Ban clarification - Toxic Behavior

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Hello CSRs,

I was the lucky recipient of a 14 day ban about 10 days ago and still don’t fully understand why I was banned.

This is not an appeal… I just need some clarification on what went wrong. I really don’t want to be banned again when I come back Saturday.

The Scenario occurred while I was leveling a holy priest on wotlk 2 Saturdays ago. I was spamming holy nova and aoe grinding in duskwood. A feral druid, clearly jealous I wasn’t killing mobs 1 at a time like him (?), started tagging mobs and dragging them onto me. Eventually he got me killed.
During a back and forth exchange, I called him {names} (using the actual curse words in game). That’s what I ended up getting banned for. He wasn’t a noob, he was just a jerk.

There are 4 total lines in the ban appeal,
{Removed}

Those are the 4 lines on the appeal (I can attach a screen shot with proof, but I don’t want to link anything with curse words and get banned again). Yes I used the curse words in game. Guilty. I didn’t say anything I wouldn’t have said at work or in a public setting. But I do understand wanting to hold your game and community to a higher standard. I asked in the appeal ticket what I was banned for and the GM copy-pasted the definition of toxic behavior (which she misspelled) and closed my ticket.
I tried posting twitch clips, because I’m sure you guys only see the chat log, but I don’t think they were looked at at all. (same 2 views :frowning: )

**Was I actually banned for cursing in this scenario? **
If that’s it, I get it. You want to hold your game to a higher standard. I think its crazy but I accept it. You guys are going to have a lot of appeals if you want to treat this like a pre-school and you are going to go after people for cursing. It’s particularly crazy when you think that the average age of a wotlk player has to be mid-30s.
Shouldn’t you ask people sensitive to cursing to turn on chat profanity filter before banning customers?

If I didn’t say the curse words, yet still said equally dismissive ornegative things to try to discourage griefing, would I still have been banned? Does the scenario matter at all?
If I said, gosh darn it, leave me alone or some equally toned down version of what I said, would I still have gotten banned? And does the scenario play into it at all? Will you look at twitch clips if they can be provided to see if there was griefing. (I did provide links but they weren’t looked at).
You guys are going to be busy when hardcore rolls out.

If I disable chat, which is an option in the default UI, is it considered “anti-social behavior” and bannable
I only really need to communicate with my guild at this point in WOTLK. If I have to fear being banned for talking to the general public, can I just mute in-game chat all together and communicate via discord? You can disable chat through the chat settings in game. Could this be considered non-participation or anti-social behavior?

How are penalties applied for this type of infraction?
I don’t know if this is something that you can share with your customers, but how are penalties applied? I notice my other accounts are still playable (Same battle net account). Is the duration of the penalty linked solely to the individual wow account? For example, if I got a similar penalty for cursing on my second wow account, would it just be a warning since it hasn’t had a direct penalty yet. Or is the duration of the penalty based on passed transgressions battle.net account wide?

Thanks for taking the time to read all this.

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Yes you do:

You clearly understand it.

Next time, don’t do that.

If you’re taking the time to type out stuff like that, you clearly have a personal issue, and other WoW players don’t need to be subject to that.

If you can’t be the bigger person (which clearly you weren’t in this case), then you’re just going to end up here. Considering this was a 14 day ban, this also wasn’t your first offense.

You may want to consider whether WoW is even a game you should be playing anymore. Obviously, you have some personal issues that you need to work out with yourself.

Good luck.

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For most offenses - only the license where an infraction occurred is penalized.

Now, for extremely egregious behavior, that is not necessarily a hard and fast rule and more can be done - but usually that is not the case.

There is a difference between a ban and a suspension. A ban is permanent with no end date unless overturned. A suspension has an end date.

As for how these are applied, This is far from your first offense, Stealthcat. Subsequent violations stack in terms of time allotted to penalties.

And yes, what you’ve posted more than qualifies.

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The scenario does not matter. Do not use profanity, masked profanity, insults, slurs, etc. Depending on what you say, you can still get a suspension even without profanity. There are lots of way to be horrible without profanity. People are really creative and Blizz does account for that.

To the WoW license the infraction happened on. Penalties stack as well. So next penalty will be a longer suspension. Eventually (or if something is bad enough) a license can be closed.

If someone were to have enough infractions, or again do something really bad, the whole Bnet account can be closed. That is rare though.

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Well, you seem to already know:

That’s your clarification. That level of behavior is against the rules.

So…why are you appealing? You are free to do so, but if you used curse words, and you know you did, and Blizzard is going to see that you did…then it’s going to be upheld.

Again, why? You already know.

Yes. You were told exactly why you were suspended.

No. If you use curse words/toxic language, then you are going to be actioned (if it’s reported). There are tools in the game to deal with people you don’t want to interact with, and there’s also the level of self-control to simply ignore someone and not respond.

Generally, screenshots/videos are not accepted because they are easily doctored. One exception to this would be from someone hacking/botting, as it can be used for that team to understand what is happening.

Griefing is not any kind of actionable term. It can (and often does) mean anything. Harassment is actionable, cursing is actionable, hacking/botting is actionable.

But in the end, another player’s action does not give you an excuse to break the rules yourself.

Of course not. They give you the option, so why would they punish someone for using it?

I feel like you are really stretching to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. It’s not a problem with another player. It’s not a problem with enabling chat. It’s not any other excuse you can think of.

The reason is you broke the rules.

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Since everything else has been covered - I wanted to touch on this. The profanity filter exists for parents/guardians of minor children and people who do want to try and block that kind of thing to try and filter out that kind of thing. Mind you, it isn’t perfect and there are still plenty of ways to get around it.


Source

It does not exist to give people free rein to go ham. If you don’t want to abide by the rules, don’t agree to them and find yourself something else where those rules don’t exist. But it’s not treating it like it’s pre-school. It’s holding people accountable for breaking the rules that no one forced them to agree to. It should have been handled like this from the get go, but in the recent year or so, they have absolutely been cracking down on toxic behavior that has run rampant for far too long.

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No one here is trolling. This forum is the most heavily moderated one there is and trolls are shot down really quickly. You asked questions and everyone here has answered in good faith.

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There’s been no trolling in this thread. But why ask a question in a public forum if you don’t want an answer?

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Annnd, I think we are done here.

Folks, we’ve always had rules covering player conduct - and they really haven’t changed. What has changed is more folks are reporting.

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