For a brief moment, the Banshee Queen was once again deeply insulted in World of Warcraft. But Blizzard quickly fixed it – and is once again causing discussions.
A few years ago, when the major sexism scandal at Blizzard became public, particularly the developers of World of Warcraft took many consequences. Not only were there changes at the workplace, but Azeroth also changed. Some suggestive images were replaced (“Women to Fruit”), many long-standing jokes of the player characters were removed, and some emotes were altered. Additionally, problematic language was removed in some cases.
One of these cases was the term “Bitch” for Sylvanas from a Cataclysm quest. Now that very voice line has returned – albeit for just a brief moment.
What kind of voice line is that? In a questline in Silverpine Forest, it is about the Forsaken being controlled more strictly under Sylvanas’ leadership. Garrosh is the leader of the Horde and sends one of his generals to oversee the conquest of Gilneas and ensure that the plague is not used. Sylvanas, on the other hand, uses her Val’kyr to kill Gilneans and remaining humans first and then resurrect them for the Forsaken. Garrosh is present at such a resurrection and asks Sylvanas what the difference is between her and the Lich King.
Sylvanas casually replies: “Isn’t that obvious? I serve the Horde.”
Garrosh is enraged by this statement and responds in the original English “Watch your clever mouth, bitch.” which translates roughly to German as “Hüte deine spitze Zunge, Schlampe,” although the actual German translation was somewhat milder even back then.
The word “Bitch” was removed in 2020 and that led to major discussions back then.
Why is the voice line back now? For several weeks now, the beta of “WoW Cataclysm Classic” has been running, and it is exactly there that the voice line was included again. Many players reported, somewhat satisfied, “Sylvanas really is a Bitch,” when they rediscovered this line while questing in Silverpine Forest.
In a hotfix, this voice line was adjusted a few weeks later and changed to the state of WoW Dragonflight, thus without the “Bitch” addition.
Why did the voice line come back at all? Although Blizzard didn’t provide a reason for it, it is likely that they were simply working with an old version of Cataclysm and modified it for “WoW Classic.” Since the adjustment of the voice line only happened in “Shadowlands,” it would be logical that it still resided in the old Cataclysm client.
So it was very likely not an intentional act, but simply an oversight to adjust the voice line in the “new old” version as well.
Nevertheless, the brief return of the “Bitch” comment has sparked many discussions on Twitter/X and once again fueled a conflict that had actually been settled about 4 years ago.
At least Blizzard now admits mistakes more often – but they still seem to stand by the removal of this voice line.
