Even more in World of Warcraft is being renamed. Even an old city must get a new name.
In recent weeks and months, much has revolved around the major sexism and discrimination scandal at Activision Blizzard. Some current and former Blizzard employees have been accused of sexual misconduct.
An employee, Alex Afrasiabi, was already fired from Blizzard in 2020 due to these incidents. Many references to Afrasiabi in World of Warcraft have since been removed – but it goes further. It was announced that even a city is to be renamed.
Which city is in question? This was not clearly stated in the article from the Washington Post. Most likely, it is the city of Mac’Aree on Argus, a region of the Legion expansion. The city is located on Argus and was once a metropolis of the Eredar.
In WoW, it is “only” a quest area now, even though the former splendor of the city can still be seen. Mac’Aree was apparently named after the developer McCree.
What is the problem? One difficulty may be that Mac’Aree not only appears as a name on the map but also in spoken words during the long Legion quest chain on Argus. It seems to be quite a large effort to re-voice all the sentences – especially with content that has not been current for almost 4 years. Therefore, it is suspected that Blizzard will simply change the spelling of the location so that the similarity to McCree is not as noticeable.
The developer responsible for the Voice Over had already confirmed on Twitter that she made sure at that time that the speakers pronounced the name “Muh-KAH-Ree” because she thought it was silly that the capital of Argus was named after a developer.
What else will change? Aside from that, there are likely also some other NPCs in World of Warcraft that remind of developers and especially Afrasiabi. These NPCs are also to be renamed in the future. It seems that Blizzard will be much more cautious in the future regarding the immortalization of developers in games.
We will probably see these and other changes in Patch 9.1.5, which should soon be available on the PTR.
What do you think about this? Is it good that Blizzard is getting rid of these references? Or does it not make sense and is a wrong signal?
