I want to be invisible to the guy harassing me - This is NOT a pvp issue

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I have had a former guidie harassing me for six months now, and I just want to disappear from him.

TL;DR

  1. The problem with ignore lists is this - It doesn’t stop them from saying public stuff about you, you just don’t get to see it
  2. Ignore lists also don’t prevent harassers from having you on their friends lists and knowing when you are online or /who to find out where you are. They can still stalk you even if they can’t whisper you

This dude hates me as a hobby. I’ve already reported him multiple times, but either blizzard doesn’t really care, or he is adept at just skirting the lines of what is technically “free speech” but targeted at me to make me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Yes, I’ve had him on ignore for months now. What he does is post in public channels like World, trade and LFG or even /1 if he’s in the same zone as me and trash talk. It’s disruptive because he also just spouts a bunch of untrue stuff about me that I don’t have a lot of recourse in because he’s spamming global channels. Yes, I right-click report him. Yes, I have him on ignore.

But I want to disappear. I don’t want him to be able to add me to his friends and see when I am online or /who to find out where I am. When I use LFG channel to legit look for groups I don’t want him counter-spamming me saying I’m an Egirl who begs for money, etc.

The problem, with ignore lists as well is that he can still spam all this crap and I can’t see it, so I can’t report it. So I feel an incentive not to have him on ignore because he is free to slander me and I don’t know when he’s doing it. He is absolutely determined to trash me as like, a hobby, and I am pretty much ready to quit.

Blizzard, the tools for harassment are not enough and this dude is basically stalking me in the game, nevermind on reddit and discord where blizz can’t handle it.

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Do you respond when he says something about you in chat?
If someone does not get the response they want they stop.
I would just keep reporting him, I don’t know of anything else you can do.

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Do you respond when he says something about you in chat?
If someone does not get the response they want they stop.

This is absolutely 100% NOT TRUE. I have not responded to him in MONTHS and he is still after me because I post in global channels and am public. He knows I am online and wants me to quit.

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Sorry this is happening.

I had a similar situation once. I ended up changing my Battlenet handle and server transferring/name changing some toons. I no longer accept Battlenet friend requests.

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Best option I could come up with is don’t play on toons he knows about for a long while. If possible, just make a new one of same class. Or server transfer. Or find yourself a guild of people who will know you and can refute him.

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Sorry this is happening.
I had a similar situation once. I ended up changing my Battlenet handle and server transferring/name changing some toons. I no longer accept Battlenet friend requests.

Thanks. I appreciate it. I feel frustrated because I haven’t done anything wrong besides the crime of Being Female On The Internet. I like my guild, I like my friends, and I don’t want to pack everything up and leave so some dude can jerk off to the fact that he made a girl miserable.

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Open a ticket.

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Sorry meant to type “usually stop”.

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Yeah there’s a couple people that don’t like me, and have tried to slander me as well. I’ve just ignored them and done my thing. Regardless of their immaturity your reputation will spread based on what you do. Some random guy trash talking you to themselves on a public channel will eventually ruin their reputation, not yours.

I’d also keep reporting them, and not just right click report. I’d open a GM ticket over the issue.

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Unfortunately this happened on my server to somebody that I knew tangentially. Last I heard she server transfered to a server where her name was taken so it forced a name change. AFAIK he never had her bnet though so he couldn’t track her that way. Ultimately blizz doesn’t have a great track record of handling these situations. It sucks that you have to put up with that.

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I have opened two ongoing harassment tickets against him now, aside from right-click reporting the incidents after I take screenshots. One back around november / december and one a few days ago. I get the same response “We are looking into it and can’t tell you the result” so I just… wait until he comes back for another round.

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I feel like this is a bad idea but f it. I say fight fire with fire, bring him down a bit.

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You are correct.

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No offense, but if he’s gone to Reddit and discord then this has just become a case of actual slandering and real life harassment; especially if he’s using your real name or other such information like account stuff. Lawsuit might be your best option, or show the police or something along those lines, cause it’s generally a factoid that most people who take it that far are likely not “all that right” and probably do pose a semi-serious if not a truly serious issue to one’s privacy and safety.

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That has honestly been sitting at the back of my mind. Being female, I have been of the receiving end of a lot of weird / creepy / unwelcome behavior and we often get told “just ignore it” until it builds and builds and becomes a giant mess. I just want to disappear from this dude.

Thankfully, he has not actually threatened me physically and I don’t think he knows any RL information about me, so he sticks to just making stuff up, like I’m a p*rn star, etc.

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I’ve had reddit, world chat and lfg slander against me by a liar with falsified screenshots. It took months before it stopped and blizzard didn’t do anything about it.

I considered getting outside authority once against someone who stalked me for 4 years, applied to every guild I was in, would faction change and hunt me down in the world, server xfered to where I went to. Sent me irl mail and emails…

Edit: Not a female.

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Couple of things I can think of.

One is enlisting the help of friends/guildmates. In order for you to continue to report, you would have to be removing him from Ignore. That can undermine your case. Even engaging peripherally, such as defending yourself because someone else repeats the information isn’t a good idea. If you have guildmates or friends who can see the badmouthing and report it, that’s better.

Have those people note the times of the comments and the channel for you. What you want to do is put together a case for moderation review.

Once you have enough to show he is intentionally targeting, open a ticket to report Ongoing Harassrment. Provide (in short form) the channel and date/time of as many of those as you can.

Now, the hard part is it takes time for penalties to add up. They might get nothing but a warning at first. They could get a short suspension. And with some people, instead of that making them stop, it makes them ramp up. Which can be uncomfortable, but continue reporting and the case will build until they hit a penalty that takes them out of game for a while or the clue-bat hits.

If a real-life threat comes up, that can be quicker to get actions, but if it’s made outside WOW then it’s not in Blizzard’s records and you may need to refer to policies on other sites, or as some mentioned getting local authorities involved.

Unfortunately, there’s not a good way to hide a specific character. You could transfer to another realm, wait out the cooldown and transfer back, but you’d be the same race/class/level and the moment you rejoin your guild it would be a pretty obvious match.

Leveling an alt could work, maybe getting guildies/friends to help you do so quickly. (However, if you’re trying to stay connected to the same group of friends, this gets hard because people unwittingly share information all the time.)

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You will continually lose until you decide to stop being insecure and letting his actions take hold you.
Had people do it to me before and some would ask and others didnt care. I let people decide. Because in the end you dont need anyone. Build your own empire if it comes to it.
Seize the day.

I’m sorry, that’s… not how internet misogyny works.

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Once upon a time blizzard would step in and do something about this kind of thing. Unfortunately their customer service is laughable now. Most likely he will continue to go on doing what he does with little to no action taken…However, if you can get multiple people to report him then the auto squelch/gm review will kick in and something will actually be looked at. I would also suggest making this same post in customer support section. You might actually get some answers there.

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Had similar experience years ago with some creep from Germany who was obsessed with me. I kept ignoring his characters and he would just start finding me in game and just hovering around me. Opened a ticket and they removed his character from my zone and I never saw him again

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