I was in a group to do a dungeon and we had one of those people that just talks and talks. He kept asking the tank questions and the tank never said a word. Then I get a whisper from the talky person saying we ought to kick this tank because he doesn’t say anything. I don’t reply, because I’m busy dps’ing for one thing and I thought the idea was stupid as we were doing fine in the dungeon. Next thing I know there is a vote to kick him out and boom he’s gone. I felt bad about it, so I whispered to the kicked player that I was sorry and to tell them I did not vote to kick. We get another tank and continue on. We get to the last boss and I notice as we are fighting that I got another whisper back from that player. It basically said, this is (so and so’s mom) and I’m just wondering what happened as he is upset and almost in tears and telling her he can’t play for another 30 minutes. So I explain that someone in the group voted to kick him, because he didn’t talk or answer their questions. She tells me that he is not allowed to talk to anyone while playing the game, it’s her and her husbands rule as they had problems with someone saying inappropriate things to him in the past. She told me he was 14 and they allow him to play for one hour a night, 2 hours on the weekend days. I apologized to her and said I was sorry but the game can have some toxic players sometimes, but we are not all that way.
In the end, I told her I would make another group with me leading and run him through a dungeon if he wanted in a little bit and he won’t be kicked out. So we waited and then I logged onto my main and took him though a dungeon run. He was a decent tank, just not allowed to talk because of his parents. I can sort of understand wanting to protect your kids. There are a lot of bad apples in our society today and some of them play games.
I’m 49, will be 50 in January and been playing this for around 20 years. I been gaming since the days of Intellivision and original Atari. I’ve played about everything that’s ever been popular on PC, console, etc. and there are always a few toxic players in every game I’ve played. I’m not advocating for or against the vote to kick system as I think it has its place , but yes, it can be abused. I don’t think there is any good solution to it, to be honest. The dungeon we were in, did not require any coordination or talking either, so it was just one person basically upset his questions were not answered and he decided to use the games kick system to exact his punishment.
I’ve racked my brain trying to think of a way Blizz could make the kick system fair to people like that kid, but also still be available for when people really need it. There just is no real solution. If they removed the kick time out penalty, then toxic players just reque and ruin someone elses run. If they keep it in, then sometimes a player gets kicked who doesn’t deserve it. Sort of taking the good with the bad approach.
In the end, it is what it is and maybe the real problem are the people that vote YES to kick, when they know they should not. Sometimes I wonder why people just go along with the toxic mentality of one person in the group, instead of making up their own minds and doing the right thing. Then again, maybe this world really is getting worse, and people just care less and less about their fellow man. I pray it’s not that, I really do.
