I am writing to express serious concern about the prevalence of inappropriate sexual content on the Moon Guard realm in World of Warcraft, particularly in areas like Goldshire. As a long-time player who first joined as a minor and has recently returned, I’ve witnessed behavior that violates the game’s terms of service and is inappropriate for a game with many players under 18.
My concerns are based on personal experiences from my teenage years and recent observations. As a minor, I was exposed to explicit sexual content through in-game communications. Today, it seems Goldshire has become increasingly saturated with similar behavior.
I read in an article from 2010 on Tom’s Hardware that Blizzard was cracking down on “ERP” with dedicated in-game patrols. However, there over 70 players currently hovering around the notorious area even during off-peak hours. I don’t know if this practice was cut back as customer service was supposedly reduced, if the players are getting around it with out-of-game comms, if those players are playing at times when no patrolling is active, or if the older demographic for this game has let you loosen up on enforcement. Please do not make this an area where you lighten up.
This situation is concerning because:
It exposes minors to inappropriate sexual content.
It creates an unwelcoming environment for many players.
It appears to violate Blizzard’s policies.
I respectfully request that Blizzard:
Investigate and address the ongoing issues in Goldshire and similar areas.
Enforce existing policies more strictly to prevent such behavior.
Consider implementing additional safeguards to protect minors.
I would appreciate a response addressing these concerns or other users’ feedback, but please avoid the trite jokes about Moon Guard’s reputation. If there is any further information, or any in-game actions I can take beyond the reporting I’m going to be doing more regularly, please let me know. I have already submitted a condensed version of this letter via the in-game feedback tool.
Just to get the obvious question out of the way, you’re reporting this in game when you see it in public channels. Reports are the only way to get this reviewed, and reporting does work.
Then their parents should be utilizing parental controls to disable their chat complete. This will, without question, remove any concerns about a minor being subjected to such content.
Then report anything you publicly see in chat.
They already tried the whole “leave a GM in-game to monitor chat” thing and it became worse as people stopped reporting altogether.
Lastly, it’s good that you used the suggestion feature as the CS forums are not a means to provide in-game feedback.
I agree. I’ve seen several players saying obscene things in public chat, and I report all of them. Additionally, many of them write obscenities in the “Total RP3” addon, which makes reporting more difficult. This is because you need to take a screenshot and report the player through customer support, as the in-game reporting options do not include reporting what players write in an addon.
Assuming the Tom’s Hardware “Blizzard Crack Down On Erotic Role-play” from 2010 was referencing a temporary thing or just made up? Too bad.
How much of this ERP in Goldshire is realistically happening in public channels? Is that the only way it can be looked into? Not sure how to reply to you guys specifically in quotes, sorry.
It shouldn’t as there’s an option to report those in-game too. Right-click report. We often see people here who have received account actions for exactly this.
How would a minor see it if they’re not in those private channels? Parents (and I say this as a parent of two 11+ kiddos), need to take responsibility for what their children have access to online. My daughter is too young for chat in a very popular online gaming community that offers a plethora of different games. So she DOESN’T have access to chat at all.
This is a current feature (and has been for as long as I can remember) for parents to disable chat in WoW. Boom! Problem solved.
Public channels are really the only thing Blizzard can police. If someone is talking in Discord awhile rping in game, Blizzard has no jurisdiction over what occurs in Discord.
If they are using private party chat or whispers then you have no way of knowing what they are saying.
TRP profiles that are against TOS you can report them from the profile itself now.
This is going to be my approach, but for my largely media-illiterate family around 2010 it wasn’t something they were even aware of. I suspect there are a lot of people in this circumstance, I’m not interested in harping on it but I am one of those people. With so many people active in Goldshire, frankly for years, I don’t know if this is really working. When I joined the server in 07 or 08, there was maybe a dozen people there that I could recall. That’s my concern.
Thanks again.
What is considered a public channel? I don’t know why I assumed that meant say/emotes/yells, or can this include whispers, party and bnet chat?
It didn’t work. That’s my point. They stopped doing it back then as it lead to fewer reports and catching fewer people.
Now, people have moved to private channels or other means outside of the game to communicate. Neither of which a minor would have access to. So your concerns actually have already been solved.
If they haven’t, then it’s from a lack of parenting, not a lack of moderation.
Yes, those are public channels. If someone is acting inappropriate in Say, Yell, or Emote you can report them.
Using in-game emotes probably not so much. The game removes emotes it thinks are inappropriate (the infamous /spit emote for instance) so anything left in is deemed fine. Now a…unique combo of emotes might be reportable.
But stuff done in whispers and in party/guild chat you as an outsider wouldn’t see and thus couldn’t report. If you were invited to the party you could always report but those are deemed more “at will” by Blizzard and chat in those areas tend to be more lenient.
Just to clarify, they could be ERPing in private channels instead? So there’s no way to kick that big group of players out… this still sucks that they’re doing that through the game with kids playing.
I appreciate setting a firm standard on media literacy, but unfortunately I grew up in the woods lol. Sometimes kids slip through the cracks online, ergo my serious worry about leaving dozens of people who may or may not be ERPing in a discord somewhere running around. I really would rather get a special case for Moon Guard to phase that area into oblivion, though I’m sure they’d just migrate or something.*
Why are you letting your kids have access to private channels or to chat altogether then? Disable it through parental controls.
Trying to use “but the children!!!” as an excuse to not parent is not acceptable in my opinion. That’s why Blizzard already (and has forever) allowed parents to turn off chat.
Otherwise, monitor your children more closely, report any inappropriate chat, get some addons to help filter things even more, make sure that the mature language filter is turned on and you will no longer have any issues.
As for something happening on a different platform like Discord, don’t give your children access to Discord. Problem solved there too.
If it’s happening in private channels, there’s nothing for you to see, and thus nothing for you to report. If it’s occurring in public chat channels, right out in the open, you need to report it.
From some NIH data I looked up; “Among 1613 survey respondents, the analyzed sample included 808 parents with at least 1 child aged ≥11 years. Overall, 62.9% (n=566) of parents agreed with frequent parental monitoring of their children’s social media use.” I’d link it, but i says I can’t, sorry. “Parental Attitudes on Social Media Monitoring for Youth: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.” Linking this to say I think there is a good demo of kids who aren’t getting that appropriate internet supervision, and to the extent Blizzard can do more, I would like them to.
Basically to say, I hope someone at Blizzard catches those 3 requests I made. I stand by those and hope they make a special case to try revisiting this issue in its current state. Thank you everyone for these replies, I’ll check in again later.