I made a post over at the Classic forums asking folks if they know Blizzard’s response to poly/banish griefing. There is a large debate over there and the answers I’m receiving aren’t quite clear.
As you may be aware, the Classic community is largely embroiled in discussion about how things will be on Classic’s launch, so that’s the driving thought behind my initial question.
I want to ask a CS expert and get an official word on what Blizzard’s response would be in the following scenario:
I am a level 8 night elf druid named Cheater. I am questing in Elwynn Forest. A group of level 8 human mages approach me. As soon as I tag a humanoid mob for my quest and begin killing it, this group of mages begin polymorphing my tagged enemy, causing it to heal. I keep trying to do enough damage to kill it but I’m only a druid and I don’t have a lot of DPS. They keep polymorphing it over and over until I run out of mana. I have no choice now but to either die, or run away so I ask them to please stop. They don’t respond.
As soon as I run away, the mages follow me and repeat the same behavior against my next target as well.
I think of my options: Can I use a PVP solution to solve this problem? No, they are the same faction. Can I go to a different zone and quest there? I really prefer Elwynn because I want human reputation, but I decide to travel to Dun Morogh. Unfortunately the mages use the /who command and follow me and repeat the same behavior. I repeat my evasion to Teldrassil and they follow me there and do the same. There are no more areas left for me to level and I’m not high enough to do an instance.
The mages continue following me for several hours. I can’t make any progress on the quests and I can’t level.
Are the actions of the group of mages considered griefing, and are they actionable offenses against their account, or will they be allowed to continue their behavior?
There’s no way you’re going to get a cs response for classic hypotheticals at this point. We don’t even know that polymorph griefing will be in classic unchanged let alone the policy about how it will be handled.
Griefing, by Blizzards terms, is “doing stuff I don’t like” and is not against Blizzard’s policies. The times when Blizzard get’s involved is if the issue gets exploitative or falls into the realm of harassment.
On a side note, the are no rules stating the players should play nice with each other.
You’re asking a rhetorical question and expecting a specific answer. The answer is that “griefing” isn’t a specific term (despite what one player from that thread thought) and doesn’t tend to be anything real, other than someone making another player angry. That, in and of itself, is not against the rules.
If someone is actually harassing another player and it’s ongoing over a long period of time, that may be different to Blizz.
But someone casting poly-morph on a mob that they’re allowed to cast it on, is not against the rules.
It’s like attacking an NPC of the opposing faction. If they can be targeted and killed, doing so is not really against the rules. And as pointed out in that thread, poly-morphing a target really has no effect when it’s being attacked.
There are no rules that require someone to respond to a whisper.
Edit:
It gives them feedback that what they are doing is annoying you. If you whisper them, they will just do it more. I’ve found that totally ignoring them and continuing to try to quest and not reacting to their idiocy does more to get them to stop. Look on it as a Mythic+ affix for lowbies.
A jerk move but still not against the rules.
That is assuming that Classic is using Vanilla’s rules for /who. If they use the new rules for /who, they will not find any character under level 10.
Find a guild. Get them to help. The same as you had to do in Vanilla. Or make another character and play that one for a while.
No. Nothing they are doing breaks the rules. There is no rule against being a jerk.
Like on the Classic forums, people are getting bent out of shape over hypotheticals. I’d wait til the Classic Beta comes out before you ask this question again OP.
He said it was a group of mages. But the whole situation is hypothetical, it isn’t something that’s actually happening. I don’t understand why people waste their time and energy thinking up situations like this, yet they can’t seem to take the time to think up a solution. Such as simply asking a friend with a level 20 character to help by one-shotting the mob after you tag it. Or simply log out for a half hour or so and do something else .
The problem with these type of “what if” situations is no matter how many solutions are suggested, there always seems to be a devil’s advocate response to them. Then they become a circular argument that leads right back to the beginning of the problem. I’m not saying that the OP is doing this, but that’s my opinion from most of the arguments I’ve seen on the forums. Some people just simply enjoy trolling and creating conflict.
The others are correct, I can’t really give you an answer for your hypothetical about classic. Primarily, we simply don’t have any information on how support will work there or what policies will be in place.
Overall, “Griefing” is a bit nebulous, often used to mean “something I don’t like”, but not necessarily something where our staff would be able to intervene. We tend to focus on clear violations like inappropriate chat, naming, cheating, exploitation, etc… and not micromanage social interactions.
That said, when some behavior becomes extreme, we have stepped in before. Not saying it would be the case in your example, but the circumstances may be looked into.