reputation is important in classic, but what about slander?
what if you roll need on a legit upgrade and someone is just mad about it because they wanted it so they start to make claims you are a ninja or something?
can’t remember if this was much of a problem in vanilla, its been a while
It rarely came up in Vanilla.
Generally speaking, people did not believe unverified claims of ninjaing. You need screenshots to demonstrate that these were the loot rules and this is them being violated.
Also that type of player doesn’t change. Eventually they’ll do something similar again, somewhere else, and you can be redeemed.
Always take screenshots.
And when someone claims someone else is a ninja, always ask to see screenshots, and if they can’t produce them, say politely that you can’t act on their information then.
Honestly, in my experience, they’re doing unusually well if they deny it, rather than bragging that yes, they did get the item and that proves they’re smarter than you and why is everyone walking away from them?
Not much you can do about that. Just conduct yourself with integrity and eventually everyone will figure out the other person is a git.
I feel like a lot of players will just take the claims at face value without much thought. idk
It rarely happened, and when it did the “aggreived” party would quickly be found out the moment the looted item and winning persons class were bought into the conversation.
There wasn’t people walking around saying “Dave ninja’d loot, kick him / ignore him now !”…it was more “Dave ninja’d a shield while on his hunter”. People communicated in Original, don’t look at Refail as an example of what Classic’s community will be like.
Hai Aryxy!
That DID happen to us though remember? It wasn’t Vanilla, but i think LK? I vaguely remember that a couple officers in the guild were in a pug raid for Wintergrasp’s instance and the loot rules weren’t explained to everyone properly and one guy got mad at the end, edited his screenshots, submitted them to a loot/guild drama website who just declared our entire guild were ninjas and then every terribad PvP-centric guild who hated us on ER used it as an opportunity to come after us on the forums and call us thieves and cheaters.
Always take screenshots. Always get your guild to use the right click report feature to get the accuser silenced for slander/language.
screenshots might help. doesnt hurt to take them. but they could be faked. also what if they dont slander you until like an hour later so you didnt take any at the time?
if you RCR them do you think blizzard would try to figure out the legitimacy of the claim? idk if they would have the man power for it
Nope, they get auto squelched. It is going to be a powerful tactic in classic considering how much more a silence substantially affects a player than in retail. 
Pics or it didn’t happen.
The beauty of individual servers is that jerks will sink to the bottom of the pile and be ignored over time. Just behave well and treat others fairly and it will work out long term. Was my experience in original game anyway.
Even if you prove a ninja with screenshots or some form of evidence, you’ll likely only reach a small percentage of the server population. And even then, many won’t immediately blacklist the ninja.
However, humans are designed to be particularly aware of patterns. If a ninja continues to ninja, and his name appears again and again in a negative light, then the server as a whole will start to pay attention. A truly bad character will eventually earn a spot on most of the server’s blacklists given enough incidents.
Remember it won’t really matter. No one will know each other on servers 4+ times as big as vanilla servers were. Also ninjas arent that big of an issue in reality
I dont remember it being much of a problem back in the day, but I dont like to bias myself with my own 15 year old experiences/memories. the community is likely to be much different this time around as well
but it will probably be fine, hopefully
I’ll just say, Slander would be a good rogue name.
if you’re a fair player, you’ll develop friendships with people who have much more experience with your etiquette in groups than the one person who blows up at you and wants your blood.
these people will defend your character.
Slander/false claims didn’t really happen, because if you played much, you lost items on rolls every single day. If you get mad at people just because they won an item you wanted, you would be slandering people left, right and centre, and it wouldn’t be in the least bit effective.
Reputations mattered in classic and that went for false accusations as well as ninja looting. If you went about lying about someone behind their back, and you got caught out, you would be the one with the ruined reputation needing to start again on a different server.
And to what end? You still wouldn’t get the item you wanted, and chances are there were witnesses anyway.