[News] Blizzard renames WoW character based on musician who made homophobic remarks

[Mr.Talha]

 

Blizzard is renaming another World of Warcraft character, following the re-emergence of homophobic comments made by its real-life inspiration.

Gorge the Corpsegrinder was added back in 2008 as a nod to Cannibal Corpse vocalist George 'Corpsegrinder' Fisher (thanks, Metal Hammer). The artist was a self-proclaimed "pathetic nerd" for WoW, talking in length about his passion for the game and his Horde characters in a 2007 interview. But things took a turn when Fisher began ranting about his hatred for the Alliance, using homophobic slurs and telling those who play the faction to kill themselves.

"I don't play no homo-Alliance either, I don't play no [CENSORED] night elves or gnomes," Fisher said. "It's [CENSORED] orcs and undead. [CENSORED] the Alliance, [CENSORED] die you [CENSORED] emo cocksuckers."

His Alliance rant persists for a few more minutes, before saying "you ever see in World of Warcraft, the undead have a dance and they do the metal sign and bang their head, playing guitar. Yeah, go [CENSORED] cry in a river and tell me how you're gonna slit your wrists you night elf 

The interview clip above was shown at BlizzCon in 2011, albeit in a heavily censored format, as part of a musical performance at the event. Blizzard senior art director Sam Didier introduced Fisher to the audience as "the unofficial ambassador to the mighty Horde." 

The appearance of the video prompted an apology from former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime at the time, calling the decision to show it "shortsighted and insensitive." The character remained in the game though, until now. A tweet from Wowhead shows that recent changes to patch 9.1.5 on the PTR has changed the NPC's name to Annihilator Grek'lor.

Blizzard has been gradually pruning the game's character names and quest dialogue, having already removed references to Blizzard employees accused of sexual harassment earlier this year. The company has also said it'll no longer be naming future characters after employees or prominent figures across all its games. Aside from WoW, Overwatch hero McCree is also facing a name change sometime in the future.