- Blizzard continues to remove in-game World of Warcraft jokes and employee references
- This comes amidst the fallout of controversial lawsuits the company is currently going through
- Fans are not receiving the new changes well
WoW players are not happy that Blizzard is removing old voice lines from the game, which is yet another controversy amidst Activision Blizzard’s ongoing lawsuit.
A Company under Scrutiny
For about two months now, Activision Blizzard has been under investigation for misconduct and discrimination in the workplace by some of its employees. As a result, series of lawsuits have been a thorn in Blizzard’s sight
In an effort to “clean up their act,” Blizzard has started implementing new changes to both their company staff and also their games. Players have noticed these changes and are not too thrilled about most of them.
One of the first things Blizzard did was to remove former employee references out of WoW. These references were considered inappropriate as they alluded to current and former company employees who are under investigation of sexual misconduct at the workplace.
Fans did not receive this very well, saying Blizzard is simply trying to sweep things under the rug by censoring the game’s art and quests. Instead, players urged the company to focus on combating toxicity. Player dissatisfaction continues as now they have discovered that Blizzard had begun removing flirty voice lines on WoW’s PTR (public test realm).
A New Round of Changes
Blizzard is continuing its spree of removing old references from WoW, now launching a purge on voice lines.
It seems people first started to talk about the new changes on Reddit. “I was curious on the PTR and decided to check and see if [Blizzard] removed Flirts and Jokes from the game. It turns out they have,” one post made by Reddit user Tengenflare read.
Tengenflare expressed their unhappiness by saying this is very disappointing and that the studio will indeed remove certain references from the game. The Redditor reviewed voice lines from more than half a dozen playable races, urging other players to check for themselves how substantial the changes actually are. He ended his post with a plea to Blizzard to bring back some of these.
Commenters under the post also seem to agree with Tengenflare. One Redditor wrote “Why would they remove that? It’s cute and wholesome, not explicit in the least.”, regarding a certain voice line from a Mecha Gnome.
Even Twitch streamer Asmongold, who many consider being the go-to source for WoW content criticized Blizzard for how they handle the events, calling the developers “mentally ill or socially maladjusted.”
