Battle.net forum format

[Greatbrae-dalaran]

We need the WoW forums to change to a b-net form.

Why?

1. To tackle ppl with alts masquerading as other people when it’s the same user.
2. To discourage some trolling attempts (trolling will still happen, but is less likely as people will know they are trolls more easily)
3. Stops Alt bumping.

And other reasons I have forgotten atm.

Why people think it’s a bad idea:

Stalking, which is not possible due to the ability to block b-net users and reject requests. (actually it’s easier to stalk ppl on the current format because players do not need permission to add a charecter to friends lists)

Actually stalking is the only reason I saw. Just make the forums a B-net format instead of charecter format blizz.

Reasons from posters:

@Jalanili-moon-guard

For one, because it has been stated by Blues that the moderators have problems tracing patterns in activity back to a singular person for the purposes of applying penalties to forum trolls, because each character you post with is an island in terms of the data. That leads to situations where, like with the T-squad, people repeatedly roll up level 10 characters or Classic alts, start posting with them, delete the character, and while the forum moderators whack-a-mole with their individual post it’s seldom identified as a consistent pattern by a single person.

For two, because if there was a singular posting identity on the forums, you could ignore someone and all of their alts with a single request. Repeat-offender trolls would get frustrated when their posts started getting less traction because people would have already identified that they weren’t posting their genuine thoughts and opinions and pre-emptively ignored them, and gave others a heads-up that the person was a known troll.

For three, because right now each account gets up to about 160 likes and 160 flags on the forums, one for each character. With that, a single person can hide the posts of someone they want to silence by repeatedly reporting it for moderation, and with that they can create the appearance of a consensus, like people switching alts to vote on polls making those polls pretty useless for being a genuine gauge of the popularity of an idea or opinion. When the T-squad was around, they were consistently upvoting their own posts to make their ideas look popular and encouraging an environment where people who didn’t agree with the opinions that they pretended to have felt persecuted and overwhelmed, and flagging people who tried to identify their behavior to others. They played these forums like a fiddle for like a year, causing massive damage to people’s opinions of the groups that they pretended to be a part of.

For four, because it would have a chilling effect on some of the worst of people’s behavior if they do actually play the game and have friends, GMs, family, etc. who wouldn’t approve of their trolling habits and the opinions that they express disconnected from the characters that they know. If they were to switch to a Classic alt just to be like, “Oh yeah, well, women should be in the kitchen anyway, make me a sandwich!” they might end up having their GM, their friends, or their wife raising eyebrows about that. Future GMs, future friends, and future wives could also see that behavior and label it as the behavior of a person that they don’t want to associate with.

@Mirasol-mannoroth

• Forum resets when changing server, name, or char. Trust level, post history, post count, likes/flags, are all tied to the forum account which is currently charname-server. Every time someone transfers or has a name change, it wipes their forum account to the start. Any new char they use, starts at zero. That gets a fair amount of tickets/complaints to CS.
• Btags give account wide Ignore. Treating char-server as forum accounts means Ignore is only for that one char instead of all the chars on that Bnet account. It means people can, and do, make more chars to evade ignores and keep bothering individuals.
• Btags are more secure. They don’t let anyone talk to you, add you, or see where you are without your permission. Char-server allows people to add you in-game without your permission, message you, find where you are, mail you, etc. Even see if you get a name change. Btags don’t. They keep anyone from talking to you without you giving them permission to add you as a friend.
• Using multiple characters to abuse the reporting system. Each char has a set of flags, so when someone runs out on one char, they use the other chars to report the same person. Yes, it is against the forum rules and some people do get suspended, but it makes more work for the mods and they don’t catch it all. One Bnet with one set of flags greatly reduces false flagging. Same with a more minor issue of “fake likes”, although that is not really damaging.
• Last, sock puppets and people switching chars to just make trolling threads. Those do cause a lot of disruption and extra mod work. It costs Blizz money to clean it up and it can interfere with attempts at honest discourse.

[Seele-blades-edge]

What’s the B stand for?

[Greatbrae-dalaran]

It’s short for battle.net

[Seele-blades-edge]

What’s wrong with alts?

[Joonhwa-stormrage]

Stalking seems like a really bad problem to have TBH.

[Seele-blades-edge]

We need 13 characters to do what FF14 has.

[Greatbrae-dalaran]

people tend to jump on multiple alts on the forums to mascarade as “other” users or bump forums.

Also with the poll, they can vote multiple times.

@Joonhwa-stormrage

Stalking seems like a really bad problem to have TBH.

I can stalk you easier with your charecter name then with your battle.net username.

[Seele-blades-edge]

Masquerading is a part of this game.

[Golavar-stormrage]

@Greatbrae-dalaran

people tend to jump on multiple alts on the forums to mascarade as “other” users or bump forums.

Can you prove this?

[Greatbrae-dalaran]

k

/10 char

Also alt’s can like each other to inflate popularity.

[Grandbrae-dalaran]

k /10 char

[Moondoggíe-faerlina]

another btag thread yyyyyyyyyyyyayyyyy

[Greatbrae-dalaran]

It’s rather an important topic, so yes.

[Murdercarpet-zuljin]

@Joonhwa-stormrage

Stalking seems like a really bad problem to have TBH.

How many times have you been stalked? What did they do that you consider to be “stalking”? I don’t think it’s a big problem at all.

When it is truly a problem, Blizzard can and should deal with it.

The issue with “stalking” is people who can dish it out but can’t take it. When they get called out for hypocrisy (or stalking other players) they project and whine that they should be above criticism, and everyone who counters their claims is “stalking” them. It’s really no different from the claims we see by posters who think that everyone who has a different opinion is “toxic”.

This is forum PvP. If you stay civil, you won’t get flagged.

[Gravedancer-destromath]

Hmmn I smell a alt , I thought alt hopping was something you were trying to say you are against…

Can’t tell me your two aren’t the same person, if you say you’re not I have a bridge across the river you can buy.

[Doness-kargath (Doness)]

All the previous threads about Battletags were closed. I think Blizzard is trying to censor this topic. The last thread was not even toxic.

@Greatbrae-dalaran

Stalking, which is not possible due to the ability to block b-net users and reject requests. (actually it’s easier to stalk ppl on the current format because players do not need permission to add a charecter to friends lists)

They should just add an option to disable all Battle.net friend requests.

[Murdercarpet-zuljin]

Check their pets. Same account.

[Gravedancer-destromath]

Name was more than enough, don’t need to go that far to check when couldn’t even change out the toon name so half of it didn’t match lmao

[Mirasol-mannoroth (Mirasol)]

@Greatbrae-dalaran

It’s rather an important topic

It is, but at this point there is not much gained by making more threads about it. It just crosses over into spam, or trying to troll the crowd who enjoys posting misinformation. Blizzard is well aware of the issues with the forums, and has raised the issues internally, before the forum posts even started. This is going to be up to Blizzard mgt and of course, whatever happens, will happen at the speed of … Blizzard. Which is glacial.

Reposting so that others have a broader view of the forum issues - and that most of us don’t want chars to be gone. They just want the Btag/single ID system added and shown.

---

It is actually a lot more than “just trolls”.

• Forum resets when changing server, name, or char. Trust level, post history, post count, likes/flags, are all tied to the forum account which is currently charname-server. Every time someone transfers or has a name change, it wipes their forum account to the start. Any new char they use, starts at zero. That gets a fair amount of tickets/complaints to CS.
• Btags give account wide Ignore. Treating char-server as forum accounts means Ignore is only for that one char instead of all the chars on that Bnet account. It means people can, and do, make more chars to evade ignores and keep bothering individuals.
• Btags are more secure. They don’t let anyone talk to you, add you, or see where you are without your permission. Char-server allows people to add you in-game without your permission, message you, find where you are, mail you, etc. Even see if you get a name change. Btags don’t. They keep anyone from talking to you without you giving them permission to add you as a friend.
• Using multiple characters to abuse the reporting system. Each char has a set of flags, so when someone runs out on one char, they use the other chars to report the same person. Yes, it is against the forum rules and some people do get suspended, but it makes more work for the mods and they don’t catch it all. One Bnet with one set of flags greatly reduces false flagging. Same with a more minor issue of “fake likes”, although that is not really damaging.
• Last, sock puppets and people switching chars to just make trolling threads. Those do cause a lot of disruption and extra mod work. It costs Blizz money to clean it up and it can interfere with attempts at honest discourse.

I don’t care if they do Battletags like all the other Blizzard forums, or a WoW single ID for the forums, it would all be resolved by changing the forum structure back. IF they do Btags, I would hope anyone who does not have a free change left, would get one so they can select something they are comfy with, and that does not break the forum rules.

Of course, nobody wants chars to go away or transmogs, so using those for the avatar is welcomed. It would just also denote the Btag/forum account name.

[Murdamore-thrall]

I had a stalker, but then I found his wifes facebook account and that was the end of that >:)