Revision of Queer Bodies: Modifications of Sexual Affordances in World of Warcraft

This paper examines how avatar design in World of Warcraft (WoW) influences sexual affordances for players, specifically focusing on how game patches and expansions compromise queer gameplay by reinforcing heteronormative body standards. The analysis centers on the embodied experience of gaming through avatar design and how scripted values constrain online performance, particularly for players seeking to express queerness. The study covers WoW's 14-year history, from its 2004 release to November 2017, encompassing its six major expansions and numerous patches.

Key findings indicate that while initial low-level design choices and the availability of diverse playable races (e.g., male Blood Elves, female Orcs) allowed for a pluralism of gender performances, subsequent revisions to avatar body designs have increasingly policed the social appearance of gender. Blizzard's updates have consistently widened the gap between binary genders, creating more abrupt sexual dimorphisms between character models. This is evident in the significant increase in sexual dimorphism from the alpha version to the commercial release, where female avatars received smaller racial ornamentation and were redesigned to align with Western beauty standards, often in response to alpha tester feedback.

Further updates, such as those in the Warlords of Draenor expansion (2014), continued this trend, with male models accentuating hyper-masculine features and female models adopting softened gazes, thinner bodies, and narrower shoulders, akin to other feminized character designs. These changes were validated by comments from predominantly straight male players, who perceived the updated female models as possessing increased sexual appeal. The paper concludes that Blizzard's trajectory of increasing sexual dimorphism and promoting a common, sexualized appearance for female characters effectively erases affordances for queer performativity, making it increasingly difficult for "queer bugs" to subvert the game's heteronormative narrative.