[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The excitement of the all the new Wrath of the Lich King buzz this week must have gone to some readers' heads, making them testier than usual. This week saw several squabbles in post comments, from mild differences of opinion to outright controversial debate. News about the shape of raid instances to come brought out plenty of opinions both for and against the new raid sizes. Should Arthas be 10-mannable? With even well known raiding guilds such as Death and Taxes burning out and moving on, are raiding applications still necessary in this day and age?

The comments got hot and heavy in a post that sparked plenty of discussion about racism in Arena team names. Readers also seemed of two minds at the efforts of top-tanked 5v5 Arena team M L H, who've turned out to be prolific points-sellers. But commenters pulled together in a post advising one reader whose system seems to have slowed to a crawl. And reader Kershner wrapped it all up on a chilled note for the weekend with a great macro to help us kick back and enjoy some fishing.

Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one, silly!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.

I think there are few things more disturbing in the modern world than ill-conceived notions of racial, religious, and sexual divisions. For some reason parts of humanity continue to believe that just because one group or another looks and/or acts differently, they are bad. One of the reasons I enjoy WoW and just games in general is because it allows us to escape the problems this world gives to us, even if only for a few hours a week.

Unfortunately, some people find it necessary to bring their attitudes in game. We've covered some of this before, from border-line inappropriate arena names to sexism in WoW. However while playing an arena game recently fellow writer Amanda Dean came up against a team named "Rosa Parks Stole My Seat," and this name is possibly the most offensive one I've seen. Rosa Parks (for those of you who need a history lesson) refused to go to the back of a bus because of her skin color and continued to sit in the white only section of the bus, despite being told to do otherwise. She represented a key moment in the history of civil rights.

There are 65 arena teams with this racist name.

When Amanda ran into one of the teams she reported it via a GM ticket.

As with any grouping of people online, some WoW players can perfectly sociable and respectful of others, and some can be nasty, offensive and even bigoted. As the player Adaan wrote on the European WoW forums, he had the displeasure of encountering some players who use a certain racially offensive word, and it made him feel very angry.

It turns out that if you encounter such language in WoW, you can report other players for racism. Vaneras stepped in to confirm that Blizzard does not tolerate racist language, and such comments will get those players banned. Although I have not encountered racist language in WoW myself, I heartily encourage anyone who does to report that player. Dealing with racism in real life can often lead to awkward confrontations with people who refuse to admit what they were saying was wrong in any way, but in WoW, Blizzard is all set to do that for you, while at the same time helping to make sure there are negative consequences on racist behavior.

Although Vaneras doesn't mention it in his post, it is my understanding that the same also follows for other forms of discriminatory language, such as sexism. While of course there can be a lot of annoying grey area in such issues, another reason to such offenses in WoW is that Blizzard may actually have proof of what the other person said stored in their systems, and a genuine problem is more likely to receive a real consequence than might otherwise be the case.

Mallory has an issue with one of the ranked arena teams, Kool Kids Klub. Because the initials of the guild are spelled KKK, she believes the guild is openly racist. Which really only works if you assume that so is Krusty the Klown. I can't exactly picture real-life KKK members sitting down to form an organized racist arena team in WOW. Plus, as several people pointed out, arguing about racism in an arena where you kill characters because they're of a different race is weird.

But the interesting thing in the thread isn't about the Kool Kids Klub. Rather, it's how many really ridiculous character, guild and arena team names fall below the radar. Particularly bad are arena teams, which don't seem to have the same filter as character and guild names. Examples given in the thread include:

• Nucken Figgers
• Jew N Da Oven
• Maybe Hitler Was Right
• Muslimkilla
• Jesus Had A Soulstone
• I Survived Virginia Tech

Eh ... while I don't condone racism, most of these names are clearly done for shock value. And if they're actually racist, then that would just help anger their opponents. I know I'd fight harder against Maybe Hitler Was Right. If we have to ban something, can we ban the horribly overused guild/arena team names? I'd be happy if I'd never have to face another STDs are BOP, Naga Stole My Bike or Ihavecandy Getinthevan member ever.

What do you think about the naming policies of WOW? Do you think their should be stricter enforcement of naming rules, or should Blizzard let it be?

Murmurs of player discrimination have been surfacing recently; a forum thread on Tales of Warcraft has apparently grown to over 7,000 replies with many Chinese players posting that they have experienced racial discrimination from other players. This ties in with something I linked to here recently, an exploration of our attitudes to gold farming--it seems many players are assuming that broken English equals gold farmer, and shunning others totally based on this assumption. In Nick Yee's article, he points to a case where a French speaker was labelled as a Chinese farmer by an ignorant interlocutor.

As Game Tycoon points out, this isn't a new phenomenon. However, it is a worrying one, as it seems ignorance is overtaking good sense and causing problems all round. On the European servers, which are separated by language--English, French or German--many people play on the English servers without English as their first language. I frequently see adverts for Danish or Swedish guilds, and non-English chat in General, both of which are met with huge amounts of flaming from other players. However, English speakers don't shun these Europeans because they're suspected gold farmers, but because they don't obey the "rules" of the server.

Is the anonymity of virtual worlds a good thing, providing us with a mask to hide our racism and hatred behind? Or is it simply a love of the game and an adherence to rules that cause us to strike out with such a huge backlash against those who don't speak properly? Have you experienced or seen problems like this in-game?