Monthly Archives: January 2006

Thanks to unexpected attention from digg.com, my brief news post on accusations of discrimination in World of Warcraft has drawn thousands of visitors to this site. Had I known that would happen, I would have spent more time on the post! I don’t normally bother to write about the same subject twice in one week, but this situation seems to merit some followup.

First: many visitors appear to have assumed that I was accusing all language-selective WoW players of racism. I would never make such a blanket accusation, news-based or otherwise. That would be as foolish as, oh… assuming that all foreign players are gold farmers. To anyone who felt unfairly accused, my apologies.

Second: It’s worth quickly glancing at the comments on my post, and on the digg entry leading to it. You can draw your own conclusions about them.

Third: My thoughts on encouraging diversity were idle speculation… intended to start a dialogue, not dictate hard and fast changes to MMORPGs. Multiplayer video games have tremendous potential to bring people together, no matter where they live or what they look like. For years, the video game industry has itself trumpeted this as one of the most promising aspects of games; a worthy rebuttal (among many others!) to the accusation that games offer nothing of social value. All the sadder, then, to see several people make comments like (and I’m paraphrasing, here): “foreigners should stick to their OWN servers!”

Fourth: the most common objection to my post was that players have legitimate reason to reject poor English speakers, since they might not understand directions, might ruin the raid, etc. I readily admit (as I did in an earlier comment) that I would not personally accept someone into my group if they spoke almost no English … it would unnecessarily complicate gameplay. But there’s a wide gulf between “perfect, unbroken English” and “almost no” English. I’ve got friends in Europe and South America who may not be able to spell perfectly, but they understand enough to avoid trouble, play their part, and generally contribute to the cause. It doesn’t take fluency to understand the less-than-Shakespearean instructions I generally hear being barked out during any given raid.

There are many ways to address legitimate player fear of potentially bad group members. One possible solution is an in-game reputation / feedback system (ala eBay), which could be used by players to ding other players who behave poorly or dishonerably while in a group. I’ll attempt to describe my idea of a functioning, relatively low-maintenance rep system in a future post.

*Update: there’s an interesting comment on this post that explains why Singaporeans (among other people) legitimately wind up in English-speaking servers, aside from immigration to the US. It’s 2nd from the top in the list.

*2nd Update: strangely, some people seem to be assuming that I “support” gold farming because I’m concerned about the cultural divide. Not that it should require clarification, but these two things are not automatically correlated…

Apparently, discrimination is becoming a problem in World of Warcraft. Some players are refusing to accept other players into their group unless they can chat in perfect, unbroken English. This phenomenon is being blamed on a widespread backlash against the practice of gold farming, which is unfairly associated with all non-English speakers in general.

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.

Gold farming has simply become a handy excuse for some people to indulge in their darker impulses. So what can MMORPG developers do about it? 1) Don’t add fuel to the fire by publishing scathing remarks about the practice of gold farming. If you don’t like it, just deal with it quietly, fairly, and efficiently. 2) Reward diversity. Perhaps groups that are comprised of players from different countries could be rewarded with an experience point bonus? Or perhaps diverse guilds could be rewarded in some way? These are just idle thoughts, but I think the idea is at least worth considering. Bringing people together is one of the most socially-beneficial things an MMOG could ever do. And hey, you might even be able to get some decent PR out of it.

PS. If you haven’t read always_black’s famous short story, Bow Nigger, you really should.

*Update: in response to the unexpected controversy this has generated, I’ve posted a followup for clarification’s sake.

*Update 2: as promised, in response to all the controversy, I’ve written an article for Gamasutra about designing an MMORPG user feedback system, which is meant to address legitimate player concerns about bad teamwork, loot theft, etc.