Reported. Reported! Gah

The writers of the Constitution lived in a time where they could not fathom the Internet. If you wanted to talk to people, you had to go outside or use snail mail, and the first ammendment was sufficient for protecting that speech.

“A private company doing what they want” would be the owner of a local business. There’s a huge difference between that and the mega tech/game companies today that host the speech of millions of people. It’s quite clear that these “private company” arguments do not consider the spirit of the First Ammendment.

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Because even the “spirit” of the First Amendment doesn’t hold any water, in the US, either. There are consequences against threatening and libel speech.

I don’t think so. I know Blizzard wants to make the game more welcoming, but I think they’re just enabling concern-trolls and the maladjusted folks, like I mentioned before.

Every interaction, alteration, mandate or rule is more complex than, this good, that bad. Good intentions sound good on paper, but in practice are usually much more grey in outcome.

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I don’t see how this has to do with anything.

That the concept of “free speech” doesn’t really exist, as long as there are barriers for even some speech regardless if they’re threatening, libel, “hate speech” (whatever that means), etc. The hold on the concept of “free speech” is laughable, at this point because it really doesn’t exist.

So I really don’t have a reason to be sympathetic to those maladjusted folks and concern trolls. You’d think I’d take their side if what they were doing was in the best interest of the community’s health. Is Blizzard able to pick this up?

Sorry, I’m pumping the brakes on that. Uhhh, I just came on to play. I don’t want to think. I want to let my brain rot and escape my crappy life. :crazy_face:

THIS happens a lot. Conflicts happen a lot of times because there’s no deeper understanding.

No, that’s not clear at all. You don’t get to break out your sandbox on someone else’s property. Period.

No it’s not, but there’s a time and place for that type of behaviour. Try going into Disneyland and cursing up a storm and being crude and disgusting around the kids and employees and time how quickly it it takes for security to toss you out on your behind. Bonus points if they ban you from the park.

When you’re in your own space, setting your own rules, go for it, be as offensive and crude as you like. Curse up a storm. But when you’re in someone else’s house, you follow their rules. I’m sure you’ve gone into someone’s house at one point and been told to ‘take your shoes off at the door’ right? What happens if you don’t take your shoes off? The people who set the rules get upset with you. Now imagine how they’d react if you not only didn’t take your shoes off, but put them on their couch or on their dining table. You’d probably get asked to leave, and rightly so, because you weren’t respecting the rules of their household.

When you play World of Warcraft, you’re in Blizzard’s house, and Blizzard has a set of rules they expect you to follow. You can choose to ignore them if you want, but you will face the consequences if you do so.

Respect the rules. It’s not hard.

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I don’t know what adults you hang around with, but no, adults don’t swear all the time. Most adults know that there is a time and a place for things and moderate their own behavior to fit the environment. Work, church, strangers, family activities, etc - most adults know to use polite vocabulary. Knowing the time and place for things, and understanding they have to follow the rules they agreed to, are things adults that I know are very capable of doing.

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Yeah, this is all wishful thinking. If you really believe this is true, you either live in a very sheltered community, or a fairy tail world. Or, you’re simply a lot older.

A quick search shows that statistically, you’re more likely to find a person that swears in casual conversation than not. Next time, look it up before you use phrases like “most adults.” Because that doesn’t mean anything.

Seriously, give this a quick google, then come back to me.

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I have my own opinion on the abundance of reporting systems being added to games nowadays, especially in the face of mass industry layoffs. It’s a lazy and cheap way to pass off the responsibility of monitoring your game community to your customers. Something Blizzard has increasingly become comfortable with. Getting their paying customers to do their jobs for free. We beta test their games, so they don’t have to pay in-house testers. We police their game, so they can have like 1 GM. I remember when you could get in contact with a human for almost anything. Nowadays, everything is automated. It’s just laziness imo. It also puts moderation in the hands of some less than savory people, which is a recipe for disaster.

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Sounds EXACTLY like the children complaining about not being allowed to swear.

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No, it’s a fair complaint.

You have a generation or two of people that were brought up thinking that everything they did, said or thought was a sin, or evil or later on made you some sort of ist. This is the logical outcome of terrible parenting for two generations. :man_shrugging:

I live on the boundary of Jimtown and Pigeon Creek in Evansville, Indiana. This is the poorest, least employed, lowest-class neighborhood in this city. It’s not exactly a “sheltered” environment and the folks who live here are primarily younger (and can’t afford anywhere else) or hopelessly unprepared for life in the real world (lacking employability) and can’t afford to live anywhere else or live here out of some sense of nostalgia having grown up here.

I can go days without hearing anyone other than the wandering mth-heads or the occasional escalated domestic dispute yell-fights without hearing a single swear word.

We had one neighbor who couldn’t keep himself from yelling profanity at every opportunity. It was offensive enough to the community that (after several attempts at directly asking him to keep it under control failed) the police were called, multiple times. CPS was called, multiple times. It had a happy ending in that the young man who was causing the problems finally got the message that you can’t start every sentence with screamed profanity just because life isn’t giving you what you want at that specific moment. He quieted down and as far as I know he hasn’t said a thing that any neighbor could hear that wasn’t church language.

He dodged a bullet there, though. The CPS officer who I spoke with about him on a follow-up visit said that if it happened again, they’d take the kids. No violence, just an environment where speaking was yelling and yelling was profanity pretty much all the time. That’s not a healthy environment for anyone and it’s not enjoyable for the people who have to put up with it.

Yes, I suspect a slim majority of adults has used swear words in conversation (private, appropriate conversation).

As to your statistics: I doubt they hold up if you define the parameters of “casual swearing” to be every other sentence in mixed company in a venue that specifically and absolutely forbids that sort of language.

Adults know how to moderate their language. Children do not.

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That’s a very nice story and all, but it’s also completely subjective. Averages don’t care about your small town. Both you and Mirasol are wrong.

The numbers would probably differ, but the range seems to be between not 0% to just under 4% of a persons daily word usage. And this is people just under 40 years old. Again, if you’re older than that then it starts to fall off, because older folk are usually much more conservative.

So, if you’re older than 40, chances are you’re just too old to be subjected to this kind of conversation. No offense intended, that’s just the way of it. But, judging EVERY walk of life by a very limited and sheltered view of the world, isn’t realistic or helpful.

EDIT: To add to my last point. Judging every walk of life based on a small town, also not super realistic or helpful.

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Unless you know the criteria in that statistical report you gave for a) how often, b) in what venues, c) severity of the swearing involved it’s pretty pointless to use that as “proof” of anything.

You’re being disingenuous.

You said …

I rebutted that with a clear example of a non-sheltered community that was also not a slice of upper-class, privileged people. In this community of people whose lives are not easy, casual swearing is almost unheard. When it is, when it impacts the community, local governmental agencies get involved in shutting it down.

Evansville is the 3nd largest city in Indiana (not exactly a “small town”). We have two universities and the metro area has close to a million people living in it.

You’re being deliberately dismissive of facts you don’t like.

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Dismissive of facts? You mean your completely subjective story? So your completely subjective story has more value than mine, where I hear swearing every single day? You might want to put a bit more thought into this.

Besides, I gave you another sources statistics, and that still wasn’t good enough. As I said before, you can very easily… VERY EASILY… look this up on google, with just one search. You will very easily see that people swear all the time, every single day. And, swearing isn’t a big deal, they’re just words that enunciate a mood. Heaven forbid people actually have moods, or feelings, and exclaim those moods or feelings with words that you disapprove of.


This is a bit of a tangent, but I’d like to make another point. Swearing or profanity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What’s important is the intent behind those words. But, we don’t worry about intentions behind words, we just worry about the words themselves. They aren’t magical, they don’t hold power, but the intent and emotions of the person does have power.

Asking why people don’t simply “act better” is ivory tower, privileged levels of thinking that doesn’t really exist in the real world. It’s computer jockey, white savior, white knight levels of crap. And, telling children or adults not to act how they choose to act, is kind of foolish, at best. Children especially need to make mistakes in order to learn and improve on themselves. The reason that you don’t swear is because at some point you learned that that wasn’t the best way to communicate, that it might be a bit childish. But, in the end they are just words.

A better way to handle swearing, would be to ask why people feel the need to do it, what frame of mind they’re in when they do it. Instead, we live in a world where hyperactive-nanny’s hear these words and get bent out of shape. Again, they’re just words, and they aren’t important.

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In a way, not much really changed. Most players still communicate via Discord, and most players are fine with adult language. Even a lot of guilds barely talk inside the game, they communicate over Discord

It’s a very small minority of the playerbase actually “offended” by an adult conversation - seems to be mainly a handful of forums posters? Personally I’ve almost never seen a player inside the game say something like “knock it off guys, there’s kids in the room” or a similar Karen-y remark… and the once-in-a-blue-moon that they did pop up they instantly got shouted down by the mob :laughing:

New rules have also had little to no effect on boosters as well. When I’m standing around in Oribos waiting for a queue pop I often see the same exact level 1’s I reported days ago still advertising their scammy RMT stuff

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A better question is why are words considered “swear” or “curse” words at all.

But the words are important. They are the indicator and they are the behavior that will precede actual banning.

People that advocate for leaving profanity in usually use the argument “but they’re just joking, we all talk that way.” True, we all do. But do you want Blizzard to moderate based on your heart of hearts? Sounds a bit Orwellian, no?