Break Out the English Books, World of Warcraft Groups Test Your English

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Before getting too far into this, I’ll admit, I don’t play World of Warcraft (WoW). I do play City of Heroes, though (COH), and though, as MMORPG games go, that particular game has a lot of players going solo, only grouping for specific difficult missions like the Hamidon Raid. I’ll discuss my ideas on grouping later.

Now, WoW requires grouping in many more instances than COH. Frequently players can group with friends, but often it’s necessary to play with total strangers (i.e., pick-up groups). Quick responses to in-game instructions must be made in order to save players’ virtual lives, and because of that, more and more groups have been giving English tests to players to determine their “worthiness” to join a group.

Just before entering, the group leader asked everyone to type two sentences of grammatically correct English. Some members talked about the latest King Kong movie, while others jokingly said, “I think Bob Dole is great.” One by one, the group leader quizzed each person he passed, but the last few who were interrogated kept repeating, “Yes UBRS.” After a few minutes, the non-cohesive players were kicked out.

While kicking people out because they can’t type English may seem harsh to some people, players argue that it ensures survival of the whole group. Many group leaders say they cannot effectively direct players to do certain actions if they cannot understand English. A group without coordination can blindly attack monsters when not properly directed, so the tougher bosses require frequent communication.

Still, some continue to denounce the English test as wrong or even racist. They argue that there are alternative technical mechanisms to prevent a player from taking an item without permission, and that non-English speaking players are equally capable of helping the group by killing monsters.

The English-language test has brought forth its share of comical moments even to the most ardent opposition. In the aforementioned UBRS group, a player complained of this policy by typing a few sentences explaining his position. The group had a good chuckle after the leader responded, “You passed.” Source: TG Daily

We Say: While the article brings up the examples of air traffic controllers needing to know English, and other examples, this is, of course, a game. On the other hand, I have done pick-up groups in COH, specifically for respec missions (missions in which upon completion you get a free chance to reconfigure your powers), and I know how important communication is. We would often spent several minutes discussing strategies and getting ready before approaching a certain “sub-task” in the mission.

What do I, as a MMORPG player, think of all this? It’s a tough call. In COH, there are servers for Europe, and I have yet to see someone on the servers I use that doesn’t speak decent English. So, I haven’t had the experience of getting killed for the reasons above. But I have been killed because of people who simply can’t follow instructions and don’t know how to play as part of a team. While I don’t like to take away other people’s enjoyment by placing restrictions as in the TG Daily article, I don’t see this as racist, and unfortunately, it’s sort of the Star Trek 2-ism, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” The many English-speaking players just don’t want to spend hours getting unnecessarily killed by players who don’t understand instructions. Oh, and don’t worry … in my experience, English-speaking players who can’t follow instructions will get kicked from a group just as fast as non-English speakers.