What the eff, people.
[Trigger warning for self-injury, homophobia, misogyny on ALL links, especially the ones hosted on Blizzard's sites]

Blizzard recently had their yearly convention for their three franchises, Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Fans from all over the globe come to see it, and tickets usually sell out within hours (if not faster) of tickets going on sale. Many Blizzard employees have praised it for being a family event, but I've never been so I don't know how generally family friendly it is.

This year, their closing ceremony included a video from the lead singer of Cannibal Corpse, bashing alliance players in sexist and homophobic terms. Here is the censored version they played, and here are the uncensored comments. Megabitch provides the comments for those who don't want to watch Youtube.

Some of their employees replied to fan comments, although they mostly/only focused on the "Blizzard hates the Alliance!" complaints. Bashiok with a fauxpology, Zarhym with "It was just a joke!"

WoW_Ladies and Dear_Gnome both have mostly safe discussions but there are trolls and bigots. The WoW boards are not so safe, 1, 2, 3, 4 and oh god, so many more.


On a side note that could really get its own post but I have homework to stop putting off, a lesbian WoW player asked about Blizzard's intentions to have any canon gay characters and then posted about it and made a follow up. Her girlfriend also makes a post. Naturally, the whole thing triggered a lot of hate across the forums.

ETA: Worldofwarcraft apparently wants everyone to know that just because you're not on the WoW forums, you can still get plenty of douchery!

ETA2: Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftan, the band made up of Blizz employees, has put out an apology. Except it's not addressing the homophobia at all, and could easily be about just the alliance players.

ETA3: Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, put out an actual apology.