Legion Beta Key Giveaway - Week 5: Warcraft GO

New Silence Penalty Coming to World of Warcraft
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
World of Warcraft offers many opportunities to engage with other players in a variety of ways and to help support positive experiences in these engagements we wanted to inform you of a new silence penalty we will be implementing with the pre-expansion patch for Legion. Depending on the type of report, players who are found to be abusive in chat or engage in inappropriate chat behaviors may be silenced from engaging in certain ways within the game.

The Silence Penalty
Following the Legion pre-expansion, any player who is reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will, after investigation, receive an account-wide silence penalty. While this penalty is active, the silenced player will find that their ability to chat with others is greatly limited.

Silenced Players Are Unable to:
  • Talk in Instance Chat (Raid, Party, and Battlegrounds)
  • Talk in global channels that are auto joined (such as General or Trade)
  • Create Calendar Invites/Events
  • Send in-game mail
  • Send Party Invitations
  • Send War Game Invitations
  • Send Invitations to Duel
  • Update a Premade Group Listing
  • Create a New List for a Premade Group

Silenced Players Are Able to:
  • Whisper to friends (both WoW friends and Battle.net Friends)
  • Reply to Whispers from Non-friends
  • Party/Raid Chat (with Invited Players)
  • Create Parties and Raids
  • Talk in Global Channels that have a moderator
  • Share Quests
  • Sign up for a pre-made group

The first time a player is silenced, their chat will be restricted for 24 hours. This duration will double for each silence penalty received after the first, and there is no maximum. This means that players who receive multiple silence penalties may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.

Silenced players will be receiving a notification when attempting to send a message to a channel in which they have been restricted.

By using the in-game report tool to identify players who may be engaging in inappropriate interactions within the various channels, you’ll be helping create the type of community we all want to take part in.
This article was originally published in forum thread: New Silence Penalty Coming to World of Warcraft started by chaud View original post
Comments 672 Comments
  1. Zandalarian Paladin's Avatar
    This is perfect. It was about damn time too!
  1. Moozart's Avatar
    The may as well just ban repeat offenders because most of them will just unsub if they cant do half of anything lol
  1. Otaka's Avatar
    I hope this is in effect on PTR too? :P people in there are leaving all brainmatter behind.. lots of idiots around in the chat channels.
    Would be fun if they kept doing that and got reported and realized that even on live servers they are silenced.
  1. Colmadero's Avatar
    This can be abused but I suppose it's better than nothing.
  1. Telomir's Avatar
    SeemsGood / FeelsGoodMan
  1. mmoc3711817e2e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Colmadero View Post
    This can be abused but I suppose it's better than nothing.
    How when its "after investigation" only?
  1. Collie's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Colmadero View Post
    This can be abused but I suppose it's better than nothing.
    Players will only be silenced after an investigation by Blizzard, so I tend to think that the possibilities for abuse are fairly low.

    I'm really excited for this.
  1. Ryken's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Colmadero View Post
    This can be abused but I suppose it's better than nothing.
    They say upon review, so there will be a human element checking out if the numerous reports are valid, so no abuse.
  1. Irian's Avatar
    Holy shit, I actually called it. I was literally just saying that I would love something like this in the game.

    ...Well, okay. Someone else did and I posted in his thread. Wait...was it Jaylock? Oh god...Jaylock works for Blizzard, we should have known...

    That being said, I think this is an awesome idea. Prepare for douchebag tears. They will be delicious.
    I'm looking forward to hopefully a step towards a game that isn't run by a community comparable to MOBAs.

    Also, this will probably be fixed by the time I post this, but you guys got it reversed I think. The official post has the restrictions flipped. I was seriously worried for a second when I saw this that Blizzard had lost their minds.
  1. Williamgood's Avatar
    Trade chat will finally lose its spam?! Though hate these, because where is the fine line for calling out someone versus trolling/dangerous spam.
  1. Gallahadd's Avatar
    This is a huge step in the right direction. No more general and trade chat spam. No more event spam. Excellent set of changes.


    Let's just hope the spamtards and gold sellers don't think of a way around.
  1. Schmittay's Avatar
    I think there should be a maximum because it can really destroy an account. Nothing wrong with a month long ban to give people a seriously long time to think about it and those that keep doing it can only do it once per month.

    /shrug But seriously ignore is there for a reason.
  1. TheBaron87's Avatar
    I wonder how many people are going to go rant about the absurd restrictions now without ever double-checking the official source...
  1. Cinnamohn's Avatar
    Can't wait for this to backfire, not that there's much of a community left to be had.
  1. Fenixdown's Avatar
    As of two minutes ago, they fixed the post and it reads correctly.
  1. Soluna's Avatar
    From what I hear the lists have been switched accidentally which means that we can finally start silencing these idiots who keep spamming trade chat with boosts all day. Hope everyone does that so that these idiots can fuck off. Well done blizzard!
  1. Arrashi's Avatar
    So basically "You were banned from club penguin for saying "Damn, that bitch has fine tits !"" ?
  1. LazzySpazzy138's Avatar
    They better make damn well sure it is investigated THOROUGHLY and that they speak to BOTH PARTIES so as to make sure they know CONTEXT of the situation as well. Someone could very well have incited inflammatory responses JUST to get fuel to report for this shit. Bad decision imo, it's gonna backlash on Blizz hard.
  1. Xkiller9000's Avatar
    Wtf, that's pretty damn harsh...
  1. DesMephisto's Avatar
    Can't wait to abuse this.

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