World of Warcraft players have gone viral in some pretty weird ways in the past, but a Chinese gamer may have created a new piece of Chinese internet history recently when he told guild members that he had had one night stands with several of the guild’s female members “for the Alliance.” His chat with another WoW player about his exploits has since been posted to a number of gaming sites (including QQ Games) and has attracted hundreds of comments. After an extended discussion, the other player asks “So you switched servers and came into our guild just to do our girls?” and the first gamer responds simply: “For the Alliance.”
Some netizens are clearly amused. “For the Alliance, I’ve got to upvote that,” wrote one commenter in Anhui province. “Fighting for the Alliance both online and off; all Alliance players should support this.” “Wow, what a badass response,” wrote another commenter in Zhengzhou.
It’s not all a joke though, as the chat and comments threads have both raised a lot of questions about the way women are viewed and treated online. The player who slept with the girls, for example, argued that everyone involved was an adult, and there was no reason to publicize or make a big deal out of his sex life or the sex lives of these female players. But the guild member he was chatting with berated him for refusing to “take responsibility” for his actions.
Some of the comments on the story are also blatantly sexist. One Guangxi commenter wrote, “I’d dare to say that any girl who plays games all day is a mess and smokes cigarettes. If you treat girls in the game as prostitutes it’s fine, but don’t take them at face value; they act very innocent in the chat but their professional skills under the sheets are world-class.”
Luckily, it seems that the identity of the girls the WoW player slept with — if his story is actually true — haven’t been revealed by him or by the angry guild member he was chatting with. In the midst of this strange story, that certainly seems to be the bright spot, especially since there’s no real evidence the story is even true. But the online controversy over it has brought the issue of sexism in China’s gaming community boiling to the surface once again, and the picture isn’t pretty.
Sexism in the Chinese gaming community is an issue we will be looking into in more depth over the next few weeks. If you have a relevant story to share, or if you’re a female Chinese gamer and would like to offer your opinion, please leave a comment or get in touch with us!
(via QQ Games, image source)
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