Just a heads-up to LGBT gamers who might be considering Runes of Magic because of the same-sex marriage option.

In my experience, there are no LGBT-friendly guilds in this game. The ingame chat filter also censors the terms "gay" and "lesbian", making recruitment difficult.

Other games like WoW and Lotro have responded to customer pressure to become more LGBT-friendly. They are able to do this because they are both the developers and publishers of the game. Runes of Magic is developed by a Taiwanese company Runewalker, but published by a German company Frogster. Communication is bad, and they cannot respond to problems quickly or adequately.

The playerbase is generally mature. However, efforts to raise LGBT game issues on the forums are met mostly with hostility. Other games have this aggressive heterosexist element, but they are drowned out in the larger playerbase. This is not the case in RoM because the playerbase is too small.

Trying to make Runes of Magic more LGBT-friendly seems like a lost cause.

My advice to LGBT gamers is to play Lord of the Rings Online if you want a free game (most LGBT kins appear to be on Landroval); or Word of Warcraft (on the Proudmoore server).

0.o i've never seen this type of guild in any game, then again i've never looked. sorry about that issue with runes of magic

I've heard of a few games having a decent LGBT community...most are in the more mature based player games like LOTRO, EQ2....even seen a legion in Aion when it first came out, but I wouldnt look too far into this and let it bum you out.  Use the words LGBT instead of Gay/ Lesbian when trying to recruit...it's kind of a good thing they would block it.  It keeps the smart ass immature kids from abusing it.  Any gay/lesbian/friendly person would know what your talking about anyway. 

If you are concerned about the lack of LGBT guilds, why don't you just make one? Also some lesbians and gays find those terms offensive. Some non-lesbian and non-gay people find those terms offensive. You can find a way around that too.

so, after a quick net search....I now know what LGBT means. Thanks!

I dislike when guild members discuss anything in real life, be it their drinking habits, favorite sports teams and now, I guess, sexual orientation.

I join gaming guilds to talk about gaming, and pretty much that's all I want to hear about on vent or in chat channels. Keep your personal lives out of my gaming.

Good luck with that.....People like talking about anything they want to talk about. It's part of the joy of these things. Plus that would get pretty boring after a while, the conversations would just start to repeat themselves. I like to get to know the people I'm going to spend several hours each day I play with.

Why was this moved from the Runes of Magic forum to Off-Topic?

This thread was discussing a gameplay issue related to Runes of Magic. It provided information LGBT-gamers might want to consider if they planned on playing the game.

It is similar to issues regarding item shop use, hacking, and GM moderation, all of which remain in the Runes of Magic forum.

Could the MMORPG.COM mod please make clear why this thread was moved?

Originally posted by RedMonk

Why was this moved from the Runes of Magic forum to Off-Topic?

This thread was discussing a gameplay issue related to Runes of Magic. It provided information LGBT-gamers might want to consider if they planned on playing the game.

It is similar to issues regarding item shop use, hacking, and GM moderation, all of which remain in the Runes of Magic forum.

Could the MMORPG.COM mod please make clear why this thread was moved?

 Redmonk

I understand your frustration about creating a LGBT guild. I really do. Many people think it isn't important to create a LGBT group but with me as a pansexual (a lesbian who tends to jump the fence for any gender) there is a strong unity within the LGBT guild system just like there is a strong unity within real life LGBT communities.

Many people here will tell you its useless or pointless to have a LGBT guild because of this or that. But there are ways of changing it.

The Guild that I am in WoW first started with the same frustrations you have had. At first, WoW would not even let the guild creator post in general chat that he is starting an LGBT guild because WoW thought that was political sensitive and advertising it was a no no. He could not even do it on the forums.

However, he really fought for his right to advertise an LGBT guild and, eventually, it worked. As of today, our Guild, TAINT, is the second largest guild in World of Warcraft and has been in many LGBT magazines as well as Gamer Magazine. It has gotten so large that when they changed the guild cap to 1,000 members, Blizzard gave us all password encruptic keychains for the inconvienence because our Guild leader had to split the guild into 7 sections; however Blizzard developed software so that all the guilds in our family could talk in the same guild channel. We had seperate rooms for Gays, Lesbians, bi sexuals, transgenders, etc etc.

And it all started by one guy who wanted a gay guild on Pridemoore.

Just keep up the fight :)

I'm in agreement with those who say this shouldn't even be an issue in the MMO world.  No one cares who you are behind the screen.  Just get down to business and get your game on.

People play games to get away from the real world and all it's crap.

So it's completely understandable if you're getting negative feed back for what you're trying to achieve here.

I absolutley hate seeing guild advertisements like " Christian guild recruiting like minded people." 

Gets on my nerves, and kills immersion.

It's not the game that isn't catering to you. It's the players that aren't catering to you. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from forming an LGBT guild if you want to. Why don't you take the initiative and do something about it instead of complaining about it. You are not entitled to having people cater to your whims just because you're another one of the thousands of special interest groups that are forming. As far as I'm concerned you're just another person.

Good luck with that. I hope the trolls dont scare you away.  There community is set up like ff11. So there will be troll galoure.

Does a guild that is LGBT-only count as heterophobia?

Does a guild that is no-LGBTs-allowed count as homophobic?

I join guilds to meet people and make friends in a game. That said, I understand there are elitists, (and i suppose a couple average people) who don't.

That said, it should not kill immersion for anyone when someone advertises a LGBT-friendly ANYTHING. Your character is supposed to be an avatar for you in the game world, and it makes no sense to hide major IRL personality/lifestyle characteristics in favor of other's desires to have nothing to do with real life the second they enter their password on the login screen. If i even played this game at this point, i would gladly start a LGBT-friendly guild on my server, and advertise it everywhere i went, regardless of what elitists/homophobes/people who think a major facet of a fellow human's personality being shown ingame kills immersion think of it.

I wish the world would hurry up and grow up already. I'm tired of hearing about people looking to be accepted for who they are; can we all just go ahead and agree that it really isn't a big deal and all get along already?

Edit: As an afterthought; people buy BioWare RPGs by the millions, even though my male toon gets hit on by male NPCs, why should having gay party members be more acceptable than gay guildies?

You should check out City of Gaymers, a coalition of LGBT friendly guilds (Supergroups) in City of Heroes.

Who cares? Not to sound harsh, but MMO's are shrouded with internet anonimity that people abuse like no other. If you want a guild that supports you, then create one yourself, don't blame the game for not doing it for you. People are jerks.

Some of the posts have been pretty ridiculous. I dont really like any guild to be TOO segregated.  You can miss out on missing a lot of great people that way.  I have played in 2 different LGBT guilds, one completely by accident.  I am a straight married man, and never once did I have an issue, Nor was there anything off color discussed.  In fact it was one of the better gaming experiences I have had.  To the OP, dont give up, as they said you should make your own guild and just make it known that you are accepting of all gamers with an emphasis on a home for LGBT gamers.  I think the world is really to small these days for people to be so completely ignorant of others.  People will of course by nature congregate with folks that share similiar lifestyles, interests etc, but in the end I think everyone be willing in gaming to step past their boundaries.  Some of the best friendships are made that way!

{mod edit}

What?