'Will You Fist Me?': World of Warcraft Players Respond to New Chat Abuse Policy

This news may mean something to people who play the game, but the rest of us are left to wonder what's gone wrong in the world of elves and orcs. Thankfully, you have me, a faithful WoW journalist reporting on the ground from Azeroth, the primary world for most WoW action. This week I embedded myself in the game to observe the culture for myself, to hear firsthand what locals think about this upcoming penalty and the problem it will address.

Stormwind City is probably the most highly populated capital in all of Azeroth. I fit in perfectly as a Draenei—a race of cloven-footed babes with horns. The other species that inhabit Stormwind include humans, night elves, and dwarves, but there's something special about being Draenei here. My colleague Callie once investigated the sex culture of WoW, and she warned me that the Draenei arouse sexual interest simply because they're part animal.

I passed through the canals, a tunnel system that connects the different city sectors, and entered the Dwarven District. There were people running past me, silently riding wolves and stallions. A side street led me to an inn, where I thought I might find some locals for conversation.

"Ellexisetta Shoves her whole two fist in her *!@#$%"

The notification appeared in my chat box as I entered the inn. Another user shooed Ellexisetta away, to which Ellexisetta replied, "Smell my fingers." She is a red-skinned, green-eyed Draenei with a black bob and black, elbow-length gloves. I found her dancing in the center of the inn, her hands raised into the air as she moved her body in seductive figure eights. "I feel uncomfortable," I said, and Ellexisetta yelled "hYE," and ran outside.

As another user mourned, "It's all about Pokémon Go now," I walked through the inn. The main floor was small; there were only four visitors, including me. In the back corner of the room I noticed a stairwell. Upstairs I found a bedroom with a canopy bed, and when I turned around Ellexisetta was standing behind me, in the center of the open doorway.

"Will you fist me?" she asked, walking closer. I ran.

Downstairs, Crystaltank was dancing with Rarejewels. They're both sexy Draeneis who wear bikinis. "Sho cute," Rarejewels said to her friend.

"I didn't think it was cute that I was sexually assaulted," I interjected.

"This is Moonguard lovey—people will say ^&*! to get on your nerves or creep you out," said Willférål, a hot male night elf. Moon Guard is one of many servers on which WoW can be played, and it's a role-playing server, which means people here are more likely to speak as their characters and not their real selves.

"You left me the other day with a creep," said Rarejewels, dancing toward us. I asked the group where I should look for more deviant WoW behavior, and they told me I should head to an area called Pornshire.

"When I first entered Pornshire I didn't expect naked people," WIllférål responded, laughing at his own naiveté.

The sexual debauchery in WoW is well established. Pornshire is a colloquial term for Goldshire, a small outpost just outside Stormwind City, and the inn there, the Lion's Pride, is host to an inordinate amount of filthy erotic role-playing (ERP). That's fine when it's consensual, but perhaps the unwanted behavior here, and elsewhere in WoW, has inspired the upcoming silencing patch.

"Worgens will pay for you to ERP with them and then piss on your afterwards once the ERP is done," Willférål warned me. (Worgens are human-like wolves.) I asked the group what else I'd find in the Pornshire, and Crystaltank gyrated against me. "Just dancing nuffin else," she said.

Now, all I had to do was find the place. I left my sister Draenei and went to the trade district of Stormwind City. It was packed with people. After asking for someone to show me the way to the Goldshire, a human man offered to help. "Follow me," he said. Once we were outside the city, he told me to keep following a dirt path until I arrived. I turned around to thank him, but he was already walking away backward, looking right at me. Eventually he disappeared.

The inn at Goldshire was as perverted as I'd been told. After observing the wanton lust for a while, I walked over to a night elf who appeared to be keeping to herself in the corner. She agreed to talk with me privately, and we went into the woods to be alone. Kchox told me that it is common for people to beg for sex, to get in fights, and spam other users with messages without their consent. Once the silencing penalties are implemented, users who are reported for abusive behavior will be investigated by WoW authorities, and if they're found guilty they'll be temporarily disabled from speaking virtually anywhere in the game.

When I told her about the new silencing update, Kchox said, "Thank god. Would be pretty damn great." In her opinion, the feature will rid WoW of spammers and "just people being dicks in general." According to Kchox, this is a serious problem. People harass other players who ask to be left alone, "all the time," she said, and "they go for anyone who tells them to stop."

Then Kchox was gone, and I was back in the Goldshire. "NEED A LESBIAN LOOKING FOR THE PUSS PUSS COME GET IT BABES," yelled Whydoidodis. Just then, a male human warlock named Rupnik ran towards me. I waved to him, and he followed me into the woods.

Rupnik believes the hot sex that is rampant in the Goldshire is fine because life is short, and he suggested that the upcoming update will be most effective at stopping "spammers," people who flood chat channels with their solicitations or rage. "The visitors to the inn, in general, have no control over their desires," he said, and then ran away. He said he didn't want his female companion to suspect anything "strange" was going on between us.

I had one more player open up to me in the woods. He was a human, Jaraki. "There is physical abuse and mental abuse," Jaraki told me, attributing this to WoW being a place "where everyone thinks they are super strong and they can get away with it."

"To be honest, I have done it," Jaraki admitted. He told me about a friend he used to have: Jaraki wanted their relationship to be romantic, but she didn't. He kept trying to convince her despite the fact that she asked him not to, so she unfriended him. "I thought I could explain," Jaraki said. "Now I realize only time can heal."

Jaraki doesn't typically play on Moon Guard. Like many users from other servers, he was just visiting to witness the raucous atmosphere in Moon Guard's Goldshire. In his primary realm, he is actually dealing with a user whose behavior is abusive himself. "I reported him," Jaraki said. "Many of the people at [the Goldshire in my realm] are annoyed at him." Unfortunately, he told me, there is little recourse right now—the abuser's behavior persists despite having been reported.

Jaraki hopes the new silencing feature will help him, but he thinks it will be primarily "beneficial for female [characters]. They are the target for sexual abuse," he said—and sexual abuse, according to him, is one of the most prevalent forms of harassment in the game. Sometimes, he told me, that abuse can actually become dangerous in the real world. According to Jaraki, there have been instances where women on WoW have been pressured to give their phone numbers to male players, who've then exploited their information. "Sometimes these stalkers are harmful," he said.

I left Jaraki with a graceful bow. He ran back inside the inn, and I took the path back toward Stormwind City. As I was walking through the grassy streets in the mage district, I overheard a conversation between two nearby night elves. "When silence comes out this chat is goin' to be super quiet," one said.

"Moonguard will die," said the other.