The developers of World of Warcraft have been heavily criticized by the community about an upcoming mission, which includes sexual assault. Now the team has reacted and here you can read everything about it.
The gaming world has its fair share of tasteless games, in game missions and characters. But that a mission, involving hints of sexual harassment, gets approved by the developers of World of Warcraft is quite a scandal. The community outrage about this topic was huge and now Blizzard released a statement. Here's everything you need to know.
WoW Players Criticize Mission Including Sexual Assault.
So, what happened? In the upcoming World of Warcraft Patch called “Fractures of Time” there is a mission, named “A Missing Soul”. At first, it seems to be a simple quest to retain a missing artifact. Nothing new, since missions like this have been in WoW and other MMOs for decades.
What makes this mission so messed up is the story or “lore” behind this missing artifact. The artifact is called “The Demon Soul” and was used by the Dragonmaw Orcs in the second war to bind the Red Dragon Alextraza and torture her. And not just the typical torture we all know from other dark parts of the lore, but actually in a sexual way as well.
This sparked outrage by parts of the WoW community and forced the development team and Blizzard to react. Community Manager “Bornakk” wrote in the games' forum, saying:
We have seen the comments in the community regarding some Chromie quests in Fractures of Time on the PTR and we understand your concerns. We’ve been iterating and discussing all of these quests internally, and we’re in the process of adjusting and removing quests. These changes will be available in an upcoming PTR build. Thank you for your feedback!
In lights of the recent history of Blizzard, regarding sexual misconduct and allegations of harassment at workplaces, it's understandable that Blizzard reacted fast. But of course the community is irritated how a mission, with a delicate topic like this, even gets green-lighted in the first place.