I recently reported a player for malicious activity causing people to mute their sound in-game in Classic and unintentionally got myself banned in the process by calling for other players to report him in public channels. This is not a thread to revoke my suspension but one to ask for help.
When speaking with a GM I was told that simply reporting is the correct thing to do. I will continue to do so when my suspension is over but the question I have is what if nothing helps? What if I return to my favorite spot in game only to see the player continuing to spam an ability unnecessarily to grief other players after they have been reported numerous times by multiple people and even after my 9 day vacation? If that is the case I will suspect I am right in having to “recruit” others with intent to get this malevolent act noticed.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging others to report suspect activity, you need to be wary of how you do it - as you’ve discovered.
Be careful not to spam. I generally post a message in the general chat once and leave it at that. I don’t tend to private message people.
While we don’t know if there is any internal threshold to trigger something, it really can only take one report.
Banned by an automated system for 9 days. Jesus.
Except that it’s not automated.
The only part of any disciplinary action that is automatic is a squelch; which silences you until it can be reviewed by a GM.
Any actual silence (24 hours to start, with stacking penalties) or a suspension from the game is applied by a person, not an automated system.
Except that isn’t what happened. An investigation was launched by a Game Master, based on a report. Violations were verified and then they applied the appropriate penalty based on the our logs while also taking the history of the account into consideration.
The best I can tell you, Dyl, is report potential violations if you encounter them but I would not recommend engaging with the person and watch the language and how you refer to people.
I will do just that, but I’m asking what happens if nothing is done regarding the player spamming an ability several times within the length of a second for multiple consecutive minutes totaling several hours a day? I will provide an update on the situation once I get back into the game to see if it is continued.
I can’t really say what would happen because I wouldn’t know.
If we investigate the situation and confirm they are violating policy we will take appropriate actions. If we are not able to verify or agree the behavior violates policy, then nothing will happen.
I can tell you with near certainty that nothing is going to happen to this player. Everyone is allowed to use their given abilities as much as they want, for whatever reason, in whatever place, for any amount of time they choose.
Now, if there is something attached to this ability, then that’s a starting point. Is it a sound that Blizzard attached to that spell? Then you want to make a suggestion for Blizzard to remove it. Is this player using an add-on that spams your chat box or creates its own sound? Then you’ll want to suggest that Blizzard break that functionality. Or open a ticket and explain the situation regarding the emote spam that could be happening.
Ah, there it is.