In response, Blizzard said the following via its World of Warcraft forums, and later in response to media requests:

We encourage community building among our players with others of similar interests, and we understand that guilds are one of the primary ways to forge these communities. However, topics related to sensitive real-world subjects -- such as religious, sexual, or political preference, for example -- have had a tendency to result in communication between players that often breaks down into harassment.

To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such topics being broadcast. This includes openly advertising a guild friendly to players based on a particular political, sexual, or religious preference, to list a few examples. For guilds that wish to use such topics as part of their recruiting efforts, our Guild Recruitment forum, located at our community Web site, serves as one open avenue for doing so.

The debate strikes directly at the core of personal identity and expression through virtual worlds, and Blizzard shows no signs in this case, despite growing pressure, of allowing the real world to invade theirs, adding simply that language will be added to their policies to avoid such confusion in the future.

---------From Edge Online

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