Guy loses hearing, then tries World of Warcraft

Earlier this year World of Warcraft player Unwelcome suffered an accident that permanently robbed him of his hearing. Feeling alienated and shunned by his real life friends, he returned to World of Warcraft for some online alienation and shunning.

The loss of one’s hearing is a tragic and traumatic event, but it doesn’t necessarily mean an end to gaming. Many popular games offer subtitle options for the hearing impaired. World of Warcraft itself is quite deaf-friendly on a basic level, overflowing with text-filled quests that don’t require aural cues to complete.

It gets a bit more complicated when you’re in a raiding guild, however. Unwelcome found himself living up to his name when he recently returned to his raiding guild of four years. He detailed his experience in a post on the World of Warcraft forums.

So i came back to wow. Now I’ve been playing with my guild for about 4 years. We have all become close friends. We have even done some rl guild parties. I explained why i have been off for so long to the guild. I explained my condition. Everyone was pretty supportive for about 5 minutes.

Do you know what the first question i got from my guild leader was? He asked me if i could still use (popular voice chat program) vent (Ventrilo). I told him no, but tried to assure him it wouldn’t be a problem as i usually research the fights beforehand and use dbm.

He tells me that i can’t raid unless i have vent. Guild rules and all. I was pissed. After a huge blow out between us i get removed from the guild and put on ignore.

Read the original article in full on Kotaku.