The atmosphere where you spend your recreational time is important and can directly impact your level of enjoyment. To help keep Azeroth a fun, fair, and friendly place we have developed policies that cover several aspects of in-game behavior.
Understand that we do not “police” chat, names, or many other aspect of player behavior; our policies are primarily reactive in nature. With that in mind, it is important for those who encounter chat, names, or behavior that they believe to violate these policies, to report it so our staff can review the reports.
For bad names, inappropriate language and harassment we have several tools to help. The easiest and most effective method of addressing this behavior, when properly utilized, is our Right Click report feature. There are several categories available, covering most situations our In-Game Support staff is able to assist with, which we’ll cover below.
Bad Names (Player, Guild and Pet)
You can report a bad Player/Guild name by right clicking on their name in chat or on their character portrait and selecting: Report for: Name. That will bring up a box where you can select if you are referring to the character or guild name as well as a space to include optional information.
Note: for most names we do not need a reason but more obscure words/phrases, it may help our investigation.
Bad Pet names, both hunter pets as well as companion pets, can be reported by selecting the pet, right clicking on their portrait and select: Report Bad Pet Name.
Inappropriate Language/Subject Matter
For reporting bad language and subject matter you’ll want to click on the character name in the chat window and select: Report For: Language. This sends a report with the chat line you clicked on to our teams for review and places the character on a temporary ignore that lasts until you log out.
Note: This applies to custom emotes that may contain inappropriate language and/or subject matter.
Reporting Spam, Advertisements and Phishing
The Report Spam option is used primarily to report those entities that are using various means of advertising illicit goods and services such as gold, leveling, etc. as well as pretending to be a Blizzard rep in order to get you to visit a site or otherwise provide your account information. Select Report for: Spam to send the report up to our staff.
Understand, while we do have systems in place to help limit these types of messages, it is near impossible to eliminate them entirely. The best defense is a good offense and these advertisements should be reported as soon as they are received. The more folks that do so, the better the system can limit the reach that these folks have.
Cheating
This category in particular is used for characters that you find that may be using an exploit, bot, etc…
Keep in mind, these types of investigations are often the most lengthy, so you may not see immediate action. Please know that our teams work hard to investigate this type of behavior. This allows them to deal with, not only the exploitation that you see but also works to block or break the method used. Click on the character portrait and select: Report For: Cheating.
Note: For situations when you are unable to use the right click report option, you may email hacks@blizzard.com with relevant details.
The bottom line is that we want the World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players. While playing World of Warcraft and posting on our forums, you will encounter thousands of other players who share different experiences and come from vastly different backgrounds. While certain language and imagery may not be offensive to you, consider the fact that that same language and imagery may have a completely different effect on someone else.
We’ve done everything we can to make this a great environment – now it’s up to you!