10th post down from the OP, First sentence. I’m quite aware of this fact.
This is where I disagree. 9.2.5 introduced new Report Players options.
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that we get both a revision of Social Contract/ToS and new Report Options in the same patch. Blizzard is very much choosing to take a more active role in rule enforcement as opposed to their old methods of passivity.
The only semantic to be argued is if the GM replying is a User-Reply or an Automatic-Reply.
At best, the argument could be made that this new enforcement of old rules is to address how toxic the PvP community has become. This does NOT change the fact that in this thread alone two players have applied for tickets and the shared/posted Blue Post reply was “We don’t play favorites, these rules indiscriminately apply to everyone”
No, I don’t feel like it’s an overreaction at all.
As I previously detailed in this post, Blizzard is now choosing to take more overt participation in the rule enforcement of the Warcraft community - which also includes Roleplayers who get in-character to fulfill a role in a story.
Someone has another thread on WrA that also addresses the same topic (An Eye on Wyrmrest Accord Behavior), One user made it clear that in the past they report anyone using slurs in-character. That is their right to do so if they feel wronged, I don’t know the outcomes of such blanketed reporting. I bring up this fact as evidence that there exist players who are quick-draws to reporting slights done in RP, as you say “Self Deputized” How players respond to such deputys is their own personal choice, but such reactions come too little, too late if the damage is already done with account suspensions or bans and that under the new rules we may see some faces vanish.
Antagonist characters are the easiest example of how the new Social Contract affects roleplayers because Antagonists talk smack to get under the skin of people prompting a controlled drama series of events that culminated in a fun story between characters & guilds. “Deaders” & “Scalies” are just me being Forum-Friendly, I’m sure you or anyone can use personal experience in how you’ve observed language weaponized in RP.