I know these days you can coordinate with others to silence people via vote. Of course I have a problem with this system, and I’ve even seen people say things like, “Everyone report so and so! If enough people do it, it will silence them!”
Crazily I still wanna play this game despite the breach in fairness, but recently I got silenced and couldn’t figure out why.
The most I’ve done is send out guild invites with a recommendation to join my guild, like many other guilds have done.
Blizzard said I broke the rules, but each time I asked how, they just give me the same standard “You broke rules, nuff said” type response.
Now I’m not sure if it was something I said, or if it was simply a popularity vote by a group of people who don’t like me.
Anyway, I was wondering, does Blizzard refuse to tell people why they were silenced/banned now? How can players correct their behaviors if they don’t know which ones got them penalized? And how is it fair to rely on a popularity contest that can easily be exploited by those who simply don’t like you?
Squelch, yes. Silence, no. A silence is only applied by a GM (a real live person).
A squelch is if a number of players report you and is only temporary until a GM looks at it and decides if it was valid or not and applies a Silence if it was valid.
Did they say it was for inappropriate language or was it possibly spam?
This is one of those big things that people get too hung up on. People can say to gang up to squelch someone, but it can also backfire when the staff can see if there was any abuse of the system like that. It can be abused, yes, but it cuts both ways.
I think it’s moreso the guild invite/posting spam than it being folks who are anti-vegan.
If you’re using inappropriate language or are being abusive to other players (not that I’m saying this is the case, just examples), then you probably know what you explicitly said. If you’re spamming whispers, public channels and sending out mass-invites, then honestly? A lot of people find that mess annoying. And they will report you, as is their right. If you’re only posting your spiel to trade or general maybe once every 10+ minutes or so? The GM will see that and it’s likely the reports won’t earn a true silence when the squelch is reviewed.
For over 10 years the game has had a squelch system. It was put in for spammers and gold sellers. If someone gets enough reports it will SQUELCH them until a GM looks at it.
A SILENCE is an actual penalty applied by the GM once they review the reports. That means the GM agreed with the reports and applied a penalty.
That Silence is newish (2016) and doubles each time it is applied.
If you think you did nothing wrong, you put in an appeal ticket to get that Silence reviewed. The GMs have the chat logs that were tied to the reports so it is easy for them to check.
So no, even if 100 people report me, if I did nothing wrong it won’t get the Silence applied. The most I might get is a temp squelch til a GM looks at it.
If your server considers it spam, you may have been reported for spam. It is possible a GM agreed.
Blizzard has an option to turn off random guild invites though. If someone chooses to keep invites on, that’s technically their problem. They can “object”, but that’s like “objecting” to a brick wall they are running into, and a professional company should see that.
With every character I’ve ever created, I’ve been randomly invited to guild after guild, with whisper after whisper, provided I kept invites open. That’s just a fact of WoW that should be established for anyone who plays without a guild.
Am I to believe that every open guild master with Fast Guild Invite addon is to expect a silence? Nope. Been playing over a decade, and I’ve known plenty of big guilds that have never had a problem.
Thanks for the recommendation, but it’s based on a flawed system, and my question remains unanswered.
I don’t understand why you can tell me I was “mass spamming” a Youtube recommendation, but when I send tickets to Blizzard, they repeatedly deny me information. Guess I should just come here instead of make tickets?
I was hoping that I said something inappropriate somewhere and didn’t realize. But now I see that I legit got suppressed for saying < don’t do it on the boards, either> as a guild advertisement.
If that’s worthy of silencing a player, then I’m glad my subscription runs out in a couple days.
For everyone calling this “spamming”, Fast Guild Invite sends an invite, a whisper, and then remembers that player for a week before sending a single whisper again. That’s not spamming.
To be blunt, doesn’t matter what you think something is or isn’t. Blizzard made the rules and they’re the one whom make what call on a given thing. The GMs ain’t there to debate actions.
