World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will have more inclusive character creation options

It looks as though Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is removing gendered language from the game.

Dragonflight's alpha test went live yesterday, July 15, showing off the game's new character creation screen, which now lists options as Body 1 and Body 2 instead of male or female.

"The new body type labels are merely text changes within the character creation screen and barber shop," explains a post on Wowhead .

"Where it previously gave players the option to select Male or Female body types, it now simply refers to them as Body 1 and Body 2 respectively.

"As a text-only change seen in a grand total of two menus across the entirety of the game, this is a very low impact, but important change in keeping with the developers [sic] views on inclusivity."

That's not all, though. Wowhead also reports that some datamined strings also indicate that players "may be able to select their preferred pronouns", "he/him, she/her, or they/them", as well as the character's voice. 

While this change has yet to make it to the alpha build or be formally confirmed by Blizzard, fans are hoping the discovery means the change is on the way and the expansion will be more inclusive. 

"What we don't know is how these options would be used though, as there doesn't appear to be any place to actually select this customization, and neither gender nor pronouns have ever been referenced in any player UI element," Wowhead explains (thanks, NME). 

"While clearly a matter of personalization, it's an interesting inclusion, as historically, the use of pronouns in reference to players is generally avoided by the game - even when it comes to NPCs and quest dialogue, player characters are most often addressed either directly or through some kind of expansion-specific honorific (Champion in Battle for Azeroth, Maw Walker in Shadowlands, along with the occasional Hero or other generic term) rather than direct pronouns."

Blizzard recently revealed that it has acquired the developer of Spellbreak, the magic-based battle royale that will be shutting down next year.

Boston-based developer Proletariat will see its 100-person team folded into Blizzard and set to work on World of Warcraft and its upcoming Dragonflight expansion, which is expected to release later this year.

Proletariat informed fans about the changes via a blog post, revealing that it was halting development on four-year-old Spellbreak and planning to shut down servers in "early 2023".

Get prepped for Dragonflight with our World of Warcraft timeline.