The nonsensical phrase body type has replaced gender and sex designation in many popular RPGs in the past few years. This is a top-down initiative that has been implemented to more “inclusive” to non-binary players. For me, this is more evidence that the video game industry has become captured by woke activists who live in a bubble.
Pandering to non-binary people who will never play your game is stupid and only alienates your core fans. It’s an act of virtue signaling that has no return on investment. WoW’s Azeroth is a traditional fantasy world. Non-binary people do not exist in fantasy worlds. In contrast, male and female people do exist. The erasure of males and females in fantasy worlds is a serious issue that threatens the very foundation of the verisimilitude of virtual worlds.
A reader inspired by my previous articles on the topic decided to post the following on the official WoW Classic forums. His post has been downvoted by the community and it is now in a moderation queue where it will be determined if the post has violated any of the rules of conduct.
You can read the post for yourself as I have reprinted it.
For 18 years, WoW players could create characters and choose between male or female. However, this option has been removed and replaced with Body 1 and Body 2.
The term “body type” does not pertain to biological sex or gender. Scientifically, it refers to classifications introduced by psychologist William H. Sheldon—ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph—which describe physical builds that can apply to both sexes.
From developer interviews at the time, this change was intended to promote inclusivity. I believe this was a mistake. Rather than being inclusive, it removes the ability for players to select male or female, effectively reducing biological sex to a superficial appearance. Biological sex is not a mere “skin”; it is a core characteristic of individuals.
Even within a fantasy setting, biological sex plays a critical role. For living, breathing worlds, species reproduction is a natural and necessary element of world-building. Removing sex distinctions undermines this foundation, making a consistent, immersive experience harder to achieve.
This change contradicts the WoW Classic ethos. Players choose WoW Classic to experience the game as it was in November 2004, before modern-day social trends retroactively altered design principles. Choosing a character’s sex is a long-standing aspect of fantasy RPGs, going back to Dungeons & Dragons. Such traditions are part of what make these games timeless.
I respectfully urge Blizzard to reinstate the original male and female options in WoW Classic, preserving the authentic experience we play this version for. Thank you for considering this feedback.
From my point of view, there is nothing wrong with this post. It makes a convincing case for Blizzard to return the male and female designations at the WoW Classic character creation screen. It does not violate any of the rules of conduct on the Blizzard forums.
The majority of the replies are like the following:
What is it like to go through life where something so inconsequential eats away at you to the point where you need to tell everyone about it?
Using ChatGPT I detected the following fallacies in the reply:
Ad Hominem: The poster attacks you personally by suggesting that you are overly consumed by something “inconsequential” rather than addressing the merits of your concern.
Straw Man: The poster misrepresents your position as being overly obsessed with the issue (“eats away at you”), which may not reflect your actual reasoning or motivation for making the post.
Appeal to Ridicule: The response mocks or trivializes your perspective instead of engaging with it logically.
False Dichotomy: Implicitly suggests that if something is “inconsequential,” it is unworthy of discussion, ignoring the possibility that it could still be meaningful or worth debating to some people.
Another poster replied to the above reply:
Because it’s clearly not inconsequential.
Someone like you will dismiss it as inconsequential but if it gets removed suddenly you’re denying trans right to exist. You’re responsible for the disproportionate suicide rates through non-affirmation. You’re transphobic. You need to be cancelled etc.
It’s a ratchet problem. Once you’ve tightened the social fabric in this way it becomes really difficult to pull back against it.
We play to the most sensitive in our societies under the guise of ‘kindness’ without realising the most sensitive in our world are usually pathological in their psychology.
The original post is the victim of what is called brigading. A group of activists in the WoW community have ganged up and conspired to mass report the post so that it will no longer be visible to the community. Mass reporting still happens on X formerly Twitter. This is a clear case of censorship. They do not want anyone to discuss this idea. I believe the post has no errors, and nothing in the post constitutes trolling.
Conclusion
If Blizzard wants to remove traditional sex/gender designations from WoW retail, they have every right to. I find WoW retail to be a distasteful childlishy woke MMORPG experience that I want no part of. However, WoW Classic is predicated on the fact that they are selling nostalgia and offering players a chance to relive the WoW experience when it was released in 2004. Removing sex/gender from the character creation process and replacing it with body type needlessly degrades that experience.
As DEI and other manifestations of gratuitous wokeness are relegated to the garbage heap of history, major video game studios will rethink the body type fiasco and return to norms that are consistent with RPG history and the expectations that players have to play video games free from propaganda and indoctrination.
–Wolfshead
