Proudmoore Pride 6

World of Warcraft is a community-based game (this, I know, is a "duh" statement), and so a lot of its success has to do with the people that play it. For instance, I probably wouldn't play nearly as much if I didn't have the people I played with. It also mirrors our society and the things we find important, such as holidays like Winter Veil, Hallow's End, and that Love Fool one. Most of these things come from Blizzard to show that our characters have lives similar to our own, that even in a fantasy environment these things are still important to the life of the community and that, regardless of race or faction (and whatever differences we think we see), we still value the same ideals. World of Warcraft isn't as much a sandbox or as community-controlled as, say, Eve Online, but it does have its moments. For instance, June is Gay Pride Month, and what better way to celebrate it but to have a gay pride parade in World of Warcraft. This is a player-created holiday and the first time I'd ever heard of it.

It's called Proudmoore Pride, taking place on Proudmoore-US for both factions. When I read about it on wow.com I was floored. Although it is after the fact, here is the website if you care to take a look. It was for the entire player base on Proudmoore, hosted by Taint (Horde) and The Stonewall Family (Alliance). Horde characters met in Camp Turajo and Alliance in Theramore and they marched up to Crossroads to meet up, and then to Ratchet for the boat to Booty Bay for a night of dancing, flirting, and general merriment. Getting to the event was easy, with warlocks at each place summoning. Each guild had a sister guild for everyone coming with alts from other servers, which I joined on a tauren hunter I created for the event. She became a Tainter Tot.

The parade marched up to Crossroads, with a few different kinds of floats. There were guild that were represented in pink shirts and tabards, along with a bear mount float, a sparkle pony float, and a lumberjack float.

The Lumberjack one was funny, with tree druids and lots of plaid shirts. In Ratchet, it took a few boat rides to get everyone over to Booty Bay. I was there for one of the first ones, but waited behind to see more people. The Alliance were behind the Horde, and I was curious to see what they had. Truthfully, I wish I had stayed for more of the parade to see what floats the Alliance had, although I'm sure it'll be posted on the Pridemoore website soon enough.

All in all, the experience was amazing. The community was fantastic and it was very well planned, with a radio streaming dance music from the website and just this great collective of people celebrating the idea of just...loving who love and are proud of who they are. It's also a really impressive look at the World of Warcraft community as a whole and exactly what it means to the players. This is, regardless, a place where you can be exactly who you want to be, without limitations. There were no nay-sayers, just friendly players and a good time.

It makes me proud of be a WoW player. :D