You think they should hire thousands of people to sit in all public chat channels at all times to review everything that is said? I am not sure that is feasible or realistic.
They do review the chat logs attached to reports though - so they have the whole story. What they don’t really care about is WHY you said something. Just that it was said.
The same rules we have had since 2004.
I can repeat the basics from 2004 again if you wish.
B. Rules Related to “Chat” and Interaction With Other Users.
Communicating with other Users and Blizzard Entertainment representatives is an integral part of World of Warcraft and is referred to in this document as “Chat.” Your Chats may be subject to review, modification, and deletion without notice by Blizzard Entertainment. Additionally, you hereby acknowledge that Blizzard Entertainment is under no obligation to monitor Chat and you engage in Chat at your own risk. When engaging in Chat in World of Warcraft, or otherwise utilizing World of Warcraft, you may not:
(i) Transmit or post sexually explicit images or other content or language which in the sole discretion of Blizzard Entertainment is deemed to be offensive; nor shall you transmit any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable content or language, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;
Don’t do that stuff in public channels. If you do, don’t be surprised if you get reported and a GM issues a penalty. That is not “abuse” - that is consequences for not following the rules you agreed to. There is no “get out of jail free” card just because you are RPing.
See above. RP is not a get out of jail free card. You can’t use public channels for stuff the breaks the game rules.
Yes actually lol, because it gives far better customer service and in a timely manner. They did have this a time ago, but then decided that laying off tons of employees was the move. We saw where that got them alright.
If they don’t care about why something was said, than that is quite literally a biased view on the issue, and not somebody that should be a person with the power to make someone unable to play the game based on their own opinion.
And if you read what I had said above, I am aware of this, however, I also said the bans on RP realms have never been so outrageously bad until now. They need to give a specific set of rules for roleplay if they are going to do this, and if not, they will just lose more than the 65 something million they’ve already lost in players. It personally sounds like we need a more diverse community team than we got.
This sounds suspicious, like we’re not getting the full story.
Were they being lewd in public? As in posting the nsfw text in chat for everyone to read?
If so, they’re going to be reported.
Were they doing multi-paragraph RP where they used an addon to expand their post lengths to take up a large amount of text space in a busy area? I’m talking like 5+ full buffers?
If so, people are going to right click and report for spam to get their walls of text off the screen so they can RP too. If your friends were inconsiderate enough that they got reported enough to actually have their behavior looked at by Blizzard, they were probably deserving and need to work on being more considerate, consider playing in party chat if they’re going to post massive walls of text, or moving out of a busy area so they’re not disrupting people as much.
And I’ll say it again since I got all day. People should not be forced to not roleplay in the general chat, a tradition that has been going on for like 15 or more years just because people want to abuse the report feature.
No social contract is going to deter the ones false flagging innocent people just for the hell of it. I dont see this going anywhere but south. People think the community is anti social now? Its going to be a lot worse.
I don’t see how “freak” and “Frankenstein” infringe on that. Also if I’m using curse words in game who cares? Blizzard literally made a option in interface that censors it. I just feel like a lot of this stuff is just hypocritical on Blizzards end.
Edit: Obviously if I’m using hate speech then sure, I deserve a ban. Or if I’m posting anything that is actually “harmful.”
However it should be noted that there were also specific rules for RP servers. They also said they viewed RP servers as a place where the players set the barometer, and it is why different servers originally had different levels of reactivity from GMs and such. Because RP is not normal talk, that actually acknowledged it in their own posts originally lol.
If blizz is so upset about words like freak, they need to stop forcing players in their content to commit genocide lol. Cause thats objectively way worse and way more people see it. HAVE TO deal with it to play the game.
They might have fired them all though, so we might be stuck with the regular gms on rp realms which is why it may be so bad right now.
I’m pretty sure in voiced lines throughout the game, there’s far worse than freak anyways. Yep! The voice actors can say it, but not grown adults that pay to play lol
They tried having a live GM sit in chat in Elwynn on an RP server long ago. It was an experiment that ended badly. People acted worse to get a GM interaction, even if it ended in a suspension. Players also stopped reporting thinking the GM could catch everything so why bother.
That is the only time they tried real time intentional chat moderation - and it did not happen again.
Blizzard has a reactive enforcement policy - in that they react to reports, not go looking for infractions.
They don’t care WHY something was said. As in, there is no bias or opinion. Either someone said whatever, or they did not. Period.
They are not going to institute a set of rules on RP servers that are different than other servers. They are not going to sit around and try to figure out why someone said something or the context. Really not going to do that.
You are going to continue to see penalties because people have right click report now. They don’t have to go outside game and make a ticket with the name, server, chat channel, time, nature of infraction. They can right click and it captures all that info for GM review.
It does not matter if you are RPing a filthy mouthed pirate character or not - you can’t say things in public chat that break the rules.
I don’t think you realize just how diverse the Community team is. And yes, many are into RP as well.
It is not abuse to report language that violates the rules. It is a cut and dry fact - don’t say that stuff in public chats. You are free to RP in public chat - but you are not free to use profanity, etc and you can’t cause it to get spammy and drown out others.
Meanwhile other settings and MMOs realize roleplay isn’t the problem and look elsewhere lmao. RP servers have some of the worst and greatest personalities on the internet you’ll prolly ever find. I can understand how a player from just a normal PvP servers like Mannoroth doesn’t know the absurdity of Roleplay server history and how genuinely petty people get about fictional locations. But for people who have actually been there, we know LOL.
Company that legitimately made the players commit acts of genocide on another player race. That gives you the option of bashing in the heads of innocent human beings with a shovel LMAO. Company whose game has tents with human faces sewn into them. With child murder, with half breeds like Garona produced through S.A. “Greenskin” “Pig skin” Eugenics obsessed imperialist elves, flesh giants made from women and children wailing to be freed from their suffering…
In the 90’s when these things first started to pop up I used to argue against hate crime statutes for what I thought was obvious. That they were essentially allowing the state to prosecute unfalsifiable thought crimes and eventually it would get turned around on the people it was meant to protect.
But like now, that made me a horrible -ist of some sort.
I agree with most of what you are saying but if you are implying that people do not have implicit bias and it effects what they do in this world, I have to disagree.
Humans are not machines> One person could say X is offensive and on mod would agree while another mod might not. If you say the MODs are aligned 100% then you might have a culture problem because right now Blizzard seems to allow one political side freedom to say and do what they want while banning the opposition
Blizzard cares and has since 2004? They have said it since then and enforced it if reported since then. The filter is for parents, and those who don’t want to see it, but it does not allow people to use profanity.
This can be activated within your Interface Options: Main menu (ESC key by default) Click Interface > Social and check - Mature Language Filter.
Once enabled, all inappropriate words in our profanity database will be filtered and masked to appear as jumbled characters, such as ‘*##@&’.
Note: The filter does not excuse the language used. The filter serves as a temporary shield, to help parents of minors and others who do not wish to see it, to block it. Our policies prohibit the use of both clear and masked inappropriate language.
I strongly doubt the simple use of the word freak or frankenstein would have resulted in a multi week suspension. I obviously can’t see the logs though so can’t say if that was really what it was for.
Correct. Content that Blizzard creates is reviewed under the ESRB rules. That content is static coded content. Player generated content (chat and names) is under the EULA and Policies of the game company and is far more family friendly. The same policies apply across all Blizzard games, even ones with an M rating. You can’t swear in those either.
Yet another SINGLE example, that isn’t really that strong. They obviously shouldn’t have had the GM stand out in the open where everyone could see it. If you think about it, lets insert a real life example here. If you have a state trooper on the highway, doing a speed trap, people are obviously going to either try to get their attention or they are going to be extra behaved until they are out of view. Take that as you will.
Well… actually. If you think about it, if someone, regardless if its a gm or not, is put into a situation where they have to look at a report from one person and not from the other to hear their side of the story, and they only punish the person based on one set of selective evidence, that is quite literally bias. I don’t know what you consider bias to be, but there are free online dictionaries you can utilize to educate yourself.
Except that historically, RP realms have been very RP friendly, meaning that if you typed in a certain way or spammed the chat or didn’t have an RP friendly username for your character (I.E. Aurielle vs Retslayerxxd), Blizzard would actually flag your character for a rename if enough reports come in. What’s happening now, is it feels like RP realms are no longer RP friendly. It’s actually insane how a wow community member is saying that report abuse doesn’t exist when there is quite literally massive discords and communities in game that players can go to to get someone banned. Don’t believe me? Look into it, or don’t. I couldn’t care less. Further, as Valeclaw has mentioned prior, Blizzard has historically (until apparently now) that RPers set the parameters, and not exactly them or other people. RP servers are for RPers, not other players. That being said, you saying this:
