Blizzard: Moon Guard Goldshire

#0 - April 26, 2010, 6:57 p.m.

To whom it may concern:

I recently began levelling an alt on the Moon Guard Realm in order to join an RP faction stationed out of Stormwind. In doing so, I was subjected to Goldshire general chat which I must say was the most horrifying experience I've ever had in a video game. Some of the things said in local and /says, not to mention e-motes made me recoil in horror. Something needs to be done to put a stop to this. I'm 23 years old and found the content of such to simply be unacceptable. There is no telling how many young teenagers who play this game have rolled characters on Moon Guard and unwittingly subjected themselves to this behavior. I realize that the game states that experiences may change during online play, however, the behavior is simply not acceptable in a T-rated video game.

Blizzard, put a stop to this! Reporting seems to do nothing as day-in and day-out the same behavior continues. It is unacceptable that this should be considered the "norm" for any area of a realm. Yes, it is avoidable and I got out of Goldshire as quickly as possible. Yet again, when taking into consideration the age groups that play this game and that new players may not know other means of levelling are available it quickly becomes apparent that this sort of behavior simply should not be allowed. Have a GM patrol Goldshire for an hour around prime time and you'd be hard-pressed not to find at least 100 bannable offenses.

I digress... Blizzard, do something about this or I will. Hell, I'll call Chris Hansen if I have to.

-Ogreth

Malkorix

#72 - April 26, 2010, 10:42 p.m.

Q u o t e:

You may be right, I won't pretend to know the laws/rights concerning companies and the discretion at their disposal for this kind of thing. For those saying report, report, report; please understand what a daunting task this is for a run-of-the-mill player. Should I really have to spend hours standing around in Goldshire just to report all the miscreants? Instead, Blizzard needs to take responsibility for what is going on in their game. I refuse to believe they haven't received countless petitions regarding to the behavior that goes on here. Ultimately yes, it is up to the players to dictate the behavior that goes on in the servers. At the same time, Blizzard needs to convey a clear message that this sort of thing will not be tolerated.

Actually, we do take responsibility for enforcing our policies, and by extension, what occurs in-game. Our goal is to provide the best possible play environment for all our players, which is why these policies, and the reporting system itself, exist. It remains that it is not feasible to 'patrol' chat channels, or even specific regions on given realm type. We've posted on the subject of 'realm policing' in the past:

Game Master Proactive Policing Feasibility
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=86808775&sid=1#7

It is by necessity that our policies are reactive in nature rather than proactive. They can and do remain effective, so long as those who encounter potentially inappropriate behavior afford us the opportunity to investigate. If you should encounter behavior which you believe to be inappropriate and in violation of our policies (http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20309), then please submit an in-game petition to report the name and realm of the offending character, as well as a description of what you observed. We do investigate and deal appropriately with the reports we receive, though it is worthy of note that we will not reveal the actions taken against another player's account due to our privacy policies.

It is best to restrict your reports to reasonably detailed accounts what you've actually witnessed, rather than what you might suspect to be occurring. A mass report of 'everything in Goldshire is terrible, plz halp', on the other hand, is probably an ineffective means of reporting.

Malkorix

#97 - April 27, 2010, 2:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:

Well, back from work and I can't say I was expecting anything else out of a blue response. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I realize it's about the bottom line especially in these economic times; luckily for you Selfridge and his "customer is always right" maxim has been shot down. Please realize that to some players, or maybe just me, this comes off as a very shallow approach to ensuring quality of gameplay. Guess we're fortunate more companies don't take this approach.

It's very easy to simply say 'fix it'. The reality is that improving World of Warcraft and creating a positive in-game environment is an ongoing process that requires effort from all parties. It remains a process that we are quite dedicated to.

World of Warcraft is enormous. The resources involved in attempting to 'police' or 'patrol' a small portion of World of Warcraft for a single hour, let alone a whole day, are pretty staggering. Would that this were the only issue facing us. As it happens though, there are many, many issues that the players of World of Warcraft bring to our attention every day, on all realm types, ranging from harassment to character restoration to assistance with raids and stuck characters and beyond. All the requests and reports our players present are all extremely important to us, and we need to allocate resources to make sure that every player's needs are met.

I have given the best and most appropriate advice I can, though I am genuinely saddened to see that my response was interpreted as 'shallow' or dismissive. I want to say that our approach to the subject really is anything but dismissive, and we take harassment and inappropriate behavior quite seriously. When confronted with something you believe to be against the spirit of World of Warcraft, I hope that you are willing to take a moment to give us a chance to look into it.

If you have ideas regarding how we can improve this aspect of our service, we are more than willing to hear constructive feedback provided on our Suggestions forum as well.

Finally, if you are going to quote Ghostcrawler, it's perhaps best to quote him in context?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23767540911&sid=1&pageNo=9#166

Q u o t e:

We spent a lot of time designing hard mode Arthas and for that matter Yogg 0 and Algalon too. If we targeted all of our content at the parts of the game the largest percentage of players are doing, then we would release almost all of our content for level 1-10 players. Obviously that logic doesn't make sense, but I'd argue neither does the logic that a minority of players participate in Arena, therefore the experience doesn't have to be a good one.

With your signature in mind, the question arises: what is your intention here?