I’ll just reply to this thread, the same way I replied to the last thread we had on this exact topic, that also went over 500 replies…
Anyone in favor of this asinine system where players can deal out squelch punishments, before a GM review, feel free to answer, because not a damn one of you could in the other thread:
let’s look at a vanilla example… A friend of mine, and a server legend on Stonemaul in vanilla, who ended up passing IRL in Cata: The Shadowpriest Booms.
Booms’s method of making himself (in)famous in vanilla was by becoming the Pirate king of Menethil. He was a Horde Shadowpriest in one of the most accomplished guilds, spent most of his free time sitting on the menethil boat, next to his secondary account’s alliance character named Boomsbot.
Boomsbot’s job was simple… Everyone who wanted to take the boat, had to pay his alliance character a toll, or walk the plank (he spoke in pirate speak the entire time)… He was successful enough at this, for it to allegedly become his primary form of in game gold farming. If you didn’t pay, you got MCd off the boat into fatigue waters until you did. He was ruthless at this…
and he was a LEGEND on the server because of it… He had friends in numerous top horde guilds who would come join in on the fun/get his back if alliance tried to group to take him down, but for the most part he simply became a fixture of every day life for the Alliance there…
I want to be very clear about this… Booms did nothing wrong, and was never once banned for these actions, in fact, Booms was CELEBRATED by both the Stonemaul community in general, and even by Blizzard itself, when he was immortalized as an NPC after his IRL death. https://www.wowhead.com/npc=68985/booms
Now put this same exact situation in the modern right click report/squelch system… Every person Boomsbot talked to probably right clicks his name and reports… It doesn’t matter one damn bit that this is a player that Blizzard themselves celebrate in memorial in game… He’s getting squelched.
He’s now being punished for doing nothing wrong with constant squelches. Moreover, to your assertion that the people reporting him would get banned for causing an inappropriate squelch… ask yourself if they really would? Most of the people reporting him might have even thought that they where doing the right thing in reporting his behavior. Are they punished for trying to use the system honestly? Now what if some people just see him there and spam report him because they don’t like him… How can you possibly differentiate between the reports made in good faith and the reports made in bad faith. Just how much GM time are you now requiring for each and every report to determine intent?
Booms would be auto flagged from reports into oblivion, and it would be impossible to distinguish false reports made in bad faith, from real reports made in good faith. The system is arguably anti-wow in general, but at the very least it’s clearly anti-vanilla as the system completely fails when exposed to a real world vanilla environment/situation.
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