A hotfix has removed all references to former Blizzard employee Alex Afrasiabi. With this, World of Warcraft responds to the scandal.
In recent days, a lot has been happening around Activision Blizzard and World of Warcraft – but unfortunately, not much that is pleasant. Currently, a major sexism and discrimination scandal is the number one topic on social media. The developer team of World of Warcraft has taken a first step with a hotfix – all content that could point to a specific developer has been removed.
What was the problem? Former developer Alex Afrasiabi is at the center of the sexism and discrimination scandal at Blizzard. Many women are coming forward, reporting how they were harassed or bullied by Afrasiabi. Therefore, Blizzard employees and many players in the community find it terrible that there are so many references to Afrasiabi in World of Warcraft – Retail and Classic.
In the past few days, players often gathered to continuously kill Field Marshal Afrasiabi in Stormwind as a sign of protest.
What has been done? With a hotfix, Blizzard has renamed numerous NPCs, quests, and items that were a direct reference to Alex Afrasiabi or his nicknames in the game. Some examples have been compiled on wowhead.
So far, players have found changes to the following content:
- Field Marshal Afrasiabi has been renamed to Field Marshal Stonebridge.
- “Fras Siabi’s Axe” from Duskwood is now “Grimm’s Cigar Cutter”
- All references to Fras Siabi have been removed from the dungeon Stratholme and now refer to “Ezra Grimm”.
- All items with Foror in the name have been renamed. “Foror’s Compendium of Dragon Slaying” is now “Nostro’s Compendium of Dragon Slaying”.
- Lord Afrastrasz in the Wyrmrest Temple is now Lord Devrestrasz.
- Pathstalker Kariel is now Pathstalker Avokor.
Surely, this is just part of the changes that Blizzard has made. Over the nearly 16 years, developers have repeatedly immortalized themselves in various ways within the game. So it can be assumed that there have been many other renaming changes.
By the way, the renaming has probably not been completed in all languages yet. It may take a few more days for the adjustments to be fully active in the localized versions.
What do you think of this step? A right decision given all the incidents? Or should a developer and their characters not be retroactively removed from the game?
