#25 - May 2, 2011, 8:55 p.m.
Greetings Saynt,
I’ll start by saying that I’m afraid we’ll never be able to release the ‘ban statistics’ I believe you’re seeking, and this is for a number of reasons.
Firstly, we have an obligation to maintain the privacy of each and every one of our account holders and customers – this means that we won’t divulge information pertaining to your account (and actions taken on it, or reports made from it) to other players for any reason.
Secondly, I’m not too sure such statistics (if they
were collected) would necessary mean that much when viewed as a string of numbers. Would knowing that a specific number of players were suspended for X hours be of much benefit without knowing how many reports were received? And furthermore, if you knew how many reports had been made, how many of these reports would have been made regarding situations that
actually warranted action?
In general terms however, and leaving numbers aside,
every single harassment report we receive that concerns a situation where our in-game policies were violated is actioned accordingly.
Now it may be possible that your definition and our definition of ‘harassment’ or ‘inappropriate language’ differs somewhat, but that’s why we make our in-game policies (and indeed all our major policies) visible to players on our website;
In-Game Harassment Policyhttp://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_GB&articleId=50072These are the policies that we, as customer support, adhere to (although our internal guidelines are fleshed out a little more in order to further avoid any variation based on the personal sensibilities of the support agents dealing with these cases on a daily basis).
We do not, however, believe in permanently excluding a player from the game based on a single minor offense or policy violation – everyone has the potential to get angry sometimes, or lose their temper in a bad situation, and we believe we scale the severity of account action appropriately based on the seriousness of what has been said, and the potential for offense to the affected player-base at the time, as well as any history of previous infractions on the account.
I’m afraid there’s perhaps little more for me to say on this matter, but I would encourage you (in the gametime you have remaining) to
please continue to report to us any offensive, abusive or inappropriate language you may come across – being in a situation where we’re regrettably unable to maintain active monitoring of in-game chat channels, you the players are our eyes and ears and we greatly value your contribution in keeping the game environment as friendly and free from unnecessary profanity as possible. :)
