The filter has never ever been an excuse that allows people to use profanity in game. They rules have been in place since the start but you used to have to come to the website and put in a ticket about the infraction so few people bothered. The penalty then was a suspension from the game.
Then they added right click report which captures the name, server, chat channel, and logs. That lets the GM review and penalize far easier - logs are right in front of them vs having to search based off ticket info. They also have an auto squelch for mass spam reports. In 2016 they added the Silence which removes social features instead of a Suspension. The hope was people would learn from that and stop it. Sadly, it did not, so they are back to tacking on Suspensions again if needed.
We mostly used black lists for loot ninjas and guild drama queens on my server, not so much being a potty mouth.
What changed over time was the ease of reporting, and to a degree the lighter penalties now.
Source on the profanity filter not being an excuse to break the rules (besides the thousands of CS posts where people come complain about their silence or suspension for “just using common words”)
Mature Language Filter (aka The Profanity Filter)
- This can be activated within your Interface Options: Main menu (ESC key by default) Click Interface > Social and check - Mature Language Filter.Once enabled, all inappropriate words in our profanity database will be filtered and masked to appear as jumbled characters, such as ‘*##@&’.
Note: The filter does not excuse the language used. The filter serves as a temporary shield, to help parents of minors and others who do not wish to see it, to block it. Our policies prohibit the use of both clear and masked inappropriate language.