by the need for avatars to be at least level 18 i.e. legal.

What is interesting is that neither blogger can manage to get mad about this. Both feel that this kind of sexism is so expected and ingrained that its not worth getting upset over any more.

The Playboy Brand
I totally understand the point of view of Larisa and Green Armadillo. Playboy has its own stationary range these days that you can buy in any high street in the UK. I remember being shocked and disturbed the first time I saw it, but now its just a part of the background. Playboy has become a brand and the fact that its built on the exploitation of women is hidden behind pink bunny ear logos and novelty cocktail glasses. The ‘Shake Your Bunny Maker’ achievement is degrading to women, but in a way that is so ‘mainstream’ as to be invisible.

The controversy of talking about women in WoW
Ariedan at The Wordy Warrior posted on Leading as a Female last week, and I was all set to post about how parts of that very informative post resonated with me. I found it useful and it helped clarify some of the issues I’ve faced over the last year or so of being an officer.

However when I went to look it up the post was gone! In its place was a post about why it had been removed. The author had expected a certain amount of controversy about the post, but felt that the comments were such that she had to remove it.

These two cases highlight a few things and raised some interesting questions:

• Ariedan made a point of denying being a feminist which interested me – what does it mean to players to be labelled a feminist? Why would a woman posting about sexism or being a female officer in a guild feel that they had to make a point of denying their posts were feminist?
• Its okay to post about acceptance of sexism but controversial to post about how to act in the face of it?

Feminism in WoW
Personally, I am a feminist and I’m happy to admit it. I’ve spoken up for myself and my gender many times in WoW even though its made me unpopular. I would feel deeply uncomfortable with accepting some of the more sexist things that happen in the game. The leadership post (which my Google Reader still has) was a great post. It was about letting other female officers know they aren’t alone and that they just have to be firm, assertive and professional.

That’s all the post was about and it was a good post. But apparently it sparked off a torrent of abuse. That’s not a surprise to me. I’ve seen it before. Defending yourself as a female will often result in this kind of response. Assertiveness in women in WoW is generally not acceptable.

Theres one paladin knocking about my server whos tried to apply to every guild I’ve been an officer in. The first time, we trialled him. He turned out to be not particularly skilled (in the first raid he warned us he was used to topping the dps meters – he came last), lazy (after that first raid he specced PvP and never showed to a raid again) and obnoxious (his comments about women were such that not only did they offend the women, but most of the men too – comments of that went well beyond flirty or jokey and probably would have gotten him a beating had he aired them in a club or the like). He was removed from the guild to general cheering (literally). Now because I always refuse an application from him, I am apparently sexist!

Another trialist walked out on the guild because I asked him, politely, not to call me ‘girly’ – to quote the Ting Tings ‘that’s not my name’. You can call me by my character name (any of them will do) or by my real name which most people in my guild know. But ‘girly’ and ‘chick’ are demeaning and unacceptable, especially to a married woman approaching 30.

I’m not naïve. I know that people have these opinions and that I can’t change them in the game. But I don’t want to have to listen to it! I don’t want to sit there and be called a whore or an idiot or talked about like I’m a blow up doll to my (virtual) face. I know guys talk about this stuff when they get together, but I’m right here! I see your guild chat, I hear your vent chatter. And its not even because you don’t like me or have had an argument with me or disagree with a decision. Its just because I have XX chromosomes.

Although I fully understand why she did, I wish Ariedan had not taken the post down. I know people were going to get offended – but sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it takes drama and controversy to make people pay attention to a problem. And it is a problem, or there wouldn’t be any controversy. That being said it’s a lot of hassle to deal with abusive responses to having an opinion as this thread from Big Bear Butt exemplifies and the supportive comments in response to this decision were a very nice thing to see.

Female Officers
Not everyone can be an officer. I used to be an officer in my University Fencing Club. Each year lots of new people would turn up to the first session. We liked to get them fencing in that first session so by the end of it everyone was facing an opponent, foil in hand, and attempting an attack. The attack was simple – extend your arm and step forward. But a lot of new people can’t seem to get the hang of hitting other people. They sort of shuffled forward and poked the sword forward a bit, jumping if it met any resistance. It’s the same with Officers in a WoW guild.

You need to be confident, assertive and in control to be a female officer. That’s not to say you might not lose your temper, or that people won’t leave over your decisions. You will make mistakes and regret them. But you need to earn the respect of your guild and you do that by being professional, consistent and fair in the actions you take and the decisions you make.