women-in-warcraft
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Know Your Lore: What exactly is up with women in Warcraft lore?
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Between Rossi, myself, and those who came before us, there have been a metric ton of Know Your Lore columns. If you're wondering exactly how many, I suggest you take a look at our lore guide for a categorized list of them all. Occasionally, I'll go back and look through the list just to see what we've missed and what needs to be filled in or updated from old columns. And I've been looking at that lore guide and going over the things in it, and I keep noticing one really particular thing about it. There are hardly any women on that list. There's a scant handful compared to all the other heroes and villains and history and everything else on it. And it's not that women don't exist in the Warcraft universe -- they're all over the place, honestly. It's that there is only a handful worth of them that have enough character development and story to warrant dedicating a column to them. To which I say wait a minute, what is up with that?
Girls That Play Games
There's a interesting article on the Play Girlz blog discussing women who play Warcraft, and some of the treatment they face. They link back to a survey that has collected comments from female gamers, which range from interesting to unusual to disturbing. Being that I have recently taken to playing characters that are not in my raiding guild in order to avoid some of the more juvenile antics of my fellow (and overwhelmingly male) players, I can certainly understand where the author is coming from when she points out the following: Many people play games so they can get away from “real life” but when this fantasy that is supposed to be fun starts sounding so much like what you’re trying to get away from in the first place, it’s hard to ignore.[Thanks, Keegan]
