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‘BlizzCon Lesbian’ Thanks Supporters, Detractors For Civil Discussion

She is known primarily as The Blizzcon Lesbian, but her character’s name is Bree, and she has been very courageous for asking about the fact that World of Warcraft has no LGBT characters in major places in the Lore. She recently thanked everyone who has been supporting her, which have been a lot of the WoW gaming community, and even had a post up on the WoW Community site.

In the statement on the WoW Community site, she stated that:

First, I would like to state that my question may not have been worded as properly as I had hoped. When you get up in front of that camera, and the lights are in your face and you realize that you have hundreds of thousands of people watching you, your thought processes tend to be a little muddled What I wanted to ask was if there would ever be an LGBT character in any Blizzard property or media. I don’t necessarily want NPCs running around the game proclaiming their sexuality. I would personally be content with a character in a novel who just happens to be a lesbian (or gay, bisexual or transgender) or even another franchise entirely.

That said, if they did decide to make this take place within the context of the game universe, I feel that it would bolster support from the LGBT gaming community (Yes, there is one) and increase the enjoyment we get out of the game. When I play a game where my character is able to interact with the world in a fashion I choose, it makes it much more enjoyable. For example, Bioware’s Mass Effect series has handled this very well, and I find a huge part of my enjoyment of those games is playing around with the relationships.

This is also important because the upcoming BioWare game Star Wars: The Old Republic will include LGBT romance options between the player’s character and her/his future companions.

Bree also stated that

I also asked this question to kind of show Blizzard that they have an LGBT fanbase, and while it may not be as huge as the majority, we are still out there and we do love Blizzard games! I feel that this kind of character is something we in the LGBT gaming community would enjoy.

Blizzard has a history of making quality games, which is why they have stayed on the top of the heap for so long. Blizzard and BioWare are the two titans of gaming right now with many of their competitors not fairing quite so well.

Bree also wrote that:

One action I did not expect was the support I have recieved from my fellow gamers. I have recieved numerous in game tells and in game mail from players who have thanked me for bringing up this question, as they feel it was a direly needed one. I have tried to whisper each and every one of these people across multiple servers to say thank you, but I could not reach some of them. Therefore I would just like to say here on the WOW forums, thank you for your support.

She has also gotten support from off the forums as well. I happen to also be a WoW gamer, and that includes having a rotating cadre of Horde main characters. Bree was even nice enough to note that we, along with democraticunderground.com, mentioned her in our blog posts. She wrote “Again I would like to thank those bloggers and forum posters who took to discussing this question.”

She went on to thank those who disagreed with her for being civil about the discussion as well as saying that she “would like to again thank Chris Metzen for his answer to my question, and Blizzard for making the industries best games. I’ll be playing your games for years to come!”

It is important for Metzen and the Blizzard crew to keep in mind that there are a lot of women and LGBT gamers out there, including myself, and that having representation in a game could be helpful to their retention of players. At this point, the number of people who are going to leave the game over LGBT representation are likely smaller than those who will drift off without it. Still, it is their calculation to make.