wow Mac'Aree Renamed to Eredath on 9.1.5 PTR

[Starym 3,779]

 

The renaming continues on the 9.1.5 PTR, and after the two achievements that were generally considered potentially offensive were changed in the last build, today's saw a significantly bigger one.

We have the biggest name change of them all so far, as an entire zone has been renamed, as Legion/Argus' MacAree, named after former WoW developer Jesse McCree, has been renamed to Eredath.

  

The name fits thematically, as the Eredar were the original Draenor race, however this defies speculations that only the pronounciation of Mac'Aree would be changed, so as to keep the cutscene dialogue the same. This comes after a larger removal of developer reference from Blizzard games, including McCree from Overwatch, and many others in WoW following the recent Activision Blizzard lawsuit fallout.

[Zvezdichko 2]

I'm really not a fan of cancel culture. I understand that they're trying to create a more inclusive and friendly environment within the studio, but this shouldn't come at the expense of the players and lore fans who got accustomed to the names in Warcraft and already have hard time to immerse themselves into the lore due to the bad quality of the storyline. And now this... 

[MeMy10 26]

58 minutes ago, Zvezdichko said:

I'm really not a fan of cancel culture. I understand that they're trying to create a more inclusive and friendly environment within the studio, but this shouldn't come at the expense of the players and lore fans who got accustomed to the names in Warcraft and already have hard time to immerse themselves into the lore due to the bad quality of the storyline. And now this... 

Totally agree, and just like how some of the story in the current expac is a bit meh.. The new name for the an old zone does not really sound right either.. The irony is in their rush to purge all they deem bad, it is probably too little to late as the damage has been done, and most people have pretty much moved on to other games..

[Mournrethar 15]

You SHOULD NEVER name any kind of item or npc or zone as any reference to any of your developer or employee or anyone like that..
Not because of what happened and that they are canceling and deleting stuff just to, idk, pat themselfs on the back.. no..
Just because it's stupid and non-cretive and pretty much self-jerking and being like "Look, I am so cool I have this and that named after me.." 

Just how deep in their asses they have been for this whole time..
 

[BobTheHuman 72]

God *filtered*, they sure were in a rush to change that, because Eredath is just as creative as Pandaria is. More thought went into what they should have for lunch that day than making this $hit up.

[KingRhiot 1]

51 minutes ago, Mournrethar said:

You SHOULD NEVER name any kind of item or npc or zone as any reference to any of your developer or employee or anyone like that..
Not because of what happened and that they are canceling and deleting stuff just to, idk, pat themselfs on the back.. no..
Just because it's stupid and non-cretive and pretty much self-jerking and being like "Look, I am so cool I have this and that named after me.." 

Just how deep in their asses they have been for this whole time..
 

To be fair, though...Jesse McCree is a dopeass name for a cowboy.

Edited September 9, 2021 by KingRhiot

[SidonisAntares 288]

I'm going to be lazy and quote myself from the last time regarding changing in game references:

Quote

Does this really fix anything? No, of course not.

Should they be allowed to remain in game content as an honor to their work on it? Also no.

I don't know about all the troll posters here, but I'm glad that sexual predators won't share the same virtual space as Amara Strande and Ezra Chatterton. Besides, people like this have huge egos, and chipping away at that in any way possible is worth doing.

As far as the creativity in the new names? If you really want to split hairs, there's not a lot of creativity in a lot of the game's naming structure to begin with. Oooo, Westfall, the western province of Stormwind. Duskwood, trees so dense it always seems like nightfall even during the day.

[Dicebar 23]

Quote

As far as the creativity in the new names? If you really want to split hairs, there's not a lot of creativity in a lot of the game's naming structure to begin with. Oooo, Westfall, the western province of Stormwind. Duskwood, trees so dense it always seems like nightfall even during the day.

It's like they intentionally picked names that are easy to recognize.

I think it's good that they're making the effort, though. I'm also dying to find out what The Cowboy will be called in Overwatch.

[Arcling 877]

7 hours ago, Starym said:

the original Draenor race

I think you meant Argus. 😉 While name is somewhat fitting, I wonder how they are going to change dialogue? Or will it remain the same? Perhaps they could mute the name, but it's still going to sound weird.

7 hours ago, Zvezdichko said:

I'm really not a fan of cancel culture. 

Contrary to a popular belief, there is no such thing. Company just doesn't want to be associated with someone who would damage (or in this case, would keep damaging) their image, so they don't want to keep things named after him.

[Zvezdichko 2]

55 minutes ago, Arcling said:

Contrary to a popular belief, there is no such thing. Company just doesn't want to be associated with someone who would damage (or in this case, would keep damaging) their image, so they don't want to keep things named after him.

 

If you destroy a piece of art, it IS cancel culture. What disgusts me is destruction of artistic creation, or altering it so it can fit within the current political or cultural climate. This is as bad as burning books during the Middle ages. The difference is that most of the art these days is digital so you don't burn the physical medium. You just hit the "delete" button. It's the same.

Think about Picasso. Polyamorous. Egoistical. Narcissistic. A horrible human being. Yet we are still interested in his art. The truth is that art is being created by flawed humans. Some of them are so horrible I'd never like to meet them. There's a reason people say "never meet your heroes". Blizzard is a flawed company employing flawed humans. Yet I'd prefer they won't bother me with their internal problems and rather solve them internally, so I can enjoy the games without thinking too deeply about what's going on there. 

[SidonisAntares 288]

3 minutes ago, Zvezdichko said:

so I can enjoy the games without thinking too deeply about what's going on there. 

Then what does it matter if they change the name of an irrelevant zone?

Also, cancel culture is just a buzzword to rile up people that watch FauxNews or worse. We've been removing things that are offensive for decades. Watch Home Alone 2 on a broadcast network this year and see if you can spot the Twin Towers.

[Calorat 78]

to the people who were affected by these ex-Blizzard employees, I bet the names Blizzard and World of Warcraft bother them a lot more  and are more offensive to them than the names of zones and NPC's in the game, But changing those names would actually require doing something that matters and aren't just rearranging chairs on the Titanic.

[Zvezdichko 2]

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

Also, cancel culture is just a buzzword to rile up people that watch FauxNews or worse. We've been removing things that are offensive for decades. Watch Home Alone 2 on a broadcast network this year and see if you can spot the Twin Towers.

 

Just to point out, not all of the players are American. A lot of us (myself, Eastern European), just don't want to be dragged into American politics and American problems. Frankly, I don't care about BLM, Donald Trump, Fox News etc... What I want is to pay for a product, and to receive a product. I've got accustomed to a certain Universe and to certain names in Warcraft lore. What Blizzard currently does is erasing those names even from World of Warcraft - Classic. Why should it be so hard to play the pristine World of Warcraft? Right now the only way to experience the pure Classic experience is by playing on private server. Why should it be so? 

Oh, by the way - I have the old recordings of Home Alone. And I watch the old movie, the uncensored version. 

[Badadada 184]

3 hours ago, Arcling said:

Contrary to a popular belief, there is no such thing. Company just doesn't want to be associated with someone who would damage (or in this case, would keep damaging) their image could claim royalty fee for the use of his own name, so they don't want to keep things named after him.

Fixed it for you.

[Arcling 877]

1 hour ago, Badadada said:

Fixed it for you.

What? Devs can't claim royalties, whatever was done by them while in the company, stays in the company. There is a lot of stuff named after people who are no longer there (hell, Starcraft 2 has several unit portraits based on devs who left years ago).

[Calorat 78]

Sounds like at least some of this stuff was happening while Metzen was there too so maybe they should have someone come in and redo all of Thrall's dialogue.  Guy was Senior VP while a bunch of this stuff was happening.  He has to just as much to blame as everyone else.

[Badadada 184]

2 hours ago, Arcling said:

What? Devs can't claim royalties, whatever was done by them while in the company, stays in the company. There is a lot of stuff named after people who are no longer there (hell, Starcraft 2 has several unit portraits based on devs who left years ago).

Can one's name be considered IP? His lifestyle, his philosophy, his personality? How far can one's character be claimed by the company? We are not talking of a basic unit portrait, but a main figure of a videogame universe - in the future possibly dozens of comic books, merchandise and movies. That's not the usual developer easter egg appearance and coding comments employment contracts are meant to cover.

Besides - as far as I understand his employment was not mutually terminated, but was a one-sided and debatable lay-off, meaning a lot of different clauses may (not) come to play.

[Arcling 877]

55 minutes ago, Badadada said:

Can one's name be considered IP? His lifestyle, his philosophy, his personality? How far can one's character be claimed by the company? We are not talking of a basic unit portrait, but a main figure of a videogame universe - in the future possibly dozens of comic books, merchandise and movies. That's not the usual developer easter egg appearance and coding comments employment contracts are meant to cover.

But this isn't how it works? Employment contracts usually cover such things. As far as I know, every work dev does for a company, company owns it. Otherwise there would have been serious issues once some dev left, making company unable to use anything they worked on, or whatever had their name on it. Company owns the character, there wasn't any shared ownership, name was just a thrown in reference. Similar with voice actors, who are typically on temporary contracts, but they don't own any characters voiced by them. So companies can do whatever (mostly), even remove their voice lines, as we saw it happen before.

1 hour ago, Badadada said:

Besides - as far as I understand his employment was not mutually terminated, but was a one-sided and debatable lay-off, meaning a lot of different clauses may (not) come to play.

He was "let go", what it usually means is "you have to leave or we are going to fire you". We can probably safely assume that's the case here.

[Mournrethar 15]

20 hours ago, KingRhiot said:

To be fair, though...Jesse McCree is a dopeass name for a cowboy.

I agree with you.. and its not that uncommon name either.. 
I will be honest, I do not even know it was some developer's name until this stuff..