World of Warcraft just fixed another old racist reference buried in the long-running MMORPG’s 10-year-old corner. The change comes after a group of World of Warcraft fans brought racist connotations to the attention of the developers.
In World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion, former Darkspear Warchief and Horde Warchief Vol’jin surrounded himself with an elite group of troll warriors known as the Siame-Quashi. These NPCs are ostensibly shadow hunters like Vol’jin himself. They only appeared briefly with the chief at a few locations and were not seen again for 13 years.
While pondering what a World of Warcraft legacy quest for trolls would look like, a group of players thought Siame-Quashi could make a triumphant return in a theoretical quest. However, World of Warcraft player and critic BaalTheWarlock draws his players’ attention to an unfortunate detail : The word “Quashi” has a pejorative connotation in the Jamaican dialect, while “Siame” means “foreigner” in Zambian South Wanga . Siame-Quashi is a pretty offensive title given Darkspear Trolls’ distinctly Jamaican inspiration.
World of Warcraft fan and troll enthusiast ShdwHntrClub used his own platform and voice to amplify the offensiveness of the name. Through their combined voice, these fans were able to get the attention of many World of Warcraft developers on Twitter, including Anne Stickney, Senior Narrative Designer and co-author of The Ultimate Visual Guide to World of Warcraft : who assured them they would pass it on to related team.
Less than a week later, Siame-Quashi was renamed on the public test server for World of Warcraft : Dragonflight’s next major patch, Neltharion Embers. The NPC group is now known as Atal-Mhuto. Atal-Mhuto has a rough translation in the universe of “devout hunter or warrior” and has no connection to that title, so Atal-Mhuto is a safer and more harmless name than Siame-Quashi. This change will take effect when Embers of Neltharion drop on May 2.
Fans were delighted to see World of Warcraft fix this issue so quickly. Over the past few years, WoW has removed some questionable references and tried to do a better job overall, so seeing it make this kind of change – even to outdated content – is a good sign . While the game still has a long way to go before it’s completely cleared of all inappropriate content, it’s refreshing to see the World of Warcraft community and developers working together to make Azeroth a more inclusive place.
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