Harrassment, Threats, Toxicity

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So, my story starts with a friendly chatty player on my server. Always chatting, some may say he/she never shut up. Brightened up this rather dreary corner of Classic Wow, it is an 80% Allaince server, so the 20% Horde needs that everyday player that makes you smile, bring life to a rather desolate server.
Our beacon of goofy old dude/dudette, had a moniker, all of his characters had some of their Ancestral Heritage in their name. Last week our friend wasn’t cheerful, after talking to them I found out they were having a bad week. Someone took it upon themselves to Pay Players Gold to bombard them with tickets and just BS, they often boast of this “triumph”. After our faithful friend got banned, and overwhelmed with negativity… The ATTACKER made characters USING our friends Ancestral Heritage naming conventions to talk poorly and threaten to do the same to others. Soiling a normally fun and happy persons good name. I reported this many times, I even opened a ticket.
I was told
"Hey there,

Game Master (Name Removed) here, and I see you’re reaching out about another player’s behaviour

Firstly, we don’t just ban people because reports are submitted. It takes something aggregious to result in a ban, and those only happen after a thorough investigation

So if they want to pay people to do something that’ll ultimately result in nothing, that’s ultimately their choice

We cannot comment on the status of another character or account, as that information is protected by our privacy policies

Please note that the best way to report people for inappropriate behaviour is by right-clicking their name, and using the Report option there, as this helps us track behaviour over time

Hope that clears things up a bit, and I wish you the very best of luck on your adventures

(Name Removed.)
Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support"

So I am here to tell you, You are wrong Sir. This is bull. A characters good name was being slandered by someone, they moved to get away from this person. I asked for help, You kindly told me to pound sand. I disagree with this. The ATTACKER Has since taken their ACTUAL name and are now in chat, and threatening to pay people to get more players banned and or leave through toxicity. This makes me angry, this GM was wrong and would allow this Proxy Bullying to happen. This needs addressed.

Think before you comment with negativity please. Would you like this kind of Harassment, for you? Your Mom? Dad? Kids? Friends? Loved Ones? This isn’t funny.
On a bad week, this could push someone to far. Wow was once a bright place in a dark corner of life for potentially all of us. Keep it that way. Be better.

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This is a player help player forum. Not sure what you actually want to happen but there a no GM’s or developers here.

Personally, I’d certainly report them and also put them on ignore and go about my business. The other important thing is, do not reply or engage them, ever. This is what they want. Pretty soon they’ll get bored when no reaction is forth-coming. As the GM stated, it’ll take more than one report to result in a ban - it’ll take a history of doing so, or something incredibly bad.

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Just being reported, even by many people, won’t result in a player being punished. All those reports do is prompt a GM to investigate. If the investigation turns up nothing actionable, the reported player won’t be punished; they won’t even by aware they were ever reported.

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I can understand not being happy with the response from the GM, but they really can’t do much of anything unless a pattern of behavior is continuously reported. They aren’t going to look into someone, just because you want them to. They aren’t going to ban someone simply because you feel it’s justified.

The individual you claim that is being “attacked”, also has options they can take to block and report people themselves.

No matter how many times you report something, a GM will never discuss someone else’s account status with you. You may get something in the mail thanking you for your reporting, but that’s it.

While this probably doesn’t mend your feelings on the matter, this is what Blizzard recommends you do in this type of situation: Harrasing or Defamatory Naming

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No one told you to do this.

You need to report it properly by right-clicking the chat line, selecting “report player for” and then “language”. You get a box to allow you to put a brief report if you feel it’s needed.

But your negativity about Blizzard employees is OK?

The right-click report feature is there for these reasons. The ones who are trying to imitate your friend by using similar names can be reported using right-click, “report player for” and “name”. Then put in the box why you are reporting the name.

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Let’s think about this. Why would a company willy nilly ban someone for no reason? That doesn’t make sense as it would cost them revenue.

What they would do is ban someone for breaking the rules they agreed to when playing the game. If your friend got banned it was because they had done something against the rules no matter who and how they were reported.

If your friend had done nothing wrong then no amount of reports would have gotten them banned. And you keep saying this person had “ancestral heritage” in their name which leads me to believe it was a name that was against the rules. Which lead them to get a warning for the names but they renamed themselves the same thing which can lead to a ban.

If the person you believe is reporting made names like your friends then report the names and move on. This is ultimately between Blizzard and your friend and they will absolutely not discuss this with you.

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You attempted to appeal on behalf of another player, which is valorous, but misguided.

Ultimately you only have one side of the whole situation, and the GM would not be able to provide clarification due to privacy laws.

Clarification on the proper channels is not being told to pound sand either.

Ultimately the responsibility for appealing the penalties your friend may have incurred, belong to your friend.

But if you experience any rules violation in game do continue to right click and report, as well as using the other tools provided in game.

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Giant post isn’t really necessary, but I digress.

If your friend got banned, then they can appeal. If the appeals continually denied, then your friend is possibly not being as truthful with you as you think about their innocence. The GM is correct, reporting people doesn’t result in a ban. Reports result in a ticket being sent to an appropriate part of the support team containing log information. The results of a human looking at this information is what determines a ban or not.

As to someone seemingly harassing your group, you and everyone affected should put them on ignore and report any communications you receive from them, as well as any inappropriate language.

No, you don’t need to “get this some publicity”, before that claim comes up. That doesn’t make any difference. And yes, the GM actually is correct.

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Just to wish to touch on this:

You said you friend was action, their account was close or something like that. But if they were, no one can just up and take their name because any names on a closed account can’t be reused.

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This is a big issue in our society, currently. That being, just because people disagree with you doesn’t make their response “negative,” “trolling,” “spam,” or what have you.

The GM gave you an appropriate answer, as the account issues are private, between Blizzard and the account holder.

Do we want privacy, or don’t we? Seems people are all about privacy these days, so why does it go out the window here? The issues are private, between the account holder and Blizzard.

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First we can get some terminology out of the way so we are on equal footing :slight_smile: There are 3 types of penalty and one type of automated catch all.

  • Ban - means they can’t play the game at all - permanently. Applied by a GM for repeated or egregious activities.
  • Suspension - means they can’t play at all for a limited duration. Applied by a GM.
  • Silence - means they can’t access some social features. Applied by a GM after checking logs attached to the report.
  • Squelch -is an automated social chat limitation in response to lots of reports designed to deal with spammers and gold sellers. It escalates it in queue for GM review at which point they decide if a penalty (those above) needs to be applied.

Which is what the GM tried to tell you here

If they got banned it took a LOT for a GM to apply that penalty. The GM was correct in pointing that out. I am thinking that maybe the person got a Silence due to his chat lines being reported as spam or for breaking the rules (inappropriate topics/language).

No, you were politely told that they can’t discuss someone else’s account with you. You would not want them talking about your account with someone else either.

The player who was actioned with a penalty is the one who needs to appeal. https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/2639 Tell your friend to do that if they don’t agree with any penalties applied to their account. It gets the GMs to check the logs again and verify the penalty was warranted.

If people are being annoying in chat they need to report any chat violations via right click then put them on Perm Ignore.

If a player or group is engaging in persistent harassment then the impacted player needs report for that. Good overview of that here Spotlight on: Harassment

Keep in mind, people who are active in chat channels tend to draw attention. If they engage in spammy “games”, chat patterns, or content that most of the other players don’t like, the GMs may go with the majority who don’t want to see that. A Silence doubles in length each time it is applied so the person may want to review their chat activity and decide if they need to tone it down or adjust in some way.

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Aren’t you slandering Blizzard or at least this Game Master by posting their email response and saying:

You posted this GM’s reply, along with their removed name, in a forum that anybody on the planet can access and see. By your logic, shouldn’t you be reported for slander and harassment? That GM isn’t here to defend his or herself, and probably won’t hop into the forums to do so, so this post is really a cheap shot. And that’s not even to mention the profanity substitutes you used, which is considered just as bad as spelling out the words. The report button is there so you don’t have to make these posts, and the ignore button is there so you don’t have to see what people are saying if they’re annoying you.

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I believe the others have covered things fairly well and Mirasol’s post was pretty thorough on the subject and what your friend can do from here so there is little I can add.

I did want to touch on a few things.

If someone is targeting another individual, encouraging others to contact and/or report them for frivolous reasons, I’d encourage the subject of that attention to report the person for on-going harassment. Mirasol linked my Harassment Spotlight in her post which covers how that works.

For naming, there generally isn’t a violation in creating a character with a name similar to another player’s character. Each name is unique on a realm so we only tend to get involved if they are using those similarities to scam another person. They shouldn’t have been able take the character’s name unless that character was transferred or deleted. While it might be in poor taste, there isn’t anything inherently against policy in claiming an available name.

I hope wherever your friend is playing that they have a better experience going forward and can ignore those who try to diminish others light remembering to use the tools that are available to them when needed.

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Glad I kept reading before I commented, because that was EXACTLY where I was 100% positive that something’s not quite right.