The Silence Penalty

[SoulSoBreezy]

I'm going to ask everyone to be more civil.

It's clear that people are going to have different opinions and ideas about this. There has been a ton of unneeded hostility toward differing opinions already and should it continue I'll close the thread and infract everyone involved.

Nah, close it. That way I can open a new one with a partial transcript from my video =)

OT: Just kidding. I have a few brief thoughts before I throw in a full post:

- This will affect global channels and instanced content made via matchmaking. This is where the most abuse takes place, hands down.
- IMO normal players won't notice much aside from the channels above feeling quieter.
- This penalty didn't come out of nowhere. IMO those who're worried about abuse already know that they themselves are casual/frequent offenders.

[DarthMonk79]

Playing your class properly will improve your interaction with others at all levels. Most of the abuse in wow is toward players screwing up. A proactive and not hypocritical approach would be to show players how to play properly instead of just throwing them in the lion pit and then punishing the lions.

Ofcourse the reasonable approach to appease the fanboys and to keep the subs running is to show "the blizzard iron fist" against abusive players. Forget about abusive mechanics, forget about abusive bots, forget about abusive trading/hacking/scamming forget about abusively wiping a raid. But call someone an IDIOT and you may get silenced because being an idiot is a right but being called what you are is abuse.

This is hypocricy no matter how you choose to coat it and as for my "elitist self-image" I also have a few pages of elitist achievements that shout louder than I do.

P.S. I wouldnt have most of these achievements if I settled for playing with idiots. Fact of wow.

You can help people without being rude or a jackass. Teach them to play the class better, meet them at the target dummies and go over them with their rotations and talents, etc. Just calling someone a retard and kicking them or telling them to quit has no place in the world or in a game.

[Shakou]

Of course you completely ignore that the speech that people in this thread are complaining about is against the terms of use that everyone agrees to prior to playing the game and reaffirms every expansion. Free speach has no bearing in this argument what so ever considering WoW is a private entity not a government agency. Instead we shoild be asking people to be civil. Honestly it is worse when it is typed since you have the opportunity to not hit enter after you type and you can see what you about to say as oposed to just blurting oit something stupid.

I don't think you and others in this thread are at all simply asking people to be civil you're asking them to just put up with behavior from other people that is completely ridiculous and which nowadays they can't even be banned for.

Do you not comprehend that according to Blizzard's TOS right now a Priest who continuously casts Leap of Faith on me or uses swapblaster or something in order to cause my death, or players who do anything at all that results in intentionally wiping a group or something,s cannot be penalized? They do not punish people for that kind of stuff at all anymore, but if I get frustrated and tell the Priest who is really being a complete dick to eat shit and he reports me and his friends do, I'm going to get banned. That is not civil behavior that is flagrant bullying and harassment of the worst kind.

The terms I agreed to in Vanilla wow which were carried on through Cataclysm, and I assume this is due to the fact Blizzard wasn't crazy and anticipated the event that players in this game would act terribly to one another (if you ever played Ultima Online for example when it was the latest thing you would never ever complain about how people act in wow because you could literally be killed by a player you were previously friendly to in game and have all of your items stolen from you or even face permanent death) is that player bans were not ever given out for any kind of chat violations except in extreme cases of constant ongoing and targeted harassment. That's pretty reasonable I think, and actually overall the game was much more civil, because there were consequences for being not just awful people but also awful players who just wanted to get carried (aka also a form of awful person) because you more than likely had terrible gear and just couldn't find groups to do much of anything worthwhile.

The terms I also agreed to is that same faction grieving such as intentionally causing the death of a same faction player or somehow blocking a player's access to content through "clever use of in-game mechanics" was the worst example of an in game offense outside of cheating and the one which players could be most severely punished for.

I come back after a 2 year + break from the game and suddenly I am witnessing my game turn into a battle of who can report who for what the fastest and get the other person banned it is extremely difficult (compared to what I am used to) to find groups to finish any kind of content (literally people just often do not talk to each other at all even to share important info) when previous at this point in the game I could spend 20 minutes in trade chat and get a pug together for literally anything and we would kill it without coming to hate each other in the process. Basically every single thing that players predicted features like Looking for Dungeon would result in have come to pass and this game has turned into the most anti-social nightmare version I have ever witnessed and instead of being rational getting back to this game's roots and what made everything magically work well before (the fact you had to make actual friends and build teams that stayed together to clear the games major content) instead they have provided players with tools that can actually help them get people banned just because they do not like them.

Regardless of Blizzard's Terms of Service, what you have to realize is that Blizzard does not actively police any of their channels they rely 100% on player generated reports which do not include any more information than the lines of chat for which you are reported for, the timestamp of the report and the name of the character the report initiated from.

It's hella whack and it's not cool and it's not healthy for the game. You're sitting here telling me you want the game to be less toxic and that's why you like this kind of policy and I'm over here trying to get you to understand that these policies will never ever ever ever ever ever ever discourage toxic behavior in this game ever ever ever it will only make things worse. The only full-proof thing that will stop the sheer amount of insane behavior people frequently engage in is when this game get's back to some kind of equilibrium where players have to remain in a guild with players they are on good terms with in order to finish end game content.

The source of these nightmares is the cater to me crowd, and they're not just people who say offensive things chat, a whole frickin load of them really don't do that at all. They'll just like make you die in game, bait you into saying something they can report you for, anything they can get away with and not be banned for that dehumanizes you. Because let's face it you don't have to treat people like human beings when you never have to group up with them again.

You know a huge part of being a human being means having empathy. It doesn't mean that you're some perfect goody-two shoes that everyone likes at all, and less face it that scenario is highly unlikely for everyone. It doesn't mean feeling sorry for other people. What it means is you have ability to feel other people's pain, their burden. It means that when you see someone hurt or pissed off you understand why they feel like they and are acting like they are.

When you've already made the decision that a person, a human being isn't worth anything to you more than another notch on your ban belt and you're not even going to go through any type of procedure to make sure they really even deserve it at all, you're just going straight up declare them inhuman for no reason other than they said something that may or may not have actually offended you, you're not really being very human anymore you've become the thing you hate. You have no idea what that person might be going through, you have no idea of anything at all beyond some trivial words written in a small little box of text placed inside of a small frame, you have to want to understand other people to know what it means to be human.

You know who I play this game with? A lot of srs military guys, we just simply don't do drama. We don't hold grudges, we don't waste time over petty trivial b.s. We kill internet dragons together and we do so in a timely and efficient manner even if it means we're carrying other people, you better at the very least give us your best and be grateful, and if you make even us snap and we're just that much more disciplined than you and then you have the audacity to throw us under the bus because you fucked up? Don't be acting crazy now.

Cuz man let me tell you something, look at my avatar, and look at the picture below. Notice any similarities? Maybe like uh, an extremely similar facial structure? I don't normally do this, but seriously I don't know how else to more clearly tell you that I know how to build shit son. Fucking airplanes with my god damn bare hands made out of tampons, ducktape, toilet paper tubes and paper clips, or whatever the heck you find. Get on my level please. It's not scary at all. It's magical and there's real gold at the end of the rainbow I swear it. We can do this any way we have to. But first you gotta ask yourself just one question compadre. Were you born to win?



I am very srsly not trolling.

[Haxlax]

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.

Pretty much.

I have 0 people on my ignore list. I probably had a few in pre-battle.net WoW but I eventually pruned them from my list. It's not like people I didn't like will login to bother me again after a year.

But people are definitely too delicate. That's why they keep introducing single-player content in an MMO game.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Do you not comprehend that according to Blizzard's TOS right now a Priest who continuously casts Leap of Faith on me or uses swapblaster or something in order to cause my dead and wipes the group or something in the process cannot be penalized? They do not punish people for that kind of stuff at all anymore, but if I get frustrated and tell the Priest who is really being a complete dick to eat shit and he reports me and his friends do, I'm going to get banned. That is not civil behavior that is flagrant bullying and harassment of the worst kind.

You could get that person kicked from the group. I'd call that being penalized. As for you losing your cool in that scenario, that's definitely your fault.

- - - Updated - - -

This topic is still active, so I’ll leave this here. It’s an excerpt from today’s news video, with the Account Silence thing being the main topic.

TL;DR - Video link.
TL;DW (it lacks a LOT of context):

- This will affect global channels and instanced content made via matchmaking. This is where the most abuse takes place, hands down.
- IMO normal players won't notice much aside from the channels above feeling quieter.
- This penalty didn't come out of nowhere. IMO those who're worried about abuse already know that they themselves are casual/frequent offenders.
- Just don’t be a jerk.

Blizzard announced a new mechanism designed to combat some of the more negative social experiences in game with they call a Silence Penalty. If penalized, players will basically be unable to proactively initiate conversations or other personal interactions with other players not in their guild, or friend list, but can still at least be on the receiving end. You can’t whisper someone unless they whisper you first, and the default global chat channels will be considered read only.
This penalty will last for 24 for hours and will double for each additional infraction. On top of that there’s no limit to the maximum penalty. We also don’t know if additional silences can be given while a player is already silenced, nor do we know if the penalty is lowered after a period of good behavior. Assuming this is multiplicative, than a fifth infraction means 16 days of silence. The next means 32. Damn.

So how is this going to work? The system will look at reports made by players that use the report function. Blizzard said they’d do an investigation and once that’s done, take action. Or no action.

Players have quickly placed doubt on a system like this, insisting that these investigations will be automated and many infractions will be erroneously dealt. They’ve also pointed out scenarios where the system can be abused, that large groups of users can effectively “brigade” other users and keep them silenced indefinitely. Can this abuse happen? Absolutely! No system is perfect, after all. But has Blizzard thought of these kinds of scenarios? Absolutely! Call it fanboyism, but I’m confident that Blizzard or any other company wouldn’t launch this sort of initiative until they went over all these scenarios. So I’ll do my own take and see how this system will work.

The announcement said that reports under the spam or abuse categories will be subjected to silencing, so let’s start with spam.

Without a doubt the vast majority of spam comes from bots. I’m sure you’ve seen lots of different messages using ASCII text, warped words, symbols and other stuff. This isn’t just to make their spam stand out and get attention, but to throw off Blizzard’s ability to easily detect spam automatically. It’s one of the many reasons Blizzard relies on player reporting, which thanks to addons, is better these days.
As a PSA, go download Badboy; it’s a great anti-spam addon.
Here’s some speculation. Under the silence system, when enough players report spam to a certain user or account, it’s flagged by Blizzard. In this case I think it’s an automated system that runs a check and probably looks for certain keywords to identify it as a grey market seller. Words like gold, account, sale, stuff like that but I’m sure it’s a lot more robust than just keywords. If the system concludes it’s a bot, silence can be immediately dealt out. If it can’t confirm it’s a bot though, it’ll go to a human to verify.
Yeah, it’s not what I’d call a full-on investigation, but I think it’s a good idea to have an automated system that identifies its biggest spam offender, a different automated system.

But what about normal spam? What qualifies? Here you are, straight from Blizzard’s page. The kind of stuff players don’t really want to see. Can this reporting be abused through brigading? Maybe, but if there’s a system similar to the one I described above, even a large number of reports wouldn’t make a difference. Let’s pretend I’m in trade chat and make it known that I’m a huge fan of Ashran. And I’m immediately reported by a hundred people for spam. I’ll probably show up on someone’s computer displaying my account with the number of recent reports. The automated system determined I’m not a bot because my Ashran comment was literally all that was said. I’m being brigaded by all the Ashran haters. It’s easy enough to look at my chat logs and determine if in fact I’m spamming, and I’m not. Maybe I’m trolling, but that’s a different thing.

Now, for abuse, which seems to cover every other reporting option, from the quick commands we have access to from our chat window, to the tickets that can be submitted in game or through the battle.net website.
Inappropriate language is easy to explain. Like I know there’s a language filter but don’t think for a second that it’s an excuse to walk the line on global chat. Let’s pretend you fucked up on something and you’ve just got to let everyone in your LFR group know. If you literally typed in you ****** up, even if it’s bleeped out, we know exactly what you’re saying. You can bet that if someone was offended or wanted to be mean, and silence you for swearing in instance chat, they’ll be able to now, and it’ll be entirely your fault. It doesn’t matter if you say ass, @$$ or ***. You’re just trying to be a smartass, and you’re gonna get what’s coming to you.

Abuse or harassment are defined by Blizzard but individuals experience and tolerate this differently. I’m not going to teach a harassment course here, but I will say, just have some common sense. Hopping into trade chat or a random pug means you’re locking arms with a lot of people who don’t know you’ve had traumatic experiences and sensitive to hearing about sex acts. You might not know about the dad introducing his 10 year old to the game he’s playing and forgot to switch off trade chat. It’s not his fault for being there, it’s your fault for talking mess. Same goes with people in your guild. They’re your guildmates but even if your guild guidelines are clear, Blizzard’s guidelines supercede that. Just don’t walk the line. Give your guildies and other players the the same respect that you give yourself. And just in case, respect yourself more.
All in all, how will this affect the day to day for players?
I think most players will still behave normally. They’ll report things they don’t like as usual. Maybe more players will do it because they feel a bit more empowered. A few major social points will be affected though, including global chat channels and chat inside groups that are created with matchmaking tools. So think of random battlegrounds, LFD and LFR. These spaces may look a bit more quiet.
I also think some of the more toxic players will have a choice to make, to decide whether their freedom to express is more important than playing the game normally. Maybe they’ll have to redefine what normal is. Or quit. Maybe someone will create and moderate a new global channel for silenced users. Maybe make a guild called <128 Days Later>.
Some players will likely try to abuse the system, or at least be overzealous with reporting every swear word or politically incorrect thing they see. It could happen. But that’s going to be something for Blizzard to wrestle with and tweak on their end.

I look at all these players on forums carrying on, saying aw, this system is going be abused and so on so forth, but the way I see it, it’s probably those players who pull this sort of crap, and are probably part of the reason why this system is coming in the first place. The rest of the players don’t have to worry about anything because they don’t infringe themselves in these public spaces.
And people who’ve been watching this video but skipped this main topic, they’re probably the players who don’t talk outside of their guild anyway or barely talk at all, so this has no meaning to them whatsoever.

I’m basically saying that we should be careful of what we say because anyone could be offended. That your freedom to express is compromised by, dare I say, social justice. I’ve seen some reactions and know how some will feel about this piece. People should grow a spine, or leave Trade, or not a play an online game where behavior like this is expected. But if you look at other games like League of Legends or Call of Duty or others, there’s a certain level of toxicity there and it reflects badly on them. The behavior of the community is a large part of what defines those games, including WoW. Blizzard is about to set loose a potentially powerful tool to clean up chat, but until now it’s been up to us, the players, to decide what the social atmosphere is going to be like. The creation of this system didn’t come from nowhere. The worst groups of people led to this, so, thanks.

[MoanaLisa]

Do you not comprehend that according to Blizzard's TOS right now a Priest who continuously casts Leap of Faith on me or uses swapblaster or something in order to cause my death, or players who do anything at all that results in intentionally wiping a group or something,s cannot be penalized? They do not punish people for that kind of stuff at all anymore, but if I get frustrated and tell the Priest who is really being a complete dick to eat shit and he reports me and his friends do, I'm going to get banned. That is not civil behavior that is flagrant bullying and harassment of the worst kind.

I would kick the priest or leave the group on my own. I have a low tolerance for BS of this sort and if it goes on, either they go or I do. Usually without saying a word.

[Lasombria]

So basicly become a tutor of mongoloids and mouth breathing idiots who wont even bat an eye the next time they die to he same mechanic for the 15th time?
Yeah right......

Nobody's saying you have to tutor anyone. A bunch of people have been saying that their abusive language is a kind of tutoring, though.

As it happens, the best arena player I know has Down's Syndrome, and and one of the best raiders is a mouth breather thanks to severe apnea problems. This illustrates the problem - you could have just said "bad players who won't learn anything from repeated failures". And of course there is something you can do: kick them. (There is a genuine weakness in the current kicking system, the ability of a troll to keep pulling and never provide an out-of-combat moment to initiate a kick. I'd like to see that closed, but it'd be tricky to define well.) I initiate votes to kick pretty often myself, often because of bad behavior of the sort that hurts a whole group's chance of success. I just don't dress it up in language about how my abuse is actually supposed to do them some good, or anything like that.

[Wewlad]

Stop being stupid - the thing is on the internet people can say stupid things without any consequences, it doesn't compare with real life where there will be consequences if you say stupid stuff.

So introducing a penalty online is in order - it has nothing to do with "skin" it's about acting like a human being.

Clearly there could be other problems if it can be abused to get people silences without checking if they actually did something wrong.

You didn't read my post.

A great deal of IRL socialization revolves around firing off insults and taking some hits. It's completely natural, and how humans tend to operate.

People here just want to run away from anything that might hurt their precious ego.

[Shakou]

You could get that person kicked from the group. I'd call that being penalized. As for you losing your cool in that scenario, that's definitely your fault.

Wow you people don't even bother reading someone else's vastly superior wall of text to understand the full depth and breadth of their argument before throwing in your 2 cents and I'm supposed to trust you to be fair

[Gentlepenguin]

Wow you people don't even bother reading someone else's vastly superior wall of text to understand the full depth and breadth of their argument before throwing in your 2 cents and I'm supposed to trust you to be fair

There is no interaction or "trust" necessary. This system is working in a game far, far, far more popular than WoW. Most people won't even need to change their behavior. The people that feel the need to rage and berate their fellow players and have it in their heads that there's some conspiracy of people out to provoke them into being silenced, will be silenced.

[therayeffect]

I really hope this calms down the spam but most likely it won't. I can already see Blizzard getting bogged down in reports and barely anything changing from this system. I'm not sure what it'll change really since the same flaws exist in this system with the one we already have. I guess it'll really only turn the bans into mutes for loudmouths.

- - - Updated - - -

Seen quite a few people in this thread essentially refuse to not use the in-game ignore function, saying "why should I have to use it". Is that not tantamount to basically saying "Why should I put in a modicum of effort when someone else can do it for me"?

Seems kind of ridiculous to me.
And as for this stopping gold spam, I haven't seen gold spam in the game in years, thanks to a small and simple addon that has been around for years. Again, a small amount of effort and my "issue" was solved.

Amazing how it seems to be everyone else to blame for any "problem" except one's self, huh?

Though a minimal chance, addons can have security issues and severe ones at that. An example would be the gold-stealing that somehow happened with WeakAuras. Blizzard should be working to get rid of the gold spammers as best as they can and that's not a bad desire to want.

[Shakou]

There is no interaction or "trust" necessary. This system is working in a game far, far, far more popular than WoW. Most people won't even need to change their behavior. The people that feel the need to rage and berate their fellow players and have it in their heads that there's some conspiracy of people out to provoke them into being silenced, will be silenced.

This system isn't a system it is simply a change in policy from banning players for stupid frivolous minor chat violations to silencing them from chat. Most of you have no idea what you are talking about at all I am not being rude you are actually uninformed.

As for the rest of your post what are you even talking about? Of course trust in this game with other players and interaction is necessary that is the fundamental block this game is built on. The issue with this game is people like you have no idea why the game sucks now at all and you think a frickin policy change (NOT A SYSTEMIC CHANGE) is gonna clean up this game? No dude not at all, people are going to continue being anti-social douchers who have no care in the world for other people in the game because where's the incentive?

The only thing that's going to fix the cespool this game has become, is a whole lot of time as communities slowly naturally and organically come back together again after they get rid of features from this game that detract from the original core social aspect of the game, you know where you used to have to build relationships with people and maintain a reputation in the game to complete contents. The issue is that people do not have to be social anymore because screw it they can just queue in in the LFG tool and do the content with a bunch of folks they're never going to talk to again.

You get rid of all these pointless tools that made the game "convenient" mainly for all the awful people we didn't want in our guilds (sorry people on dead realms but there was always a better option and it was called server transferring), and get the game back to the stage where the actual game is giving people incentives for being social the community will be great again. If you choose to keep using these same systems and fail to recognize that it's the broke ass systems that made this mess in the first place, you're never gonna get anywhere.

I suppose I'm totally wasting my breath here but y'all could actually become vocal on what I'm talking about here and support this and get other players talking about it because believe me most of us who have played this game for most of it's existence want our game back and because we were THERE we know why the game has become what it is now and it all started with LFR. For real for real.

You can't have it both ways. If you want this game community to improve the only way it is going to improve is when carry me and give me what I want now instaqueue nature of the current game is abolished like the spawn of hell it is and we go back to the old day of making guilds with other people we enjoy playing with and we don't act like fools anymore because you'll face the consequence of getting kicked out of your guild and blacklisted from the server.

I would kick the priest or leave the group on my own. I have a low tolerance for BS of this sort and if it goes on, either they go or I do. Usually without saying a word.

Understandable and of course the only reasonable course of action but that completely misses the point. Do you really honestly think it's fair that someone who isn't just some jerk running around flaming and harassing people and ruining their game experience get's baited into a situation like this and punished for just sticking up for them self? Really? You think the ends justify the means? That because you might possibly have the vague small sliver of a chance of getting rid of players who say things you don't like the game is suddenly going to become a friendly welcome environment again?

- - - Updated - - -

Seen quite a few people in this thread essentially refuse to not use the in-game ignore function, saying "why should I have to use it". Is that not tantamount to basically saying "Why should I put in a modicum of effort when someone else can do it for me"?

Seems kind of ridiculous to me.
And as for this stopping gold spam, I haven't seen gold spam in the game in years, thanks to a small and simple addon that has been around for years. Again, a small amount of effort and my "issue" was solved.

Amazing how it seems to be everyone else to blame for any "problem" except one's self, huh?

Right? It's like people could actually turn the mature language filter off, then that screaming todler who oh so offended you is revealed to be what he was all along, mystical nothingness. Just pure white noise.

I am highly convinced that many of these would be crusaders up in here are either paid Blizzard trolls (not really though but funny right?), or are actually the very sort of players who are actively contributing to the downfall of this once great game. Cuz ya see it's not the fact that people in this game are generally pretty anti-social toward people they don't know that is causing all these issues, it's the fact there's all these jerks in the lfr saying things people don't like! Purely logical.

I literally never noticed this kind of thing was actually a real problem in game until LFR existed and then guilds started falling apart left and right in MOP and WOD and then finally after 12 years of playing this game I was banned for a very frivolous chat violation, and the I read Blizzard's new terms of service and realized they were no longer even issuing bans for extremely and continued harassment but instead, were focused entirely on short term bans for just saying Fucker. or something, (maybe even in raid chat and I said it to a friend of mine and we were only joking around with eachother.

Man its so fun when random strangers on the internet can police how you interact with people who they don't even know that you actually do.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh by the way kids, if any of you were actually bothered by any of this stuff (obscene and vulgar language) or gold spam and such, you could have just turned the mature language filter on and got yourself an add on the auto hides gold spam from your chat. And then you would have realized years ago these major problems you think exist are not real at all.


That is Master Sargeant Bob Ross 2 u!

[Gentlepenguin]

@Shakou , So you're clearly biased against the system because you've been actioned for violating Blizzard's ToS already. Which means you're already susceptible to being silenced once the pre-patch hits. You also clearly lack the ability to take responsibility for it. Deflecting blame to LFR, Blizzard, the people that reported you, the playerbase as a whole. "Getting baited" is clearly your fault, because you lack self-control.

It is a new system, that utilizes currently in-game report features. Similar systems are being used for Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm with success, otherwise they wouldn't be bringing the silence system here. It's effective. It won't 100% stop abusive players, but it's a good deterrent. Repeat offenders will just end up in an endless cycle of being permanently silenced. Some will adjust their behavior. Saying the system can be abused and will change nothing is nothing more than a scare tactic.

[MoanaLisa]

Understandable and of course the only reasonable course of action but that completely misses the point. Do you really honestly think it's fair that someone who isn't just some jerk running around flaming and harassing people and ruining their game experience get's baited into a situation like this and punished for just sticking up for them self? Really? You think the ends justify the means? That because you might possibly have the vague small sliver of a chance of getting rid of players who say things you don't like the game is suddenly going to become a friendly welcome environment again?

Choosing a reasonable course of action is precisely the point. It keeps you out of problems. I'm well aware that there are lots of people who seem to live to spoil someone else's evening. Not taking a bait is sometimes hard. It's something everyone here or in any sort of internet public space needs to learn to do.

[Pann]

You see the problem of this system? Its ok for you to be provocative but if someone calls you a name that you deserve based on your provocations you have the power to silence them. So being the player that you are (biased/provocative) you can bait others freely and go under the radar but the other guy is the bad guy.

If thats how you want to play it sure fine but dont be surprised if suddenly you say hello twice and get reported for spam. Blades always cut both ways.

And lets not pretend that you don't know what you re doing when you provoke people right? You do it on purpose because you get some weird joy from trying to piss other people off. You don't know Shakou or me but you jump into conclusions about what kind of players we are and what kind of behavior we have in game.

You are the least capable person to have a say about anything in game. Game can and WILL be worse by empowering people like you.

You have been covert insulting me and shakou for numerous posts now jumping into your own conclusions to prove yourself to yourself. I think you are smart enough to know what Im talking about. Can I just remind you though that reports in game are much smarter than the forum and GMs will take YOUR behavior much more seriously than what you are allowed to do here unharmed.

So good luck to you if you behave in game like you behave here.

If someone is provoking why not take you own advice and ignore them? You could even report them.

[Pann]

Are you calm 100% of the time? Because only dead people are. I probably give the impression of someone who gets mad a lot but in 12 yrs wow I have lost my cool extremely few times even for the greatest of stupidities. However there are times where even the most peaceful sheep will go mad and headbutt someone.

Now imagine a system that is constantly abused by most people idling in dalaran (which will be in a patch or two) and just playing report wars.

Don't make this all about me make it about you make it about the community we play in. You focus me because you think I give a damn I just advocate against all systems that put restraints on players for minor stuff.

If those who are in favor of this system though need a policeman next to them 24/7 maybe its time to grow a thicker skin? Because if people need so much safety in wow in order to operate I can only imagine how hard it is for them out in the open.

And please lets not go back to "out in the world noone calls me names etc". This is not about name calling which can be reported right now also. Its about people getting reported for petty reasons out of spite of "fellow" players which is how this will turn out to work.

Ofc Im in favor of chat bans for swearing/abuse etc but as you see most people carefully say "raging" which can be anything. You could say "omg" and be reported because someone felt stressed by your comment. GG

Well, it seems as if the people most worried about this system believe that people should grow thicker skins and ignore them whenever they're being rude but these people never seem to be able to do the same with t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ the people that provoke them.

[ComputerNerd]

Choosing a reasonable course of action is precisely the point. It keeps you out of problems. I'm well aware that there are lots of people who seem to live to spoil someone else's evening. Not taking a bait is sometimes hard. It's something everyone here or in any sort of internet public space needs to learn to do.

I see too many placing the need to fix the issue on anyone but those causing the issue.
The problem here is the lack of player-dictated consequences that used to be a core part of the community.
That degradation of the community is what made this a problem in the first place.
And it has been made obvious by the constant redirection of blame that players aren't going to solve it.

Therefore blizzard are stepping in.

Why this persistent need for someone else to solve it.
That is not a mindset in this case, but a very widespread one in many group interactions.

[Mosotti]

Best feature ever. The only ones complaining are the fuckers that spill their shit all over the chat. So fuck 'em

The problem for me is not that I don't have a thick skin, the problem is that anyone can insult me and I can't do anything about it, unless I'm childish enough to enter an insult battle. I'm not paying a subscription to do curse fighting with random imbeciles and I think no one who's not fucked in the head has this purpose in game.

And no, people won't be silenced for nothing, because this is NOT automatic. Also there need to be multiple reports. So all that crap about provocation is retarded. As is the priest example that does some shit. But even so, if you get "provoked" on the street and you beat the shit out of that "provoker" guess what? You end up in jail and you end up paying damages. Why should anyone do whatever they want in a game?

If someone is a dick, why would you want to play with him? If he's acting like a dick, leave, don't start acting like a fucking dick yourself, because you're such a testosterone filled macho. Especially if he has some dick friends that might "collectively frame" you, even though, again, that's not really possible, because this is not automatic.

[Shakou]

If someone is provoking why not take you own advice and ignore them? You could even report them.

You should learn to listen more, try to understand others and speak please. Just my advice. Because you keep saying the same things as if you have a good point to make here and I'm sorry to tell you this but you honestly are not making a good argument for your cause at all.

The very fact that players have always had tools to avoid the kind of speech that the current report system and the policy surrounding tries to nullify (poorly), kind of completely destroys any argument folks like yourself have made here. That kind of proves that you're not concerned with the actual speech and behavior of others (especially not yourself or your friends) but you just like this system because it gives you power over players you do not like.

I mean, whether or not you realize it (and I'm assuming you don't because you literally keep saying the same things in here) in all of your posts but especially the last several here you just laid out very clearly why the report system and this new policy change is completely pointless nonsense because it does not at all eliminate any sort of rude or douchey behavior in game, it will simply filter out the speech of people you don't like if and only when they use certain words, and furthermore ONLY when you or other people decide to report them. Which is utterly pointless because for 12 billionth time, the game has always been capable of automating this task for you by block that kind of speech if you chose to set it up that way.

The truth is you do not give a single flying fuck at all about the use of abusive and inflammatory language and terrible behavior in this game except when it comes to people YOU don't like. Of course people who are you friends or who are in your guild who do the same fucking things to people are not going to be reported by you, otherwise you would soon find yourself without a guild or friends. And do not try to tell me that's not the case because I have played this game for 12 years on the most populated realm in this mother fucking game and I know better than to trust some guy on this forum who tries to claim that he and his friends are white spotless lambs. BULLSHIT.

You just want to be able to report random people and/or those you do not like, if not you would simply take measures like installing a chat add on to filter out spam, and mature language, because I'm going to repeat myself yet again here and phrase this ever so slightly differently, you'd have to be a complete idiot to think we do not realize that you all have homies in game who do the same things, but you don't report them because they're your friends. That's just human nature.

Shall I continue?

Let me be a little more clear, in case you're still having a hard time understanding completely valid points that you have failed on any level to counter, any of you that think this is some awesome new thing that's going to improve this game is wrong. And you're going to continue being wrong. There have been very simple tools that players could use to avoid all of these issues surrounding this policy change as long as this game has existed.

Seems to me it would be far easier to just give players the ability to create their own safe space in game, you know like they already did 12 years ago, when they made this game.

My advice? Stop being so concerned with pointless drama. You may not realize it but you actually come off as an incredibly negative person who wouldn't be any fun to play with.

[taishar68]

You didn't read my post.

A great deal of IRL socialization revolves around firing off insults and taking some hits. It's completely natural, and how humans tend to operate.

People here just want to run away from anything that might hurt their precious ego.

The difference here is the degree of separation (pardon my liberal use of the phrase here)

In a RL situation, insults that are fired off have a different effect based on who is doing the firing; when you and your friends are ragging on each other, that's one thing; if you start insulting a complete stranger, there are going to be consequences...not necessarily dire or violent, but it is unreasonable to assume someone you don't know will accept the abuse.