ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, I started to play this game from time to time again after a long hiatus, and I yesterday went to the Far East and found that Orc Breeding Pits were removed, people in the chat told me it's because there was some outrage about them being racist, sexist etc bullshit. It's disappointing, since it was a very amusing area with great lore, and it's creepy that it's not possible to avoid this shit even playing some fantasy role-play game. While killing orc broodmothers was morally questionable, this game has a lot of other morally questionable stuff like sending innocent people to be burned alive in Zhigur, siding with Assassin Lord to make the merchant tortured to death, mandatory killing the person who asks you for mercy if you play undead etc. Also killing a pregnant woman in Last Hope graveyard, she deserve to be killed though. Is it tumblr or what? Who could protest vs them? Somebody who cannot get laid think that he will if he pretend to be a feminist? Or is it a genocide part? It's creepy, it's disgusting, it's funny after all.

kyuubee wrote:So, I started to play this game from time to time again after a long hiatus, and I yesterday went to the Far East and found that Orc Breeding Pits were removed, people in the chat told me it's because there was some outrage about them being racist, sexist etc bullshit.

Nah, the complaints were more like:
- this is needlessly gross
- I can't play this with my kid

DarkGod in his infinite wisdom removed the area.

There's a thread about it if you look around.

Here's the thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... eeding+pit

It's closed, I think, so you can't comment further.

kyuubee wrote: Who could protest vs them?

To answer your question, it seems that there are people who

1. Find it perfectly acceptable to kill hundreds or thousands of living sentient beings without jury or trial during the course of a typical game

2. Don't find anything wrong with betraying mage escorts so they can slowly be tortured to death by chopping them to pieces in Zigur

3. Consider sacrificing young girls to freaking demons to be business as usual

But after all this think that an orc with many vaginas is truly offensive and horrible.

Yeah, I didn't understand the logic of the complainers either.

EDIT. In the end, maybe this is kind of like the situation with movies: killing "enemies" is cool and happens in pretty much any movie you can think of that is somehow related to action but you don't want to show any graphical material about genitalia, otherwise people get instantly offended.

EDIT 2. Oh yeah, and the "this game hates women" card was played as well, naturally.

The removal of the Orc Breeding Pits is also frustrating because of how annoying it is to deal with orc patrols now. I hope there's some fix for that soon because I really don't want to have to swap on movespeed gear and use a Movement Infusion every time I want to walk around.

bpat wrote:The removal of the Orc Breeding Pits is also frustrating because of how annoying it is to deal with orc patrols now. I hope there's some fix for that soon because I really don't want to have to swap on movespeed gear and use a Movement Infusion every time I want to walk around.

With the Quest addon contest hopefully we'll see some interesting solutions to this.

There's the Breeding Pits Restoration Project.
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/orcpitsrestoration

bpat wrote:The removal of the Orc Breeding Pits is also frustrating because of how annoying it is to deal with orc patrols now. I hope there's some fix for that soon because I really don't want to have to swap on movespeed gear and use a Movement Infusion every time I want to walk around.

Yeah, this a good point.

kyuubee wrote:So, I started to play this game from time to time again after a long hiatus, and I yesterday went to the Far East and found that Orc Breeding Pits were removed, people in the chat told me it's because there was some outrage about them being racist, sexist etc bullshit. It's disappointing, since it was a very amusing area with great lore, and it's creepy that it's not possible to avoid this shit even playing some fantasy role-play game. While killing orc broodmothers was morally questionable, this game has a lot of other morally questionable stuff like sending innocent people to be burned alive in Zhigur, siding with Assassin Lord to make the merchant tortured to death, mandatory killing the person who asks you for mercy if you play undead etc. Also killing a pregnant woman in Last Hope graveyard, she deserve to be killed though. Is it tumblr or what? Who could protest vs them? Somebody who cannot get laid think that he will if he pretend to be a feminist? Or is it a genocide part? It's creepy, it's disgusting, it's funny after all.

While I strongly disagree with the accused, and am personally quite upset that unique content was removed, I don't feel that slamming the ones who forced the issue is necessarily the best option.

I do, however, urge you to offer a creative solution to the alleged problem(s).

Ouch, been absent from the game for a couple months and returned only to find the content being removed =( It's really sad to see the Breeding Pits gone, since the place and lore behind it were genuinely creepy and depicted in such a vivid way that just gets under your skin. The Pits were the first dungeon I cleared in Far East, and I always thought that they depict the orcs' harsh and unforgiving nature with incredible precision.

Hope we'll see something equally as good in the future as a replacement.

As the curator of the 'Breeding Pits Restoration Project' I feel I should point out the what is included in it is a modified version of the original breeding pits that DarkGod introduced for about 1 day before ripping it out entirely. While I won't go into the reasons it was removed after less then a day (I believe they can be found here anyway, but there's no reason to rehash them again.) I will say that he tried to address some of the problems folks complained about. (Personally, I don't think much needed work, but I kept his version anyway.) Because he ripped it out before getting any feedback, if someone would offer feedback on the 'altered' version he made (and I re-enabled), it would probably be appreciated. If nothing else, this feedback might be used when he re-adds the pits, or some other location to serve the same purpose. (Which is the general consensus on what's going to happen, given that the lore is critically important to the setting in the upcoming orc sequel.)

Feedback on what I could do to improve the version that's in play currently might also be helpful, though largely I'm interested in feedback that DarkGod can use at a later date.

Hopefully someone can offer some insights after reading this.