If I were to target someone’s character I don’t know.
By target, I mean clicking on their character so their portrait pops up or inspecting their gear. Just like clicking on an NPC to interact with them.
Not following them around everywhere to annoy them, which is clearly harassment.
That’s a basic in-game mechanic - I see no problem at all.
I do this sometimes to see what awesome gear they have or which armor gives them such an epic look.
There are a variety of functions in-game that can only be done by targeting a player, whether it’s a game function or addon function. As Bitcaster mentioned, right-click inspecting a player’s character will bring up a dialog that shows what gear they have equipped, including applied transmogs is but one of those options.
Some addons such as Total RP 3 has a dialog pop up that shows information a player wants to be publicly known about a character if you’re into the writing scene on a given RP server, but you’ll only have that option if you also have one of those addons installed.
Okay if someone did report me to Blizzard or my GM for harassment, would they just shrug it off and say “this is an in-game function. Deal with it”?
How would someone know you’re clicking on them?
The only time a player would know you’re clicking on them is if they were clicking on you as well and had target-of-target enabled in their settings.
There is legitimately nothing happening in this scenario that a GM would take even remotely serious.
When you click on them their icon appears in the left upper corner of the screen. If you can see their Icon on your screen they can see yours on theirs.
So basically they won’t know you’re looking at them, unless they’re looking at you too.
This is such a basic game function I’m not sure how it’s pursuable in any format, unless there’s some strange context or add-on we’re unaware of.
There are addons (such as TipTac) that will show you whom someone is targeting with just a mouseover.
If someone did they would get a reply thank you for the ticket we will investigate and that is it. If they right click report they get nothing and then nothing would happen since this is not against the rules.
Player reports have zero weight when it comes to what is being reported. By that, I mean that a player report is only the impetus for an investigation.
Beyond that, any literal or figurative “ZOMG this person was AFK and cheating and they said mean things and I really hate them and the whole team should vote kick them…” is all irrelevant. Even if the person really got the group to initiate 40 votes.
That’s it, and that’s all. The public may - unfortunately - believe in the idea of “auto-account-action” but it doesn’t exist, because any and all reports simply initiate the investigation. There has to be an actual violation for a penalty to be applied.