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Friends, Azerothians, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Bunny Ears
by Wolfshead on May 1, 2009

At first I thought that it was just another entry from the slow MMO news day department but after thinking about it perhaps there are some deeper issues to consider. This week Broken Toys mentioned a blog article by a man who was offended by bunny ears as part of a WoW achievement for the Azerothian holiday of Noblegarden. The website in question is not even a gaming website - instead it's devoted to radical gender feminism and other assorted left wing causes - full of cheery, happy-go-lucky people who only see the good in humanity.

If you look hard enough you'll find that WoW is rife with every kind of "ism" imaginable. No matter what Blizzard does you're going to find one person among 12 million that is waiting to be offended by the content or tone of the thousands quests and achievements. WoW and other MMOs have been no strangers to pressure groups and political correctness in the past few years. Due to the increasing popularity of MMOs and virtual worlds, it seems they are being used as a platform to advance political issues? Is the intrusion of the real world into virtual worlds a good thing?

Some Recent History on Political Correctness in MMOs

These days MMO companies are only too willing to cave in to the demands of pressure groups. A few years ago, afraid of being insensitive to African Americans Blizzard changed the name of one of their vanity cat pets called the Maine Coon– the actual name of a real world cat breed - to something more politically correct like the Black Tabby. It was rather cowardly of Blizzard to change the name but that's how corporations behave these days - they are afraid of generating controversy and awakening the rage of the identity politics shakedown artists who are in the business of extorting money and influence.

From a lore point of view and since Maine doesn't exist in Azeroth Blizzard should never have allowed that named to be used in the first place. Blizzard needs to curtail the excessive use of real world references as they needlessly violate the sense of immersion which is vital to MMOs and virtual worlds.

Another incident where political correctness triumphed was when Blizzard set a dangerous precedent by apologizing for disciplining a player for advertising for new players for their GLBT guild. Regardless of your stand on the issue, Blizzard has every right to determine what speech is allowed both on their private forums and private servers as the U.S. Constituion which guarantees freedom of speech does not apply, yet due to pressure from special interest groups they folded like a house of cards.

Regarding Bunny Ears

Let's examine the actual issue at hand concerning the Noblegarden achievement. The author of this charge seems be making the inference that the bunny ears could be seen as a reference to Playboy Bunnies - an easy target of feminists over the years.  However, Blizzard routinely and shamelessly includes many real life pop-culture references in WoW which are rather silly, sophomoric and at times crude, so that practice may be coming back to haunt them with the Shake Your Bunny Maker achievement which could be seen as a sexual double entendre.

In defense of Blizzard, Noblegarden with it's focus on egg collecting was intended to be an innocent homage to Easter - not a celebration of Playboy Magazine. Bunny ears are in fact harmless and many kids dress up in bunny costumes during Easter and Halloween. I think that it's a bit of a stretch to claim that this is sexism. I have to wonder if the author of this article would have been as offended if Blizzard required that bunny ears be placed on both male and female players? I'm sure that for next year Blizzard will do just that to placate the few critics.

How anyone who is legitimately concerned with sexism in WoW can still be playing their MMO while the warlock class has a scantily clad female succubus pet that objectifies women (with no male counterpart - more sexism!) complete with S&M references is beyond me. There are countless examples of overt sexism and the objectification of women and yes even men in WoW. So why would any hardcore feminist striving for *equality* be a willing participant of such a obvious hostile and poisonous virtual world? The answer is that some feminists and feminized men can't wait to be offended but as I will show you below, they are quite selective about what offends them.