An Eye on Roleplayers Behavior

[Valestia-wyrmrest-accord (Valestia)]

@Vrakthris

@Auhgag-wyrmrest-accord

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?

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.

@Auhgag-wyrmrest-accord

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

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.

@Auhgag-wyrmrest-accord

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

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

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.