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

[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.

So you're saying you don't like people who enjoy the game for different reasons than you do to keep playing? Or are you saying differing opinions are a reason to celebrate someone leaving an activity? Do you genuinely celebrate another gamer not playing a game?

What do you mean "people like me?" I'm feeling stereotyped...



They could just make a mostly unfiltered chat channel with different criteria for reports and call the channel Barrens Chat. Since it would be opt in and no one could be offended by it without first choosing to visit it (and of course be clearly warned about potential chat content) then both the people who wish to say what they will and the people who wish to not experience certain things could theoretically coexist without infringing on the desired experiences of the other.

No, I'm saying that people whose only source of fun has been expressly stated as something that both lessens the enjoyment of other players and is against the TOS, that's worth celebrating.

That said, I would totally support your suggestion of an opt-in channel of the sort you describe. That'd be fine. However, I question whether people whose main enjoyment is offending others would get much satisfaction from chatting in a channel populated solely by people who aren't going to take offense at anything they say.

 

[Jburton9]

Hmm well this sounds pretty automated and I feel it is aimed more at gold farmer bots and auto spammers, troll player blocking seems to be an added bonus. Hopefully this will have some decent people at the helm for review before taking action.

Another possibility, ActiBlizz is actually trying to retain subscribers with this feature in promoting a more hospitable environment. Hopefully they will add it quickly after expansion release if that is their intentions. Gotta catch them in that 30 day window before they start staring at the cancel subscription button heh.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Back in my day, we simply did not invite assholes into raids and guilds!
Whuzzat, sonny? raidfinder? you mean yer gettin' lost on the way there?
*shakes gnarled cane at them kids these days*

Social dynamics used to be a feature in these games, whether they were deliberate or not, cross-server groupfinding got people a certain sense of anonymity since you would likely never meet these same people again, nor could you really take steps to avoid them if they really did come from another server, and with anonymity inevitably comes asshattery.

Assholes did excist in the game from the beginning, which only meant less people wanted to associate with them as a result, ignore lists were enough if they truly did bother you.

 

[Elijin]

I cant tell whether I'm behind the ideas thrown around in this discussion about separated chats for people of varying temperament. I mean very obviously, the people who are genuine trolls rather than just those with a offkey sense of humour will have a targeted audience to cause trouble with, so on one hand it wouldn't work. On the other hand, that would make it real easy to ban the genuine trolls, and not catch the people with offkey humour in the sweep....so...it....might work?

Changing lanes, I think online communities have reached this ridiculous level of paranoia towards PC/SJW that any mention of curtailing negative behaviour or censoring trolls is immediately labelled as people being soft skinned, and various other condescending nonsense that seems to blatantly ignore how awful these problems can(not always are, but can) be.

 

[MHR]

The internet; second-greatest invention besides the printing press for expressing ideas and dispelling ignorant bullshit. It forms factions like anything else -- just look at Facebook and you can find literal loons writing pure fiction that retarded people will believe as truth. Those factions are self-made. They don't need any arbitrary help to divide the community into "good" and "bad" players. Safe spaces don't need to happen in a place everyone is supposed to enjoy for better or worse.

As for legitimate problems caused by general chat toxicity (lol fite me IRL [slurr],) I can't think of any off the top of my head. MMOs have had harassment policies since the beginning of server-time. If someone is singling you out just to cause you shit 'cuz reasons, tell a GM to look at it and they actually do already get banned, or you could just hit the ignore.

In shooters, votekick is your friend.

In MOBAs hate is part of the experience. If you're not getting yelled at for being a shit dumpster that can't lane to save your own worthless life, I think you installed Hearthstone by mistake. In League they have this tribunal thing. I approve of it because it pits the community against itself. Answer hate and anger with more anger-inducing sanctions. I think in DOTA you just report people, I dunno, maybe Valve will get around to addressing your customer concerns, and maybe the VA hospital will clear up its paperwork problem at the same time.

In Hearthstone spam them "well played"s all you want, hit squelch, or don't accept "friend" requests from the user you just defeated just so they can reveal their deepest love for your deck and social status.

In all cases of any severity, leveling up your skin's thickness stat is essential.

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.

I don't have much faith in Blizzard's ability to "investigate" chat infractions.

I got reported for saying "ho" and got a language warning. Wasn't even in a very aggressive context. I wasn't even talking directly to anyone. It wasn't even in trade chat. Adding an automated system without even timely appeals seems like a messy solution.

 

[Strazdas]

Another possibility, ActiBlizz is actually trying to retain subscribers with this feature in promoting a more hospitable environment. Hopefully they will add it quickly after expansion release if that is their intentions. Gotta catch them in that 30 day window before they start staring at the cancel subscription button heh.

Given what we saw with Overwatch name debacle where their "Bad name" detecting algorythm got so out of hand it started censoring regular words id say Blizzard is not retaining subscribers by creating a system where a group of trolls can silence anyone they want.

 

[Phasmal]

Well, good. This probably should have been added several years ago, but I guess this is fine.

In all cases of any severity, leveling up your skin's thickness stat is essential.

Pffffft, I think the people who are now upset they might get silenced are the ones who need to 'level up' themselves. If you break rules, you'll get punished, simple as.

I do kinda find it funny that for years the go-to answer was "Just ignore them/block them" and now an automute function is being implemented to give some actual repercussions to these people - now it's suddenly people's skin isn't thick enough.

Nah, fuck 'em. Talk shit, get hit (with a silence penalty).

 

[MHR]

Well thicker skins all around is all well and good, but without the system the worst case scenario was you go emo and cut yourself.

If you can't chat with people, you can't play WoW right. I know what I think is the lesser of two evils.

But it's probably just for spambots, guild shill macro spam, and [SLURR! SLURR! SLURR! SLURR!] spammers anyway. I'm just glad I got out of that shitty game precisely when I started to smell the winds of shit blowing in. Before it became a shit storm. (Wrath of the Lich King)