Catching Up With Red Shirt Guy Ian Bates Ten Years After He Became A Gaming Icon

Ten years ago, Ian Bates became part of one of gaming’s most iconic moments. At the annual developer panel for World of Warcraft (WoW) during Blizzcon 2010, Ian asked about whereabouts of WoW character Falstad Wildhammer, who should be in the game according to the lore - but wasn’t. After Ian filled them in, the stumped developers realised their mistake and told him that they were going to get that fixed for him. Ian’s appearance went viral, and he became known as “Red shirt guy”. Later on, Blizzard Entertainment honoured him with his own NPC, the Wild Hammer Fact Checker, immortalising him in the game.

We caught up with Ian and were delighted to see that he’s still very much interested in World of Warcraft, and is an actively participating member of the community, giving beta feedback to Shadowlands and creating content around the game. He talks about how this moment has impacted his life, how he has been enjoying the upcoming expansion Shadowlands, cultural sensitivity in WoW lore, and his thoughts about where the future of the story might be taking us.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can also check out the full video interview below.

Over the last ten years, you’ve appeared several times on Blizzcon panels. 

I’ve been at every Blizzcon since and I’ve asked questions at most of the panels. A couple of years I was not selected, I think 2018 was one of them. Other than that I’ve been there ever since.

Ten years is a long time in gaming. How has that moment influenced your life?

It has shaped it quite a bit. It’s been a while, especially because of the pandemic, but I still occasionally get recognised out in public. Most recently was around December of last year. It was at Best Buy getting a Christmas present for my Dad, and there was a guy there that recognised me as the Red Shirt Guy.

Of course, you’ve also gotten the in-game character. That one is still there, right?

Yes, the Wild Hammer Fact Checker. He’s still there in Ironforge. Whenever I’m in the city, I go and visit him.

Do you still play World of Warcraft?

Yes! I’m very excited for Shadowlands!

How do you play? Do you quest a lot? Do you raid?

I quest a lot. I like collecting things like mounts and pets. I used to raid, but about the time I went to college I didn’t have time for it anymore, so I took a little while off and stuck to [Looking for Raid]. Then I had a bit more free time I tried to get back into it, and I’ve come to find that the organising and really trying is a bit too stressful, so I’m kind of retired from progression raiding at the moment. I still try to do every raid at least once to get all the story moments.

Are you the type of person that just plays one character, or do you play multiple?

I have two primary characters - one horde, one alliance. I have a couple other characters just for other optional content like the class order halls in legion, and I’m going to have a character for each covenant for each of their stories.

We noticed that you’re very active about Shadowlands on your Twitter.

Yes, I thought that would be a good way to help, having a beta key and providing feedback.

How are you enjoying it so far?

I like it a lot. I love it when Blizzard gets to do a setting that doesn’t have a lot of pre-established details because they are at their best when they are just creating a whole world whole cloth. That’s when their world-building is the most exciting like Pandaria or Zandalar and Kul Tiras, which we really didn’t know that much about. 

Is there a zone you enjoyed the most so far?

Revendreth! I love when you the first little starting section Pridefall Hamlet you reach this walkway, and it’s on a sheer cliff, and you see the entirety of the zone out before you. It’s just kind of amazing. Like wow, normally it looks little fake vistas you'll see in a raid where you can’t actually go there - But no, that's the entire rest of the zone, and you can go to all of it. They have a similar view in Ardenweald too actually. I wonder if they are doing it on purpose.

It, of course, feels like the ultimate sacrifice of Ursoc in that moment, though we can’t ever really be sure if he’s gone-gone.

I think it holds more weight if he’s actually gone-gone, but yeah, that was a really good short.

What did you think about the short, and how do you think it drives the story forward?

I’d like to see a bit more of the Night Fae and what they do. They are one of the mysterious covenants in that the others have a somewhat defined role: Necrolords and Maldraxxus are the army, Kyrians are the ones who take souls to the shadowlands like we see them taking Arthas and Uther in the beginning, and the Venthyr are either to redeem villainous souls, or send them to the Maw if they are too irredeemable whereas Ardenweald we said that they help the wild gods regenerate, but we hadn’t really seen much of how that works. If you are in the beta, they go into it there with the main questline.

I like that the wild hunt exists. I like to make up my own expansion concepts that I will share on Blizzplanet that I write for, and sometimes I will get just little details right. Right before Legion was announced, I did one that had Black Rook Hold as a dungeon and involved the Emerald Nightmare coming back - the details otherwise were very different. In this one, I wanted them to incorporate one version of the wild because they are pretty neat mythology from little different parts of Europe and now they are in World of Warcraft, though in a very different form than I predicted. Still, that’s pretty cool.

You’ve asked a question at multiple Blizzcon panels. Of course, unfortunately, due to the pandemic, you won’t get the opportunity this year.

On one hand, I was looking forward to it being the 10th anniversary, but on the other hand with everything that’s going on I’m glad they made the decision to cancel Blizzcon. It would’ve not been a good idea to hold it with the pandemic as it is.

During your time playing Shadowlands, were there any questions that popped up like “I wonder where this is going?” or “Oh there’s an inconsistency here?” that I don’t understand or doesn’t really line up?

One thing I have been thinking which is especially coming to interest with the release of the Afterlives: Ardenweald short yesterday is that the Shadowlands trailer doesn’t fully reconcile with how spirits and ghosts have been presented in the past in World of Warcraft. For example, especially with spirits of the wild gods and druids we see them in the Emerald Dream and the Nightmare right after Ursoc dies, you see him at the end of the raid, and you can talk to him, and he’s a spirit in the Emerald Dream. And we see in Afterlives and in Shadowlands itself that no -  they don’t go to the Emerald Dream when they die - they go to Ardenweald. I’ve been wondering how exactly that works, so there is a line as Ursoc is waiting to regenerate in Ardenweald before spoiler things happen, he's told to drain wells.

I wonder if it’s a split-soul thing or if the soul is in one place, and they are dreaming that’s what we are seeing in the Emerald Dream, and we have seen spirits in there, and if these are the dreams of the ones in Ardenweald.

You tweeted something very interesting. You talked about cultural sensitivity. Could you explore that for us? 

When I was getting on discord for the interview, I loss endless scrolls of lore community which is one where I have been on the forums for many years, they were talking about how some of the Loa aren’t just inspired by Haitian and other Carabian cultures like voodoo, but have actual names from it like Bwonsamdi is just like Baron Samedi who is a real Haitian Loa and is actually still worshipped by people today and they were wondering what the implications of that using that as a fantasy character were.

I shared my opinion. That’s a pretty good thing, and I probably shared it someone where Blizzard might see it, so I put it on Twitter too.

I love that it isn’t just standard European mythology like dragons, dwarfs and elves. You can get stuff pretty much everywhere. It helps make the setting what it is.

This reminds me when they said they had to consult with China during the creation of Mists of Pandaria to make sure they didn’t do anything offensive. If I remember correctly, Chen and Li Li Stormstout had to have their eyes changed because originally they had green eyes. I think Li Li still might have. I remember at least in the initial posters and in Pearl of Pandaria, the graphic novel they released, they had to change their eyes from green to gold because they were told that green eyes can be considered a bad thing in Chinese mythology. I think they actually ended up referencing this in the actual game because there is a questline in Pandaria where you meet a Pandaria, I think her name was Kiri Jade-Eyes who turns out to be a witch… or was it the Jade Witch. Let me check?

[Ian takes a moment to fact check himself here] 

Oh, wait, no. Kiri is someone else. I’m thinking of the Widow Greenpaw. I think it might have been a reference to the issue. 

They probably should, just to be nice and make sure there aren’t unintentionally things, maybe do that for all the culture when they incorporate them. 

If you want to hear more of Ian’s insights into Shadowlands and its lore, you can check out our video interview!

Image via Blizzard Entertainment