the way groups are formed in classic to run instances. those who ninja, are jerks, or like to stand in fire. overtime they will earn a reputation, and other players will want nothing to do with them. lists and such weren’t kept back in vanilla, was no need.
With Blizzard’s massive scale-back of their support staff and recent statements in the loot trading thread, it seems players policing themselves is going to be even more important than it was in vanilla. Blacklists are a necessity.
I’m hoping that someone releases a mod that allows more options in noting someone’s reputation. Being able to whitelist, greylist, KOS, and blacklist with notes will be very useful.
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Some raids can be PuGed. In which case maybe a certain person ninja’d something that was the leader. Or maybe someone is known for pulling mobs in 5mans and having the group wipe and they bubble hearth. Trust me, there is plenty reasons to blacklist someone.
Ultimately, I don’t think a Blacklist has ever truly worked. While there’s lots of people who claim that a blacklist and a server reputation keep the community “in-line”, I tend to see a much stronger human element of giving people a chance.
A blacklist is rarely warranted except in the most egregious cases, and by then, everyone will know by word of mouth. Instead, in many cases, you’re likely going to get a lot more pushback. “You’re just trying to cause drama.”
Despite this, there will still be people who are willing to give people a chance. “They haven’t done anything bad to me.”
That said, I’m sure someone will make an addon to share stories about players, or keep a tumblr blog or something.
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It’s much simpler than that. When someone is a jerk… and you see that person LFG… state that your experience with that person was poor. He’ll deny it. Then another person NOT in your guild will also reply… “He i the same with us…” and another will do the the same, etc and so on.
Yes there will be people who lie… but not enough to upset the balance. However if enough people are willing to “lie” about you… maybe it isn’t so much as a lie than you disagree with their impression of you.
People (myself included) would also look up the guild leader of a person’s guild and send them an email letting them know how that person was acting and representing their guild. The GL may disregard a report or two… but if he got several… he would have a talk with the person and potentially /gkick them.
Karma is a result of this community self-policing. Play nice… or don’t play at all.
I mean… if you’re joining a PuG raid in vanilla you have a much bigger problem that you need to address.
As for someone who tries to wipe a 5-man and leave (hilarious when they fail at it), I’m happy enough to add to ignore, report to Blizzard and move on with life. I make my own groups which means I also build up a list of players who can play their class, USE their CD’s when **** hits the fan and doesn’t try to take loot from other people who need it more. I HIGHLY advocate you put yourself in such a position for no other reason than the game becomes much more of a joy to play.
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RCR’s auto mute takes away the community’s agency in handling their bad apples, while blacklists require each individual player to make their own judgement on whether to adopt the blacklist, and to what degree. Auto-mute comes from the retail design philosophy that takes away player agency, while blacklists are a vanilla solution that restores it.
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Whats wrong with a PuG? Nothing… If someone ninjas in a group, they ninja in a group. Acting like this behavior should be EXPECTED because you’re in a PuG is just idiotic.
Ok, but what if you’re invited to a 5 man and he is in that group and you know he will probably do it again? What will you do then?
Which is great advice and all, but in reality it’s impossible for everyone to start their own group, otherwise everyone would be in 1 person groups.
The attitude of “Just play around that behavior”, but at the same time acting like blacklisting is worthless is hilarious to me. That’s what blacklisting is, playing around other peoples behavior. For you, it’s making your own groups inviting people you know. But for the reality of most players, that’s not what normally going to happen. We will get placed in groups with people we aren’t familiar with, and if there is someone that you KNOW is going to show toxic behavior by pulling a million things and wiping, or rolling need on every boss item because he wants to DE it, or overall just being a toxic person, then you should obviously avoid those people. That’s what a blacklist is, something to remember to avoid these types of people.
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And yet, both can be abused the same way.
If they have RCR with squelch, then Blacklists should be allowed.
If they don’t allow RCR with squelch, then Blacklists should be a bannable offense.
An off-site realm discord, for example, would be much the same as an old off-site realm forum (and plenty of those existed for the kind of trash talk which wouldn’t be allowed on the official forums). If blacklist channels that required screenshots became common proliferated there I don’t see how that would be bannable. There would be no collusion to manipulate AH markets or win trade. Such lists would be there simply as a “FYI”.
And as I understand it, this is completely in line with the #nochanges philosophy.
I only ever kept track of people who had wronged me, personally. I had a Word Document of names of people who were terrible, had ninja’d things, or been unbearably rude, just so I knew not to group with them again.
People like a Rogue who Need rolled on everything 'Because I need stuff to disenchant" and told people to ‘get over it lol’ when they told him to stop. Or the Hunter who repeatedly facepulled packs of enemies and had his pet on Aggressive and refused to turn it off. Or the Warlock who needed on a piece of Druid Tier 0 armor because I had let him die in order to save the tank.
I didnt pay attention to what people in Trade chat said. If Joe Schmoe said “Dont invite Johnny, he’s a ninja”, I wouldnt really care unless I started seeing a lot of people saying to avoid Johnny, or if Johnny was already on my list.
That may have been the case on the server on which you played. That dedefinitely was not the case on any of the servers on which I played.
On every server on which I played, a person’s behavior reflected upon their guild and those with whom they associated.
On Stormreaver (my first server), if a player displayed ANY type of less than desirable behavior, their guild officers ALWAYS heard about their behavior–either from another player contacting them directly or simply through chat.
It was not at all unusual for the offending playe r to be immediately booted from their guild once an officer heard about their less than desirable behavior, especially behavior like ninja’ing. In fact, it was the norm for the offending player to be booted from the guild, lest the guild’s reputation be negatively affected by continued association with the offending player.
A guild that harbored players with less than desirable behavior earned the same rep as the player which they harbored and that rep extended to EVERY player in that guild. Members of that guild fp and it difficult, at best, to find pugs willing to take them, etc. This could, and often did, leave to those guild members leaving the guild to salvage their reputation.
I saw more than one guild implode due to their harboring of players that displayed less thasn desirable behavior. I also progression guild main tanks booted to protect the guild.
Will this be the case in Classic? I cannot say for certain.
IMO, players with a Classic mindset will be much less forgiving of less than desirable behavior than players with a retail mindset, though.
Someone who sees all those other players in an MMO as nothing but obstacles in their way is concerned about blacklists?
I’m shocked.
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Again this mainly happened when it was something constant. Guilds weren’t booting mina raider or progression peeps over one bad 5 man run they had, or because they got into with someone and that person went to the GM. However they were booting if someone was being a constant douche in chat or trolling or was constantly being some kind of way in groups.
The discussion being have about BL on the forums seems to be people assume one wrong move and your shunned from the server and that isnt and on very less than 2% where that happen.
it became even less of a death sentence as the vanilla moved on, towards the end with AQ and Naxx guilds were struggling to field 40 peep religiously so they werent just tossing out every joe who had a tiff with someone.
I can only speak from what I personally saw, but on Stormreaver “second chances” were extremely unusual, especially if someone took the time to contact the GM or an officer directly.
Blacklisting was more a thing if one was well known on the server, by doing it constantly, or ripped some big thing from a guild or so. Otherwise, it was more of a personal mental note about people I think.
You can play that way man, it’s totally your choice. However, a ninja looter can set someone back months in terms of a piece of gear and time played hunting down said piece of gear. Even if it’s not me, that screws someone else out of all that time, and that’s not right. So yes, blacklisting is a thing, and no, it doesn’t make someone a baby to contribute to it.
If you want to keep inviting ninja looters to your group/guild, that’s your choice. But I will for sure not be associating with them and letting everyone know who they are.
Once classic releases. I’m a ghost on these forums.
If a blacklist website was ever made. Unless it became hugely a part of the game like thottbot was, I’d possibly never hear about it.
Well you’re putting yourself in a situation where you don’t know 39 other people and all you have to go on is good faith. At least if you’re a pick-up for a guild you have that guild’s reputation as collateral. There’s risk in everything you have to trust in others for - it’s about mitigating that risk. Putting yourself in a MORE risky situation carries with it the consequences of that higher risk. Don’t slather yourself in honey and hang around bears and complain “The grizzly bears are doing grizzly bear things” /PatriceONeal.
What is your expectation here? That your report is going to have an impact? You don’t have that kind of power. If you’re out to punish bad players, I’m sorry to say they’re not going to care.
Here’s your vacuum argument for blacklists:
- You’re in a group
- Ninja steals loot
- Ninja is ‘Blacklisted’ for their actions
- Ninja has a tough time getting groups after that
In reality steps #2 and #3 have happened multiple times before step #1 but you as the observer are oblivious to this fact. Which means Steps #3 and #4 don’t actually play out as you think they do.
So you don’t start your own groups because not everyone can do that? That’s a total failure in logic. You playing smarter is not contingent on everyone else playing smarter. I don’t need everyone in the world to protect themselves from loot ninjas in order to protect myself from loot ninjas. I do that quite easily. You seem to be arguing that there’s a problem in general that you want to solve. I’m saying it doesn’t have to be your problem at all so why worry about it. I don’t mind the idea of blacklisting but it’s a reaction to an event that for the vast majority of the time can be avoided in the first place.
People get scammed all the time in games (and in real life), you are completely capable of protecting yourself with preventative measures so that it doesn’t happen in the first place. Relying a list of names to protect you from getting scammed is so low-effort that such a person is the exact type of player who gets scammed.
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