por la horda!
May. 4th, 2010 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkThis is a WoW post, but it's also interesting.
We just made new characters with a friend of ours. He picked a server semi-randomly (because he liked the name), and there was something very cool about his choice.
WoW has separate clusters of servers for different countries, and of course they speak their national languages there. They recently added three servers for Latin American countries, but since there were only three, they put them in an existing cluster with a bunch of US servers. (They couldn't group them with people from Spain because the physical distance would cause too much lag.)
So when you get into a pickup group, chances are good that some of the members will start speaking Spanish to each other! To me this is awesome, because where I used to live I heard tons of Spanish, and you NEVER hear it in Vermont. My Spanish is rudimentary at best but I understand some -- it just makes me happy to hear/see it.
The reactions of the US players to this development are probably unsurprising. Some people are bigots and blame the Spanish-speaking players for... pretty much everything. It's their fault we're losing. It's their fault we're lagging. They're all bad players. I hate that they don't speak my language. As soon as I see one of Them, I leave the group.
Yet, it seems the quiet majority has simply gotten used to it. They either ignore it or adapt to it, learning a few useful words of gaming-related Spanish and accepting that sometimes communication breaks down. (Well, sometimes you can't get through to English-speaking players either, can you?)
A few people get more elaborate with their attempts to accomodate diversity:
I am pleased and amused.
We just made new characters with a friend of ours. He picked a server semi-randomly (because he liked the name), and there was something very cool about his choice.
WoW has separate clusters of servers for different countries, and of course they speak their national languages there. They recently added three servers for Latin American countries, but since there were only three, they put them in an existing cluster with a bunch of US servers. (They couldn't group them with people from Spain because the physical distance would cause too much lag.)
So when you get into a pickup group, chances are good that some of the members will start speaking Spanish to each other! To me this is awesome, because where I used to live I heard tons of Spanish, and you NEVER hear it in Vermont. My Spanish is rudimentary at best but I understand some -- it just makes me happy to hear/see it.
The reactions of the US players to this development are probably unsurprising. Some people are bigots and blame the Spanish-speaking players for... pretty much everything. It's their fault we're losing. It's their fault we're lagging. They're all bad players. I hate that they don't speak my language. As soon as I see one of Them, I leave the group.
Yet, it seems the quiet majority has simply gotten used to it. They either ignore it or adapt to it, learning a few useful words of gaming-related Spanish and accepting that sometimes communication breaks down. (Well, sometimes you can't get through to English-speaking players either, can you?)
A few people get more elaborate with their attempts to accomodate diversity:
I am pleased and amused.
