Conquest of the Horde

I was exploring the blogosphere this morning when I came across a link to this thread on the Blizzard Customer Service Forums. In a brief summary, a mother of a young teenage boy recently canceled her son's World of Warcraft account. She found that he and his friends were spending time in Goldshire on the Moon Guard roleplaying server, watching the various activities that go on in that area. Dismayed by Blizzard's apparent lack of concern, she decided to create the thread explaining her actions and also her disappointment.

Arrestide (a recent addition to the CS Forums staff) had the following reply:

Quote:This topic is not a new one, and we know it's a concern for our players and our player-parents. We hear perennial complaints about spots in our game where this activity is said to take place, and Moon Guard Goldshire appears in that list with some regularity.

Often the public assumption is that unless a GM appears with a crack of lightning and a mighty hammer, Blizzard is turning a blind eye.... this is very much not the case, so I'm hoping to shed a little more light on this topic from Blizzard's perspective.

For reference, the In-Game Harassment Policy:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article. ... leId=20226

Our Intent
It's our goal (and in our interests, obviously), to present a safe and accessible environment for play. While defining "offensive" behavior can be subjective, the policy linked above reflects our working definition, and our intent to keep certain types of offensive behavior from affecting the play experience.

Enforcement
With millions of players in hundreds of servers and thousands of channels, it is impossible to manually monitor everywhere. To this end, World of Warcraft provides features to help players protect themselves and help us moderate accordingly:

- Profanity/obscenity filter to automatically intercept the most obvious offensive language
- The ability to report any player violating the rules
- Ignore functionality to remove individuals from appearing in chat

No single one of these, by itself, is always sufficient. It's critical to understand the rules we're enforcing, and where they apply. Relevant to this case, whisper chat between two consenting individuals, guildmates, etc is not an area we are out to pro-actively police. Any offensive in-game behavior needs to be reported in order to receive the right followup.

"Punish in Private"
Some posters on this thread have suggested that Blizzard ignores those reports. From several years as a manager for our call centers, I can promise you that we take action routinely.... because they call us. Or they email us. Sometimes there's blame placed on a roommate or sibling, sometimes an account thief committed the offense, etc. The point is that players appeal because players receive actions. You won't see it happen.... well, unless it happens to you. Otherwise you can only decide whether you will take our word on it.

Okay, what now?
Members of our CS team will 'patrol' Goldshire on Moon Guard on a regular basis, and take appropriate action for individuals violating the Harassment Policy. Note that this pertains primarily to public messages (/say, /yell, General) and unsolicited whispers. We won't be showing up with that mythical crack of lightning-- we'll just be watching silently for any rule-breaking language and following up privately with the player[s] in question.

I found the response particularly interesting because it's a marked difference from Blizzard's reactive stance regarding the enforcement of their own policies. The company typically maintains a reactive policy, in which they respond to complaints made by players, whether they are through the in-game ticket system, phone, email, or on the forums. Exceptions in the past typically related to problems that would break gameplay, such as using various botting programs (remember all of the people banned a few years back for either having WoW Glider on their computers or having used their credit cards to purchase the program?), gold selling, and Arena exploitation.

Comments made later in the thread reveal that not a lot of people will be engaged in the active enforcement of the harassment policies, but at least they're making an effort to do so.

I do feel that being a more visible presence in-game would help alleviate a lot of the concerns that players have regarding the Blizzard staff. They've always been so aloof, which is a big difference from any other MMO that I've ever played.

Oh yeah, I've always wondered what would happen if they got complaints from parents, thanks for posting this Piroska.

Just so you know, largely it is all stuck in the Goldshire inn.
Largely.

Quote:"Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB."


Sorry.

Looooool,
That's what the first response was xD xD
Blizz cracks me up at times!

Yeah, I've heard that excuse so much. It makes me lul.

Now if blizzard would just purge Cybermoon city...

Goldshire and Silvermoon City tend to be the hotspots where this sort of thing happens. It's not always the same on every server, but a lot of them (roleplaying servers in particular) run into these kinds of problems.

Quite sad really, Silvermoon has so much more to offer and had the potential to be a place for good rp, sadly you are right Piro. I think it has been that was since the start of TBC.

It's high time they start becoming more active and/or be seen by the players. That way players won't feel tempted to break rules knowing that a GM could be there... Hiding

Well, keep in mind! What people do via whispers or are in party is their own business. As a result, players are still able to explore those kinds of concepts in these areas without breaking the rules -- which is fine by me! The problem is the proliferation of this kind of thing in public channels, particularly /s.

I agree with Piroska, Whatever said in whisper and party chat is the player's responsibility, and should be controlled by a parent somewhat...
Though what said on a public channel is really important, and should the aspect controlled.