Blizzard Looks to Clean Up World of Warcraft Chat with New Silence Penalties

[ffronw]

Blizzard Looks to Clean Up World of Warcraft Chat with New Silence Penalties

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1335/1335842.jpgA new silence penalty is coming for those who abuse World of Warcraft's chat channels.

World of Warcraft's chat channels have been notorious for years. Even those who don't play have likely heard players describe "Barrens chat" and the plethora of Chuck Norris jokes and other things found within. There have also been those who abused chat channels to harass and annoy others. Blizzard is looking to address those issues with a new addition coming in the pre-expansion patch for Legion: the Silence Penalty.

Once the patch hits, Blizzard says that, "Any player who is reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will, after investigation, receive an account-wide silence penalty." What does that mean? Well, it means that your ability to use in-game chat will be severely limited.

Players under a silence penalty will not be able to do any of the following:

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

Those players will still be able to whisper friends, reply to all whispers, use party and raid chat with invited players, create parties and raids, share quests, and sign up for pre-made groups.

That's a fairly meaningful penalty, and for first offenders it will last 24 hours. But if a player receives multiple silence penalties, the duration will double each time such a penalty is assessed, and there is no maximum. Habitual offenders may find themselves without full chat privileges for quite some time.

You can check out the official word from Blizzard on this new feature over at Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/20177160/new-silence-penalty-coming-to-world-of-warcraft-7-12-2016]. This may not completely clean up WoW's chat, but it will definitely be a step in the right direction.

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[Tuesday Night Fever]

I wonder how many reports constitutes "many" to Blizzard, and whether or not the system is automated or actually investigated by a GM.

If the "many" is too small of a number, that opens up the possibility of coordinated abuse of the system to troll players. If "many" is too large of a number, the system's simply not going to work for anything beyond extreme scenarios.

While I wouldn't mind chat channels in MMORPGs being a friendlier place, I'm not quite sure that this is the way to do it. This looks like another potential mistake on Blizzard's part, continuing a trend of such actions with WoW.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Barrens chat was one of the few things I ever enjoyed about WOW. And it was a great thing to taunt the Alliance with.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Does anyone care at this point? It's only like a decade late.

 

[Vanished]

I wonder how many reports constitutes "many" to Blizzard, and whether or not the system is automated or actually investigated by a GM.

If the "many" is too small of a number, that opens up the possibility of coordinated abuse of the system to troll players. If "many" is too large of a number, the system's simply not going to work for anything beyond extreme scenarios.

While I wouldn't mind chat channels in MMORPGs being a friendlier place, I'm not quite sure that this is the way to do it. This looks like another potential mistake on Blizzard's part, continuing a trend of such actions with WoW.

It says the punishment is only issued after investigation so I would assume someone actually checks beforehand. In addition I'm sure anyone grouping up to troll will find themselves getting punished after reports are reviewed.

 

[mythgraven]

"investigated". Which means the trolls and asshats who use chat for this very thing, will now have a weaponized report system. Yippee.

 

[MatthewTheDark]

If someone's an asshat, by all means have them muted, but I feel all the other stuff they're pretty much unable to do after silence seems to be a bit much.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Great, take away one of the few remaining fun aspects of WoW. Trade chat trolls are one of the few things that keep you entertained while waiting for your queue to pop. What a bunch of killjoys. smh

 

[Remus]

Well, an expanded ignore list wasn't entirely effective enough. Even with an ignore list of 200 or so, there's still thousands of douchebags in chat. I often had to resort to cutting out my chat window completely, which is great if you want to play WoW like a single-player RPG, terrible for progression.

 

[flying_whimsy]

About time somebody started bringing out a big hammer for these issues. I love the full extent of that punishment: it still allows for play with friends but effectively gags you if you actually deserve it. I suspect it'll take some fine tuning to find that magic number of reports that trigger action, but once they do it make the game a lot more fun for people that aren't just there to be shit.

 

[MHR]

Aaah Barrens chat. Good times.

This sounds like a response to gold/level spammers more than anything else. Get slapped with 30 reports in an hour and somebody looks into it. Reasonable.

But it's mostly pointless. If you don't like naughty things in your chats, don't read them. As if you ever actually trade in trade chat. Get real.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

A nice idea I guess. Won't really affect me given that I left the all the global channels on all my characters long ago anyway.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Yawn... anyone get the feeling this will be the last Expack? Even among those I know who still manage to play WoW the feeling towards Legion is sorta 'meh'. Been wondering, wwhay even add a new class, only thing that does is make the other classes more one-note so the new class actually serves a purpose.

 

[Flathole]

oh boy, now trade chat will go from waifu arguments and "can metroid take off his gun or is it strapped to him?" to "RAIDING GUILD RECRUITING MATURE, SERIOUS PLAYERS, NO VULGARITY IN GCHAT MUST HAVE ILVL 777+ LINK ACHIEVES GO TO WWW.GUILDS.GUILDNAME.COM TO FILL OUT APPLICATION $5 PROCESSING FEE REQUIRED" being spammed every 30 seconds.

Can't wait for an automatic 24 hour silence because I typed "damn" in a BG.

 

[Buffoon1980]

Being able to say outrageous and ridiculous things and spout random (sometimes offensive jokes) was a main source of fun in wow. Now that they're getting rid of the one fun thing to do in that MMO what's the point of playing it.

Aw man, I had doubts that this system would do any good, but if it persuades people like to stop playing, it's already doing great work. And it hasn't even been implemented yet! So awesome.

 

[infohippie]

About time somebody started bringing out a big hammer for these issues. I love the full extent of that punishment: it still allows for play with friends but effectively gags you if you actually deserve it. I suspect it'll take some fine tuning to find that magic number of reports that trigger action, but once they do it make the game a lot more fun for people that aren't just there to be shit.

What "issues"? That some people are too thin skinned to be playing games with other people? That some people think being "offended" means something important? I've not even played WoW since WotLK but Barrens chat is one of the few things from it I still remember fondly. I didn't even have to say anything in it to be entertained, just sitting back and reading all the shit talk was entertainment enough.

 

[flying_whimsy]

What "issues"? That some people are too thin skinned to be playing games with other people? That some people think being "offended" means something important? I've not even played WoW since WotLK but Barrens chat is one of the few things from it I still remember fondly. I didn't even have to say anything in it to be entertained, just sitting back and reading all the shit talk was entertainment enough.

Wow, pretty vehement response there. I was thinking more generally than WoW as far as the issues of toxic communities and unending verbal abuse are concerned. Only thing I remember WoW chat for is an endless stream of gold farmers, so it's more of a 'your mileage may vary' kind of thing.

That said, I am happy to see someone taking more than just simple punitive measures about dealing with toxic players and I hope it sets an example for the rest of the online game industry about being able to be stern. For the record, I don't actually care about it being offensive; I just don't need it screamed in my face all the time. You might enjoy that, but other people may not and it has nothing to do with it being 'offensive'.

 

[Nilanius]

Honestly, this feature is something all games should look into doing. The other day, someone spouted off about how all the people in florida deserved to die, and went on to racist remarks, and generally being the most toxic person would could encounter. This system, will put an end to such toxicity.

WoW is a social game. But there's a limit to what is, and is not acceptable, and I am glad to see them taking a stance to clean it up.