I got silenced for one week, because of AV chat. I hate that place so much and it makes me angry. I called out the team for sitting outside of Van for like 5 minutes not pulling using very mean language. Ok, so it was a silence deserved. I reached out to customer support asking how they calculate and apply silence penalties, basically I wanted to know what the system was. The GM said they could not answer questions about internal Blizzard practices on penalties. I basically wanted to know if silences penalty marks drop off. I rarely run afoul of the rules, and my last silence was well over 4 years ago, where I got a 24 hour silence. So I am assuming they don’t. Based on what I could find on reddit this is penalty system 24hrs, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, account closure. Is this true? So I am 3 negative marks away from having an account that I had for like 15 years closed? Is this right? Can someone confirm?
Marks do not drop off, that is correct. Appealing and having the punishment reversed does remove a mark but from what you said it was earned and unlikely to be removed. You’re free to appeal it though.
The penalties do stack and will continue to double in time. And yes, it can lead to an account closure. There was a user posting here a few days ago that had their account closed for repeated chat violations.
If the urge to be toxic in chat gets too much, you can simply disable it. You can hide chat. You can get rid of the keybindto reply which makes it hard to do. You can disable whispers. You can simply say what you want out loud. There’s lots of options at least to help keep your account safe.
One other question. I generally say stupid crap in chat normally in barrens chat, and some of it is super cringe, yet I have never ever gotten a silence over it. I am assuming that A I technically could if enough people reported it or B, Blizzard doesn’t really care about cringe chat, unless it is abusive towards other people. Is that right?
It depends on what you mean by “cringe”.
But in general Blizzard doesn’t go out hunting for chat to penalize. One report is enough to get chat looked at by Blizzard, though enough unique reports in quick succession will get you temporarily squelched while a GM investigates. That’s mainly used to help stop gold sellers form spamming chat for example.
Just be mindful about what you’re talking about about in a general chat setting. Politics, religion, world current events and the like don’t really belong in game. You may or may not get reported and actioned for it, but in general those remarks aren’t looked fondly upon.
If you’d like to discuss those things, you can join a guild of like minded people or communicate outside of the game. Guilds are considered at will so chat violations (unless very egregious) arent typically policed as strictly. And Blizzard has no jurisdiction over what happens outside of the game.
No.
No one can confirm how close you may be to an account closure. But yes, if toxicity continues, an account can (and will) be closed, regardless of how long the account has been active.
I actually was in a guild that didn’t have any rules regarding their chat. This was years ago. Some folks in the chat were talking about LGBQT issues in chat, and then it turned toxic. they started picking on someone who had a different opinion and told them to stop being jerks towards LGBQT folks. They told this player just to leave the guild then, so they did, and I replied that they were being mean and to grow up and then I left. I really don’t care what people say in chat, unless they are bullying someone or being super toxic to any group of people. I DO get really frustrated in BGS , Blizz probably took one look at my chat logs in AV going back weeks, and were like this guy needs a silence lol. the plan now is just to have my laptop open play the first couple of minutes, and if it looks like the bg is going to a frustrating loss, I’ll just sit in the cave and play skyrim on my main pc.
No, if you don’t want to stay in the battle, then the choice is to leave. Non-participation in a BG is also against the rules.
You can get banned for that as well? I thought you just get flagged for being afk and once afk the game just kicks you?
Do it enough and they might.
For doing it once, probably not. Having a pattern of joining a BG for the express purpose of doing nothing will, though.
The flagging for AFK timer is mostly for actively participating players to get rid of people that are literally AFK. Players that get that timer but aren’t actually AFK can go and tag an enemy player to stop the timer and not end up kicked out of the battleground.
Good to know, I didn’t know this. For a good number of AVs, I’m usually multitasking, playing with the cat, eating something, writing posts on the forums etc I usually just go in a tower or a gy that is being capped and sit there until I hear combat and switch to WoW and fight whoever is attacking me, but that’s usually when I’m so frustrated with Hordes performance, or if I have played a ton of AVs that day.
Quite frankly, this kind of behavior is not acceptable. We see players arguing all the time about getting reported for defending towers, and this is part of the problem: players gaming the non-participation system.
It doesn’t matter how frustrated you are. Non-participation is not allowed. Play the BG or leave so the team can get a replacement. If you’re so tired after a long day of gaming, log off and get some sleep.
They don’t really get into it because policies change over time. Blizzard has tried several different systems of penalties in their hopes to curb unwanted behavior.
The current system, generally, is as follows:
- First offense: a week silence
- Second offense: a week suspension
- Third offense: a longer suspension
- And up from there which can include license closure.
They do reserve the right to skip straight to harsher penalties if something is egregious enough. Note that mild infractions though don’t result in lower penalties. Those are just based on how many the account has. Even if a third offense is mild, it still gets the 2 weeks.
While squelches and warnings are automated, the actual penalties are applied by a GM. They never drop off the account so things you did years ago, are still there.
Yell at your monitor or something else, but never let yourself get rage baited into typing something you should not.
Until it’s updated, that’s the official support article. If Blizzard’s official support channel is providing inaccurate information, that’s on them.
Yes, it is on them to correct the article. I have no idea what you though to gain, or what confusion you sought to sow, by linking me to it.
It is not up to date, in any way. You gained nothing by trying to “correct” me. You have been told many times not to provide inaccurate info for the sake of arguing. If you want to be constructive, use the feedback tool at end of the article to provide feedback to them. I can’t fix it.
In this forum, we tend to give the most up to date information as possible. Remember this forum is about helping fellow players navigate the support systems in place. Not to confuse them or to give anyone false hope.
And as was mentioned, if you find a support article that you feel is out of date. Be sure to report the issue so that it can be updated
I wasn’t. I was simply linking an official support article with additional information.
If you believe the article is inaccurate, then you can use the feedback tool. It would take 5 minutes for someone to modify it or remove it. They’ve chosen not to at this time.
#dfmb
I’m just wondering how long they’re going to let you keep jumpscaring into people’s posts to be argumentative and give out bad information.
This recent thread may provide some information.
Or not.
In essence, it appears the starting point is one week of silence: There is no longer a 24-hour wait, nor warning. This is based on my experience this week, for which the GMs apologised.
Please note, that Blizzard has not updated their online documentation (as was noted above) and while others may be trying to assist, it is best to only listen to those paid by Blizzard (blue posts).
And they are not providing any details on this.
Why not? I got backgrounds sounds enabled. I was in a game last night where we lost, writing on the forums, but I heard the sound effect of rogues sneaking in one of the dun balder towers ( I had the fel hunter out) switched over dotted them both up and helped my war team mate kill them. I’m not “gaming anything.” I’ve seen repeat offenders afk the entire game, every game for weeks on end and nothing is done, even when they get reported them and auto kicked, it doesn’t result in a ban.