Project Lore

Ah, Silvermoon city. Home of the highly effeminate blood elves. A magical city, where housework is performed by magical brooms and there are more inns and mailboxes than perhaps any other Horde city. Its no surprise that Silvermoon is a little more magical during Winter Veil. Around the various inns in Azeroth, you may find a pair of "Winter Revelers" flirting under the mistletoe (I use flirting generously; they really just stand there). Players can then /kiss one of the revelers to receive a special seasonal item, like Mistletoe or Snowflakes. Most inns have one reveler of each sex.

The same couple last year

However, if you head on down to Silvermoon for the holidays, you may notice two male revelers under the mistletoe. Its unclear whether or not this was a mistake, but it definitely happened last year as well. The pertinent question here is not if these are gay Winter Revelers, the question is why they changed to green suits and dropped the hats from last year. Blizzard has traditionally been very friendly and accommodating for its LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) players, especially relative to other online video game providers like Microsoft. There have been hints of some LGBT characters in WoW, and one of the biggest guilds in all of World of Warcraft exists as an LGBT-friendly guild. In case you haven't picked up on any LGBT characters in your WoW experience,  check out this roundup done by Michael Sacco at WoW.com:

Question, though more of a curiosity than anything, really: Are there any gay/lesbian/bisexual or even transgender/genderqueer characters in the Warcraft lore?

Officially? I don't think so. There are a few characters that people tend to question in terms of sexuality, though.

Readers point out that Sentinel Sweetspring at Stars' Rest in Dragonblight is flirting openly with another female Sentinel. Skyguard Khatie will also ask your character on a date, regardless of your gender. Even Maiev Shadowsong and her female lieutenant, Naisha, are insinuated to be an item in WarCraft III.

Chromie, the Bronze dragon, had a dragon model in the Culling of Stratholme named Chronormu, which is a male name, but Chromie's mortal form is a female gnome. That model was renamed to just "Chromie" to match the gnome form, though, so the world may never know. I think it was probably just a typo.

It may seem like there's a ton of heterosexual "main" characters (because there is), but remember that the world is populated more by players than NPCs, and players' real-life backgrounds aren't something Blizzard has a real hand in. And even then, we don't know the story behind most NPCs, either.

I'm not sure we'll ever see an "out" main lore character, but times are changing, at least in the real world. We'll see.

As with all of our posts on Project Lore, discussion is encouraged, but purely hateful or "flaming" (the irony!) comments will be moderated.