An Eye on Player Behavior and Reporting Improvements

Community General Discussion
62

Don’t get me wrong, I like these improvements, but unless there are actual human beings on Blizzard’s end to adjudicate, this is going to cause more harm than good.

In the past we have seen people:

  • Banned because a multi-boxer mass-reported the person.
  • Banned because they were using a VPN and appeared as if they were account sharing

The end result is the person being banned for something they didn’t do (or claimed they didn’t do) due to an automated response and then the actual human "customer care” representative not having the agency to correct if it proved the automated system was wrong.

There is no amount of scripting or AI that can do better than a real human being. And I would feel far more confident in these efforts if I knew there would be human beings reviewing the tickets to make sure there isn’t a spiteful abuse of the system.

The other thing I would recommend is that players who have opted in to being a “Guide” have their reporting flagged for expedited review. Those who have opted in to basically do free customer service for new players have been holding the line on encouraging a more friendly in-game exchange; thus would likely be more accurate when identifying activities which would break Blizzard’s behavior standards. If you are trusting us with the care of and guidance for people getting their first impression of WoW, then you should trust us when we are reporting bad behavior in general.

Anyway, great first step, but this can’t be the only step, and Blizzard just has to make the investment of having real people reviewing any complaints.

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63

I don’t know either, but I hope anyway. They would stop every minute or so and loot but I never saw them skinning so I’m not sure what they were doing, or if by me skinning them it was messing them up, but they just kept going mindlessly so I kept skinning. lol

64

one of the section will be gameplay and you can put holding back team progression

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65

A reward system(Thank you noteS) to incentivize reporting is not progress. This is like when governments ask people to report their family and friends for wrong think. I understand there are rule-breakers, but there is already a mass report problem in the game. This will just make it worse.

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66

“When players first log in to World of Warcraft after the 9.2.5 content update goes live, they will be greeted by the new Social Contract. This contract will need to be read and accepted before a player can continue into the world of Azeroth. The contract outlines behavior that will help make your experiences more positive and provides an outline of behaviors that are not acceptable within the game. While you should only need to accept it once, there may be a future point where you’ll need to reaccept the contract to continue playing.”

Thank you blizzard, especially the last part of the social contract update! This should be something we need to accept on a monthly basis. This will keep it fresh in everyones mind and will help reduce toxicity!

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67

We shall see if this changes anything. There was a lot of promises and stuff geared to this many times and eventually, it was found to not be working or being abused.

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68

Having the option to filter bad words does not give someone the right to use those bad words. The filter is there to reduce the chances of seeing toxic language. It’s not there to give you a pass to be a degenerate.

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70

Blizz knows the difference on these. They use more than just the IP before they ban someone for account sharing. What has gotten falsely flagged though is “gold selling/bot farming” type behavior that when combined with a VPN can cause the system to think the player is one of the bot accounts. That can get overturned on appeal.

Right now the only automated part is a Squelch which has been in game for around 15 years or more. It will squelch the account when they get a lot of unique reports against it in a short time pending GM review. The GM can then clear the flag, or apply a Silence, Suspension, or perma ban.

Falsely asking people to report a line of harmless chat, esp for a stream stunt, has gotten a streamer suspended for abuse of the reporting system before. So there is that.

I can’t say that the system will always have GMs reviewing before a Silence or Suspension penalty, but for now it is humans. The reporting system has made it pretty easy because it captures the name, server, chat channel, chat logs, game position, etc that they need to quickly make a decision, or to review on appeal.

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71

Might I suggest 24h ban from Instanced Mythic+ Dungeons if you are the first to leave in the middle of one?
Some people quit after the first pull if it “takes more time than they judge to be necessary” without any consequences, making the other 4 people that queue, prepared, pre-pot, flasked, wasted a key and TIME to bear the consequences.

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72

Appreciate the improvements to the system and any ongoing work to make this game a better place for everyone.

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73

Is the squelch system still in place with the new report thing?

74

Welcome to the nanny state

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75

Yes, that is still in place as far as I know. It is one of their old systems and I don’t know of any replacement for it yet.

It takes lots of reports from unique accounts within a short time to trigger it. It was initially designed for gold/website spammers. Abuse of it can get people suspended though so report wisely!

Welcome to 2004!

[/quote]

Original User Manual from 2004 https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/template_resource/LO0VQ46XB1281555957773363.pdf - which has the EULA at the end. It points to the requirements for accepting Terms of Use with the website for it. I selected the first archived Wayback Machine TOU for WoW from 2004. I have copied out the relevant sections for you. Yes, it included hateful names and speech.

https://web.archive.org/web/20041217101250/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.shtml

  1. World of Warcraft Rules of Conduct.

As with all things, World of Warcraft is governed by certain rules of conduct that must be adhered to by all users of World of Warcraft. It is your responsibility to know, understand and abide by these rules of conduct. The following rules are not meant to be “exhaustive,” and Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to determine what conduct it considers to be outside the spirit of the game and to take such disciplinary measures as it sees fit. Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to add to or amend this list of rules at any time, and you are responsible for checking these Terms of Use for any newly amended or posted rules each time that you log on.

A. Rules Related to User Names.

Each user will select a user name for his or her character, or allow the World of Warcraft software to select the name for him or her. Additionally, users may form “guilds” and such guilds will be required to choose a name for the guild. When you choose a user name, create a guild, or otherwise create a label that can be seen by other players of World of Warcraft, you must abide by the following guidelines as well as the rules of common decency. If Blizzard Entertainment, in its sole discretion, finds such a label to be offensive, it reserves the right to change the name, remove the label and corresponding chat room, and/or suspend your use of World of Warcraft.

In particular, you may not use:

  1. Names of another person with the intent to impersonate that person;

  2. Names which incorporate ‘swear’ words or which are otherwise offensive, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;

  3. Names subject to the rights of any other person without authorization;

  4. Names of popular culture or media personalities;

  5. Names that are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment or other companies);

  6. Names of religious deities or figures;

  7. Names of characters from Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft products, including character names from the Warcraft series of novels; or

  8. Names related to drugs, narcotics, or criminal activity, including references to drug substances; or

  9. Name comprised of partial or complete sentences (e.g., “Inyourface”, “Welovebeef”, etc);

  10. Names comprised of pure gibberish (eg, “Asdfasdf”, “Jjxccm”, “Hvlldrm”);

  11. Names that refer to pop culture icons or personas (e.g. “Britneyspears”, “Austinpowers”, “Batman”)

  12. Names that utilize “Leet” or “Dudespeak” (e.g., “Roflcopter”, “xxnewbxx”, “Roxxoryou”)

  13. Name that incorporate titles. The term “Titles” as used herein shall include ‘rank’ titles (e.g. , “CorporalTed,” or “GeneralVlad”) and/or fantasy titles (e.g., “KingMike”, “LordSanchez”)

Additionally, you may not use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the name restrictions listed above, nor can you have a “first” and “last” name that, when combined, violate the above name restrictions.

B. Rules Related to “Chat” and Interaction With Other Users.

Communicating with other Users and Blizzard Entertainment representatives is an integral part of World of Warcraft and is referred to in this document as “Chat.” Your Chats may be subject to review, modification, and deletion without notice by Blizzard Entertainment. Additionally, you hereby acknowledge that Blizzard Entertainment is under no obligation to monitor Chat and you engage in Chat at your own risk. When engaging in Chat in World of Warcraft, or otherwise utilizing World of Warcraft, you may not:

  • (i) Transmit or post sexually explicit images or other content or language which in the sole discretion of Blizzard Entertainment is deemed to be offensive; nor shall you transmit any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable content or language, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;

  • (ii) Carry out any action with a disruptive effect, such as cause the Chat screen to “scroll” faster than other users are able to type to it, including setting up macros with large amounts of text that, when used, can have a disruptive effect on the normal flow of Chat;

  • (iii) Disrupt the normal flow of dialogue in Chat or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users, individuals or entities, including, but not limited to, posting “Spam” messages on World of Warcraft (“Spam” messages as used in this document include, but are not limited to, any effort to use a computer or other electronic device to post an unauthorized and/or unsolicited advertisement to World of Warcraft);

  • (iv) “Spam” by posting or sending more than one unsolicited message or piece of mail to a single address or in a chat area;

  • (v) Communicate or post any user’s personal information in or on the World of Warcraft, or websites or forums related to World of Warcraft;

  • (vi) Use bots or other automated techniques to collect information or communicate or post any user’s personal information in or on World of Warcraft, or websites or forums related to World of Warcraft or Blizzard Entertainment

  • (vii) Harass, threaten, stalk, embarrass or cause distress, unwanted attention or discomfort to another user of World of Warcraft or other person or entity; or

  • (viii) Cheat during game play, including but not limited to modification of the game program files.

  • (ix) Participate in any action that, in the opinion of Blizzard Entertainment results in an authorized user of World of Warcraft being "scammed " or ‘defrauded’ out of gold, weapons, armor, or any other items that he/she has earned through authorized game play in World of Warcraft.

Now can we please agree that these rules have always been in place for WoW and that updates may refine phrasing, but not core content? If anything the rules are more lax now than that were then.

The only difference is that now you have right click report in game with accurate logs attached instead of people having to make tickets manually and hope to give a GM the right details so the GM can find it in the logs. Way faster now.

10 Likes
76

This is all fine and great but how about you do something about enforcing the existing rules already in game? I mean just open the damn group finder a second and I bet you a monthly sub that you will find carries being advertised there and they probably have been for weeks. How about you do something about botting?

I don’t have an issue with your new “be nicer” stance but it rings hollow when you can’t even enforce the existing rules.

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77

As can every system on earth.

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78

Yep. They really need to clean the Group Finder up again.

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79

Bad idea

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80

For toxic leavers, maybe.

They waste my time and my key with no consequences at all.

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81

oh no the horror of playing in a moderated game . . . like most of them . . . including forum favorite FF14 . . .

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82

As someone who’s had to deal with harassment multiple times, call me when Blizzard gains the fortitude to actually punish players who use social media to harass their players, IE: With false / doctored screenshots, and or hate speech; such as the tumblr site, Spine of Deathwing.

Because that’s all that will happen here. People will say nothing in game, and simply go to places Blizzard cannot enforce their ToS. At least FFXIV is willing to use their watermarks and the hidden info in every screenshot (which Blizzard also documents) to trace all screenshots back to the taker, and action them if they are engaged in wrongdoing.

This? Let’s just say it will be abused heavily on the RP servers, and probably serve as the final nail in their coffin. Don’t like someone RPing and in character?

Ms. Velf: -flirts with Mr. Dwarf, clearly wanting 'Epic Roleplay.’

Mr. Dwarf: -looks long and hard at the elf-
‘Ey ya little tart, drop some ice in that thing ya call a top, an sod off.’

Ms. VElf: -Geoffry Baratheon rage whimper- …What did you say…?!

Later…

Blizzard: Mr. Dwarf? Sorry, you’ve been reported for hostile language even though we can clearly tell you and Ms. Velf were in-character and on an OOC basis you apologized in advance for your character’s prickly nature.

Your banned from World of Warcraft for playing your Dwarf on an RP Server.

:clap:

So yes, really great work Blizzard. If you wanted to give many other players a final reason not to play this game? The moment (and I do not doubt that we will) we see a roleplayer being banned for simple character interactions will do it, and we all know this is going to happen. Grudge reporting players is kind of a problem.

Good thing I don’t even bother with it now.

So congratulations I suppose? Yoshi-P thanks you however.

5 Likes