I Just Want To Recharge – The Climb #881

Thursday 22^nd July 2021

I’ll be honest and say I can’t wait for this heat to be over. It’s given me bizarre sleep patterns where I can’t sleep during the night and then catch up late afternoon. It’s also impacted my ability to concentrate and whilst I’ve struggled through a few things, I don’t feel particularly productive.

Normally when I’m like this, I just write a day off and play games to recharge ready for the next day.

BUT, it turns out that World of Warcraft has had a huge scandal! Another one! This time it’s the developers and systemic misogyny. It’s so bad (and the details are very grim) that the state of California are prosecuting. And Blizzard’s response: they claim that the investigation is unfair and threaten to move out of California.

I’ve never held Blizzard on a pedestal. I love Warcraft. I’ve had great times in the game… I’ve played it since launch and my characters very much live there and with me. I couldn’t even change servers because I was afraid of losing their names, I’m that fond of them.

But I know, one day the game will shut down and those characters as they exist will be gone. One of the reasons I write is because I know how people can screw up franchises I love – Star Wars, GI Joe, etc. Better that I have my own IP that no-one can ruin but myself.

The problem is that the allegations are bad. After a lot of bad behaviour by elite players over the years, we now have bad behaviour by the devs. You want Warcraft to be a welcoming place for all, and it’s clear it’s not. Things are so bad, that some of the more fratboy elements of the community whose Twitch streams skirt very close to the edge of being misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic, now look like the shining white knights of the community – and I hate that, because in any other community their borderline behaviour would be stamped out.

A lot of people are choosing to leave, and I don’t blame them. There’s been bad feeling over the last couple of weeks since the release of the new patch (which I’ve been enjoying) and this just feels… well even I had problems summoning the will to play last night and did something else instead.

Things can get better. I look at the raid group Method, who basically imploded when it turned out one of their raiders was grooming young girls. They’ve implemented the sorts of checks and policies that are sadly needed in today’s world and are building themselves back up. But you can’t help but feel that Blizzard are a bit hypocritical when what they were doing was just as bad, and possibly worse.

A streamer I enjoy put it best when they said it has to be everyone’s personal decision whether to leave or not. The vast majority of devs are good people. Indeed, many of those directly impacted, still love the game and want people top continue to play. I go to play Warcraft to chill out, not be reminded of all the misogyny in the world. And if I can’t play Warcraft, how do I recharge my creative batteries?

I, selfishly, don’t want to abandon my characters who I have an emotional connection with but I want to do more than just do a sit-in protest in game. Report more… make the game more welcoming for women and minorities? But most of all, I want to forget about everything when I go into Warcraft, enjoy the story and my progress.

And then I want to be able to jump out and back into whatever project I’m working on, focusing on that rather than considering the behaviour of people who play and develop this game.