Account Restrictions for Toxic Players?

[Spiffums]

And why should it always be down to those on the receiving end to deal with the problem.

Because they are the ones who are "offended" and they can take action so they don't have to experience whatever hurt their widdle feelings.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

ahh so any comments/actions that offend others but your ok with are "imaginary" hmm not very realistic or accurate.

no persons "imagines" something that offends them, its highly subjective what offends you may not offend others, imagination has nothing to do with it.

Wrong. Its imagined.

Either way, what we are discussing here would fall inbetween the boundaries of "not speaking at all" and just before something becomes "harassment" ... Blizzard already has anti-harassment rules. If you are actually being harassed, make a ticket. Someone telling you that your spec is bad isn't really an issue.

The issue is simple.. what if YOUR POST offended me just now? HOW DARE YOU OFFEND ME!?!?!

[Igi]

Right hand corner of screen: Click Settings.

Once you are in your settings scroll down the menu on the left side until you get to "Edit Ignore List". Click that.

Oh, thanks!

[Deleted]

I hope they don't touch toxic players... I spend too much time with my account to get banned because some casual got what he deserved.

[yeto]

would be glad if mmo champion soon put restrictions on your clickbaiter account, in wow you just need to report and ignore quite easy.

[tripleh]

If they did this, it would only allow further things into the game that don't belong. Like SJW's .

[Echocho]

Was overwatch not banning/muting people for verbal abuse? Or was it another launch week blizzard pr act?

No idea. The text chat is just filled with toxic pricks on the PC.

[Tharkkun]

Freedom of speech, dude. They have the right to say what they'd like just as much as you have the right to /ignore. No need to ban them when you can just ignore or disregard them completely.

Freedom of speech only applies if the government is limiting your speech through laws. That's all it means. Everyone else including corporations can limit whatever they want.

[xuros]

Just do like they did in EQ2 and create a server for assholes and rule breakers. People who openly troll too much in general chat or makes someone elses game time a living hell gets their ACCOUNT banished to that server and they can never get off. Nor can they create new toons on the other servers after. So in the end if you love being a prick all the time dont cry when you get stuck on a server filled with assholes and cheats!

[Rudkobing]

Sounds like a plan.

[Mytheros]

Shouldn't you be supporting freedom of speech? Chat should never lead to consequences, you have the ignore feature for a reason.

But there is no constitutional right to free speech on a private forum

Freedom of Speech applies to governments....the government can't squelch your right to free speech....a game you actively create an account, agree to ToS and (at least in the beginning) pay money to play would definitely meet the requirement as "private".

[Vineri]

As I said before there is abuse by action and abuse by words. Abuse by action (or inaction) is far more devastating for the game and goes unpunished. Someone gets in a BG and plays bad deliberately. Another guy enters a raid and deliberately pulls trash and wipes raid. They may or may not get kicked from the respective raids or reported afk etc but nothing will ever stop them. Instead if some legit player who is legitimatelly frustrated by their actions calls them a bad name they will be banned if reported.

This is a PC approach by blizzard who loves to pretend that the game has a PEGI of 12 and thus we cant show boobs we cant have bad language we cant have "strong themes" (seriously blizzard?) and so we waive the ban hammer over the heads of players that are up to the neck from the shit blizzard allows while bots and pricks are free to run the game as they like.

Straightforward approach: Leave the language offenses alone let players regulate that. You give players ignore and you give players mature lang filter. So why the bans afterwards? And to those who can't handle the bad language: Maybe its time to start playing better so noone will have anything bad to say about u. Think about it.

Bans in this case are not likely to happen, since half of the paying subscribers fall into the miscreant behavior category, at some time during their sessions. Blizzard doesn't ban active subscribers, unless their account was hacked - even then temporarily until it is back under control - subscriber pays for that lapse too, if I'm not mistaken.

[skannerz22]

blizzard fired 600 employees most of which were game masters

it cost too much to have that many game masters banning people

banning people costs them more money than fixing content to keep people subscribed

[Deleted]

No, keep any League punishment system out of WoW. Ever since Riot tried to punish people harder the game just got more and more toxic, irronically.
The amount of times I've encountered someone toxic in WoW are so rare and few inbetween that the ignore feature has been more than enough, and unlike League, if i'm grouped with someone I don't want to play with I can just leave without getting punished.

[Sierra85]

this is a form of censorship that blizzard itself should not be doing to its playerbase. Imagine if your government didn't like the "toxic" things that you were saying so they decided to restrict your bank account or access to public transport.

It's simple, if you don't want to hear from people you perceive to be toxic, don't group with them and put them on /ignore.

[Deleted]

Freedom of speech, dude. They have the right to say what they'd like.

No they don't. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding with regards to what "Freedom of speech" actually means.

Freedom of speech is a legal perogative which protects people from facing criminal charges or being persecuted by public authorities. It does not apply to the actions of or enforcement of rules by private moderators or private owners of privately owned spaces.

Freedom of speech simply permits a person to vocalise their own personal opinion or belief in public without being arrested or charged by criminal authorities under any criminal laws - and nothing more than that.

However, freedom of speech allows private citizens to prosecute other private citizens for vocalising their opinions, through civil procedings; freedom of speech also allows any private citizen who owns a public space, or an online public space, to block and censor any material that they dislike - that is their right as owners of those spaces.

Furthermore, Freedom of speech is not freedom to engage in bullying, harassment, intimidation or threatening behaviour. Nor is it freedom to engage in 'hate speech', discrimination, or incitement to hatred.

TLDR - "freedom of speech" is an irrelevant concept on the internet.

[Barnabas]

Would you be in favor of Blizzard implementing a system that would put some sort of restrictions on accounts that are found to be posting toxic shit either on their official forums or in the game itself?

What I mean by this is not straight up bans from playing the game, but if a person is caught spamming trade, trolling trade, spamming negativity about the game all over the official forums, maybe have posting rights taken on the forums, or if it is in game toxicity then maybe remove access to the AH for a couple days, or restrict the account from entering raid instances for a week, or something similar?

The point is, if players know they can and would have account restrictions as punishment for acting toxic in game and on the official forums, it would reduce the amount of toxicity seen in the game, in the queue system, etc. Obviously the current ban system that blizzard has would continue to be the same (for like botting and racist and other stuff ban worthy), but for just being plain negative and toxic, would account restrictions help curb that?

I'm genuinely curious as to how you guys think on the matter.

they already action toxic players. what is the goal of this thread?

[Deleted]

And why should it always be down to those on the receiving end to deal with the problem.

All idiots already have their own definitions of what's toxic and what's not. Just because some moron finds a post toxic -- or "offensive" -- doesn't mean it is, as long as it doesn't violate any relevant laws (By "relevant" I mean those that are in effect in the US, Blizzard's home country) or terms defined by the company itself. So, a personal ignore feature is simpler than having Blizz chase down every imaginary offender.

According to some people (generally the same morons who find everything they don't like offensive), there is no universal moral code either, so how do you define what's bannable behavior?

[Deleted]

Toxic players have always lurked within almost every game since the dawn of time. They've just grown more toxic as the filters we used to have now have been removed. Cursing is acceptable, it's normal and you're weird if you don't say the f-word five times a day and spin a circle while praying to Satan or any other demon. Being polite and talking about things just don't work anymore as you'll be fighting fire with a handkerchief. People are not just toxic online anymore, they're toxic out in the real world and if you expect that to change, then you're fooling yourself.

Calling someone a noob isn't the worst you can do anymore. That's just how it is.

[ComputerNerd]

Toxic players have always lurked within almost every game since the dawn of time. They've just grown more toxic as the filters we used to have now have been removed. Cursing is acceptable, it's normal and you're weird if you don't say the f-word five times a day and spin a circle while praying to Satan or any other demon. Being polite and talking about things just don't work anymore as you'll be fighting fire with a handkerchief. People are not just toxic online anymore, they're toxic out in the real world and if you expect that to change, then you're fooling yourself.

Calling someone a noob isn't the worst you can do anymore. That's just how it is.

A good part of it is hiding behind an online persona, effectively safe from any consequences.
The player community used to create consequences through inconvenience.
Now they can't be bothered, for fear of causing "drama" - which in reality means they don't give a damn about others unless it also inconveniences themselves.
It is a definite shift of player behaviour in-game, from being part of a community to thinking about themselves.