Just like it contributed to the decline of HOTS. (Google search Kendric silenced hots or Grubby silenced hots, the two most wholesome friendly players/streamers you could find. Silenced in HOTS=Ban on ranked play.)
You can make the game with no changes, but the culture the game exists in has changed to become much more sensitive. The definition of “harassment” has widened beyond recognition.
Vanilla’s emphasis on GM intervention saved many from being wrongfully banned for adverse behavior (camping towns, killing NPCs etc) but this will not be a factor in Classic, as demonstrated by HOTS’ (And new WOW’s) automated system where GM’s must be manually contacted in appeal efforts and rarely reverse the bans. Killing flight masters and quest NPCs in Camp Taurajo for 8 hours straight will be considered harassment/disruptive gameplay in 2018.
I am posting this as a historical reference for when my entire clan gets banned for PvPing, and I get to say “told you so.”
Yeah, sometimes I just wanna gank someone until they log off, and I imagine I’ll be taking a vacation from gameplay as much as I take a 72-hour hiatus on this forum for referencing explicit webpages.
Maybe on a PVE server, but I don’t think this will happen on a PVP server. I mean, I don’t know for sure since I haven’t played in a while, and have nothing to reference this by.
considering you can and will receive temp bans on the forums for using curse words kids learn when they’re 8 on here, it’s safe to assume you should just not talk to anyone for fear of getting reported.
One of my favorite ways to farm honor between long BG queues was to take 5-6 buddies (Horde faction), and run out from Undercity to Chillwind Point. When a player flies into Chillwind, they are not worth any honor for something like 1-2 minutes. So we had a Rogue sap or a Mage poly them for a little bit, then I’d charge in with a Shaman behind me, drop a string of MS crits, and collect honor and ears. Then we’d go ravage the surrounding Sorrow Hill and Andorhal area until we went back.
Man, that’s going to be disappointing to not be able to do. I’ll get over it.
Oh, and Morgan’s Vigil! Most of those NPCs don’t fight back, so that was another area to farm ears.
Rip honor between queues. Rip the fact I’ll be harassing -without prejudice- and getting banned ;].
I disagree - I’m fairly vocal when people suck and I had exactly 0 issues in it, ever.
A quick google search for “silenced hots” revealing many disgruntled players saying “f*ck this game” as well as the various user-driven changes to the reporting system over several patches should influence you otherwise.
Can you actually name one person who was wrongfully banned?
No. That won’t ever be a banable offense. Despite Blizzard coming out and dispelling this foolish rhetoric time and time again we still have people like you. Amazing.
Do I have examples from 14 years ago? No. I have examples for the current system that Blizzard uses in its games. As I added to my OP, at least two of the most friendly/wholesome streamers of HOTS (Grubby/Kendric) were both banned due to the automated system, and Grubby (a Blizzard employee) was even denied appeal by a GM.
I will be putting this to the test with a separate account to see what is and what is not bannable. I’ll start with relentless ganking in low level zones for a month to see what happens.
I’ll be using a night elf hunter for shadowmeld and eyes of the beast ganking from high mountains.
If you have any harassment scenarios you’d like to have tested please leave them here.
Doesnt answer the question though does it… if someone’s appeal was denied then there were legitimate grounds for the Squelch and whatever resulting SIlence they were given. Doesnt matter how wholesome someone is or who they work for… if you break the ToS, you pay the consequences.
So, again name someone who was actioned that were proven to be innocent.
The key thing that is automated is a chat squelch, which is a temporary silence that lasts until a GM reviews what was said and makes a determination whether that is a violation of the Terms of Use. If it is not a violation, the squelch is lifted and no negative mark goes on the account. (If it is a violation, it generally leads to a specific length of silence, which depends on the history on the account.)
Yeah, I’d love to see evidence of this. I can’t actually remember a single thread with someone complaining that they were automatically squelched, and the GM review failed to reverse it WHEN they honestly had not engaged in any chat behavior that was in violation of the Terms of Use. (Even one of the Community Managers outright said that - they look whenever people post a complaint, and sure enough that person DESERVED the silence.)
Biases are interesting things. I’ve watched the culture the game exists in become more and more vicious and hateful, and seen a larger number of people decide that “ignore them” has just let the weeds grow to the point they’re killing the garden.
Strange. I saw a thread semi-recently in Customer Support where a person with War Zone active was asking whether being corpse-camped was harassment, and was clearly told no.
I suspect there are mixed stories out there, with more nuance than the outrage implies, and the times when zone disruption gets to a point of GM action is not simply “did wPvP”.
PVP will never be actionable… Blizzard has never allowed that or done that to anyone. Blizzards policy states that PVP can be countered by a PVP solution, they wont action anyone for that, even prolonged PVP and supposed griefing.
Blizz has a very definite definition of what is allowed and what isnt, even in todays safe spaces culture. Griefing doesnt exist in Blizzards world, and ‘zone diusruption’ has to happen over the course of days or weeks before it is considered actionable.
Grubby wasn’t banned. He was silenced. And what happened to him only happened because he’s a streamer. He draws the sort of attention that attracts malicious users.