Notes

Should WoW Players be Held Accountable for Accountability for Players?

Blizzard's policies regarding reporting players has been the same since day one. Report any problem you have with the player. Blizzard will reach out to thank you for reporting the issue, but it does not provide any information regarding what it did to fix it. This is something I have always known. In all the years that I worked in customer service and call center jobs on and off, rule #1 was that you were not able to communicate with anyone else than the account holder concerning the status of the account. To me this policy seems to me like Blizzard policy is a continuation of the same treatment. Blizzard cannot tell you about actions taken against another player's account because, well, the account isn't theirs You know? It's personal information.



However, I've been required to report a lot of players over the years, and never knew if there was any actions were taken against them. In the case of simple name violations, such as using an inappropriate word for the name of a character or guild I can usually determine if something was done because the guild or person concerned will have their name changed. You never know what they've been told in the event of harassment by a player. You can only hope that the person who harassed you will stop harassing you and that it will stop but there aren't assurances.



Pugnacious Priest wrote an interesting article on player complaints and reporting, particularly in the League of Legends world. It appears that League of Legends is doing something totally unusual in the world of gaming -It is taking these reported cases and letting the players decide if there's something that needs to be accountable for or not. Pugnacious Priest takes it one step further and wonders if this system could be implemented in WoW.



WoW has seen its fair moments of jerks throughout the time, whether it was people who stole gear, players who deliberately caused drama, players who used GearScore to gauge another player's validity, players who used Recount to rub higher DPS numbers on other players' faces - the list goes on and on. WoW has also had its fair share of people who are out there simply to make another person's life miserable, whether it's because of a bizarre sense of entitlement, personal vendetta, or just the urge to be as obnoxious as you can in an environment where nobody will notice you.



It's odd that WoW does not have a premise for accountability of players. Wow Data Vanilla had players sequestered on different servers , and each was a tightly knit community. One thing you could count on from these servers is that just as in any small town there was a lot of conversation. Anyone who did anything that was considered to be infuriating to the server in general was immediately removed from guilds, raids and instance runs. They were kicked out. Back then it was impossible to pay for a change in your name or transfer servers. You could either make amends and attempt to rectify the error or begin on a different server on the same level.



This bizarre watchdog system for WoW has virtually vanished. The potential playerbase that Raid Finder and Dungeon Finder systems can draw from is staggering. There is almost no chance of encountering an offensive player more times than once. Why should you? It's not like they'll ever see you again.



It makes strange sense on one side. You can draw from more players and you won't have an offender who is a regular, or extreme harassment. This system, on other hand , lets players be jerks whenever and wherever they'd like. Why would they do that? There's no reason for anyone to bother to report them.



This is one of those nebulous little conundrums that doesn't really provide a clear solution. Do we sacrifice the flexibility and ease of things such as the Raid Finder and the Dungeon Finder to be able to go back to that self-policing state again? Do we allow offensive players to continue being offensive? Pugnacious Priest asked whether we should implement an approach similar to LoL and let the players decide who is right or wrong.


Here's my website: https://wowdad.net/