While the reports may be mis-categorized, whether abusive language or spamming the chat, people are allowed to report what they’d like and can until their mouse button breaks.
There would not be a penalty (past the auto-squelch) applied if the GM didn’t see something in violation of their rules. As Ruffle stated though, people are human. It’s why we have the chance to appeal rulings, in case something was made in error.
That is actual that “people are human” thing again. Errors can happen. It sucks, but it can happen. Especially when a new policy rolls out and there is some confusion about it.
The good thing is that anyone who is inappropriately sanctioned? If their appeal is successful and the player shoots a request back, there is a history of Blizzard giving back the game time that was lost due to the mishap.
That’s not the case, I single handedly know ~10 people who have been silenced for a week in the last 48h for advertising and have had it overturned 12 hours later.
A GM is “manually applying” this silence meaning they either don’t read english (wouldn’t surprise me in customer service for a large org) or they’re automated/just automatically applying a silence without reading the content.
You can’t just claim “people are human” when the data set grows beyond a very small minority. Making a mistake once sure we all get that, but there aren’t HUNDREDS of GMs “reading” these reports and applying these penalties. How does the same GM see this happen multiple times and apply the same penalty?
Just to be clear on this, there are times when automated responses to tickets are sent. When this happens, the response will actually include language that makes it clear that it’s automated, but that’s also only in the realm of items like quest support, etc.
With that said, it sounds like there’s still some confusion for some between squelching and silencing since it was clarified earlier that silences are indeed manually reviewed and are not automated. It is good to know the “abusive chat” email issue is being looked into as well. Hopefully this all gets cleared up
You really want to get this stab in? Just as an FYI, CS is all done in-house. It’s not sent out to be handled out in all corners of the globe.
Are these people actually getting full-on silenced and sanctioned? Or just temporarily squelched UNTIL the GM looks things over and removes it? A lot of people get hung up on being silenced when the squelch and silence terminology is a bit different, as explained above.
YOU are assuming that the number overturned is large - it isn’t. YOU don’t know how many were actioned. YOU don’t know what number were not overturned. YOU are making a mountain out of a molehill over something you personally may have experienced but ultimately have little knowledge of .
Not a stab, but legit not sure where CS who handle these reports are located. Most large orgs outsource it to other countries because it’s 1/3rd the price.
And we are talking about full on silenced. Everyone is actually silenced and unable to use LFG/etc until GM overturns which makes the game unplayable.
Let’s take the discussion pertaining to the legitimacy of the squelching system to GD. I only wanted this thread to be a reference for others to use and not serve as a complaints department. Complaints aren’t really handled in CS and often get threads shut down; GD is for complaints.
To be clear, I am completely on your side and think the squelching system needs reworked or thrown into the bin due to its ease of abuse and its effects as we can clearly see, but that discussion is for a GD thread and not here.
I know it needs to change but it won’t happen on the CS forums or this thread. We need to keep the push for change confined to GD - that’s the only place change will happen from. The CS forums aren’t meant for that and those types of discussions get shut down quickly here.
That is still part of the temporary squelch feature before a silence is manually applied.
Squelches that are overturned don’t count against a player. Silences, however, stack. So if someone were silenced for a full day the first time, it would be two days the next. Four days after that, and so on and so forth.
So if they’re just squelched? It prohibits some social things until it’s reviewed, yes. But once a GM looks it over and decides against it, then the squelch is removed. Silenced and Squelched are not interchangeable within WoW’s context.
Unfortunately, a lot of players don’t understand the difference so when you’ve got a handful of people all screaming SILENCED!!!, you really don’t know if it were the temporary automated squelch or the GM applied silence unless it is your case. You’re not privy to the entire episode, only the actioned player and the GM dealing with it. I get what you’re trying to do and argue for, but you really don’t have a horse in this race unless you’re the one squelched or silenced.
I could throw a post up in GD to say a lot of things, true or untrue or misunderstood. People only can see that one side of things, they don’t always have all of the information.
It’s dangerous then to spout off what you think is the case when you admittedly do not know. Just like taking things at face value in GD, if you don’t know then it’s best not to be slinging what you think to be the case out on the public forums. Someone will come along and that misconception continues to be perpetuated, even though it’s been corrected every time it comes up here. If I had a dollar for every time someone referenced out-sourced CS or that all the staff was fired off/laid off/what have you, I’d be a rich old bat.
The GMs for the NA license have primarily been located in Irvine, California, and Austin, Texas. All Blizzard Customer Support is in-house. Prior to Covid, all support was done from their offices.
I’m not sure what you are implying by where CS who handle these reports are located. Outsourcing doesn’t mean that the ones handling tickets don’t speak English. Outsourcing doesn’t mean that the ones handling tickets are sloppy in how they do it. I’m in Canada and did phone support for two major US companies on an outsource basis. Those companies regularly monitored calls to make sure they were handled correctly. Even if Blizzard did outsource, it wouldn’t mean tickets would be handled incorrectly.
The category used was wrong and has been happening lately. They also now send out emails for Squelches, not just GM applied Silences.
This was discussed yesterday here on CS.
You got reported. You got squelched. You got an email - which is sort of new and never used to happen. The email is using the wrong language and they are working on fixing that.
Yes, I understand they email for squelches but it says silence and I was unable to do anything valuable in game which I believe follows what a silence does.
This thread you are posting in now has Blue explanations about that. Functionally a squelch and a Silence are the same. Only WoW has Squelches so the template uses the word silence because it applies to other games too.
The only really difference is that a Squelch is temp and an actual Silence is a black mark on your account that doubles in duration each time a GM applies an actual silence.
I would suggest reading the blue posts in this thread. I learned quite a bit too.
As I mentioned previously, those tend to be squelched.
I can’t speak to those you claim may have been hit for greater than the standard 24-hour squelch, I can only say that of the ones I have reviewed from folks posting here, they have been squelched, not silenced.
I do understand the frustration here. With the announcement of the change to our policy regarding organized in-game services, there has been some confusion about what is or is not a violation and folks are reporting individuals and guilds in error, which is resulting in folks getting squelched.
I can only recommend that you submit an appeal in these cases so that our staff can look into it.
To avoid the GD trend of a 500 post back and forth of, yes it is not it isn’t, I’m going to keep this one locked. Thank you all.
