Go look at GD. There are 4 people in the SAME thread who have been silenced and overturned.
I also know of 4-5 others in game who have had the same issues that aren’t on the forums.
Bringing the total people I’ve just HEARD OF up to ~10 players. Imagine how many more there are that aren’t posting on the forums/etc?
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.
No man, this needs to change and GMs held accountable.
I just posted my ad ONCE in trade chat and received and in game warning for “language” so now I can’t post it again in fear of being silenced.
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.
I meant to post yesterday. Thank you for getting this clarification.
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.