An Eye on Roleplayers Behavior

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Hi everyone! I’m posting this in CS because the people here are pretty informed about the ToS and I’m hoping I can get some better information here and hopefully input from a blue if they could offer some clarification. This post is going to be a little long-winded so there will be a tl;dr at the bottom.

This post isn’t to debate the Social Contract, the ToS, or moderation, and I’d appreciate it if we could keep that out of here. I’d like to be able to share this thread with others in the roleplay community to help others understand the impact moderation may potentially have on roleplay and how to abide by the ToS.

Does anyone know how GMs approach reports in regards to roleplay? Obviously swearing, slurs, and disparaging language are against the ToS, but how are dark themes and abusive language approached by GMs? If it’s on a roleplay server, will a GM look at logs to see if it was in-character vs out-of-character? Will a GM look to see if all parties involved consented?

A few examples:

  1. What if my character and a friend’s character get into a heated argument in the middle of Stormwind? No swears or offensive language is used, but it could be considered “abusive language”. Would that be an actionable offense?

  2. What if a group wants to roleplay the Demon Hunter rituals, or a Warlock ritual? Would the more darker themes of that be actionable?

  3. If my Horde warparty is roleplaying fighting pirates, would getting into the details of our attacks and wounds be an actionable offense?

If anyone could please provide clarification it’d be greatly appreciated. As I said I’m not looking to debate the ToS or stir up drama. I think having some input on these things would be a big help to the roleplay community though so everyone has a better understanding of what is and isn’t ok.

Tl;dr: do GMs take a different approach to looking at in-character interactions vs. out-of-character interactions when it comes to reports?

Thanks everyone!

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I do not think you are going to get a solid yay or nay answer

That said…

Number one i am going to guess, in my opinion, could possibly be reportable.

I say this because bear in mind others around you may be oblivious to the fact you are friends and it is pure rp.

Like i said just my gut feeling. I got nothin on the other scenarios.

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A good rule of thumb is to go with this: Try to keep it within the teen range of things. If you’re typing in details about gore and other dirty details, would probably be left in the backstage.

To touch on this, doing RPs don’t really give a shield on what’s allowed that other servers have to fellow suit. It’d be a good idea to be reasonable with one’s RP by knowing the given rules of the game as a whole and try not to toe the line just because it’s an RP server.

And just to touch on the overall thing, the blues here don’t go into details on what a GM does besides them looking over logs and seeing if it breaks rules. Can’t give you more of an answer then that.

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Yea I figured this would be a longshot, was hoping maybe a blue would have more insight on how things like this are approached but I guess not. Oh well it’s no big deal. Would a good rule of thumb be to keep dark themes in party chat then where everyone involved has agreed to participate?

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FYI auhg from what I’ve heard over years, as far as rp goes, open channels aka /e for custom emoting in case of rp servers should leave out anything 18+ or you risk actions on the rare chance some minor aged player would be in range of you and or your rp partners to see said interactions.

not that you’d be lewding in that regard but if you’re going extent of graphic detailing with example of raiding pirates in azeroth if you were say out in middle of tanaris where no one really goes anymore you’d probably be safe unless a passing quest toon happened to walk by or whatever.

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the game is basically t+ if you go buy esrb rating which mean the game includes:
Blood and Gore
Crude Humor
Mild Language
Suggestive Themes
Use of Alcohol
Violence
so i find that to be ridiculous

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The programmed content made by Blizzard is rated T. That content is pre-made, static, and can be reviewed. The user made content (names and chat) is not rated. It has to follow the policies of the game company.

All Blizzard games, regardless of rating, follow the same chat policies. They are rather family friendly. This even applies to M rated Blizzard games.

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Is this in private channels, ie guild, player created. Chat joined at will shows consent, public channels do not.

Outside channels, such as Discord are even more private, and can’t be monitored like in game chat.

Usually at will channels are better, but extreme behavior can still be actioned.

Ultimately if you are in a public channel in game, be mindful of the rules.

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The GAME is rated Teen. That means content provided by Blizzard. It does not apply to players. Players need to follow the EULA/Code of Conduct. Essentially, player-created content needs to be rated E for Everyone.

Blizzard has control over the amount of those items that are in the game code. Blizzard has limited control over what players do in the game.

Using “crude humor” or “mild language” in Trade Chat or General Chat is the same as going to a crowded place filled with mainly strangers and yelling the same things. Your friends might enjoy your humor and some of the strangers around you might. But more would likely find your actions rude and inappropriate.

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Dark themes, perhaps, it really depends on the content involved. Abusive language, not as much. Our policies against language extend beyond just profanity or inappropriate subject matter, we are looking at overall toxicity as well.

Not really, no. If it’s not appropriate to say out of character I don’t imagine it will suddenly be okay just because it was in-character.

That generally isn’t a main consideration, no. At any point if a player feels the chat may violate policy they can report it.

It is possible, yes. Assuming neither you or your friend submit a report about the other, any bystanders could since it sounds like it would take place in public.

Perhaps. What needs to be understood is that our policies are almost entirely reactive in nature, meaning that we don’t look into potential chat violations unless those violations are reported to us.

If a group wants to roleplay something that might be questionable, assuming all involved are okay with the content, generally speaking, they may. As long as it isn’t in a public area and witnessed by others who may not be okay with the content, we’d never know.

The indication that other players are okay with the content is if they do not report it.

I suppose it would depend on the content, but also if public or not.

All chat is subject to our policies, but we tend to consider guild and private channels more “at will”, so we take a more hands off approach there unless the language/content is egregious.

Anything taking place in party or raid chat could be reported, so it depends on how much you trust others that you are with.

I hope that answered the majority of what you were asking. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for your detailed response Vrakthris! Really appreciate you taking the time to go through all that. And a big thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread with your responses. I think all the responses taken as a whole paint a clearer picture of how these subjects should be approached, and that certain themes may be better off not in public channels.

Thanks again everyone! This was very helpful. :slight_smile:

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agree with auhg. thanks for the insight on this too

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imho probably the most important thing to consider when RPing.

Think about it: irl there are things that are fine to participate in inside your own home that would not be appropriate at Disneyland in a long line surrounded by parents (whom you don’t know) with children.

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An important thing to consider about RP servers is that more than other servers, they’re a community. People generally know the other people around them, people have persistent reputations that characters on other servers don’t as much anymore. The other thing to keep in mind is that actions for chat are reactive, people have to report chat for action to be taken.

If people start to notice a pattern of reports being made for IC behavior that seem vindictive, nitpicky or spurious without the context that it’s fictional characters talking to fictional characters, I imagine that they’re going to start to keep tabs on the patterns and track who might be making those reports, given that /say and /emote only carry so far. If someone gets a reputation for reporting at-will in-character interactions in ways that people think are nitpicky or frivolous or used as a tool to push around OOC rivals, that’s going to stick a lot more than it would stuff from Trade Chat where anyone could be listening.

That having been said, this was something that I had to say on the subject on the Moon Guard forum recently for someone who got a warning for IC chat in a public scene with a friend:

While I personally never report anyone for anything said IC, I can see some more iffy situations where people might still find what was said inappropriate:

  • If anachronistic slurs are used, or attacks are slung on the basis of prejudices that the game world doesn’t appear to have. Greenskin, knife-ears? Okay. Spicier terms that refer to specific RL races, statuses and disabilities? Those aren’t a thing in WoW. I can see people being upset about those getting used even if it was supposedly “IC” - not only is it not great to hear, OOC, but it doesn’t fit a world that doesn’t appear to contain canonical transphobia, homophobia, or human skin colors based on culture and region.
  • Very explicit emotes. I’ve never managed to see this happen in all my time in the game, but I imagine that if someone decided to be very public with certain kinds of RP in a public place right out loud, that might get a report.

I don’t know, I can see how people would feel that statements along those lines might be inappropriate in public RP even if they were said IC.

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It isn’t reasonable to expect GMs to do additional investigation to determine context and intent. Anything that requires more time, interpretation, and judgement calls, is generally bad.

Time, because in the real world, GM time is not a free resource.

Interpretation and judgement calls, because they are detrimental to having objective and consistent rulings on reports.

Additionally, people will try to circumvent the rules by claiming that what they said was in character. There are also people, even on RP servers, who simply don’t grasp the concept of RP, and who will interpret everything as OOC chat.

Just assume if the language isn’t appropriate, it may get reported and acted on. If you want to RP dark subjects, it’s probably best to keep it to private chat.

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Someone tried this a long while back, he wanted to RP having Tourette Syndrome so he can badmouth everybody. That didn’t last long.

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I really feel like this isn’t at all acceptable on Blizzard’s end. Warcraft is a game about war. Heated arguments and terrible things happen in the game story all the time. And they happen in PUBLIC RP. ALL. THE TIME.

It’s what a good portion of people who come to WoW to RP are RPing about. The craft of War.

I really feel that at minimum-- anything that happens in the story should be acceptable in RP.

The RP community is already mortally wounded and bleeding by the lack of support from Blizzard and the storyline direction. If the social contract applies to in character actions, nearly all public RP will cease, and friends will dump friends they don’t completely trust. There will be no more open world RP between acquaintances or strangers to grow the community.

The RP community has been accustomed to in-character conflict since the birth of RP in WoW. We have some casual social events, but we have a lot of RP that revolves around the story and lore and world of…WARcraft. There is death and injury, inner-racial and interracial rivalries (that are insulting at best and deadly at worst), battle scenes, espionage, lies, slander…

There used to be a specific RP Realm Terms of Service that protected basic RP (fantasy names, immersion, in character chat channels, etc) elements from abuse or violation on RP realms. They used to be quite lengthy and quite strict and have been gutted and all but forgotten on some back page of the battle.net help menu.

I think RP Realms need their specific Terms of Service back, especially in light of the Social Contract, to protect the very core elements of RP in World of Warcraft from griefing by players who will report RPers because they dislike RP and from erroneous and unnecessary moderation. RP realms create a living, breathing, adaptive version of the World of Warcraft story, filling it with rich and lush character stories and immersion beyond the imagining of the Story and Lore team. It would be a sad thing to lose them entirely because Roleplayers want to RP according to the elements of Warcraft’s story that are acceptable elements of the story, but that they as players may now be punished for.

Chat report abusing in rp - Moon Guard - World of Warcraft Forums (blizzard.com) and so it begins. and we have…no support. It’s just…demoralizing and unacceptable.

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That thread started 19 days ago, well before the social contract rolled out.

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Hi everyone! While these conversations are important to have, I’d like to reiterate in my original post that I’d strongly prefer debate to be left out of this thread. As soon as I have free time I plan to share this thread with the various RP realm forums as a general reference guide to help make the community aware of what’s expected of us.

Let’s please keep this thread informational. A new thread in GD or the RP forums would be better suited for debating personal feelings on the rules and whether or not they are appropriate. It’ll be hard for people to navigate this post if it devolves into arguing. Thanks everyone :slight_smile:

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The rules that the Social Contract discusses have been in the game since 2004. It does not change anything.

And it could have been reported before Patch 9.2.5 as evidenced by the link you yourself provided. That thread was created on May 14th. The patch went live on May 31st.

If it takes place in chat that someone not RPing with you can see, they can report it. Nothing has changed. If you don’t want someone interfering with your RP, form a party/raid to do it in. Alternatively you can do it in your garrison. This would isolate you if your RP group likes using custom emotes.

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