Has anyone noticed that reporting advertisements in LFG is less intuitive and takes more effort under the new system?
Gone are the days of simply right-clicking the offending post, selecting Report, and selecting Advertisement. I think most of us knew that Blizzard wasn’t doing anything with our reports, but at least, it was a straightforward means of reporting. And, it removed those posts from view for that game session.
With this new era of “listening to player concerns,” Blizzard has implemented a new method of reporting, wherein we need to right-click the offending post, select Report, and deal with a new popup menu. We’re given two choices in a drop-down menu, Inappropriate Communication and Inappropriate Name. But in which category does advertising fall? On the one hand, advertisement does technically “communicate” something. However, it might not be in the way we normally think about in-game communications (i.e. chat windows and whispers). On the other hand, LFG advertisements are group names.
Once we figure out that Blizzard considers LFG advertisements to be communication, we need to click an Advertisement button and, then, click Report. The end result is a “Thank You” window, which we must manually close, and an LFG advertisement that does not immediately disappear from view.
The facts of the matter are that Blizzard has introduced a certain level of ambiguity to reporting advertisements and that Blizzard has increased the time and effort required to file a report. Now, granted, it isn’t terribly difficult to figure out the system through a little trial and error, but how does moving from a straightforward system to an ambiguous one help the community? (Spoiler: It doesn’t.) Moreover, the few extra clicks and seconds it takes to report may not seem like a lot for a single report, but for those of us actually reporting, we aren’t reporting only a single instance of advertising. It adds up.
The question with which I’m left and the question with which I’d like to end is…WHY? Now, I could wax cynical about WoW Token sales, in-game economies, and Blizzard covertly creating a pay-to-win environment while maintaining a facade of “we care about player concerns,” but I leave it to you. Why would Blizzard in the face of historical inaction toward advertising make a reporting system less intuitive and more time-consuming?