wow Silence Penalty Coming to WoW!

[Valks 2,375]

There has often been problems in World of Warcraft social channels where players have felt that simply reporting someone and the resulting slap on the wrist just isn't enough. Blizzard seem to agree, so they're bringing a new system into WoW!

Check out the post describing the new silence penalty below:

Silence Penalty

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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.

 

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.

 

(source)

Now that we know what the penalty is, let's see exactly what a silenced player can or cannot do.

Silenced players can't:

• Talk in instance chat, such as in raids, party or battlegrounds.
• Talk in global channels that are automatically joined, such as General or Trade.
• Create calendar invites or events.
• Send in-game mail to anyone.
• Invite someone to a party.
• Start a war game.
• Challenge an enemy to a duel.
• Change a premade group information or listing.
• Create a new premade group.

Silenced players can:

• Send whispers to their friends, whether added on the normal friends list in-game or on Battle.net.
• Reply to whispers, regardless of who sends it, friend or not.
• Talk in party or raid chat with invited players.
• Create a party or a raid.
• Share quests with other players.
• Sign up to join a premade group.
• Talk in a global channel that has a moderator and requires manual access.

As you can see, there's a few important things that players who are silenced mind find extremely challenging to deal with. So how long does it take to lift this ban? 

Silence Length

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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.

(source)

Personally, I support this new system. I can only hope, however, that it is not abused. The fact that it is checked manually by Blizzard representatives means that, hopefully, people cannot mass-report players to have them silenced for no reason.

[Jorno 10]

6 hours ago, Blainie said:

Silenced Players Can't -> Invite someone to a party.
Silenced Players Can -> Create a party or a raid.

Think i'm lost with these changes.... How can one create a party without being able to invite anyone to it?
Per my understanding a party must exist with at least 2 players in it.

I'm more worried about when you'll actually receive this Silence Penalty. Is it based on 5 complaints or are we talking about 50 complaints? For example yesterday i was healing an instance with massive aoe damage on the floor (can't remember which one). And everybody died due to fact nobody avoided the aoe on the floor. From that point they started to curse at me saying i was the worst EU healer they have ever faced, bla bla bla. So i kinda got pissed and cursed back. From that point they all kicked me and all of them ignored me. -> So what would have happened if they had "silenced" me from that point. I would be unable to join parties and perform my activities for 24h.

Hopefully Blizzard has a good way of tracking this, so innocent players are not victims of this.

[Zadina 923]

5 hours ago, Jorno said:

Think i'm lost with these changes.... How can one create a party without being able to invite anyone to it?
Per my understanding a party must exist with at least 2 players in it.

Yes, a lot of people wondered about that. I think they mean that you can still start a party with friends and guildies, but not with random people.

I am concerned about people abusing the system, too. Even though complaints will be manually checked, Blizzard representatives can be unreliable sometimes (I do appreciate their work though!). Sometimes, if you get a GM on a bad day, then you are bound to have a bad day as well. The quality of their services differs between games too: in Heroes, they do check thoroughly the chat logs, but in Diablo there are multiple reports about false positives for bans (a different case, but you get my point).

I have to say I applaud Blizzard for sticking to their goals, though. I think some months ago they said in an Overwatch interview (or something similar) that they want to make player behaviour better. And truly, they have taken measures in all of their games to assure that. It would be really awesome if people became better thanks to Blizzard games!

[ghostdeini 12]

3 hours ago, Zadina said:

I have to say I applaud Blizzard for sticking to their goals, though. I think some months ago they said in an Overwatch interview (or something similar) that they want to make player behaviour better. And truly, they have taken measures in all of their games to assure that. It would be really awesome if people became better thanks to Blizzard games!

I agree with this 100%.  I've loved MMORPG's since I was first introduced to Everquest during their first expansion.  That's the reason I ended up in World of Warcraft.  Unfortunately, the downside to playing these games has always been player abuse.  Trolls exist in every game (let's face it every corner of the internet) but there hasn't really been a way to handle this other than ignore.  I love Blizzard's standpoint that players who come to this game solely to make others have a bad time should be punished.  It seems they're trying to improve the community in all of their games.  Well done Blizz.

[Valks 2,375]

7 hours ago, Jorno said:

Think i'm lost with these changes.... How can one create a party without being able to invite anyone to it?
Per my understanding a party must exist with at least 2 players in it.

To clarify this:

• I can start a party by inviting an individual, with us two being the first two members. 
• I cannot be given leader in a raid or party that I did not start and then invite them.
• I cannot invite someone into a raid if I am given assist.

It seems the distinction is who started the party.

3 hours ago, Zadina said:

Yes, a lot of people wondered about that. I think they mean that you can still start a party with friends and guildies, but not with random people.

I am concerned about people abusing the system, too. Even though complaints will be manually checked, Blizzard representatives can be unreliable sometimes (I do appreciate their work though!). Sometimes, if you get a GM on a bad day, then you are bound to have a bad day as well. The quality of their services differs between games too: in Heroes, they do check thoroughly the chat logs, but in Diablo there are multiple reports about false positives for bans (a different case, but you get my point).

I have to say I applaud Blizzard for sticking to their goals, though. I think some months ago they said in an Overwatch interview (or something similar) that they want to make player behaviour better. And truly, they have taken measures in all of their games to assure that. It would be really awesome if people became better thanks to Blizzard games!

Agreed. I've had completely different experiences with different representatives and on different games. It's like rolling a dice. 

[ghostdeini 12]

6 minutes ago, Blainie said:

To clarify this:

• I can start a party by inviting an individual, with us two being the first two members. 
• I cannot be given leader in a raid or party that I did not start and then invite them.
• I cannot invite someone into a raid if I am given assist.

It seems the distinction is who started the party.

 

That was how I interpreted it, but thanks for actually clarifying Blainie.

[Jorno 10]

16 hours ago, Blainie said:

To clarify this:

• I can start a party by inviting an individual, with us two being the first two members. 
• I cannot be given leader in a raid or party that I did not start and then invite them.
• I cannot invite someone into a raid if I am given assist.

It seems the distinction is who started the party.

Understood, now it makes sense :) Thanks for your feedback Blainie