Blizzard naming policy too harsh?

[Goat7]

Hey everyone!

One of my guildies was recently contacted by a GM about a character name "Pollon". Apparently it's in violation of the Naming Policy, because in Spanish slang it means "big dick". The "owner" of the character is an Italian person on an English speaking realm. Furthermore, the name was taken from a 30 year old cartoon for kids (it's even doubtful whether it constitutes pop culture at this point).

The GM handling the case showed zero flexibility, and in fact in two very cold messages made it clear that the decision will not be overturned, regardless of all the evidence supporting my guildie's case. It's probably worth mentioning there are well over 100 characters on EU and US realms with the same name.

The person has been a customer for the past 9 years, which is how long the character in question existed. In that time no one was bothered by the name. It was pointed out that name reporting might have been a retaliatory action by someone seeking vengeance for something that might have happened in PvP (which is a relatively new activity for the person).

What do you guys think? Did the GM drop the ball in this case? Was the decision to force rename justified?

Thanks for your feedback!

W

I think the policy is very relaxed. It used to be a lot worse back in vanilla/bc. I have seen some ppl with some pretty messed up names, a lot of racist or sick ppl out there. When your reported with one of these names your just required to change it. Back in the good ol days of WoW, when the policy was worse, you got few days to weeks ban for that kind of thing.

[Deleted]

Apparently I am Pollon-Dragonblight now

if you want it back, pm me

edit:
Yes, I still got the name.
No, I will give it back for free.
No, I don't want your insults.
Yes, I'm a very bad person for saving her toons frigging name.

[Koochulu]

One of my characters has a dirty slang name in Farsi(no, it isn't koochulu). Nobody has ever reported it. Spanish is WAAAAAAAAAY more prevalent in the US, so don't expect things like spanish slang to go unnoticed.

[Deleted]

Don't most forced name changes come about because a player has reported your name as offensive or whatever?

Yes it's one of my ingame hobbies

[Itisamuh]

I was a sore loser when they made me change my guild name, and hounded them with repeated tickets saying I expected to see every character and guild on every server with that name forced to change. After a few days it happened, and I felt somewhat vindicated. But yes, it is too harsh. Though I think crude or sexual names should be off limits, the copyright crap gets old.

[Lambiicuz]

I don't think the naming policy is too strict but it's sometimes enforced in a really stupid and unfair way.

If a name means something offensive in Spanish it should be changed if the character with the name was playing on a Spanish realm. If the name isn't offensive in the English language it should not be changed on an English realm.

[Deleted]

Hmmm im not sure

[Ulfhedinn]

Sorry but Blizzard is way to relaxed in their policing of names. A big part of the vile people in this game are created by Blizzard ignoring them. I wont repeat some of the names I have run into here because I will get banned but some of them would make Richard Pryor sound clean.

[Deleted]

If we are going to restrict names for the word penis in other languages then we won't have many names/words left to use... Quick search gave me 177 synonyms in English alone:
http://namingschemes.com/Penis_Synonyms

Now add German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Finish, Norwegian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean etc etc etc, and yeah...

[Deleted]

Well, it's not really like that. It should be "Pollón", "Pollon" means nothing in Spanish. GMs are being silly.

[Asiel]

Well, it's not really like that. It should be "Pollón", "Pollon" means nothing in Spanish. GMs are being silly.

Technically, alt-code characters aren't supposed to be allowed, either, unless they've changed that since I last read the naming policy.

Besides, it's the intent behind something that makes it offensive and a Blizzard employee such as a GM has no way of proving intent. So, rather than making a huge deal out of a name, they simply take the side of the reporter and force a name change.

Other than that, ITT: People blaming GMs for doing their job.

[Blueshield]

Other than that, ITT: People blaming GMs for doing their job.

No, people are blaming them for doing a bad job... there's a huge difference.

[SkagenRora]

Blizzard dosen't care unless people report, my monk friend got forced name change for the name "Naruto" even tho there are thousands off narutos out there

[Alextros]

No, people are blaming them for doing a bad job... there's a huge difference.

They are not doing a bad job. They are following the policies set for a GM, by Blizzard... They have to act, and if every kind of these reports needs to be solved 100% correctly, like Nyshade said, the name needed at Alt-code character beforeactually meaning something, then the time used per report would be too high, compared to how many reports are being made throughout a day.

[Deleted]

Well I recently found out that you are not allowed to name your pets anything that contains the word "black". So yeah I would agree that Blizzards naming policy is ridiculous

[Blueshield]

They are not doing a bad job. They are following the policies set for a GM, by Blizzard...

That's correct, but if all what is needed is a "robot" blindly applying a rule without using common sense, then we need no GMs... a script is enough.

Since we have humans, and not robots sitting in the GMs rooms one should expect a bit more.

[Schadow]

That policy is stupid as hell. It states that it has to uphold this and that, but it does not specify the language it is presenting it into. This indeed would either mean the language of the server that you are playing on (which would make sense) or all the languages in the world (6912).

The policy has holes in them and no policy should have those. It has to be straightforward, it should uphold itself to one language. If he was playing on a Spanish realm, he had no chance. But this in an English realm and Pollon can be seen as Pollen, which are seeds in the air, usually causing an allergic reaction to people with the hayfever sickness. Pollon has no direct meaning in the English language, thus should be allowed to be used on an English realm.

Blizzard, however, dropped the balls when they allowed cross-server grouping (and not just in BG's). This caused a shitstorm of names that are inappropiate on your server, but should be perfectly legal on other servers that are not in your language group. The naming policy is weird on this, it does not explain in such situations what happens.

Re-ticket it, tell them that it's a sorry excuse of GM handling and request to revert it per immediate. The naming policy is incorrect on this field.

In addition, send an e-mail to WoWConcernsEU@blizzard.com with the explanation as to why. This is a separate group that looks into your case and what has transpired, some kind of escalation pattern you can follow.

[Rivellana]

You generally need to have more than one person report the character name for Blizzard to do something about changing it, as far as I've seen. I mean...I've got a guy in one of my guilds named a variation (with symbols) of Bangjew and I saw one named Pussilicker in another guild one of my characters is in today. I report names like these, but the characters are still around.

It's all a matter of how many people report the name before a GM takes action, and if multiple people do, they will take action on that one character. They won't take action on every character named that on every server, because the other characters weren't reported by multiple people.

[wych]

They are not doing a bad job. They are following the policies set for a GM, by Blizzard... They have to act, and if every kind of these reports needs to be solved 100% correctly, like Nyshade said, the name needed at Alt-code character beforeactually meaning something, then the time used per report would be too high, compared to how many reports are being made throughout a day.

It's bullshit, there's far too many languages and dialects in the world for this to enforced properly. OP's name wasn't even the actual word nor was it the language the server was spoken in

[Lochton]

It may be harsh but needed, at times, I wish it was a little harsher on some topics. I don't find it too harsh though, as it is a needed thing. Besiddes, it wasn't the naming policy that did that the name had to be changed, it was another player. Blizzard doesn't (and they have actively said this) hunt down names of players, they are given the attention from other players about X name being bad/offensive.

Blizzard should maybe be more thorough to be sure that names aren't wrongfully reported but that is where appeals come in play, you have (and your friend) permission to appeal and lay your case for them. They'll have to go through it, if you can prove the name being write or wrongfully taken action to, then they'll reverse their actions.

Though, the bottom line for the OP's example is this, someone reported the name and actions was taken without further research (sadly), lack of research may be due to someone including the name.

Last bit is, some report names to get a name unlocked as well, luckily, doesn't work well.