The conversation about who plays it and identifies with it likely never even got considered.

The marketing group are likely more gender-sensitive. But seriously, do you think they have any impact on small details like treeform?

I’ve committed to my wife to doing NaNoWriMo and I’m starting to freak out…

Plot? Characters? Huh?

I’m sure I’d be more sensitive to things, but it’s not (at least I think so) because I’m a woman, it’s because I tend to look at all possible alternatives. (Some call it fretting without any reason… oh well.) We have a name for this in Romanian – “the mother of the wounded” (kinda like “champion for the underdogs”).

I do agree with one thing: mini pets! I do know a few guys who collect them, but they’re mostly doing it for the achievement points. We girls squee over them (Although I also know women who don’t give a damn either.) Either way, the day the moonkin pets are in the store, me and the boyfriend are getting one each!

Still, the fact is the new tree form has a beard, is stuck on a freakin’ male orc skeleton – it’s not gender neutral, it’s very male. And they didn’t see that as a problem. At all. Because….

I can’t comment on diversity and equality and the like. Discrimination goes both ways, as you pointed out, and since I have no idea what goes on at Blizzard… maybe they make it a point to never hire women; maybe women simply don’t apply.

This might get me a lynch mob, but my boyfriend is a programmer and he sometimes does interviews. He’s told me several times that he/the company works for don’t have any kind of problem with women, it’s just that most of them simply aren’t knowledgeable enough. Of course, there’s always exceptions, he knows brilliant woman programmers… they’re just rarer than men. Maybe it’s the same at Blizzard… maybe not.

Their answere was majorly dismissive and completely did not ‘get’ what the issue was.

I don’t think “there just aren’t women in the decision loop” is a generallization. We saw ZERO blizard employees that were women at the con. All through the panels were all the big tream leaders and people in charge of this or that. And every one of them was a 25-50 male.

Coming from a corporate environment, and being a white male, I am pretty grumpy about ‘deviserity’ stuff. Mostly because I have seen actual management training videos at a company I use to work for where they explained (for managers eyes only) how they descriminated against white males to preferentually hire and promote women and minorities. In numerical quotas. It was revolting. So I tend to scoff at things that claim deversity of ideas as the reason for being diverse in hiring. What the usually mean is deversity in skin color and gender. Which is quotas and such and just ends up being a different sort of wrong. But in Blizzard I see so many things that, darnit, just plain need a few woman to sanity check them.

Women tanking in belly-shirt armor? Don’t have a problem with it.
Top heavy characters? Fine. Give people what they want.
supposidly strong female leaders standing around in their underwear? Why? Seriously, just why?

I don’t have a problem with Jaina or Sylvanas… *shrug* Unless I’m looking at a wrong picture, Jaina has a metal breastplate and some tummy showing, right? And Sylvanas is wearing the same thing as Alexstraza? (I don’t play Horde.) Jaina is a mage, so she doesn’t need a lot of armor to shield her, and Sylvanas looks pretty badass to me. It might just be me, but skimpy clothes make me very self-conscious and insecure IRL, so the fact that my characters can kick ass while wearing stuff like that is actually pretty cool.

(Some of the Vanilla armor was ridiculous though… someone linked a couple of pieces in guild chat and one of them was an actual metal bra… supported by magic, probably o.O)