Blizzard to clean up 'World of Warcraft' chat with upcoming silence penalties

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,255   +192
Staff member

Like most games these days with a chat component, World of Warcraft has its fair share of abrasive, abusive or otherwise annoying players that try their best to ruin the experience for others. Fortunately – at least, for WoW players – Blizzard is finally doing something about it.

As part of its upcoming pre-expansion patch for Legion, any player that is reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will be subject to investigation by Blizzard. If it is determined that the player is indeed being a jerk, they will receive an account-wide silence penalty.

While the penalty is active, the player will be 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

They will, however, still be 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

Blizzard notes that the penalty for first-time offenders will last 24 hours. With each successive penalty they receive, the restriction time will double with no limit. It would be nice if there was an upper limit that resulted in a permanent ban although I can see why they wouldn’t want to take it to that extreme of a measure.

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It would be nice if there was an upper limit that resulted in a permanent ban although I can see why they wouldn’t want to take it to that extreme of a measure.

24, 48, 96, 192, 384, 768, 1536, 3072, [...]

Any chronically abusive player will effectively suffer a self-initiated permaban.
 
I thought at first they were talking about a penalty for those that are silent (such as myself). I was getting ready to say that wasn't fair. As it turns out, I completely agree with this.
 
If a person gets silenced for a month, they're probably going to cancel their subscription during that time. It's possible they'll come back and perhaps they just might not.
Depending on the level of abuse, blizzard should not be doing this. There is a feature in chat to Ignore a player. There is a huge difference in being Abusive and Annoying; and most of the time players are just being annoying - and it's these annoying players I ignore.
 
Exactly. Just like in Dota, you have a option to ignore voice and chat, so instead of bitching, click two button and you won't be annoyed anymore by that player.
 
If a person gets silenced for a month, they're probably going to cancel their subscription during that time. It's possible they'll come back and perhaps they just might not.
Depending on the level of abuse, blizzard should not be doing this. There is a feature in chat to Ignore a player. There is a huge difference in being Abusive and Annoying; and most of the time players are just being annoying - and it's these annoying players I ignore.
Exactly. Just like in Dota, you have a option to ignore voice and chat, so instead of bitching, click two button and you won't be annoyed anymore by that player.

And this is probably why it took them until 2016 to do this when the game came out in like 2004. The problem is though there are too many people to ignore. over the years they've done things to increase the amount of people you can talk to... Here's what happened...
1) they made battle grounds cross-realm so you wouldn't have to wait as long to get enough players to create a match.
2) they made low-level zones cross realm so you wouldn't be the only person running around questing in some starting area.
3)now I think even cities are cross-realm, but I haven't played in years, so I don't actually know.

They did other stuff like this too, and as a result it's perfectly ok for someone to be a complete jerk because there's no risk of reputation harm due to the people you're abusing being from a different realm (server).

Sure, you could ignore them, but that doesn't stop the behavior, it just means the jerk will upset someone else. Blizz also needs new players and that means more younger players, and it only takes 1 F-bomb - c0c****ker - M'r F'r to get a parent to cancel a sub.

In my opinion this is WAY overdue.
 
I should also mention that there are language filters in-place that filter out bad language on every new account. You have to disable that filter to see everything.
 
Exactly. Just like in Dota, you have a option to ignore voice and chat, so instead of bitching, click two button and you won't be annoyed anymore by that player.

that's fine, if there was only a single *****, or even a few *****s. but as a long time player I know there are MANY hundred *****s, and they often have multiple names/accounts. having to only click two buttons for them all is more work thank I should need to do as a conscientious and polite player.

I completely agree with this new rule as it puts the responsibility on the troublemakers to change their behavior rather than the rest of the player base.
 
I thought at first they were talking about a penalty for those that are silent (such as myself). I was getting ready to say that wasn't fair. As it turns out, I completely agree with this.


I am confused, why would a silent player be worried about being forced to be silent?
 
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