Being called 'gorgeous' offensive?

[Ellaran]

Seems like some people have to take offense at everything. And there's nothing you can do or say to not get them angry. Compliment them? "STOP JUDGING ME BY WHAT I LOOK LIKE/SAY/DO!!". Don't say anything? "WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?!". It's like the question "Does this make my butt look big?", no matter what you say you're going to upset the person because either they think you're lying or they feel awful about themselves.

Just go through life doing what's best, and watch out for the morons.

[Lisaara]

"Sexy and you know it!" *does the dance*

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle yeah, Yeah!

OMFG! This totally made my night! XD

[TygerDarkstorm]

Hello, friend!
You move really well, don't ya? I bet you can't keep the men off of you... or maybe you can! Ha!
Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!

See, this person's "fix" for Ji's line came off far more creepy to me than Ji just openly saying my character is beautiful. My initial thought was "What the F-- do you mean 'move really well'?"

Ji's original line I can perceive much more as a really badly timed joke or something. But "move really well?" That conjures up a lot of different things, and not all of them PG. It makes me wonder *why* Ji knows what I'm doing in my spare time (keeping in mind that this line would be uttered the first time you meet the character). At least I know what he means by saying I'm beautiful.

[Miacoda]

Honestly, when I read that on my female pandaren, I just laughed. I didn't expect it and it made me smile. He seems like he was just complimenting and then joking about it. That's just how Ji is, it seems.

[Lisaara]

Hello, friend!
You move really well, don't ya? I bet you can't keep the men off of you... or maybe you can! Ha!
Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!

See, this person's "fix" for Ji's line came off far more creepy to me than Ji just openly saying my character is beautiful. My initial thought was "What the F-- do you mean 'move really well'?"

Ji's original line I can perceive much more as a really badly timed joke or something. But "move really well?" That conjures up a lot of different things, and not all of them PG. It makes me wonder *why* Ji knows what I'm doing in my spare time (keeping in mind that this line would be uttered the first time you meet the character). At least I know what he means by saying I'm beautiful.

Yeah the remake creeped me out more than the original....Rofl...

And theres whines and complaints about Garrosh calling Sylvannas a bitch(I think she takes that as a compliment)

[pengupuff]

It seems to me like the OP was searching for something that she could perceive as being "offensive." It's entirely possible that she is insecure and maybe wanted some attention. I can't imagine a normal human being caring enough to start a campaign over some goofy comment made by a cartoon panda about an IMAGINARY AVATAR in a VIDEO GAME that in NO WAY corresponds to any LIVING HUMAN BEING.

God forbid Blizzard try to implement a memorable character that has a twinge of personality.

It would be one thing if the game did a background search using her IP address and programmed the panda to say, "Wow, Jenny McPerson, your Facebook profile pic sure is hot! And it looks like you just got out of a relationship. Let's be pals!" But no, an NPC off-handedly called her cartoon panda beautiful, so clearly Blizzard is full of close-minded chauvinist pigs with a sexist agenda, and what better way to oppress women than to include blatantly offensive text in a fantasy MMO?

And don't even get me started on "Drunken Haze" being changed to "Dizzying Haze."

[Chimera]

YES Thats another thing! Garrosh calls Sylvanas a bitch OPENLY! Like, WE ALL HEAR IT!! Not just those who are interacting with Garrosh and Sylvanas, anyone who is in the area that can see whats going on hears it whether they want to or not!

But "move really well?" That conjures up a lot of different things, and not all of them PG.

i think horrible things when i put that whole context together..

[Sasrei]

I think I am finally at a loss for words and its hard but really people find it offensive when someone calls them beautiful? Really? Seriously? I mean its *slap* in your face but he isnt saying anything rudely inappropiate besides just the initial "hit on".

But the OP found it creepy to be called beautiful and not strong, um newsflash some dude walks up to me and says "hey, I think your really strong" there would actually probably be the same dumbfonded look on my face as there is now.

Honestly some wow players dont get out so its nice to get hit on every now and then! Come on give the basement dwellers a bone!!

[TygerDarkstorm]

YES Thats another thing! Garrosh calls Sylvanas a bitch OPENLY! Like, WE ALL HEAR IT!! Not just those who are interacting with Garrosh and Sylvanas, anyone who is in the area that can see whats going on hears it whether they want to or not!

Being the Sylvanas fangirl that I am (and not just as of Cataclysm either; I've read all of her backstory and whatnot), I loved that bit of questing in Silverpine. I remember seeing it datamined for the beta, listening to it on youtube, and then experiencing it for myself and giggling. Suffice it to say that despite my inability to actually play a Forsaken for whatever reason, I utterly adore and admire Sylvanas and the newly revamped Silverpine quest lines have been the first time I genuinely devoured every little bit of quest text and was glued to my chair for the storyline.

I think Blizzard should be edgy. Sure some of the lines could probably be a little more creative, but if they use too many big and obscure words they risk losing a portion of their audience from everyone going "huh?" Plus, that line completely served its purpose. Garrosh didn't like that Sylvanas was giving him a verbal beat down so he gave her a verbal pimp slap. xD

But "move really well?" That conjures up a lot of different things, and not all of them PG.

i think horrible things when i put that whole context together..

I am, admittedly, not the most clean-minded of people which is why that person's "fix" stands out as being far more creepy than the one Blizzard gave to Ji because the fix made me actually start to think about what was being said and the context it was being issued in.

[cowmuflage]

Pandas will be pandas.

[Shade]

I will say I haven't been in the beta, not sure yet if I will once I get my invite, but I did watch Jesse and Crendors's streams of the starting zone play. When they got to this part and Jesse read it aloud, as he was playing a female, it did catch me off guard, but only because I don't normally read the quests (bad Shade!) and it was just a little more then I thought I would have seen. Not that I think being called beautiful is a bad thing, but just because I didn't expect it in a game I'd not noticed it in before.

Was I offended by it? Of course not, walk through town around here and you get much, much worse worse. Was I surprised by it? A little, was more startled then anything else. It threw me off the rhythm of the exploring going on.

I think the entire debate on the boards was more then a little much, and honestly stopped reading after the first and the last page. Way too much drama and people throwing around their opinions, determined to be right and usually mocking others who disagree. Bah too much drama for me.

And I know I'm just as bad, posting my thoughts on it too, but oh well!

[Lupis]

I was certainly surprised, but I just thought it was funny. Look, Ji thinks girls are pretty. …Woop dee doo. He's not the first one! He just appreciates beauty. He's allowed. I thought he was creepy at first, but he became more of a "best friend/big brother" sort of guy. Big, happy, boisterous, not thinking of details. He thinks you're pretty. He wants a hug from his new pretty friend. He now wants to fight monkey people.

But honestly, people will want to fight about EVERYTHING. The WoW forums are a bit like Tumblr in that way- never bring up anything even slightly offensive to ANYONE. You'll be skinned alive. Unless it's related to fandoms, then it's all cool.

[Lisaara]

I'm just really hoping Blizz won't change his text cause of a few overly sensitive people.

[Mania]

Keep it nice in this thread or I'm going to go off on you. And I can do that now since I'm not a Moderator - just the bipolar admin. And by keep it nice, I mean don't assume that insecure people are looking for a reason to be offended and just want to cause a fight. That may be true for some people, but it's not true for everyone with thoughts on this topic.

And Xakaal, if you use the word retarded again here I will ban you. You know better.

Playing through the panda newbie experience, I specifically noticed this NPC text. It stood out to me, mostly because I have seen how Blizzard has handled similar things in the past. I went back and played through to that point with a male character because I wanted to see what the NPC said to males. I was very disappointed to see that his in-character over-friendliness was ruined by the completely different contextual messages in his speech. And yes, I think in words like that when I'm reading quest text.

You don't think the messages are contextually different? Then why, if the NPC said something the same thing to male characters, would he be openly gay? Why would one message be a statement about his sexuality when the other is an over-friendly comment of your abilities as a warrior?

There is a reason I don't have any goblin hunters - because I refuse to play through the goblin newbie experience again. A large part of that is how Blizzard handled the same situation there, where the text that a female character gets is contextually very different from the text that a male character gets. (And never mind that the text makes no sense at all if your character happens to be gay.)

Yes, people sometimes act like this in real life. That's neither here nor there. (Remember when female characters took a stat penalty in RPGs? I do.) But in this case specifically, the gender-based difference in NPC text actually detracts from the main goal - making this NPC seem goofily overly-friendly.

[cowmuflage]

But isnt it in the eye of the beholder how he comes off as? To one person he might be just be goofily overly-friendly the next highy offencive. To me it does not detract from the goal of making him goofily overly-friendly.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I guess I don't understand why people would get up in arms over this one NPC. There are a *lot* of NPCs in the game that are much, much more flirtatious to our characters than this one panda who does it in friendly jest one or two times. We also are witness to some pretty horrible stuff within the game (genocide against the human race by Sylvanas, slavery from the goblins and other races, racism from Garrosh, etc). I just feel like if you're going to get upset at one tiny little aspect, then you should be upset with all of the potentially offensive aspects of the game.

A lot of times it's a good thing that a character evokes emotion from you; it gets you thinking and reacting which is better than a character who's stale that no one cares about (*cough* Lor'themar *cough* *cough*).

Could Blizzard have given him a better opening line? Yeah, probably.
Is his opening statement overtly sexual? Depends on who's reading it. I personally think no because I've seen NPCs who are way worse (a certain female boss in Black Temple comes to mind)
If there's one thing I agreed with out of that big thread on the official beta forums it's that Blizzard did create an awkward situation. He either should have a slightly more neutral stance, or he should have been played up on being a flirtatious male and made over the top.

And by the way, it's just as offensive, imo, to "compliment" a guy on his strength if he's not a man that is particularly strong. He might be a scrawny little guy or new to training, or perhaps never took up the fighter's mantle. When someone says a man "looks strong" it can be connotated in a similar fashion to telling a woman she's pretty.

I'm also a little confused by the whole matter. Here we finally have a more curvy, rotund woman being told she's beautiful. Notably the other not so petite with large boobs and ass females (dwarves and tauren and female worgen to some extent) are typically considered ugly by a decent sized portion of the population. Objectifying women (and even men) is not something new to the World of Warcraft nor to the sort of fantasy time frame/era that it portrays. I don't think that we as women need to tolerate blatant sexism, but this doesn't scream as something sexist to me, especially not knowing how the character acts further in the quest lines (at least going off of what I've read since I can't play it myself).

*Note: The word "you" in this post is used as a generalization and not directed at anyone individual. And in case it's not clear, I don't want people to think I think you can't be offended by Ji. By all means feel free to as that's your opinion, I'm just trying to understand things better and point out what I feel are inconsistencies.

[Teigan]

Granted, its an imaginary panda. But that line does make me slightly queasy. I don't like the thought of men on my panda OR me. There are better ways to make a memorable NPC with character than to make him a creeper.

[cowmuflage]

It's funny there would not be such a bug fuss if it was a female calling someone beautiful. You know it to be true. *shrug* It's the way things are. For example no one would be calling them a "creeper" but "cute" or "nice" instead.

[Malackai]

I really don't get all the rage about an NPC tbh.

sure if someone would say it to me irl I would be taken aback a little. But I would take the "beautiful" comment as a compliment.

I personally think if your really getting upset about something like this you need to take a deep breath and maybe step away from the computer for a moment.

[Sherbe]

I am not in Beta so I don't have access to other quest-texts from Ji, but I think that is just the sort of compliment that makes people stop and go "huh, I think this male panda likes my fempanda".

Gorgeous is a lot more weighty word than beautiful, mind you. I like it, I like the word a lot, but I know that plenty of people get uncomfortable even when flirting is at the compliment-stage and not suggestion-stage. I would too in real life I think, but this is Pandaria. I think it makes sense that Ji would like my panda and frankly I'd be pleased to get someone compliment the good hour I'd use in character creation.... >.<