World of Warcraft to Host First Official Pride Event: Darkspear Dash

World of Warcraft will host its first official Pride event, “Darkspear Dash,” between June 27 and 29, across all game servers, Blizzard Entertainment announced Monday. The event stems from a long-running community initiative, “Running of the Trolls,” organized by the Warcraft Cares group for the past 12 years.

Running of the Trolls, a sister event to the group’s original “Running of the Gnomes” fundraiser for breast cancer awareness, sees players create new characters and traverse the game world even as raising money for The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization providing crisis services to LGBTQ+ youth. Dravvie, the event’s founder, stated in a Reddit post that discussions with Blizzard about formalizing the community run as an in-game celebration began nearly two years ago.

The in-game event, Darkspear Dash, will allow players to align with the Darkspear trolls to celebrate equality, individuality, and the freedom to express gender and sexual identity. According to reports, data files for the event already include a tabard and a rainbow-themed in-game item as potential rewards, though final details are still pending.

Warcraft Cares, operating primarily on the Feathermoon server in the United States, has consistently used the game as a platform for charitable fundraising. The Trevor Project, the beneficiary of Running of the Trolls, provides vital support services to LGBTQ+ young people in crisis, including a 24/7 lifeline, online chat, and text messaging services.

The move by Blizzard comes as some other massively multiplayer online (MMO) games have scaled back similar events, making the World of Warcraft community’s achievement in transforming a grassroots, charitable effort into an official game feature particularly noteworthy. As of Monday, Blizzard had not announced any further details regarding the event’s implementation or potential future iterations.