The Badlands quest made me want to falconpunch, because FFS COME ON--and then GF pointed out that the orc goes 'i shared a tender moment with the strapping young blood elf'.

And I went, '...wait, seriously?'

So while it's still kind of stupid and still irritatingly gender-role 'hurhur u guise'...I'll give them this: they snuck in a bear/twink pairing. However, I suspect it only flew under the radar because of the premise and the other cracks at b'elf guys. It really is blink-and-you-miss-it.

I also took a little bit of comfort in the fact that it seems to only be nutcases (the batty mad scientist Forsaken at the sludge field), raving cloud-cuckoolanders (that !Quixote guy), and characters who are perceived as not real bright (Garrosh) who make the mistake now.

But at the end of the day? Old joke is old, stupid joke is stupid, can we get the fcuk out of grade school pliz. It's like, other gaming companies have realized the value in being progressive (Bioware, frex--they're not perfect but they fucking ACTUALLY TRY). WCIII was fucking amazing for trope-kicking. What the fuck is with the WoW staff that they've decided to hunker down and cater to the lowest common denominator? That group has a notoriously small attention span, and are very quick to judge people as trying too hard. That group is the one Coors Light tried to cater to almost exclusively, and because the commercials 'tried too hard', Coors was labelled by this group as 'gay beer'.

ARGGH my coherency has gone the fuck away. Regardless of how the jokes are framed they're still stupid, and while I can grin wryly at their making cracks at the playerbase? Those cracks don't matter much when the kind of stupidity they lambast is ENCOURAGED.

tl;dr I share your exasperation and desire to kick things.