Part of the problem with this in particular is that the vitriol spreads through other mediums like Discord and Tumblr, where RPers go to coordinate and enrich their experiences or outright RP in the story setting but not in the game and Blizzard has literally no say in what goes on, there. There’s nothing much to be done about it besides avoid those mediums.
I think 1 click reporting, which didnt exist when things were frankly MUCH worse on many realms than they are on WrA or MG, now, would help cull a lot of bad behavior. RP realms could use a 1 click “harassment” or “hate” report- as could all realms, really. Harassment and bullying should NOT be so hard for ANYONE to report.
The ignore system needs to be much more robust, as well. Ignoring a toon should ignore the entire bnet account associated with the player and it would be great if their characters literally became invisible to the victim- without Sharding ideally.
Custom in-game channels would be solved-ish if rp realm ToS were reinstated and general chat was used for things like finding RP, but sometimes the power of “community” is insurmountable. In my experience since Wrath across several RP realms, abusive players are almost always highly charismatic and imaginative, and I’ve seen REALMS die when they were driven off because they WERE the focal point of plots spanning multiple guilds in both factions. They DO control the narrative and level of inclusivity in many instances, wielding some level of power over up to thousands of players back in the day on some realms. As the community has dwindled, their strangleholds have only grown in influence. Or they were.
I notice of late as SL has truly gutted the community (expacs that are impossible to RP are SO BAD for Rpers) that many if not all these players seem to have lost interest in fighting for control over the scraps and appear to have wandered off to other games. It’s nice and quiet for now, but also terribly quiet, and I think a healthier RP environment would only entice them to return.
Back in the day, there used to be “pilgrimages” where groups of hundreds of players would transfer to new realms or factions to get away from these bad actors for a while, but CRZ and letting players play both factions on one realm has destroyed that. I’d personally like to see these features disabled/reverted on RP realms and smaller realms properly merged not CRzed to be of a size with WRA, MG, and ED. (It would probably take every single other NA realm being combined for a total of 4 realms) I just think having 8 healthy player pools that were their own separate spaces would somehow help.
RP is both most removed and closest to a real life situation. We interact with real people behind story characters, and they have real opinions as their characters have opinions. There’s aspects the RP community will always have to deal with, themselves, but…
It would be REALLY GREAT, if there were just…2 GMs per RP realm whose job it was to BE IN the environment. Present and known to the players in a global general chat, invitable to guilds and channels where they could see what was going on and address it in real time. Other MMOs - some that are F2P- DO have this kind of support for RP and non-RP realms alike, and it’s kind of inane that WoW doesnt.