@Blizzard I use Fast Guild Invite in order to draw members into our guild. Most people are easy about it because my recruitment message and responses are the most amicable I can be.
Lately I have been getting negative responses and threats of getting reported. I was just wondering if I continue to use the addon if my account could be at risk for temporary suspension or do you guys look at the auto reports and say, “Hey, this isn’t really what these angry players are making it out to be.”
The addon itself has a invite supression list for characters (to my knowledge) that has been contacted within the past 7 days. I do not want to put my account in jeorpordy, but the guild recruitment options outside of the game can be very slow and unsubstantial at times to meed guild needs.
how fast does it send out guild invites some mite consider it spam and report it. Most if they dont want guild invites they will turn off guild invites.
To go off what Darth said, even if you only send one invite to 1,000 people or 1,000 invites to one person, they can report you for spam, regardless if an add-on is doing it or not.
The definition of “spam” is not just frequency. It is partly defined by how annoyed you make other players - to the point they report you.
If you are using a spammy addon you may want to stop doing it. People react to it much like they do to invasive advertisements on radio, TV, or the web. They usually want it gone.
As long as the addon is using what the WOW team has allowed it to, it’s probably not going to be against the rules to have it. That being said, if you are penalized it is not because of the addon but because of the message spam.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of unsolicited messages. I don’t report them, unless the message is for some service that’s against the rules, but I get a lot of guild recruitment whispers and it can be a bit annoying.
It’s not against the rules to send messages to others and ask them if they’d like to join your guild but doing so in mass can be seen as spam by the community and reported as such.
There are some in-game tools for guild recruitment, and so folks can search out guilds they might fit with. I’d recommend sticking to those, or tossing the occasional chat message out to catch the eye of anyone who may be looking.
Okay so would it be reasonable to simply not send the message? At this point I’m talking in hypotheticals because I’m simply not going to put my account at risk for any type of penalization going this point forward. I understand and agree that it is and can be annoying, on the other side of that coin, it’s very difficult to get a guild off the ground, even with the best of structure, policies, and opportunity. Guild Finder is wonderful, but you have to choose 1 of 5 options, you can’t choose multiple even if you did more things that just “Raid” or “Socialize and Level”. Any other forum posts you can make 1 post for 1 period and after 3-4 hours it’s out of eyes reach. Same thing for Reddit, etc.
So, about small guilds. Spamming only gives you a bad reputation. A message every so often 5-10 mins in Trade is fine. What works better is making groups in dungeon finder or raid and playing with people. See if they are a good fit and invite them.
Also, if you want to raid, getting to know then assimilating smaller guilds into yours also works. Of course, it would be their choice to join you but it can be done. Oh, and raiding alliances are also a thing.
With all due respect I was asking in regards to account security in terms of the ToS, upon which a Game Master responded to my ticket telling me that it is not considered spam if you do not do it repeatedly. Your ethos on how you view the recruitment process is simply that. Thank you for responding, there are more valuable and personable ways to recruit, but that was not my inquiry.
Sending an invite to no more than 1 un-guilded player in a 168 hour cycle AT minimum barely makes the mark of spamming. There’s a reason marketing exists as an entity, and whether you like it or not, sometimes it is effective for the people that meet their market criteria. To every 1 negative response I get 50-60 positive responses. It’s all in the way you word it and the way you treat people.
When I receive these sorts of messages (and I’ve got guild invites off on a few of my alts), I do tend to report them as spam. Now, would that single report get you into trouble? No, not likely. But if you’re sending the same invite out to a plethora of people and even if only a handful choose to mark it as spam, your account could still be hit with a Squelch.
The Squelch system is automated in that once it hits an undisclosed number of reports, your entire account will cease to be able to use chat pending a GM’s review. Once reviewed, the GM would indeed weigh the fact that enough people felt that it was a message that was being spammed and could apply a temporary Silence.
It’s something to consider when sending these sorts of unsolicited messages to random players as each silence doubles in length starting at 24hrs.
Sending an unsolicited invite is where it gets into the spam category. If you advertise in trade or using the guild recruitment tool is one thing, but if you send out invites to players unsolicited, you can very easily get banned/suspended for spam. While the addon itself is not against the rules, what you do with it could very well be.
Also keep in mind people play more than one character, so if they’re getting invites to your guild each time they log on to an alt, it definitely feels spammy.
I’m not sure this is right, given the fact that the blues here stated that if the playerbase on a given something feel something is being spam/spammy, they can report it as such. Even if it’s just one, they can report it as such.
I think what you are after here is something like this, for example:
1-4 messages in 56 minutes is NOT spam.
3-5 messages in 43 minutes is borderline spam.
5-7 messages in 26 minutes is spam.
Unfortunately - and while I do understand you are trying to avoid account action - you aren’t going to get that. They don’t have steadfast guidelines like this because people would just come in 1 message or 1 minute under the line and then cry “but it’s not spam!” when it still certainly may very well be spammy.
The simple fact is that if you send unsolicited messages and you are reported for spam, you may be actioned, regardless of whether you use an addon to send them, or send them out manually.
I could stop playing WoW right now, take a five year break, come back in 2026, send a single unsolicited message to a single player and get actioned. Unlikely? Yes. Possible? Sure.
You won’t get cut-and-dried guidelines for spam. It’s kinda similar to “disorderly conduct” in life. It varies. Screaming in one place can be perfectly acceptable, while screaming in another place could get you “actioned” (lol).
The reason they don’t have guidelines like that, is because it invites rules lawyering. “I only sent 4 messages in 5 minutes, not 5, so it’s not spam.” Despite the same 4 messages going out every 75 seconds on the dot…looks like spam to me. That’s why there are no hard and fast guidelines.
At the end of the day this is a controversial topic within WoW as we all know at this point. I extended my message block period to 1 month, so if a message once a month is considered spam, then I simply don’t know what to tell you.
Starting a guild from the bottom up is a difficult thing to do. Given that fact that 2 Blizzard representatives have said contradictory statements it’s clear that there’s not exact measure of what is considered spam and what is not, it’s all up to their subjective explorations via each encounter.
I understand that Mass Guild Invites mechanisms get on players nerves sometimes, but other times it’s effective, as long as it’s effective and within acceptable parameters it will be implemented.
On that note, I am pleased to say the guild has reached acceptable numbers and now we are focused on member engagement. We will be moving to other avenues of recruitment as the roster is sustainable at this point in time. Invite addons were necessary to get the guild to a level of sustainability in a reasonable time-frame.
Varying opinions and dispositions do not equate to fact. We can debate all day long, but the recruitment addons have been around for awhile now, and as long as it’s kept into some parameters to prevent people from complaining, I think they’ll stay. I’ve also added the message to them “If you do not wish to be contacted again please say so.” At that point I would add, is there any alts you would like me to add to the list?
You know, as much as I personally abhor the mass guild invites and their add-ons, I will give you props for this. Most every person who slung invites my way (and let me tell you - there was this one jerk guild that reaches across multiple servers and will have multiple people sitting there mass inviting on top of one another with the same wall of text), have always hit me back when I asked to be added to their block list and were out and out nasty about it. Even other non-associated guilds, most of the time I would get an attitude or outright nastiness back.
But you need to keep in mind that you’re not the only one doing this, and at the end of the day, whispers with unwanted advertisements, are whispers with unwanted advertisements aka spam.
And quite likely, people will keep reporting for spam. As Kalviery pointed out, there are other ways to advertise that don’t involve sending people whispers. So you’re taking your chances as far as what a GM will do. You’re not entitled to force your advertisements on people who don’t want them.