An Eye on Emerald Dream Behavior

Emerald Dream
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Hello friends of Emerald Dream! You all may have noticed something new when you logged in since 9.2.5 dropped: the Social Contract.

What is the Social Contract? The Social Contract is the Terms of Service you agreed to when you first started playing WoW. It’s a reminder of the rules you agreed to abide by (no swearing, using slurs, discrimination, etc.). The Social Contract is the Terms of Service in a smaller form to remind players to be nice to each other in-game.

The Social Contract is not anything new. The Social Contract does not present any new rules to abide by. The Social Contract itself is not an enforceable document, merely a reminder of the rules you agreed to abide by.

So what does this mean for roleplayers? It’s a sign Blizzard could be getting serious about moderating its community. Blizzard has been fairly hands-off with enforcing rules in the game in the past, but with the wave of complaints coming in about account actions being taken (silencing, suspensions), it looks like things are changing. This presents a challenge for the roleplay community, as there may be a number of us who aren’t aware of the rules of the game.

I posted a thread in the Customer Support forums asking how GMs approach roleplay scenarios when reports come in: An Eye on Roleplayers Behavior

I posted 3 examples of potential scenarios and asked how a GM would approach it. Please take a look at all of the responses in the thread, particularly from Vrakthris, who was nice enough to take the time to provide a detailed response to my post to explain how roleplay is affected by the ToS.

The underlying theme of the thread is when in doubt, put it in party chat. Is your argument going to get heated? Is your fight going to get graphically violent? Is your ritual just a little too dark? Even if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, to better protect yourself from reports, take it to party chat and be sure everyone involved is aware of what the scene will entail and all agree to it.

The reality we face is roleplayers are not always well liked. While I hope the GMs can differentiate between reports and false reports, it’s important to realize there are people who will try to abuse the reporting system for malicious purposes. We all enjoy this game, but it’s hard to do that when account actions are taken against us for breaking the rules. Please share this post with your friends, guild, Discord servers, and community. The more roleplayers are aware of the rules Blizzard expects us to abide by, the better equipped we can be to avoid coming afoul of them. The game is much more fun to play when we’re not being actioned!

I’d encourage everyone to take another look at the Terms of Service. Make yourself aware of what the rules are. When roleplaying, be aware of what scenes you plan to write, and think about “what channel, if any at all, would this be most appropriate for?” If it involves swearing, violence, or dark themes, it might not be a good idea to put it in a public channel.

Please note nothing presented in this post is a reflection of my own personal thoughts or feelings. I’ve kept it intentionally neutral because I want to encourage conversations about this issue.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT use the linked post to ask questions or debate the issue. That is NOT what the post is for. It’s here to serve as a general guide for you and the community to understand what’s being expected of us. If you have questions or concerns, please either:

  1. Open a ticket
  2. Make a new thread in the realm forums, General Discussion, or even Customer Support (note: Customer Support is NOT Customer Service. Customer Support is player-to-player support, GMs and devs do not look at that forum.)
  3. Post your questions/concerns in this post.

Do NOT use the linked post. Please be respectful of those who want to use it as a quick reference guide.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and see you in Azeroth!

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Thanks for the post! Blizz put it as as more of a double check on people as it appears that not only the community, but blizz itself has been becoming more lax on these types community/in game moderation. I put this akin to something like LoL where at the start of every season they put something very similar on you upon booting the game. I don’t think people should be as spooked as they are. Everyone should know by now blizz ain’t the boogeyman.

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I replied to that thread. One thing that I have learned from my tenure in playing MMO’s and professional endeavors is that EULA’s along with Digital Contracts are one hundred percent legal. So if you break the rules that you agreed to, depending on what you have done, they can ban your account and/or other accounts that you have, and legally have the right to take you to court. Although I cannot imagine that they would exercise court actions over WoW.

After all the fluff that went on in their office with it being exposed they are being proactive now with their rules. If they don’t clean the game up in short, it will end bad for Blizzard; especially with Microsoft acquiring the company. I’ve been hearing lots of people getting banned for breaking the rules. I was able to talk to a “GM Manage” where I inquired a bit about what was going on.

This isn’t the Blizzard of old. This is something very different. If you leave people alone and don’t be snarky or rude or some other such foul behavior then you have nothing to worry about. As I mentioned in the thread, alot of people come here to escape real life woes and troubles.

If you harass someone “in the name of roleplay” you deserve to have the hammer come down on you. Over the years I have seen a ton of inappropriate behavior from “role players”. If you don’t like someone, don’t talk to them. If it bothers you that much, just ignore the person and go about your business. Then you don’t have to worry.

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Many folks dont understand that RP is something that kind of needs to agreed upon between both parties, especially if you want to be the villain/bad guy and inflict pain or misery.

I know its not super fun to be like “hey I want to be a bad guy is that cool with you?”

But it is what it is, and the truth is, most folks use RP to just relax and as a form of escapism, not to be forced upon by people attacking and berating them constantly.

Also, theres the guys that use RP as an excuse to Troll. Its a farce honestly, so if the new rules have any kind of affect on that, im all for it.

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Ahh guild politics on ED. Happy to not have to deal with it anymore :joy:

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It’s actually very easy to avoid as we have discovered. The community on the forums is quite a bit different from the community that exists in game. As I’ve found out from playing on a few realms from vanilla to present. That’s also true however of most MMO’s as well. I remember when playing CoH that they said that out of all the people that they had playing that only 15 percent of the playerbase at most came to the forums.

While the past may have been problematic with Blizzard 1.0 going forward 2.0 is a very different company. I’d compare it with alot of what I have seen over at seen over at Square Enix. We have seen this many times just on ED alone. There are good people out there, many are just quiet giving WoW’s tumultuous past.

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Going to be great when Blizz finally makes the tools to recognize and remove snakes like you.

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You mean you and your buddies using third party programs to make stuff up to slander and destroy credibility because you are nothing but internet tough guys that outside of this game have contributed nothing to your own personal lives because let’s face it, playing a game and bullying anonymously makes you hate yourself just a little bit less? Yeah keep spreading lies and antagonizing people until they get fed up. You are the Amber Heard of WoW there buds. Cry wolf some more while you fake it.

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Hello ED friends! Nazereth over on the MG forums sent a ticket with some questions to a GM on if context is taken into consideration with reports on RP servers and received some answers. Nazereth was nice enough to let me share their post with the GM’s responses, so please go give it a look!

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So now nobody will say anything out of fear of getting reported and banned further thinning out the RP scene and continue to kill the server. Great. Any RP that will still be generated will be further stifled as partakers shove any ideas they think may get them banned. Putting rubber corners on everything sterilizes it.

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I don’t think it will be that bad. Going by the statement from Nazereth, I think we’ll be fine. I don’t think hurting people and calling it “role playing” is a healthy thing. People get attached to their characters. Their is always some bit of themselves in it because we make these characters for our own enjoyment. I personally don’t have too much of a problem with people getting cocky, a bit overbearing, etc.

I have thick skin. Not a whole lot phases me. However, I know that not everyone is me. If you’re starting RP that becomes abusive, I don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s just like what I mentioned about D&D earlier. I never let players play evil aligned characters for that reason alone. It’s self destructive to the group and the game as a whole. Also not to mention I have some characters of my own that I have RP’ed with that are dark and what not, I just make it a point to not cross that line myself.

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Pretty much! Players will 100% abuse this power for any no-no language being said. Everyone better hold hands and sing kumbaiya while doing RP.

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big yikes :grimacing:

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New ED is soft :joy:

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You really gonna let your Jimmie’s get rustled over this ? Lots of old EDs heads in this thread, hilarious.

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Soft is an understatement. They’re CORNY.

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