Prejudice Server?!?!

I had a friend watching me play CoH one day, he asked me all sorts of questions and got really intrested in CoH. Naturally I fed into his intrest and eventually he bought the game and
I got him in my server and my sg. A few days ago I got a call from my friend asking me why I didnt tell him the server was for gays. It seems he was approached by several someones and was told that Victory server is the Un-Official gay server. Unfortunatly my friend ended up in a bad mix up of opinions and he was told that if he didn't openly accept homosexuality he should find another server.
My question is when did the creators of this game make the server I was on an Un-official gay server? And why are there groups of people telling others that if they are not "like minded", if you will, that they should move onto another server?
Why this sort of behavior is allowed?
I would assume my friend is not the first and nor will be the last in this matter.

There's no such thing.

Sure, some servers (Virtue, for instance) have an overwhelming reputation for something (such as RP in Virtue's case), but by and large, servers are just populations of players.

I play on Victory, and it's no more the "unofficial gay server" than is any other. There are openly gay players on Victory -- just as there are on every other server.

Whoever talked to your friend was just hateful and stupid, as it sounds like they were just trying to provoke some kind of negative reaction. I would hope that you and your friend don't care one bit about something as irrelevant as one's sexual orientation.

The developers never made any server any specific kind of server. That's what "un-official" means.

A while back (beta?) a number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (or GLBT for short) players got together and decided they'd all go play on the same server in the hopes of creating a "safer" and less prejudiced environment for themselves than they might have if they splintered off to different servers. That server, for whatever reason, ended up being Victory. Victory, by the way, is also the "unofficial European server" (of the North American ones, anyway, from back before the EU servers opened up), for the same reason: a bunch of European players got together and said, "wouldn't it be nice if we all stuck together after beta was over?" And they did. The same process resulted in Virtue being the "unofficial role-playing server," Justice being the "unofficial Australian/New Zealander server," and a number of other unofficial designations, none of which mean that people who don't fall into those categories aren't welcome, just that they're generally a little "extra friendly" for the people who do. None of them are forced, and none of them are enforced by the development team or anyone else at NCSoft. They're just the communities of the respective servers. The group of players that happen to play there.

It doesn't mean that anyone there has a right to force any kind of thinking on your friend, though, any more than your friend has a right to force any kind of thinking on any other player. If it's a few specific individuals, he may be able to /petition them for harassment. If he's uncomfortable knowing there are so many gays around him, though, maybe he would be better off going somewhere else, where it's easier for him to pretend they aren't there (even though they are).

You can find out all about each and every server's sordid reputation here.

I started playing this game on Victory server almost five years ago. I played steadily and regularly on Victory for some four to six months. Sometime later, my main server became Champion. Recently, I've started splitting my time between Victory and Champion (blue side and red side, respectively). Not ONCE in the time that I have played on Victory did this EVER come up to me or to anyone that I know.

The creators of this game don't make "unofficial" or even "official" servers for anything but geographic location, to the best of my knowledge. Geographic location refers to servers that are designated as either North America or Europe, and are determined by which "box" or version of the game is bought by the consumer. This is usually determined by where that version was bought ... in other words, in New York City, one version of the game, most likely, was sold tagged as "North American" in their serial codes and your choice of servers were the eleven servers that had been created for the North American market (Freedom, Victory, Justice, Champion, etc) but, if you bought the game in London, the version of the game that you bought, most likely, was marked as "European" and your choice of servers were the four (I believe) European servers.

"Unofficial" servers come about because of a substantial number of players belonging to one particular subset of players congregating on a given server for their own personal reasons. Virtue is the "unofficial" role-playing server. Another server is considered to be the "unofficial" Australian server.

The behavior you described is in no way, shape or form allowed. It is, in my opinion, petitionable under the rules governing griefing and harassment. The problem lies in that this type of activity must be made known to the GMs so that they are aware of it to begin with and only then can action be taken. I would STRONGLY suggest that you encourage your friend to report this incident. Should it ever re-occur, it should be reported again. It should be reported each and every time it occurs.

Geni

That said, openly showing prejudice of any kind, whether it be sexual, racial, ethnic or otherwise, is also a petitionable offense. It sounds like either someone was being a jerk or your friend got confused for being prejudiced. (hopefully they didn't actually show any prejudice)

This is the fist I've heard of Victory being the unofficial GLBT server, mind you.

Oh, snap! I totally forgot about the official French and German servers! I REALLY hate not being perfect! ;D

As a long time member over on Victory I can say that on several occasions I had the feeling of being the only straight member on my team, based on the team chat. Did it bother me? Not really. At worse the conversation was just as uncomfortable when I'm the only guy in a group of women and the topic switches to feminine hygiene or being hit on constantly by guys when I'm running one of my female characters.

Is it the unofficial gay server? Yes and such a title can become a self-fulfilling designation. This is just a case of self-segregation and can be found anywhere if you know how to look for it. Individuals will tend to cluster in groups where they feel they can "fit in" or more importantly feel "normal" in such a group. You can see this in college where you can have the unofficial dorm for a particular major or activity, for example the artist dorm, the party dorm, the geek dorm, the Christian dorm. Did they start out like that? No. Did the college administration designate them as such? No, but over time they slowly gain a reputation as the place to live if you were of a particular social/major/lifestyle group and eventually the designation stuck. I once visited a friend for his Masters graduation at Cornell and was put up in the "Bohemian" dorm with hallways covered with student murals and the floor bathrooms being coed. You could easily imagine espresso sipping, beret wearing hipsters with bongos and beat poetry readings with Maynard G. Krebs would feeling right at home there.

As for your friend being told "that if he didn't openly accept homosexuality he should find another server", it's not like he was being asked to convert, just get along. I would guess he used language usually heard on XBox Live voice chat and he found out that, as in real life, people will take offense.

Your friend should realize that in a virtual world, where you can't tell if the race/sex/religious/political/sexuality of the person on the other side of the screen that you are going to have to be on your best behavior or you may end up offending someone with language or behavior that you may use everyday in your social group without consequence but that they will find offensive.

Blame the homosexuals? C'mon now, BayBlast.

Sure, we don't have the chat transcripts, so we don't know how the conversation went, but if the first quote you cited is true, and he was actually told that he should move to another server if he didn't accept homosexuality, that is absolutely no different than someone on Guardian saying, "If you're homosexual, you should go play on Victory."

Granted, the conversation might have gone something like this:

Victory Player: "...and Virtue is the unofficial RP server, and Victory is the unoffical gay server..."
OP's Friend: "Unofficial gay server? I can't believe they'd have something like that in this game."
Victory Player: "It is. If you're not comfortable with openly homosexual players, you might have a better experience on another server."

But if it wasn't blown out of proportion or misrepresented, then the Victory player was in the wrong. Just because someone is in a persecuted minority doesn't excuse them if they make racist, sexist, or any other kind of prejudiced comments.

I dunno. I've gotten into teams where it was my wife and I and six people from SG's with names full of Rainbow and Pride and Bears and whatever else. 2/3 of the way through the Task Force the penny finally dropped for me on the name Nova Gina. It was probably Victory, but coulda been infinity or virtue. I don't remember that well.

... those players were skilled, fast, professional and they played hard. A+++ would join again.

This can't be real. The OP can't be serious.

I mean...seriously? You believed that? You thought it odd...but true?

lmao, you CAN"T be serious!

Someone sell this man a bridge NAO!

I think this is turning into one of these situations depending on what you initial assumptions on OPs post.

Either you believe them that their friend was harrassed in some way by the LGBT community of Victory or you believe that the OPs friend was being a bit of jerk to stir it all off. Or there is magic option number 3 which lies in the middle somewhere.

I think we can't really prove any of these situations but I personally feel:
a) Harrassment is bad - people shouldn't try and chase people out of servers for whatever reason, unofficial community or not
b) Bigitory is bad - attacking someone because of their sexual preferrence, race, gender, choice of chocolate bar should not be condoned at all
c) Unofficial communities are neither good or bad as long as they don't lead to a or b
d) We are hear to have fun, kick butt and hope I16 is as good as it seems to be

Anyway, just my pennies worth (or however amount the exchange rate turns that into in American dollars) over the subject

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.