Okay, I realize that this isn't a life-threatening problem or anything, but I thought I'd draw it to your attention. For those that don't know, World of Warcraft is the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) on the market right now. MMORPGs differ from most games that you play online because it is solely online, and most of them (WoW included) charge a monthly subscription fee on top of whatever you shell out initially for the game, and for expansion packs.
Female gamers have a tough time in general with online gaming communities; sexism and homophobia are rampant, due to a combo of the relatively young ages of some of the gamers and also Gabe's Greater Internet Fuckward Theory (see:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19). So much so that I quit playing Quake online (god I'm old), and haven't played online games since then with the exception of the MUD I've been on for years. World of Warcraft is especially bad, due to the fact that the game itself is simple enough that you don't really need to be nice and group with other adventurers until you're very high level. It appeals to the lowest common denominator. I tried it, liked the game mechanics well enough but was very turned off by the "community" of the server I was on. Sexual harrassment is bad enough that many women I know that play WoW play almost exclusively male characters.
Well, the latest patch for WoW enabled an in-game voice chat option. From a mechanics standpoint, it's nice because although there are lots of third-party programs that accomplish this, having easy access to voice chat for everyone makes things better for all involved. All, except women.
See, suddenly the neanderthals who play are realizing just how many women are playing the game. There has been an insane amount of harrassment towards female players, threats of stalking, etc. And how has the Blizzard abuse team addressed the concerns of their paying female customers? By ignoring and deleting threads on their message board. Here is one compilation that is still up for now. It will make your skin crawl.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2043491485&sid=1Of course, Blizzard is a private company and can do whatever it likes. But if this is how they're willing to treat loyal, paying customers, I will never buy anything with their logo on it again.