As a gay man who has left guilds over use of the word 'gay' as a derogatory, I have to ask the one question on everyone's mind...Does this matter?

I mean, tbh, I could care less if the teeming masses of morons that make up general chat use it, or any other derogatory for that matter. They enter into my 'fantasy world' as Amanda put it, only very rarely. But if the people I choose to call friends in game begin to use insulting language regarding homosexuality, I do take offense. Because I feel like those people should respect me more than that.

Insofar as elves in WoW go, I think Blizzard did intend for there to be an implication of homosexuality, but not an overt statement. Why? Because it's generic enough to appeal to both camps. Let's use the "Hot like me" joke as an example. The gay people who play hear the joke and (at least from my PoV) find it amusing, if only in the way you find someone else's misbehaving child amusing. The straight people hear it and are amused at the implication itself. But in no way is Blizzard innocent of anything.

Make no mistake, Blizz isn't stupid. Male blood elves were intentionally created through a long process of testing and trials, not only for character models, but writing, emotes, everything. And you think Blizz wasn't perfectly aware of what they were doing? Of course they were. And whatever their intention, you can't deny they were smart to do it. Hell, if they hadn't, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it, would we?

Oh, and lastly, @ Dan:

"I don't buy the gay stereotype thing either. Too me, Blood Elves are too vicious looking to be considered effeminate. "

In the interest of preserving what has been a lovely morning so far, I'm not going to disabuse of this notion...sufficed to say, if you think gay men aren't vicious and evil with the same frequency as straight men, you're fooling yourself.

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