Spreading Taint

Reading this article on WOW Insider on the Proudmoore guild Taint (formerly Spreading Taint) has prompted me to share my two cents on being queer in World of Warcraft.

When I first started playing, I found the online community aspects refreshing. After months of dealing with racist and homophobic trash talk on Xbox Live, primarily from little hellions playing Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3, the relative civility and maturity of channel chat and guilds in World of Warcraft was really refreshing (of course I'm purposefully leaving out Barrens chat). The first guilds I joined while looking for the proper fit all made statements of maturity and inclusivity, and many of the first players I met were gay, at least as embodied in their characters. Personally, I think of my female Tauren Shaman as a big dyke, and I have a story about my loner troll rogue at the ready in case I run into any roleplayers on the Emerald Dream server (it's a long story, but involves homophobia, shame, and unaccepting troll parents who are now undead).

But while a lot of guilds are accepting of gay players, Taint is so far the only queer guild I've come across, and I sorta wanna roll a character on the Proudmoore server just so I can join and possibly find some locals. More than any other guild I know of, and probably due to its size, Taint sponsors lots of meetings in real life. Sometimes these are meet-ups to drink beer and play darts, and sometimes they're rather more intimate...

A few months ago I found this video on Xtube...IT IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK! Glad to know that Tainters know how to have fun in real life! The uploader of this video describes it as such: "The Spreading Taint is a series of guilds in World of Warcraft on the Proudmoore server. Too rarely, we tear ourselves away from our computers to socialize in the 'meatspace'. Sometimes it gets frisky."

You'd never see a group of Halo 3 players getting together to do this, now would you? Actually, they probably do interact in "meatspace" more than I know, though they'd never post a video of it online...