Late last week, Blizzard confirmed that World of Warcraft: Forever beta players with usernames deemed inappropriate would have to change them. Those engaged in the most “extreme violations” of the company’s code-of-conduct guidelines would be banned from the beta altogether. One 20-year veteran of Blizzard has now been forced to delete his X account after calling on some WoW players to be “better humans” when joining the beta.
“Well honestly I should know better than to have waded into that swamp, that’s on me,” senior producer Tom Ellis wrote on X on September 25, a day after Blizzard had threatened account bans for inappropriate usernames. “Since we’re here now I’ll give one more update on this topic before getting back to actually working on launch instead of reading everyone’s hilarious variations of the N word.”
Some players were claiming to have been forced to change their usernames, or to have been banned from the beta, by overzealous moderators, but Ellis said Blizzard was simply enforcing the existing ban lists from legacy WoW. The company was not going “extra woke,” but simply doing due diligence following the rollout of a new feature that allowed players to have first and last names in the MMO. Only 0.18 percent of players had been removed from the beta over the moderation policies as of last Friday.
“Anyone saying they were removed from beta for naming their character ‘Billy Mcsuckmahballz’ is telling little white lies,” Eliis wrote in a follow-up post. “That character likely just received a forced name change. Multiple unfortunate humans read through every name that was removed from beta today. If you’re genuinely confused, remember that it’s our database, we can see every character you’ve created, not just the one you’re playing.”
He continued, “I read the list. No sympathy. Be a better human next time.”
The online hordes did not take kindly to the Blizzard veteran’s plea for players to not be assholes. Many users, at least on social media, have now been trying to get Ellis fired. While he went on to delete his X account, that hasn’t stopped toxic fans from trying to dig up old tweets that can be used to paint him in a bad light and tagging Xbox’s CEO.
“Ngl I would prefer if we had more edgy, weird devs like how Tom used to be,” posted Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt, who has been building a massive guild in the beta just a month after defending state violence against children. “Guys like that built all of our favorite games. I don’t appreciate, however, being told to be a ‘better human’ by someone who had a pedobear screensaver. It’s fake and patronizing.”
There are now anecdotal reports that at least some players who were previously banned from the beta have been let back in, with Blizzard saying that forced name changes should have been issued instead of bans. It’s unclear if the company is modifying its existing enforcement policy or if this is just the normal appeals process at work.
Plenty of WoW players have found the strict crackdown refreshing. “I am so glad that they are just starting the process to purge those who abused the name and be removed from beta,” reads one popular Blizzard forum post. “Took them long enough to respond to the call to action against these hateful individuals and offenders.”
A player on the subreddit echoed that sentiment. “The WoW community is often such a disgusting space, and I’m not shocked at all that the devs distance themselves from it,” they wrote. “We need to support them when they open channels to us and not use that open channel as grounds to attempt to destroy their lives over a video game.”
