taint
Latest
8th annual LGBT Proudmoore Pride celebration to be held this weekend
Here in the United States, the month of June is traditionally known as a month of celebration of pride by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Around the country, major cities are erupting in parades, dance parties, and excellent interior design. But it's not just the real world that celebrates -- June is a time for celebration in Azeroth, too. Sponsored by The Stonewall Family (Alliance) and Taint (Horde) guilds, the eighth annual Proudmoore Pride celebration will be held this Saturday, June 16 on the Proudmoore (US) server. Lineup for the Proudmoore Pride parade begins at 11:00 a.m. server (2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific). Horde characters will line up at the Mor'Shan Ramparts in Northern Barrens; Alliance will meet at Honor's Stand in Southern Barrens. The parade begins at 11:45, with both factions scheduled to meet up in Booty Bay at 12:30 p.m. for a massive Disco Dance Party. There will be a special Pride edition of the WoW Factor transmog contest at 2:30 p.m. at the Stormwind Cathedral. All Alliance characters are encouraged to attend to show off their fiercest fashion and try to win a share of the 100,000 gold prize pool. If you haven't been to a Proudmoore Pride celebration before, I would recommend it -- it's quite the spectacle. Full details about Proudmoore Pride can be had at the official website, ProudmoorePride.com.
If WoW is social media, what function do guilds serve?
In my time playing WoW, I've been in a lot of guilds. I've played in guilds that were fighting for the realm-first heroic progression spot and others that were content at realm 15th. I've been a part of the Reddit guild families, which are so large that they need a chat mod to link the multiple guilds for all their members. I've also been in guilds like my current one that have a grand total of 15 people as members. The World of Warcraft guild experience is as wide and varied as the players who play this game. I'm an unabashed guild-hopper who wants very specific things from a guild and is willing to leave if they don't happen. Other players are loyalists, who find one guild and form lasting bonds that keep them playing with the same group of friends for their entire WoW experience. Is WoW social media? Cynwise at Cynwise's Battlefield Manual wrote a post last month about the fact that World of Warcraft is a form of social media. There's no denying that fact: The entire MMORPG genre is based on the idea that you are playing a game with other human beings, not just facing off against the computer as in the genre's predecessors. In fact, I'd go even further and suggest that in many ways, WoW has potential to be an ideal form of social media.
The Classifieds: 7th Annual Proudmoore Pride Parade
The Classifieds brings you weekly news from around the WoW community, including our famous Random Acts of Uberness shout-outs to players who make your WoW sessions memorable. June is typically designated Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Pride Month, and for the seventh consecutive year, the celebration is spilling over into Azeroth on the Proudmoore server. World of Warcraft's two largest GLBT-friendly guilds The Spreading Taint (Proudmoore [US-H]) and The Stonewall Family (Proudmoore [US-A]) are co-sponsoring the Seventh Annual Proudmoore Pride Parade. Festivities start Saturday, June 25th at noon server (PDT). Horde players will meet at Mor'shan Rampart in the Northern Barrens to begin the parade; Alliance players will stage at Astranaar in Ashenvale. Both factions will then meet up at the gates of The Barrens and march together to Ratchet to board ships for the Booty Bay "after party." Players from all realms are encouraged to roll an alt on Proudmoore to participate -- both Taint and Stonewall will be creating visitors' guilds interconnected with each host guild's chat. Full details will be posted on the official website, ProudmoorePride.com.
The Daily Grind: Does steampunk taint fantasy MMOs?
With the recent news that Guild Wars 2 is including a technologically savvy Engineer class, purists have come out in force to bring back up the long-running argument of steampunk themes in fantasy MMOs. To put it succinctly, some people are all right with it, and some consider it the most insidious plot to ruin lives since Enron. I've heard this argument before, in many other places: World of Warcraft, RIFT, Warhammer Online, and Allods Online (to cite a few examples) all have elements of steampunk in an otherwise straight-forward fantasy setting, and some folks just don't care for it. Steampunk, to them, represents a jarring juxtaposition between the old and (semi-)new, and even suggests that the world is becoming outdated even as we play it. So I'm curious today to know what you think. Yes, you, the person with the mismatching socks -- do you think steampunk elements taint fantasy MMOs, or can they coexist peacefully? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Drama Mamas: Transgender bullying
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. I really, really wanted to embed People are People by Depeche Mode, but Warner Brothers won't let me. Rather than rage about that here, you can go to my tweet, if you wish. So instead of an awesomely appropriate video and song, you get a screenshot taken at the <It came from the Blog> Brewfest 2010 event -- because people are still people, even when they are multiboxing druids dancing with blood elves in bunny ears. Let's just move on to the letter. Hello Drama Mamas, I've been playing WoW for about a year and a half now. While I've always been a member of some minority groups (I have a few disabilities, for example) and have always had a problem with the pro-bullying majority environment on WoW, the problem kind of got a bit worse for me about six months into that time when I joined the most maligned group yet and came out as transgender. I really enjoy the game and I'm in a guild that handles this (and many other) things about me quite expertly, but the backlash I get in pickup raids mostly because of Vent (which is how quite a few people on my very small server know my trans status), has me seriously considering quitting the game or at least quitting raiding, which is my favorite part of the game.
The Classifieds: Coming out of the closet edition
The Classifieds is a weekly roundup of news from around the WoW community. Your host for this week is the ever-so-shadowy Fox Van Allen, filling in for a vacationing Lisa Poisso in exchange for an undisclosed sum of pirate treasure. As always, if you have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share, send it in to TheClassifieds@WoW.com. If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, then there must be at least 100 different ways to leave a guild. There's the middle-of-an-argument /gquit, the log-on-in-the-middle-of-the-night-so-no-one-sees-you /gquit, the passive-aggressive /gquit, and of course, the I-illegally-sold-my-WoW-account-on-Craigslist-to-buy-a-ten-year-old-dirtbike /gquit. I think I have a new favorite, though: The tauren-trapped-in-a-night-elf's-body /gquit. Milkmenot (Boulderfist [US-H]), formerly Slimbones (Uldaman [US-A]), wrote one of the most creative goodbye notes to his guild that I've seen in a long time: I have a confession I need to make, it's something that has been bothering me for quite some time and I need to get it out there. I've been having these feelings. It started out just around town in Dalaran when I would see this Tauren going by. Our eyes would meet, just briefly, and all these feelings would well up inside. I'd try to follow her, intrigued by her curves and horns, but then she always goes into that Horde-only area and I would get booted out. So I'd hang around the entrance there just hoping to sneak a peek. The rest of the goodbye note -- and so much more -- is available just after the break.
World of Warcraft's top five political contributions of 2008
With World of Warcraft having the combined worldwide population of a small country, and the combined US population of a small state, people have been finding various ways to infuse their politics into the game. This can only be seen as a natural occurrence – people will naturally want to bring their out of game ideals into the game to express themselves.We've covered various politically and socially minded groups in the past here and there. And with the end of the political season we've seen an increase in the number of political expressions in WoW.Let's take a look back at the top five politically and socially relevant WoW thing-a-ma-jigs on the net in 2008.
15 Minutes of Fame: Proudmoore guild plays out GLBT pride
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Proudmoore_guild_plays_out_GLBT_pride'; 15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.If you've made even the occasional pass through the Blizzard forums, you're likely to have run up on at least one of the periodic flamefests with players stomping their virtual feetsies and pointing in horror at the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) guilds clustered on the Proudmoore server. Never one to ignore the elephant in the room, we got curious about what these guilds are all about and how they ended up on Proudmoore.Our interview with Venfelder, a long-time member from the rank and file of Taint, paints a picture of a mature, friendly, open community of players making the most of WoW's many opportunities for raiding, PvPing and just plain hanging out together.
