Just wanted to comment on the most recent post in that council thread, that my suggestion in another thread - that RP realms literally need a GM’s boots on the ground - could help the specific situation mentioned in the council thread.
If a GM was in an area RP and Regular gameplay are known to clash in a toxic or harmful manner on a given RP server on a random night a week in disguise, I feel they could quickly curtail the parties responsible for instigating those clashes- whatever their nature, without many if any innocent bystanders caught in the crosshairs.
I think that moderating games would be one of the most depressing jobs tbh. I’m not surprised there aren’t many mods now because it’s probably underpaid and unrewarding work.
I think that even if they wanted to hire more mods, they’d have a hard time doing it. Some people say they’d do it for free, but I don’t think the picture they have in mind is anything like real mod work. When you have to interact with unpleasant people all the time through tickets and in-game reports, all while remaining professional, I imagine that is going to be tough. It’s not like you can just perma ban whoever you want, I imagine that there are rules about what you can do and when. I feel that I know some people who could handle it for sure, but they could just as easily be therapists or go into law IRL and make 6x as much. In my mind, moderation is probably one of the highest turnover jobs in existence.
I’ve been there when nasty as in very rude shouting and cursing matches going on, but it’s quite rare. No real life threats
A lot happens in private chat. I doubt anyone would want to monitor most that, but on some instances it was like some high school lunch room boyfriend girlfriend he said she said stuff between long time friends.
Why they need to /say broadcast and not whisper it is beyond me.
In dont know if they’re allowed to do this anymore, or if policies have changed, but on two separate occasions during Wrath and Cata where I was sexually harassed by strangers (so no previous issues with them harassing me) while hanging out in two separate horde capital cities, the gms who responded told me they had permabanned the offending players.
So they at least used to be able to do something.
It also used to be a much worse problem than it is now. I imagine some control methods that are fairly effective have made things better over the years-- or perhaps communities just police themselves better now.
I’ve never seen players SHARDED together from non rp realms and rp realms UNLESS they were invited.
This happens a lot in warmode, when rpers invite headhunting raids of their buddies from Tich or Sargeras to turn the tide in a zone battle.
(I’ve also seen raids invited from these realms to disrupt RP, but that’s not as big a problem since rp pvp servers have no longer been a thing. But perhaps players shouldnt be able to invite players from non rp realms into rp realms?)
I think one minor thing they can do for improvement is have a pop up when you join an RP realm stating that you are on an RP realm and will be held to the RP realm rules in public chat channels such as Say, Yell, General, etc. Then have a button you can press to view the rules.
Though I’m not saying the bigger improvements you guys suggest aren’t needed. Mostly just offering a quick suggestion to maybe help curb the harassment while they work on a more permanent solution.
I don’t know when I’m on an RP realm when I join a group, and I’ve even been stranded in RP realms before after leaving a group. So another fix would be to make sure any non RP realm people are sent off the realm when they leave a group.
The rp realm tos have been gutted down to “dont harass” and naming policies. I’d really like to see them return in full with 1 click reporting support and yes I’d love to see them pop up when entering an rp realm either as a visitor or fresh toon.
I hope they’re still able to do something. I don’t get informed when other people get punished or anything, but to be fair I also get rude when they get rude so the mods are probably like “they got them back, next case.” I don’t usually report people unless they really deserve it but then I’m thinking of the mod who is going to have to see that. For me, it’s really easy because I can ignore them and get on with my day, mods have to read the conversation for context (most seem not to but I’m sure new ones do), pick the reason why it’s bad and explain to the person why they’re getting banned. Then hope they don’t write back because they have to deal with them again.
Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee this will never happen. If I had to guess, and this is pure speculation, I feel like Blizzard is trying to move away from different servers entirely. The PvP server change was the first one, for the RP servers, I think they are mostly going the route of just having similar ‘rule sets’ as any other server. Why? It’s easier to maintain when every server is under the same general umbrella when it comes to various ToS rules.
I remember some people splitting off from my guild in Wrath and getting mad and harassing me for no longer having chats with them because I was too busy trying to replace them.
They harassed me, ongoing, several people on several alts, for over six months.
I responded with a, “Leave me alone,” and blocking them. Over and over and over again.
Finally after six months, the night before cata dropped one of them whispered me. I told them to leave me alone, screenshot, reported, and opened a ticket and something was finally done.
The GM told me he couldn’t tell me what was done but that it was dealt with.
A little birdy told me that his girlfriend was sharing an account with one of my harassers and they both got a 3 day vacation for harassment.
They missed an expansion launch. They never contacted me again. But honestly 3 days is a slap on the wrist for six months of ongoing harassment.
Worse, the ignore cap is 50, ignores are tied to characters, it’s possible to fall off an ignore list, and people can have 50 toons on one server. This needs improvement too.
If you use the “Report for:” feature in game and it resulted in actions, you are told actions were taken but you can’t be told of the specifics. It used to be an in game mail but as of 9.1.5 it’s a pop up.
However, just to point out that some people get stranded on RP realms after joining a group and leaving. So I personally don’t think it’d be fair to hold them to RP realm rules when they didn’t choose to get stuck on the realm that they likely don’t know is an RP realm. I couldn’t tell you what RP realms exist except moon guard, and even then, I have no way to tell I’m ON moon guard. (which is silly, we need some sort of indication to tell what realm is hosting the shard we are currently in)
(not referring to people being rude or such. Just people who don’t talk in first person or such) No one should have to deal with harassment.
I’m not sure why we can get stranded in realms anyway. I’ve gotten stranded on Latin American and oceanic realms so many times. I have to ask in LFG chat to get an invite to phase back.
I realize that the average age of player is 30, but I still don’t think it should be legal for ERP to happen in WoW. With the game’s rating, teenagers can access it. I don’t know how many of you remember being a teenager, but I sure lied about my age a lot. It’s just too dangerous to keep around. I don’t think its “toxic” or “discrimination” to point that out. I think that’s just being real.
This happens in FF14 too, and the devs turn a blind eye to it. The potential for grooming and abuse is way too high.
Sure, on paper, but this is something most people turn a blind eye to. It’s an open secret and no one seems to be trying to really address.
If the rule was enforced, it wouldn’t be possible for people like Asmongold to do an entire stream special on WoW prostitution. It’s embarrassing that something like that can exist in a teen rated game, and dangerous.
Like, hell, you all know exactly what server and town it’s in. How is that possible if its truly being cleaned up?
(if you council members suspend me, and delete this post, it means you condone this crap.")
Why don’t some of you GM’s and CM’s start a brand new neked human, go into p***shire on Moonguard and read some of the names of the players hanging out in there.
I did it over 6 years ago, and I streamed it. It still happens today.
I had a bunch of my friends who didn’t believe me watch when I went in there. There were players with names like “Itouchboys”, “Likekids,” “Itouchgirls” among a whole host of other even worse garbage that happens there consistantly. I reported probably 30 characters in the 20 minutes I was showing my friends that place.
Each floor has its level of disgust.
The basement is for the worgans, pandas, and the vulpera., Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what that signifies.
And then what is even worse, is seeing the text that is being said there. Asking to pay for “*ex erp.”
And there’s the urls to the real sick live stuff posted in chat, but it pops up for everyone.
How long is it going to take before someone finds out that one or more of their underage kids is in there not having a clue, just trying to do newbie quests, and end up being propositioned?
And then their parents will sue the pants off of Blizzard. Yeah, there needs to be disguised gm’s daily. I MEAN daily. Protect the kids for christ sakes.
Exactly, because if Blizzard doesn’t do that then its only a matter of time before they have a new controversy on their plate. I’m frankly surprised we haven’t already had a grooming controversy hit the news about MMOs. In FF14, they literally have ERP guilds advertising in world chat. At least WoW isn’t that bad, but we still all know where it happens in WoW and therefore Blizzard can surely stop it.
Why do people think we have any sort of power? Lol. We just have gold text.
That said, I would remove the names from your post. Not for calling out but because at least one of them violates the forum coc lol. Don’t want you getting suspended for it lol. (also the masked language)
I do agree they need a gm to sweep goldshire every so often though.
