Players that report others for abusive chat during rp need to go outside and touch grass. 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. The sad thing is that this will only worsen with 925 and the social contract they are introducing.
Imagine if you were watching a movie and the bad guy of it called the main protagonist a swear word and instantly got Thanos snapped out of existence. I’m not really sure how villains are supposed to approach rp if everything they say can be used to get them banned. All it takes is for a small group of people to get a little butthurt and have their friends mass report someone.
TLDR: IC doesn’t = OOC, people need to grow up and stop blowing things out of perspective.
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Did they appeal the sanctions? If they didn’t, that’s the first step here.
This conflicts with most of what you’re saying. If they were hurling obscenities at one another, they deserved it. Even before the social contract, everyone who plays agrees to behave with a certain level of decorum with each update to the EULA or TOS. We all hit that “agree” button, and from the looks of things? Blizzard is finally cracking down as they should have been all along.
If there is going to be language involved, best to keep that sort of RP to a party or raid to keep it from becoming an issue honestly. I would still tell your friends to appeal, and make note of the other person who was also sanctioned, that it was a consensual RP interaction between them both. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes will work in the sanctioned ones’ favor.
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I mean; it’s roleplay. One shouldn’t have to sequester themselves due to an Orwellian dogma where roleplaying a mean character gets you banned from the game. Especially to another whom is a trusted roleplay partner and friend.
It feels off that people can wander into an area, see people roleplaying, find issue with it and somehow get them banned because they typed mean words intended for one another and no one else.
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This is honestly my only hang up with the new social contract. It is fine on paper, it’s literally just the ToS, but even WITHOUT the clarification, people get silenced for that if people spam report it enough for the bots to assume guilt. They cannot rely with bot moderation for anything tied to RP servers.
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Suspension isn’t a ban. And unless they were doing something far more grievous than what the OP is saying, it’s likely they were suspended for a day or two.
While I may be pointing out the black and white of the rules, I agree that it’s a bit much - which is why I kept urging the appeal. Unless it’s someone being ignorant and bleating out f-bombs in a general chat or obvious trolls? I just let folks roll with what theyre doing. Suggesting the safe option of RPing in a private party/raid setting is just a safeguard. Should it be necessary? Probably not, but it rules out the possibility of someone taking offense.
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Taking clearly IC words and getting personally hurt by them is fun though.
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That’s fair. At first I thought you were saying in a roundabout way that it was deserved, while giving how to avoid it in the future. My apologies for the misattribution of intent. I hope you keep well, Leilleath.
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Nah, if I thought I was truly deserved I wouldn’t hesitate in saying so. I get slapped at for being too blunt and mean more often than not while helping out over in CS.
Just moreso playing devil’s advocate really, but I do sincerely hope they appeal. The original report might have been taken at face value with no thought of it being due to RP, and I can tell you there have been a lot of chat violations being brought up more of late. It’s likely it was caught up in this new crackdown ahead of the social contract looming. Hopefully, with the appeal(s), it’ll get overturned. I will add on that the sanctioned folks are not limited to a single appeal. Keep appealing until either it’s resolved or they threaten that no more appeals will be accepted.
No apology necessary! I do hope that you do the same.
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Anyone who false reports people should have their accounts terminated or suspended for at least 6 months.
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we did not get overturned.
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Apparently you weren’t that offensive since you still have forum access smh.
Its only a matter of time till my posts are deleted and i cant type anything here. But i explained to blizz, and i am hoping they will respond and listen to what i said
Going to clarify that the social contract does NOT change anything. There is nothing new presented in it. The contract holds no weight. Everything in the social contract is in the TOS you agreed to when you first started playing, it’s just reformatted into something people will actually read. I will say though that it could be a sign Blizzard is getting serious about moderating its game, but the social contract itself does not do anything or present anything new.
Now with that being said I don’t know if appealing the suspension will do anything. In an appeal you don’t plead your case, you’re just having another GM take a look at the facts again to see if the suspension was applied correctly. I think it’s worth a try but it’s good to keep that in mind.
I’m sorry this happened to your friends OP. I’m not saying what happened was right. I don’t know the details of what happened but assuming it was just RP between two consenting parties I hope it gets sorted out.
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It was rp between guildmates, lol. Some passingby third party walk-uppers reported it.
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This problem will always boil down to the fact that blizzard simply does not have a plan for RP servers when it comes to the disconnect between IC and OOC interactions - and probably never considered that the report function could be used to “punish” (for lack of a better word) players who have negative interactions in character.
This sort of reporting isn’t anything new. It’s been happening for a long time and, from my understanding, has been a bit of a hassle for gamemasters to have to sift through. With more automation, however, it makes it easier for people to use this function to be a real pain in the butt.
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Yeah, think I’ll be sticking to guild rp.
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I feel for whoever got banned over this; as mentioned before in this thread, that seems like too much.
I have a friend whose character can be super broody and on those days, he’s not the nicest guy. It’s toned down in public, but if we are hanging out and he’s having “one of those days”, he’s not the nicest person to my character either even though she’s his friend. I personally like this kind of dynamic between our characters, and I would hate to see him having to change that part just because some random person might overhear it if they happened to stroll on by 
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I’ve always wondered, when my characters have started to sprinkle around salty language IC, if I might end up getting reported for it. So far, in about 14 years of RP, I haven’t been, but the possibility is always sort of hovering in the background. Or maybe the GMs just didn’t used to take action on clearly IC speech?
That having been said, while I personally never report anyone for anything said IC, I can see some more iffy situations where people might still find what was said inappropriate:
- If anachronistic slurs are used, or attacks are slung on the basis of prejudices that the game world doesn’t appear to have. Greenskin, knife-ears? Okay. Spicier terms that refer to specific RL races, statuses and disabilities? Those aren’t a thing in WoW. I can see people being upset about those getting used even if it was supposedly “IC” - not only is it not great to hear, OOC, but it doesn’t fit a world that doesn’t appear to contain canonical transphobia, homophobia, or human skin colors based on culture and region.
- Very explicit emotes. I’ve never managed to see this happen in all my time in the game, but I imagine that if someone decided to be very public with certain kinds of RP in a public place right out loud, that might get a report.
I don’t know, I can see how people would feel that statements along those lines might be inappropriate in public RP even if they were said IC. But just casual swearing in an emote, or regular IC insults? Yeah, I’d probably try and appeal that, and hope that reporting IC actions and speech didn’t get to be a widespread thing that people started doing.
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Just another reason this “social contract” is garbage asf. It should have never seen the light of day.
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What do you think changed between Monday when there was the TOU and Tuesday when they called it a social contract?
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