The Silence Penalty

[Deleted]

This is a good thing. Finally Blizzard does something to one of the most toxic online communities. What the hell happened to helping eachother? Nowadays you get shit talk for just about anything.

[goblingirl]

Granted as regards Blizzard's motives (they're a business after all), but do note that, as per the blue post, this mechanism will apply to both abusive behavior and spam (which, I think, is the real "issue" here).

Now, I know that spam can be really annoying in dedicated public chats (i.e. trade), but it is nowhere near as revolting to your average player as the above mentioned abuse, a trait that, in my opinion, justifies personal silencing decisions for spam rather than imposed ones (and this not even considering the fact that what we deem as spam can also encompass harmless fun discussions that engage players and strengthen the realm's community feel - maybe your realm is just unfriendlier?).

As regards abusive behavior (which is a more serious matter, but which I deem to represent the breach of a limit quite further than simply not being "normally respectful"), I can testify that each time I've reported people for this in the past Blizzard has always responded, even when I wasn't the target of the abuse. So there is already a working system in place, as such behavior has been taken seriously by Blizzard since times immemorial and abusers have short gaming life expectancies in WoW. What the planned system does is extend the sanction formerly applied for abusive behavior to other behaviors with a much lower degree of social threat. It's like being liable for arrest for jaywalking when a simple fine or warning would do the job.

Note that the penalties have changed, however. In the past, Blizzard's main punishment for repeated behavioral infractions has been account suspension or closure. As in, you can't play for X number of hours/days.

Now, they are going to let you play... but you will be severely hampered in what you can do. You CAN, however, continue to raid with your guild, since that's a private group. Note that the list of "stuff you can't do" still allows you to get in vent and raid with your buds.

So if you are a guild leader with a hothead or three in your guild, at least they won't be missing raids because they cheesed off in trade chat again. And Blizzard keeps the hothead's sub active, but prevents the hothead from mouthing off to strangers. Win/win for Blizzard.

[Ridcully]

If anyone thinks it will dramatically improve chat, he is delusional. People will learn to mask their spam/abuse. "Can anyone link Vanilla legendaries" instead of "did anyone say [Thunderfurry]", things like that, it is not hard. What are they gonna do about it?
If anyone thinks Blizzard will be throwing silences left and right, he is delusional. Silencing any significant portion of playerbase and risking them cancelling their accounts will not happen. I will automatically cancel if for some reason my silence reaches 8 or 16 days.
If anyone thinks they will actually investigate and not use mostly automated system, he is flamboyant fanboy. There are too many players and too many reports. Some top 0.1% of reported players might get manual investigation, rest will probably get some automated hidden counter.

[quras]

Simpler but less effective long term.

Really?

If /ignore was account wide and the list longer. The gamer that has a problem with chat can immediately silence the offender and his whole account. Never again to be bothered by them and done on their own volition each and every time they dislike something.

The offender, if constantly being ignored will soon find out they ahve been regulated by the very gamers they play with.

But no. Instead of making /ignore account wide, blizzard goes through the trouble of creating an entire new system that works account wide but adds their moderation into the mix. A moderation that will not happen immediately and any offended gamer will still have to listen and put up with their "chat problem" for who knows how long even if it is ultimately deemed not offensive in the end worth silencing. So they are left with the /ignore anyway.

An adjustment to the /ignore system thats already in place would have made a whole hell of a lot more sense. You don't like what someone is doing? Ignore them immediately if you have a problem, seems a better deal overall than creating a secondary system.

[Birgwow]

This will most likely come at the cost of jokes, banter, and discussions on topics deemed controversial. Many countries and social media platforms already have a climate of censorship and banning anyone who has the "wrong" opinion - do we really want to bring that to WoW?

[Shakou]

Ya this might sound really great on paper but the bottom line is these sort of policies only hurt gaming communities like this where truthfully everyone (or almost everyone)has a tendency to be horrible to other people. Chat is the least of your concerns when it comes this and frankly people need to learn to grow up and use the ignore feature, and reporting things of this nature should only be used or result in a ban or penalty in the case of extreme, targetted and ongoing harassment against a specific player. Unfortunately it's been Blizz's policy for two expansions now to give people temporary suspensions from the game for minor chat violations and those same players are now going to be faced with this nonsense.

You see the thing is that people can and do things to ruin other people's game experience all the time and they can do it continuously without being banned because the action either doesn't fall under any category you can report for, or there's simply not sufficient evidence to prove the player was going out of their way to ruin your day. But honestly players do things that by all means falls under the category of same faction griefing and they don't get banned at all.

Reality of this situation is that rather than just weeding out real problem players, they are just going to unfairly punish players who are otherwise good decent people who just get rightfully pissed and tell real trouble makers to fuck off or something. Not to mention players who will report people just joking around with others in chat or something. Bottom line is that YES this system is absolutely ripe for abuse, of course players will use it primarily just to try and punish players they don't like or just to be cruel when they do similar or worse things all the time.

[MoanaLisa]

Reality of this situation is that rather than just weeding out real problem players, they are just going to unfairly punish players who are otherwise good decent people who just get rightfully pissed and tell real trouble makers to fuck off or something

Good decent people I know in real life rarely tell someone to fuck off over a trivial thing.

[Sansnom]

Rise of the police state in WoW and other games. Moderation of everything just to keep the "hyper sensitive" SJW bunch happy. Mediocrity rewarded and protected while bots run abundant. What more to ask. Anything for the subs blizzard.

Police state? Hardly? If you want to describe it as a police state, then can I call the current state lawless? Because it really is. People virtually have no accountability.

And for someone complaining about other being hyper sensitive, you seems to very sensitive over this coming change. Why is that, I wonder.

Regardless, the whole wow chat system can be bypassed but is this what we really want? A window noone uses because police state? And again I will ask and as many times as I have to:

What is Blizzard doing to protect players from toxicity by action? How many times is a player allowed to screw someone's raid/dungeon/BG deliberately before they can be punished?

Can you still not remove someone from the group? Is the vote kick being removed? If not, then what is stopping from removing players that are purposefully wiping the group? There is a different between removing a player because they ARE causing the group to fail, and players removing others because they THINK they are detrimental to the group progress.

And a final question: How many raid tiers did this idea cost us?

Hopefully most of them. Raid is one of the biggest source of problem in the game. The sooner Blizzard realigns its role and importance, the better, in my opinion.

[Shakou]

Good decent people I know in real life rarely tell someone to fuck off over a trivial thing.

Ya, no offense but you have no idea what you're talking about. First off, what is trivial to you is purely, 100% a matter of your personal views, second you might consider you and your buddies to be "good decent people" but that does not mean most other people do and I guarantee you that most people on this planet do not share your views of morality and using profanity.

On the contrary it's very easy to argue that you are not in fact a "good decent person" but a very petty and spiteful one if you report a player for telling you to fuck off instead of moving on and forgetting about such a trivial thing. Hardly something a player should be punished for more than actually ruining someone's game experience.

[MoanaLisa]

Ya, no offense but you have no idea what you're talking about. First off, what is trivial to you is purely, 100% a matter of your personal views, second you might consider you and your buddies to be "good decent people" but that does not mean most other people do and I guarantee you that most people on this planet do not share your views of morality and using profanity.

On the contrary it's very easy to argue that you are not in fact a "good decent person" if you report a player for telling you to fuck off instead of moving on and forgetting about such a trivial thing. Hardly something a player should be punished for more than actually ruining someone's game experience.

You have no idea what my ideas on morality or profanity actually are. It was an observation. At the job, in any sort of store, practically anywhere I can think of, people are not yelling 'fuck off' at one another. That suggests that it's at least possible for that to happen in an online game. All people need to do is restrain themselves a bit. By all means, if you think that's a trivial thing (which also breaks the rules you agreed to in the TOS) feel free. Consequences will be on you. Their house, their rules.

[goblingirl]

You have no idea what my ideas on morality or profanity actually are. It was an observation. At the job, in any sort of store, practically anywhere I can think of, people are not yelling 'fuck off' at one another. That suggests that it's at least possible for that to happen in an online game. All people need to do is restrain themselves a bit. By all means, if you think that's a trivial thing (which also breaks the rules you agreed to in the TOS) feel free. Consequences will be on you. Their house, their rules.

There's an entire group of people right now who think they should be able to say anything they want, anywhere, anytime, to anyone.

As you note, they typically aren't doing it at home, work, or locally in public places, because their peers, friends, family, and employers would come down on them with appropriate repercussions.

So they do it online. Social networks where your real identity is hidden. Chat forums. Games that have built-in chat. Anyplace where people they actually know aren't going to see what they're saying. And then when confronted over the inappropriate behavior, they claim to be living in a "police state" where their "first amendment rights are infringed upon" by "sjw"s and the companies who provide the infrastructure they're using to misbehave.

WoW is Blizzard's property, folks. You're there on property at their pleasure. As Moana said: their house, their rules.

Heh. In before several people quote parts of this post calling me names and crying that the police state is going to kill WoW.

[Shakou]

You have no idea what my ideas on morality or profanity actually are.

Actually I do, because you just posted that people who are "good decent people" according to you, don't tell others to fuck off.

Let me give you an example that hopefully illustrates this a little better, so you might better understand the consequences of being a prude in an online game. You're in a 5 man dungeon group and it's not going as well as it could be because a player in your group keeps pulling extra packs, is barely participating at all outside of that, but they're really nice in chat. Two of the people in your group, a dps and the tank are really good and are more than doing their job by carrying the group and moving on. You yourself are getting carried but no one is complaining about you because you're doing what you can given your gear and level and so on. Finally, after more several wipes on content that is by no means difficult or progression for anyone, entirely due to the bad player in your group, the tank initiates a vote to kick the bad player out whose causing problems. You and the not-so-great healer vote no and the player is not removed, you attempt to move on and the player causes a wipe doing the exact same thing again! Finally the tank and the dps carrying your group snap and say something not so nice in chat. Instead of doing the sensible thing and removing the problem player from your group instead you decide to vote out the tank and dps who are complaining about people who are actively doing things in the game world to ruin other people's actual gaming experience.

One of them whispers you after being kicked out of the group, rightfully pissed off because they just spent the last 20 minutes (not including however long it took them to wait in queue) or so carrying the group which otherwise would have probably failed at the first boss and everyone would have left or afk'd whatever, and he tells you to fuck off.

You report him, and he get's a temporary suspension. You still think you're a good decent person? Because I think if that's you and how you operate you're a complete and utter tool and a prime example of the type of person most people should try to avoid.

[Pann]

Actually I do, because you just posted that people who are "good decent people" according to you, don't tell others to fuck off.

Let me give you an example that hopefully illustrates this a little better, so you might better understand the consequences of being a prude in an online game. You're in a 5 man dungeon group and it's not going as well as it could be because a player in your group keeps pulling extra packs, is barely participating at all outside of that, but they're really nice in chat. Two of the people in your group, a dps and the tank are really good and are more than doing their job by carrying the group and moving on. You yourself are getting carried but no one is complaining about you because you're doing what you can given your gear and level and so on. Finally, after more several wipes on content that is by no means difficult or progression for anyone, entirely due to the bad player in your group, the tank initiates a vote to kick the bad player out whose causing problems. You and the not-so-great healer vote no and the player is not removed, you attempt to move on and the player causes a wipe doing the exact same thing again! Finally the tank and the dps carrying your group snap and say something not so nice in chat. Instead of doing the sensible thing and removing the problem player from your group instead you decide to vote out the tank and dps who are complaining about people who are actively doing things in the game world to ruin other people's actual gaming experience.

One of them whispers you after being kicked out of the group, rightfully pissed off because they just spent the last 20 minutes (not including however long it took them to wait in queue) or so carrying the group which otherwise would have probably failed at the first boss and everyone would have left or afk'd whatever, and he tells you to fuck off.

You report him, and he get's a temporary suspension. You still think you're a good decent person? Because I think if that's you and how you operate you're a complete and utter tool and a prime example of the type of person most people should try to avoid.

Tanks get pretty much instant groups once queued so why didn't the tank and DPS who were carrying the group just leave and form a new group once the vote kick had failed?

[Shakou]

Tanks get pretty much instant groups once queued so why didn't the tank and DPS who were carrying the group just leave and form a new group once the vote kick had failed?

Yaaaa your response here has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. Way to miss the point completely. Also there are plenty of times when tank queues take forever, like when there aren't many heals in queue, and this by no means addresses the fact that the current in game report system can be and (likely is in my experience) heavily abused by players who cause actual problems in the game world for other players.

[Pann]

Yaaaa that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. Way to miss the point completely.

Why is it nothing to do with the topic at hand? In your fanciful and unrealistic scenario the tank and the DPS could have easily dropped the crap group and suffered minimal disruption to their game play. Instead they are abusive to the others in the group. They sound like exactly the kind of people that Blizzard had in mind when they devised this system.

[Denkou]

I like this. Trade chat is toxic and many of the topics commonly discussed are highly inappropriate, and even more so considering that there are young children/teens playing this game.

[Xargoth6634]

I don't really care one way or the other. I'm never in any public chat and I don't talk to anyone off my friends' list in game.

[ComputerNerd]

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction, Blizzard resorts to heavy handed tactics that are prone to abuse.

More news at 11.

After investigation, and while not mentioned it has been suggested elsewhere that those reporting excessively without apparent justification could face penalties of their own.
Why are those these measures are aimed at always so keen to blame someone else for the consequences of their own behaviour.
That is a stupid comment in addition, considering ignore is on the same menu.

Interesting how the "rights" a player has are always one-sided.
That people have a right to be jerks, but those on the receiving end have none.

[Sansnom]

Actually I do, because you just posted that people who are "good decent people" according to you, don't tell others to fuck off.

Let me give you an example that hopefully illustrates this a little better, so you might better understand the consequences of being a prude in an online game. You're in a 5 man dungeon group and it's not going as well as it could be because a player in your group keeps pulling extra packs, is barely participating at all outside of that, but they're really nice in chat. Two of the people in your group, a dps and the tank are really good and are more than doing their job by carrying the group and moving on. You yourself are getting carried but no one is complaining about you because you're doing what you can given your gear and level and so on. Finally, after more several wipes on content that is by no means difficult or progression for anyone, entirely due to the bad player in your group, the tank initiates a vote to kick the bad player out whose causing problems. You and the not-so-great healer vote no and the player is not removed, you attempt to move on and the player causes a wipe doing the exact same thing again! Finally the tank and the dps carrying your group snap and say something not so nice in chat. Instead of doing the sensible thing and removing the problem player from your group instead you decide to vote out the tank and dps who are complaining about people who are actively doing things in the game world to ruin other people's actual gaming experience.

One of them whispers you after being kicked out of the group, rightfully pissed off because they just spent the last 20 minutes (not including however long it took them to wait in queue) or so carrying the group which otherwise would have probably failed at the first boss and everyone would have left or afk'd whatever, and he tells you to fuck off.

You report him, and he get's a temporary suspension. You still think you're a good decent person? Because I think if that's you and how you operate you're a complete and utter tool and a prime example of the type of person most people should try to avoid.

That is a bit unfair. You are proposing a specific encounter scenario, with the actions already determined, to illustrate an example of where people can get annoyed and let lose their anger.

It happens. People do lose their anger. I lose it sometime. You probable have well. I don't think people will deny that.

However, in a general case, people are more restrain in an environment where they can and will be held accountable for their action. Online, people are not. Hence it is anarchy out there.

The new silence may help curb some of the people with looser tongue. Only time will tell.

And using your specific example, the vote kick was original intend for the example as you described, to remove undesirable people from the group. However, it got abused where people were removing people just because they can.

[MoanaLisa]

Finally, after more several wipes on content that is by no means difficult or progression for anyone, entirely due to the bad player in your group, the tank initiates a vote to kick the bad player out whose causing problems. You and the not-so-great healer vote no and the player is not removed, you attempt to move on and the player causes a wipe doing the exact same thing again!

That's a rather specific and elaborate example which sounds a little bit like you might be projecting. But all right, since you asked.

How I handle bad groups: I wish them luck and leave the group myself. I'm not particularly interested in drama so I usually exit before it ever really gets going. You don't have to play the game for all that long to know when you have a group that is solid and when you don't. I'm happy to take the penalty for leaving a terrible group that no amount of help is going to salvage.

The rest of your post assumes quite a lot. That's all well and good for constructing strawman scenarios and it reflects an active imagination but doesn't really reflect either how I play or who I am. For the record, I haven't logged into Trade in several years so I don't think I have hit the =report= button since the calendar started reading 201X. I don't think I've ever reported anyone from a group.

My advice is that this is going to happen and anyone that pretends like it isn't will eventually find themselves in a difficult-but-not-impossible spot. That will be their problem, not mine. There will be plenty of others who will hit that report button like a brass gong. The actual tools are the ones that find themselves sanctioned because they have no self-control.

I'll stick with my sensible feeling that simply treating others in the same way I would like to be treated myself is a pretty good guide and works for others. I know, old-fashioned Golden Rule and all of that, but it works well for me.