An Eye on Wyrmrest Accord Behavior

Wyrmrest Accord
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Hi everyone! 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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No more public rp!
Everything goes to partychat!

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Very interesting – the original thread you linked is worth a review IMO as well. Basically, if your RP isn’t E for everyone, put it in private group-based chat to be safe – do I have that right?

Someone in there said something about RP servers being more community-based than other servers. That might be a fair call but I’d say there are also a lot of toxic operators that would LOVE to use the new ToS/reporting system against people they consider “enemies”.

Theoretically, someone could be at an event on a rogue in stealth reporting stuff said in /say and you wouldn’t know.

Sounds crazy in a way yet, sadly, also kind of tame in terms of the campaigns toxic personalities have launched against people on WrA and MG.

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Yes, that’s a big reason why I’m trying to spread this around. This community is great, but every community has its’ problem people. I could very easily see someone trying to weaponize moderation against people they don’t like. The more the community is aware of the rules, the less likely people will be able to take advantage of them to get others in trouble.

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To add to this, I’ve already heard of some people being reported and actioned for talking oocly despite not being around rpers at the time. For the above reasons you both mention, so I would suggest spreading that about, too. Ooc chatter reports might be getting taken more seriously now despite where they take place on an rp realm.

I can’t say I’ve been on the side of people ooc chattering in the middle of rp areas and around rpers, but away from both of those and being actioned despite that is a bit much.

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Thanks for all your work following that up Auhgag, it’s good to be aware

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Same classic Blizzard answers with non-anwers. “Maybes” all around! But that just means it’s the same as it’s always been. If your public rp is anything but handholding singalongs do what you do, but roll the dice that no one is going to weaponize the TOS against you.

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Thanks for following-up on this Auhgag. Good on ya.

Much like everything else, I suspect it will be abused and / or exploited somehow. The RP community kind of takes care of itself since Blizz has long since walked away from pro-active moderation. If someone does nothing but stir up problems or drama OOC, it gets around and people just won’t RP with them.

That of course is a double-edged sword as well, since sometimes the people doing the isolating are actually the problem themselves but it’s just not as obvious.

Nonetheless, I’m curious to see how this falls over the coming months, etc.

I’m all for removing toxicity from this game, but especially with RP - context matters.

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Reviewing the response from the GM in the Customer Support thread, I’ve grown a sense of worry that the GM’s have been forced to take a hands-off approach when trying to issue appropriate actions. That if it somehow briskly grazes the TOS, regardless if in private or public, someone can report you and you’ll get actioned.

This eerily makes me think of a no tolerance policy when it comes to spicy chat. All it takes is one report and the whole thing can shut down. Even if you behave in a way thats fitting to the established lore or scene. Such as insults we see in the game, I could see someone reporting it and bam, calling elves knife ears is derogatory for punishment.

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Hands-off approach? That’s not a matter of policy, it’s a practicality. Consider the size of the player population. Consider how large a staff it would take to effectively carry out your proactive 24/7 monitoring program. Now ask yourself if you’d rather have the company hire that many more ingame moderators, or devote the equivalent funding to developing game content.

There’s nothing new in the Agreement. Nor is there anything new in the imagined abuses posted in this thread. All of that has already happened - repeatedly. Having players click once on an agreement that reflects the TOS & EULA then never see it again, is nothing more important than corporate CYA. That’s about all the impact it will have.

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There’s nothing new in terms of the ToS, but it’s a refresh of awareness/focus on it for players, not only in having to click it but in all the streamer/youtube/articles covering it – plus, Blizzard’s eye on improving the community.

That makes people who previously might have thought “eh, why report spam this person I don’t like if nothing will happen?” to “haha I’m going to report this person’s /say content.”

Apparently, at least 2 people on MG were banned a few weeks ago. Before the new “social contract” but well after the media attention and Blizzard’s closer look at the community.

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I’m just hoping it purges MG Goldshire finally :stuck_out_tongue:

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I do feel this will have something of a knock-on effect to the walk-up public RP scene … but we’ve also desperately needed Blizzard to do something about their moderation for years now, and the ‘social contract’ reads pretty straight and clear.

Don’t say things that will likely be offensive or upsetting to other people.

Don’t go grimdark in full public.

Don’t ERP in public.

No politics, period.

There’s a lot of ways this can be used to censure people form speaking out, but at the same point, the kind of dimwits who’d go on tirades about alt-right and racist nonsense in public channels, /say and /shout are now fully vulnerable to the almighty Ban Hammer. I can see both good and bad to the new system, I just hope it remains moderated and we don’t go back to algorithm bots and unpaid interns trying to manage the sheer unadulterated tsunami of reporting that was going on.

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Don’t RP conflict in public, even. Look at the blue post from Auhgag’s initial thread: [removed, it was 404’ing, but it’s the blue post on his link]

And this: Chat report abusing in rp

I had two friends of mine banned for a conflict they had IC, where only words were thrown around. From the emails sent by blizzard, I see no hateful speech or any use of other slurs. All I saw was a conflict where words were used on both sides. One of them actually got banned for calling someone a “freak” IC.

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I don’t want to make insinuations about the conflict thing you linked, but I would like to mention that one of the people involved in that hasn’t exactly been as clean/inoffensive as they claim. (I regularly remember seeing their toon as one of the ones that ran around after the trp pronoun feature was added to misuse said pronoun feature.)

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Yeah, I don’t know those people but I figured I’d give the claim the benefit of the doubt until the thread was closed or some other info popped.

The blue post about /say and ‘IC = OOC’ just stick out to me though.

Honestly, what Auhgag did here is probably the most useful/important post in years for us.

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i mean You are the one controlling your character, at least stop to think while playing with other people “hey, maybe I shouldn’t say this thing if it might be construed badly.”

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I don’t really RP much so this barely affects me.

I do, however, think two people RPing an argument in an inn should be free to do so without fear of getting reported.

This is an eye-opener from the linked thread:

Auhgag:
“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?”

Blue:
“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.”

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I mean… imagine this:

“You violated our agreement! I will not stand for this, knave!”
“I don’t care, you fool!”
“We must settle this matter!”
"Let us duel at the gates of Blackrock Dep—

Your account has been banned

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i have reported people for saying slurs in character before

i haven’t seen anyone get in trouble for a roleplaying fight, including the peanut galleries of blood elves watching male orcs fight and saying they want to do crass things, actually