Toxic, Obsessive, and Controlling Player needs to be removed

I’m posting this to as many places I can think of because this needs to be taken seriously. This is absolutely unacceptable and I am not going to sit idly by while my guildmate and friend is being harassed by this obsessive lunatic. We are on Anathema. This guy was our old GM and he stalked one of the girls in our guild. People found out, left the guild, and then he claimed that people were harassing him. He blacklisted all of our friends and went mad. I left after that. He transferred off server and now he has an alternate account (Removed) and he’s using that to track our old guildmates and hunt them down with his pack of equally mentally unstable family/friends. He moved horde-side with his main account; he now has an undead mage named {Removed} and I’m sure {Removed} is also in his roster somewhere. We removed ourselves from a toxic situation and we don’t want to go back. Myself and others have screenshots of him harassing us and confirming that he plans on griefing us until we quit the game. I know all you guys care about is money, so what will it be: 2 accounts belonging to 1 toxic person or 10+ accounts to people that enjoy hanging out and experiencing classic?

I do not want to receive some response of “use the report feature” or “we will look into this”. This degenerate needs to be removed from the game. My friend does not need to worry about being cyber-stalked or have to endure being /spit on by this fanatical toxic person. I will gladly provide any and all resources I have at my disposal. I have no problem dropping my subscription if you want to sit idly by and continue to let this happen. Do the right thing, please.

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Good way to run afoul of the spam filters.

Put the guy on ignore, and if he bypasses the ignore, submit a continuing harassment ticket.

BTW, we don’t call out people on the forums.

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I’m sorry, Beesechurger, but please do not post this in multiple forums. It will be removed and you may be penalized for spamming.

I am sorry to hear that your friend is experiencing this but your friend, and only your friend, needs to report the player for ongoing harassment.

They should be placing the person on ignore and reporting any incident where that person is seemingly circumventing that system.

While as a business, of course making money to fund our endeavors and pay our employees and overhead is important, much like getting a paycheck for whatever work you may do would be, but your comments are a bit trite and simplistic, don’t you think?

The goal, always, is to do what we can to make sure this a fun and safe environment for all players. The fact of the matter is, we will do what we can in accordance to our policies, not based on whatever threats or disparaging comments you believe effective. The person experiencing this issue needs to report it appropriately. They need to take steps to ignore the player, to not engage in any discussion with them and to report these occurrences when they happen.

I go into it to some degree here: Spotlight on: Harassment

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Look botom line is your friend needs and i mean NEEDS to put him on ignore not communicate with him 100% and if the acuser keeps account hoping then your friend can open a ongoing harrassment ticket you all need to put him on ignore that way you will never hear from them again and yes you need to report everything and DONT COMMMUNICATE with HIM AT ALL other wise it just looks like your encouraging him.

For your sake remove his name from your post this is only gona hurt ur case more then his.

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Look, I’m extremely agitated that she has to deal with this crap, so I’m coming off like a complete jerk, I know. When I said I’d post this all over, I didn’t mean all over WoW forums; I’m not trying to spam the forums at all; I want his actions and behavior brought to the foreground so that someone will do something about this. /ignoring him won’t do anything. /ignore is not going to stop him from tracking her character, hunting her down with his goons, and griefing her until she logs out. She has been so distraught these past couple days and now she refuses to play. Yes, she has him on ignore, but it’s not going to remove him from the game. She has already put in a ticket, but Blizzard’s response was to notify them if he circumvents the /ignore. No one is doing anything and it’s not ok. I have screenshots. I have evidence. No one seems to care and that is why I’m so upset about this. Why will no one take any action? It’s just… frustrating.

You misunderstand, Frostgnaw. No, that is not likely to stop a persistent harasser, but it is the first step in establishing a pattern of behavior that allows our staff to take action.

Simply contacting someone in-game, by itself, doesn’t tend to violate our policies. This is a social game and it is expected that you’ll engage in all kinds of communication with others. Where it crosses the line is when a person has established that they do not wish to deal with you, and you persist. The act of placing the person on ignore is one of the main ways we can confirm that fact.

I understand this is frustrating, but I am trying to provide you with the knowledge that your friend will need so that we can properly deal with the situation.

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So then where do we go from here? What must be done to ensure that he can not bother her anymore? Just from the conversation I had with him last night, telling him to leave us all alone, he is delusional and hellbent on making her and all our old guild mates have a terrible time trying to play the game.

I appreciate any insight you can give, Vrakthris.

I’m breaking this up into two posts:

No, it won’t. And frankly, that isn’t going to be the goal here. The goal is to make the behavior stop. They have just as much right to play as you or your friend does. What they don’t have the right to do is harass and if they are found to be doing that, we will take actions according to our policies. That often starts with minor silence or suspension penalties and escalates from there to a possible full account closure. It depends on the situation.

Yes, that is part of the Ongoing harassment process. We must establish a pattern of behavior. So, if they circumvent the /ignore, it needs to be reported so we can look into the situation and take further action.

I’m sorry, Frostgnaw, but screenshots and whatever your “evidence” is, is not a factor. We must be able to verify the behavior within our systems (i.e. Chat log, etc…), and the report must come from your friend, not you. We will not take action based on a third party report, nor will any action take place based on screenshots or other third party evidence.

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You can’t ensure that another person won’t ever have contact, not without disabling all means of communication. What you can do is make sure your friend takes proper steps to discourage contact and be sure your friend reports the behavior if that is circumvented.

Place them on ignore, do not engage in any discussion with them and report any contact if they circumvent that so that our staff can look into it.

I would also avoid contacting this person yourself, Frostgnaw, place them on ignore and report any circumvention if they contact you. That goes for anyone who is attempting to avoid contact, such as your old guild mates.

If this person does not learn that the contact is unwelcome, the penalties for continuing to do so get fairly severe very quickly.

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In regards to camping/griefing, whatever you want to call it (using an alternate account, on the other faction, to track down and repeatedly kill a single target), what is your stance on that?

I had a similar issue in phase 3 where a single orc warrior tracked me across the world, no doubt using an alt account to find my location, and repeatedly killed me. That went on for two weeks and my ticket response ended up simplifying to “it’s a pvp server, pvp happens. this is not harassment”.

Will that be the same response she receives if she is continually hunted down?

Camping in and of itself isn’t a violation of policy. If you are on a PvP realm, you are subject to it’s rules, meaning anyone can kill you in a contested area at any time. A single time or dozens. That is the risk of being on a PvP realm or otherwise enabling PvP.

There really isn’t a way to prove that someone is using an alternate account to verify location and frankly, it isn’t really much of a factor.

It depends on what you mean by “Hunted down”. If you mean someone kills her character on a PvP realm, then yes, that is likely going to be the answer. If that is something she wishes to prevent a PvP realm may not be the best place.

If you mean stalk or otherwise grief them, outside of a PvP situation, that might be something we can get involved with, assuming we can verify the behavior.

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Ultimately, you have no skin in the game. It’s an issue that needs to be handled by your friend, not by you.

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I’ve relayed that she needs to follow up on this herself, but as far as “verifying the behavior” goes, what exactly would that entail?

For chat contact, we can look at our chat logs to verify it. If they are on ignore it shouldn’t be an issue for the account that is being ignored but if they circumvent that, we’ll do what we can to verify they are the same person or otherwise associated with them.

If it is physical harassment, using their in-game character to specifically harass her character, that may require us to witness the behavior. Which means reporting it as soon as possible using the ongoing harassment category. That is a priority category and our staff will get to it as quickly as they can.

If it is PvP, our staff will likely not be able to get involved, but I won’t discount special circumstances. The most important thing to do is to establish a pattern of behavior so she should submit a report whenever she is contacted in-game.

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Well, thank you for your help Vrakthris. I apologize for being so… unwieldy. I guess now everything is up to her at this point. I’ll inform everyone involved with “him” on how to deal with the situation and see if we can move on from this nightmare. Best of luck.

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No need to apologize, Frostgnaw, I totally understand the desire to help protect and defend friends. I can’t fault you there. I just didn’t want your passion to get in the way of the advice that I had on how best to handle these kinds of situations. :slight_smile:

Good luck!

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I come with grave news… The crazy vengeance guy is threatening blackmail against another one of our old guildmates. She has cancelled her subscription and is detaching herself from everything online, from what she has told us. She’s scared of what he will do, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. He contacted her over discord, from what I’ve been told and was threatening to send stuff to her husband. Should I even open an ongoing harassment ticket at this point? She won’t do it because she wants nothing to do with any of this anymore. To be clear, this is a different person from my last update; she has remained neutral throughout all of this, but he apparently doesn’t care.

He’s sending his guild memebers, from a guild known as (great name, right?) and they are hunting down fellow guild members. My last ticket, which I sent in when making this original post, said that the ban hammer was swung where needed, but nothing seems to have changed. He is still on his tracking account and talking smack in LookingForGroup chat from what I’ve heard.

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Since it’s extended beyond the scope of the game and the offender is threatening her husband, I’d recommend that she go to the police.

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Absolutely. This is police territory.

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Yes, this is where people start talking to law enforcement. Especially if he’s threatening blackmail and has access to someone’s discord.
Harassment charges may be warranted. This person could be one serious troll or could have a mental health problem that could balloon into someone being attacked. Regardless if your guild hides from him or not.

Local law enforcement should have an idea as to where you can start.

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