Was killing a booster earlier today with warmode on, he logged onto a horde character and told me to get lost or he was going to have his people mass report me. Is this considered griefing and what is blizzard doing about these people abusing the report system?
You could certainly report him for communication of that nature - especially by swapping factions to facilitate it.
Mass reports are highly overestimated. The most something like that would do is possibly squelch an account until it can be reviewed.
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To add, upon (succesful) appeal if an action is taken against your account if organised mass reporting is detected, abusive reporting will be penalised as it wastes GM time too.
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Please do not respond to them.
Report and ignore…
Do note when you report … Sometimes the system will put them on temp ignore, just.
/ignore %T
Or
/ignore " player name - realm "
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Report him and place them on ignore.
Then when they log back over kill their character a few more times… for good measure.
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As Orlyia said - mass reporting is nowhere near as prevalent as folks want to believe it is. I have seen people who have been reported for trying to solicit folks to report someone else who supposedly had that come back to bite them on the butt, but the big thing to remember?
It doesn’t matter how many reports you get - if you’re not breaking the rules, nothing will happen to you. The worst that can happen is a temporary squelch (a temporary silence, if you would), but that would only be in place until a GM looks over the data and either removes it or bump it into a proper sanction. But that aside, you could have half your realm reporting you and not a thing will happen to you so long as you’re abiding by the rules.
Now, if you are breaking the rules? It only takes a single report to bring it to the attention of a GM. More reports may get a faster result, but whether one single person reporting you or fifty - those reports will be looked into and appropriate sanctions levied.
If that booster is flagged and killable, you’re absolutely allowed to go murder hobo on them. PvP solution for a PvP problem.
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The Game Master staff will not intervene in Player versus Player (PvP) disputes.
In Warmode or while flagged PvP it is not against the rules to kill another character over and over again. PvP problem has a PvP solution. They can get others to help fight back. They can disable Warmode or turn off PvP. They can log into another character.
That is considered abuse of the reporting system and could result in silence/suspension/ban for that abuse.
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I had an encounter with another player 2 months ago. He had a problem with me playing a Vulpera.
I never even said a word to that player and the next thing I know I had a 24 hour suspension because he filed a report with false accusations.
Blizzard doesn’t rely on a report alone. They would have looked at the logs and determined if any wrongdoing had happened.
If you really said nothing, then I hope you appealed the suspension so that you could have the mark removed from your account too.
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What account would that be on - because it doesn’t seem to be on the one you are posting under.
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I feel like we might be missing a few details here.
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So does it take just one report to get a player silenced and/or banned? Does the person who reported ever hear what happened to the player they reported?
Sort of.
Sometimes people receive mail indicating a recent report had been actioned, though no other information is provided.
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Yes, but what I was saying was that the GMs are not just looking at the report and assuming it was 100% true and accurate. They look at the logs to see what happened.
Not usually no. In some cases, like reporting bots, the reporter may receive a message that their report led to actions taken, but they’ll never be given specifics.
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It takes one report, but only if an infraction only actually happened when investigated. No, you will not be told what happened to another player as that is between Blizzard and that player.
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Yes, if the GM responding to the report decides there is an infraction in the reported communication or activity.
Not very specifically. The reporting player may receive a generic “thank you for your report, we took action” in-game email but it doesn’t identify who the action was applied to or what the action was. This is mostly applicable if the report results in action against a fake player, like a bot operator. I don’t think they do this if they act against a legitimate player who broke a rule while actually playing the game.
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Yes, one report is enough for a silence or suspension, or even a permanent ban…BUT this only happens after Blizzard investigates the report. No report automatically silences or suspends/bans a player.
Now, there is the squelch system. This can be activated once a certain threshold of reports is reached (the threshold is much higher than 1), and cuts the account off from social channels (chat, LFG, etc) while allowing them to continue playing the game. When Blizzard investigates the squelch, they will remove the squelch or apply a silence or suspension.
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Cool cool, thanks for all of the responses. Really appreciate it.
That reminds me, I did report someone who was typing wacky things in General chat like fishy links and “Scan +/-” followed by a string of letters and numbers. While I did not hear back about the report, I know multiple people were reporting the person. Hopefully no one used those links.
Of course:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/10elkl2/challenged_the_monopoly_and_they_got_revenge_in_me/
Hmmm…
I created a simple macro that allowed me to craft the Elemental Lariat for a small tip, making it accessible to everyone. But my efforts were met with resistance, and I was banned from the chat. I received an in-game warning for bad communication,
- As long as he used the in-game macro maker that is fine, but out of game automation is not ok.
- Spamming is not allowed, even if the actual content of the message is not against the rules.
- The warning he got stated he had been reported for the macro (I assume?). No, CS can’t see those reports and the warning system is totally automated. That is explained here. CS can’t see it until it actually hits the point that it lands in their ticket queue. A warning is just a warning. It means “hey people are reporting you so you might want to stop before it escalates.”
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/301103
and a few hours later I was banned from the chat completely. I want to make it clear that I was not involved in any bad language and never said a bad word to those who bullied me or sent hate mail.
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One of two things happened here. The person got auto squelched which is an anti spam feature designed many many years ago for gold sellers/advertisers. It has been around for at least 10 years. That is automated pending GM review of the reports. It is done to stop the spammer until the GM can get to it. It takes many unique reports to do that, not 2 or 3 grumpy fellow crafters. Each report only counts once per account. They can’t rotate chars to add extra reports.
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An actual GM reviewed the reports and issued a penalty based on what they found. That would most likely be for Spam if they were advertising a ton and the server community found it excessive. They would have gotten an email to their Bnet account address telling them what the Silence or Suspension was for. Sounds like it was just a chat Silence, not a Suspension.
I don’t know which one applies to the reddit poster, but if it was the second then the GM did issue it intentionally based on reports and past account history.
An example of the anti-spam systems working as advertised, is not a “gotcha”.
Edit to add their edit:
Edit: thanks for all the positive feedback in the comments. Seems like I can (after some hours) write in chat again, but I don’t have anything from blizz yet. Here are some screenshots of some customers (in german):
So it was a squelch and was lifted on review from the sound of it. I mean, those have been in game forever 
An actual account action would have resulted in an email notifying them. The first Silence starts at a week now and further penalties are week + Suspensions. Those actual penalties are done by GMs.
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