So, my guild has been dealing with a player using an addon to harass us for several months now. We’ve put in ticket after ticket, and for a long time were told because it was through a third party addon that there was nothing that could be done about it, since the information wasn’t stored somewhere that could be accessed. Eventually, I was able to message back and forth with the developer of said addon, and they provided me with an information link to send along with tickets, because it turns out that there was a way for the information to be viewed. Looking into it, there’s even an option for reporting harassing text through addons. What I want to know, is whether there’s something else we should be doing to help the GM’s with handling this? It’s been frustrating being told, even after providing the link, that because it’s through the addon there’s nothing that can be done. We’re grasping for anything here that can help at this point.
The only thing you can do with stuff like this is, sadly, do not respond to the harasser in any way, shape or form.
The instant you do, Blizzard wipes their hands of the entire issue as a problem ‘between two players’ and you’re sunk.
Unfortunately, Addons are a grey-area for Blizzard to deal with and after the massive amount of job-pruning that went on, I’d bet few few of our remaining GMs are going to risk drawing attention to themselves by putting their neck out to ban a paying customer for harassment of another player.
If you absolutely have to deal with this person and they’re abusing the ‘unbannable exploit’ around the Ignore function, just put the person on ignore, screenshot the harassment, push the screenshots to Blizzard’s twitter/facebook/etc mass-media sites and ask them what they can do about this. You’d be amazed what folks will do when you’re putting forth evidence of bad PR fodder in a public setting, but after that you can expect to be blocked from those pages.
It depends on how hard you need to get this harassment to stop, and how badly it is affecting your ability to enjoy the company of your guildies and the game itself.
What addon was the harraser using? What was he specially doing? I may be able to shed some light.
Blizzard typically does not care about harassment, and will often hold the harassed more accountable and guilty than the harasser. As it’s easier to simply close the case if they claim both parties are guilty. As Gentarn said- THEY WILL DO THIS IF YOU RESPOND IN ANY FORM. You can so much as say “Please stop.” To the other person, they will treat you like you threatened to kill someone.
They purposefully make the experience as unpleasant and frustrating as they can, going so far as to shame and scold you oftentimes. I once told someone they were being homophobic, and had a moderator tell me that saying that also made me homophobic.
They will literally and figuratively silence you, because then it’s one less thing they have to deal with. I cannot stress enough how important it is to not engage, if you want proper results through the proper channels.
On top of all this, interactions and posted text via add on is still subject to the CoC and ToS, so if a moderator told you that an add on is a way around the rules, and a free pass to harass and bully, that is false, and you guys need to resubmit tickets until you get someone who knows what they’re talking about, or cares.
I love this because it perfectly encapsulates how useless the blizzard moderation system is.
Just ignore them
I think they’re looking for a non-cowardly, non-ableist solution.
We should always enable our harassers by ignoring them and suffering in silence because it make’s a special kind of idiot in the peanut gallery happy because you’re not rocking the boat.
Fixed that for you
I see someone Alliance side doing this as well. Its like others have said here, Blizzard really does not do anything to stop harassment/griefing. They bank on there faulty /Ignore system which is pretty much the easiest block system to get around on the internet.
One time I opened up six or seven tickets in the span of 1 year against a person harassing me and I still to this day get some whispers to them from time to time.
Blizzard doesn’t care about the toxicity of its playerbase.
In terms of solutions, I’d echo Korrgosh.
Though I’ll say don’t get your hopes up for an actual solution from Blizzard.
Moments like this make me glad FFXIV’s devs actually care so far and go to effort to make sure rules are followed properly, to the spirit and not to the letter.
Does the player belong to a guild? If so, report him to his guild leader. That may help somewhat.
Other than that, your best bet is to ignore him completely. Don’t engage, don’t approach, don’t talk to, don’t interact with, don’t call out in trade or other places where they can see they’ve got your attention. Trolls love attention. They feed on it. They feel any attention is good attention. If they know you’re paying attention to them, it almost insures they’ll keep it up.
Try RPing in different areas than usual, or on different toons than usual to give them a break in finding you if that is a factor. Put them and any of their known alts on ignore. Good luck!
The sort of Pathetic Fallacy of anthropomorphizing Blizzard a lot of posters have indulged in is a dangerous oversimplification. Reports of griefing are responded to. It’s important to understand that false reports are themselves a form of griefing. Which explains a lot both about apparent non-response by the authorities & also how to strengthen your case.
“Don’t respond” is only half the rule of thumb. “Don’t respond. Report!”
Multiple reports ( meaning by more than one person ) of an incident helps.
Reporting of multiple incidents helps
Screenshots help - especially when text from an addon on is involved
Patience helps. Both in terms of time frame & in terms of what you know about what is done to follow up on your report.
It’s not likely you will know what Blizzard’s staff are doing or the result. If the person disappears for a while then comes back around it most definitely does not mean nothing was done. Temporary bans, banning an account with subsequent use of the name on another account, … Plenty of reasons harrassment doesn’t stop forever.
i’m not talking through my hat, either. Been on the small moderation staff of a forum with thousands of active members. Also in a guild now that puts on multiple public events every single month. It takes time & effort to achieve the goal of protecting the membership. Staff work as hard as they can with the limited resources they have.
Inadequate reporting - let alone failure to report - & exacerbating the situation undercut their efforts.
This is based on sheer speculation, whereas I’ve personally witnessed Blizzard doing nothing about absolutely heinous behavior, and punishing those speaking out against it.
I had someone threaten to kill me on these forums, and he was posting again in 12 hours. They don’t care about toxicity. They care about people making a big deal about it and pointing it out. Which is why it’s punished more. They had to issue a video apology years back for disbanding and banning an entire LGBTQ guild for calling out their harassers, and claiming the guild concept was inappropriate. Blizzard fosters toxic behavior, and punished anyone unwilling to quietly take their beating.
It’s disgusting.
This is a fine sentiment but its also ignoring the original post.
Id say the OP has already been extraordinarily patient thus far. Blizzard has an absolutely horrid track record of reining in the toxicity of its playerbase and it seems this is no different.
There have been a few fine suggestions here (continue to report until you get someone competent, go to the persons guold if they have one). Unfortunately if months of sending in tickets has gotten them nothing but “sorry nothing we can do” theres not really much else to suggest or say to solve the issue.
Not to bring up the Corpsegrinder issue…but that it happened at all (and that it was only after community outcry that they issued a not-really-appology) says quite a lot about Blizzard, and I’d argue that not much has changed since then.
What kind of harassment is it? What add-on is being used to harass? Is it something as simple as someone putting “X guild sucks” in their trp? Is it someone using an add-on to interrupt RP events? Or are they using an add-on to follow y’all around? it’s hard for people to give advice with how vague OPs initial post is.
Literally all the info you’d need to come to a conclusion is there. They were using an add on, but the mod told them you’re allowed to use add ons to harass people. Which is false, per their own ToS and CoC.
The post wasn’t vague, it just wasn’t specific enough to be a callout post. Which is good, because there’s nothing mods love more than callout posts. Cuz they get to suspend the victim, throw out the whole case, and move on with their day.
Is there a particular reason you’re being hostile? Saying “via TRP emotes” for example in no way makes this a call out post. Nobody asked for names, guilds, battletags, etc. There are tons of add-ons for WoW that could be used to troll/harass someone. Having an idea of what add-ons are being abused can shed light on what could be done to fix the problem.