Harassment, stalkers, and how the current rules and /ignore mechanics doesn't stop them. Idea bouncing on how to fix that

Argent Dawn
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Hello! This is going to becoming a bit ranty so I apologize in advance.

I normally stay well clear of the forums because my few interactions with it has been mainly negative. It may have changed for the better since (it’s been a few years after all, and it’s good to try to be positive, right?) so here we go.

Last night I made two tickets to Support about stalkers. One that’s gone after me in the past and another that’s after a friend of mine. I’ve been lucky to never really have been a stalker’s main target (or at least it hasn’t been a vocal one. Who knows, I might have 20 creeps recording me as we speak that I just never noticed.), which as it turns out, becomes an issue when it comes for asking Support for help.

Here’s a VERY watered down list of how yesterday went down:

  • I make two tickets, both explaining the case with either stalker. They are (as far as I am aware) not related to each other, thus the separate tickets.
  • A very nice GM responds within minutes, explains stuff about how the moderating works and what they can do + what an offending player needs to do for Support to be able to step in.
  • The GM did mix up my tickets, probably thinking they were about the same person, so I got a copy paste response on the other one. I made a response to that and they later contacted me in game for a live chat where we talked in more detail. I super appreciate that, even though the results of the chat were frustrating still.

You see, all of that time spent explaining stuff, talking about how to fix things, and generally just asking for help handling a problem I’m not equipped to solve, boiled down to a sentence I’ve come to loathe over the years:

“They’re techincally not breaking any rules.”

Following people around in game isn’t against the rules, so nothing can be done about that.

Taking screenshots of people isn’t against the rules, so nothing can be done about that. Doesn’t matter if they do it for years, recording your every moment in preparation to use that in some malicious way. You CAN report it if they put it in a forum post or in game somehow, but you’ll have to be lucky enough to spot that yourself and in time before it kicks off some nasty rumour or five. (AD loves a witch hunt and nothing sets a RP community on fire faster than hearing that some stranger you never met did something fecked up. Suddenly everyone has an opinion and you trust the first words you hear about it, regardless of if they’re true or completely made up.)

What about saying offensive stuff? If it isn’t a swear, a slur, a threat or the like, it isn’t technically against the rules. Telling someone how you will follow a person until they ‘go away’, or ‘until they understand that everyone hates them and they need to disappear’ didn’t seem to count as saying something offensive.

Spreading rumours isn’t against the rules, or at least it isn’t being enforced because Support can’t efficiently check who’s telling the truth in a matter of “he said she said” between two people. More than two people involved? That becomes a understandable mess to figure out for people not directly involved, which is why tickets addressing people who haven’t 100% gone for you specifically is discouraged.

Frustrating because it means you can’t help a friend, even if you know things that could help an investigation.

What the stalker said to me about their targets was a freaky thing to experience, but it wasn’t aimed at -me-, so those borderline threats that I got a full log of with timestamps for Support to eye? Useless.

My partner made a similar ticket adressing the stalker going after me and him specifically, and one of the things brought up was how in the past the stalker spent years following us around, screenshotting everything we did, and then in some cases editing on explicit fake emotes onto the screenshots to use as ‘proof’. He put all of his ‘evidence’ in a forum post basically asking the good people of AD to block, report, and hunt down these horrible people roleplaying sex in public.

My partner didn’t have a link to the forum post (which got taken down after people flagged it, so we couldn’t exactly google our way back to it either since it’s gone from the forums). -I- had some old screenshots though that would at the very least have given Support a time frame for when the post was up, which would have made looking through any archives of removed posts (I assume they have some. Many sites do) a lot easier.

But since we were two separate people making separate tickets, no cooperation between our GMs could be had from the sounds of it. I couldn’t provide anything my partner lacked that would have helped their case, nor could anything they said or experienced be taken into account for my own ticket.

So from the sounds of it, as long as you technically don’t break any rules, you’re free to do whatever the feck. As long as you’re creative enough harassment is fair game. As long as you’re careful about it, Support won’t stop you, as long as you don’t directly break any of the very specific rules.

That’s enough ranting. Let’s bounce some ideas on how to fix it! I’ve a few ideas myself. Some I’m pretty sure would have a positive effect, others I’m less certain on, but better suggest and hear from others what they think that and learn of facts I didn’t think of.

Here’s some things I think would help players combat harassment:

  • Blocking people should be account-wide.
    Having to manually block a guy on every alt you play is a fiddly task, especially if you end up making a new alt later and forget to block someone.

  • Being able to set a Note to the name on your Ignore List,
    similar to how you can add notes to people you have on your Friend List, would help a ton in remembering -why- you blocked certain people. I’ve got bad memory. I won’t remember that Orcboyxbigaxe spammed me with racist stuff two weeks after I blocked him. Oh he joined the guild? I got him blocked for some reason? Odd. Can’t remember why so let’s unblock him because we need to be able to talk to play in the guild- oh there’s the slurs again. He sent me a long nasty message with some really upsetting stuff. That could have been avoided with a quick note. (Orcboyxbigaxe is a made up name used as an example. If there’s someone with that name out there, I’m very sorry.)

  • Let me block a guild.
    Every now and then there’s a whole pack of people you don’t get along with. Could be because they’re all rude and terrible, it could be because you just don’t vibe with their RP. People block others for all sorts of reasons, and that is fine. Blocking is a way to curate your space by avoiding people that will upset you, for whatever reason. Blocking every single member (assuming you find a way to look up their guild roster) is a chore and a half, especially if you need to keep up to date with it as they add NEW members.
    If I have a whole guild that I really can’t stand, knowing that blocking them by the guild rather than individual players will keep them from interacting with me, would be a huge relief.

  • Is people you’ve blocked being unable to see your messages still a thing?
    I’ve heard mixed reports on that one. If it is a thing, great! If not, can we have that? I’m pretty sure some GMs in the past and other Support threads have mentioned it being a thing. I’d like it to be a thing.

  • Make it clear if you’re blocked.
    Here’s one of the ones I’m unsure if it could have negative consequences, but I -think- it would have mostly positive ones. Could be something simple like the name of the character that has you blocked turns red, or a little ‘x’ icon or something next to it. Their messages (if they’re visible) are red in chat? Some indication.

I want this for a few different reasons:

  1. If someone blocked me and I don’t know about it, I might try to interacting with them for awhile before I realize they don’t want me near them. This happens a lot in RP where you’re often in a crowd of people. One person not responding to you could be because they missed a message or the like. “They blocked me” isn’t the first assumption one draws.

  2. If a person that blocked me who I agreed to stay away from is on an alt that I don’t know is them, the ‘blocked’ indication would tell me to leave them alone. Saves us both time and sanity if I don’t approach them thinking they’re a person I haven’t met before.

  3. If I happen to join a guild and suddenly a LOT of people nearby turns red (or whatever the indication that I’m blocked would be), then that tells me something instantly about the guild I just joined. I can ask my new guildies about it then, stick around if the explanation is fair, or leave to avoid getting dragged into whatever drama this new guild has with the other folks in the hub.

I’ve had some guilds that harassed me in the past go “We have a lot of new members. It’s unfair of you to ignore them. Being suddenly ignored hurts them.” Then it spiraled into arguments that I HAD to play with these guilds because of the innocent new people. If my name is marked as “blocking you” from the start, clear and visible, they won’t approach me and get a surprise ignore or bad response.

Finding out that you’ve been blocked can suck hard, it hurts feelings more often than not, but I think that if you ARE blocked, you’ll find out about it sooner than later. I’d much prefer to know from the start rather than after two hours of trying to join a chat only to find out that none of my messages were seen because I was blocked.

  • Make a rule against stalking, please.
    First topic I saw when opening the forums after years of staying clear was about someone else being stalked. It seems to be a growing issue these days, and it’s one of those things that feels so obvious that it’s wrong since it upsets people that it’s honestly baffling that it’s allowed.

It may be hard to enforce and may be one of those rules that would have to be tackled on a case by case basis. I don’t know how common stalking issues and tickets are. It could be that the man power to check every case in the detail it’d require to solve is beyond what Support can handle with current resources.

Would it work to make a rule like “Don’t interact with a person who’s told you to leave them alone.”? If someone tells someone to leave them be, blocks them, and the person STILL follows them around, types stuff at them, could Support step in and warn them to back off? Punish if the warning is ignored? That may require a GM to log in and look at the players to see what’s happening, unless there’s some other way to check stuff like that. Maybe some way to see if they typed /follow at a player who’s blocked them or something.

Thinking about it, this would just be a rule against continued harassment.

That’s about all I can think of right now. Got opinions on how some of the ideas would work or fail catastrophically? Got ideas of your own? Let’s have a chat about it!

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As the target of one such stalker, yeah, I wish at the very least that there was a rule against following like this. True it would be hard to enforce since some players just happen to bump into eachother at times, but there have been moments when I’ve specifically gone out of my way in a way that would leave little reason for anyone else to follow (Say I’m alliance, getting stalked by an alliance character, I head to a Horde controlled area and then see the stalker show up a while later exactly to the spot I’m at where they would normally have no business being) and such moments are very clear examples of malignant following.

But Blizzard doesn’t have the ruleset to be able to act on this. Because being in the same place, even with reasonable assumptions and even previous proof of this being used as a tool to slander people down the line, is not against the rules until they’ve actually done that offending thing, at which point the damage is already done.

So it would be hard to enforce, yes. But I suppose if that can’t be done, then I’d settle for ignored people being unable to see what you type, and that ignore spanning across all your characters. Sadly I have no way of confirming or denying that actually working in the current day but it’s something I plan on testing for sure.

As for the whole thing of being able to see if someone ignores you, at first I thought that would be an inevitable lead towards drama but… You know what? What damage could it really do? If they’ve ignored you, that’s it. You can’t communicate with them so harassing isn’t gonna be an issue unless you get an alt to message them, which is a punishable offense. And like mentioned, it saves a lot of time finding out the ignore eventually regardless. You’ll find out sooner or later and better see it at a glance than to spend several minutes making them uncomfortable with your presence trying to communicate with them.

I could see it potentially backfiring if you’ve got someone ignored, they see that and take offense, and start to simply follow you around. I want to say nobody in their right mind would do that for very long but we’ve seen people do literally that for years now so y’know, it’s already a thing that happens.

Overall I’d be positive to these changes. I think they could do more good than harm. But actual testing might have to be done because I wouldn’t want people getting targeted for harassment just because they want to separate themselves from certain people.

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The fact that this needs to be said in the first place :skull:

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First of all. I’m sorry to hear that you’re facing this issue. It’s abnormal on its own and how we, customers, have to -fight- for it one way or another instead of receiving support by default.

Which is odd. Problem is that this stalker issue is very much “blurred” right now by the ToS/Rules/Contract. However.

Disruption / Harassment: Engage in any conduct intended to disrupt or diminish the game experience for other players, or disrupt operation of Blizzard’s Platform in any way, including:
Disrupting or assisting in the disruption of any computer used to support the Platform or any Game environment. ANY ATTEMPT BY YOU TO DISRUPT THE PLATFORM OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF ANY GAME MAY BE A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS.
Harassment, “griefing,” abusive behavior or chat, conduct intended to unreasonably undermine or disrupt the Game experiences of others, deliberate inactivity or disconnecting, and/or any other activity which violates Blizzard’s Codes of Conduct or In-Game Policies.

and Social Contract:
https://imgur.com/a/Cuh81hd

I do wonder how this then works. Because CS needs to sit down, look at these two points. Then gather & compare data they’ve received and draw a conclusion. Instead of thinking within a box and just shrug it off.

Yep…

Nah. That’s what 99% of GMs do. They just copy/paste a script reply, replace things like and or and then throw in some absurd replies like “Use /ignore function!”

Through my very unlucky experience with Blizzard CS, they -rarely- read history of the tickets or previous tickets that you refer to, if it’s all about the same person. It’s lazy and absurd. In one of the tickets, GM called me by an entirely different name. In another ticket, another GM literally told me to “fly in an unpredictable pattern” and “use instances to avoid being spied on”. In other words: “Yeah, this person stalks you. So dodge them.” similar to “If you don’t have a house, go get one” sort of advice.

This feature has been implemented in one of the last patches (9.2.5 I think) of Shadowlands.
Putting 1 character on ignore, you essentially put all their characters on ignore. Although, I’m not entirely sure if your ignore list is shared between all your characters or is exclusive per each character… Something I need to test actually.

You don’t owe them anything. You’re just a player like they are. If you wish to ignore an entire guild, that’s your call and sure they can argue against it, but at the end of the day, it’s your call just as theirs to ignore you.

Yes please.
Although, I’m no lawyer by any means, I can see how tricky it can be to try and “summarize” stalker cases under one pattern in order to identify it legally as stalking. I’m sure there are IRL laws that can be used as a foundation for this. But generally, apart from the above-mentioned rule of harassment, we are not protected.

CS needs to start -doing- things.
In my past experiencing of actively contacting CS support for the past 2-3 years, they just reply with copy/paste answers. I ask for a live chat, they don’t even react to this request. I am online most of the times when they reply to the tickets, they don’t engage in an online convo and in 99% of the cases, reply with scripted, dry answers. CS needs to start put more attention, quality and focus into this.
What we have now, is a pale shadow of what we had back in MoP times.

I’m going to copy/paste this from my other thread but these points supplement to stalkers having a more easier way of… stalking their victims:

1. Allowance of low-level characters to use public chats.
2. Usage of /who
3. Ability to add anyone to a friendlist without their permission needed & track their whereabouts.
4. Enabled, by default, API code that can be used to expose your alts.
5. Inability to de-assign pets. Once assigned, you’re stuck with them and this can be exploited against you by “guess&compare”.
6. Usage of toys upon others (like pumpkins) if they are not in /party /raid /guild

As unfortunately, these old implemented systems now work as a double-end sword. They can be used for self-awareness situations just as well as to keep track of the targets/victims and continue to do so for as long as they wish.

FFXIV system of “Other player needs to give permission in order to be added to the friendlist” imo is a must-have to start with.
The /who shouldn’t tell character location anymore. Just that they are online, this level and class perhaps.
Let us de-assign pets or allow us to hide this via a setting. It’s a huge exploit currently.

I hope your case will be resolved.

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I believe it would be a net benefit for all if /ignore didn’t only prevent messages sent, but mutually phased away both players to not see one another (except when in a group/raid). This including toys deployed/used. The only risk is someone stuck permanently on ignore with little ways of “recovering”.

Re. the screenshot / tailored harassment is more an issue with the community per se; shouldn’t default to accepting any random claim thrown out there especially when we’ve got a crazy blog stalking dozens of players, and claims a guild is engaging in spiritual rituals and communal astral projection against ERP.

Unfortunately Blizzard moderation seems to have gone down the same drain as the game at large; there’s no community management and their rules/protocols are made to address ragers in PvP and LFR, not roleplay server misconduct.

Perhaps bring back the RP server rules…

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There is sort of an obvious flaw at play here in that no amount of expanded rulesets really matters because the problem isn’t a lack of rules but a lack of enforcement. You could write the most painstakingly well-contemplated and detailed rules known to man and it would not matter because customer support doesn’t care about issues that take more than 2 clicks or an automated reply to solve.

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Exactly. System doesn’t work if there’s no consequences pulled in for breaking it in a first place.

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God, this would be super useful.

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It used to be in late-MoP/WoD and then they removed it for no reason :roll_eyes:
They should bring it back and keep it, if someones on ignore they’re obviously there for a reason.

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People you ignore should also disappear from your screen. This will be very useful against basic trolling as well.

Show offline should also show offline on friendlist and guild.

Remove the collections tab from the armory. No one is really interested in seeing the mounts and pets we have anyway.

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Stalking and rumor-mongering can be difficult to deal with because of the subtle nature of it. Even in the real world, not to mention on the internet.

What makes it difficult to tell it apart is that you can see the action but not the intent behind it. Someone may be following you around but as well be spending a lot of time on that area generally. They may be curious about your RP and just watching it for the sake of inspiration while not going IC themselves because of being distracted/not on mood OOC - but they may as well be stalking and if you don’t know the person from previous experience, hell there’s no way to tell it apart until something happens.

As someone who doesn’t have stalkers but have been subtly bullied in some RP guilds in the past, I agree that Blizzard should be putting more effort in keeping their game a safe and harrassment-free environment.

Part of the problem probably is also that just like in real world, customer service isn’t trained to recognize different forms of psychological abuse and bullying. It’s easy for a non-empathic person or even uninvolved bystander just to be dismissive or rationalize these concerns with victim-blaming and so forth. Even half of the RP community in WoW I’ve met, don’t recognize dismissive responses and pejorative language as bullying.
Ie. I once was in a guild where I had issues with how another player was treating my character (and we were still supposed to be in same guild). While this behavior could often be justified as IC because they barely communicated OOC, I felt that they pushed past my boundaries a lot and when I tried to have my character to resolve it IC, nothing more than negativity followed. So, after I had expressed discomfort about being forced into RPing this kind of dynamic (or putting my character on shelf to protect my mood), how was I supposed to be part of the guild again?
Over time, this became too much for me to enjoy it and I also began to feel after one month of interacting that I’m not sure if my character is interacting with their character or the person behind it - it felt like the latter.
Thus I was at crossroads with two choices: leave or take it up with guild master/officer. In officer’s eyes the other person “technically didn’t do anything wrong because the negativity started from IC” and because I didn’t have chat logs from the length of one month, it became as much as word-against-word case.
The person -had- however few times said OOCly that I’m “crying” because I was giving critical feedback about their behavior and didn’t feel well because of it. However, I was trying to resolve the issue, and they didn’t show willingness to adjust their behavior or talk constructively about it at all. The part where I was accused of “crying” felt pejorative, and was one of the red flags of bullying.
Because this bullying also had spread among others in the guild/social group, I tried to bring it up publicly so that officers would take me seriously. It was no longer just one person being negative and making RP feel like I’m walking on eggshells if I want to be treated as part of the group. But because I was emotional due to the bullying, instead, I got dismissed with “being a clown” and that I’m “crying” again. With that, I was also shamed for bringing it up publicly and then it was up for everyone in the discord group to see. The officers did nothing because they didn’t recognize it as bullying. Neither they looked much into the dynamic which I had been reporting, but believed rationalizations of those who bullied me.
Therefore to these people I’m the creator of drama because I complained. To me they are blind to bullying which happens under their radar and the other person’s part in the drama. Which of us is the problem person ultimately and if people began to gossip about such case, which side would you believe? That is why gossip is a double-edged sword. You can only speak your side of it, how others react to it and whom they agree with, is up to them.

So, take this to customer service level. As long as you can’t prove that you’ve been directly harmed by behavior of your stalkers, they won’t lift a finger. Even if they had access to server logs (which I’d believe Game Masters do at least?)

Sure, taking screenshots isn’t against the rules. We’ve seen how screenshots can be a double-edged sword: someone can genuinely use it as evidence about someone’s toxicity while these can also be easily fabricated and even modified with right software.

Watching other people roleplay in open world, in public spots isn’t against the rules and imho shouldn’t be. However it does get fishy if you’ve turned off all methods of tracking, told your stalker to stay away and withdrawn into more hard-to-find spot to RP and you still get followed around.

Saying offensive stuff… Sometimes people lose their temper for various reasons, but doing it systematically should be looked into. There is a line between someone having a bad day or reacting badly to “dogwhistling”, and someone acting in verbally abusive ways.

Spreading rumors… Everyone is entitled to their opinion and of course, warning others about a bad experience with another person, is also a double-edged sword. For example, I’d want to stay away from any person who is pushy about ERP or act overly lewd. There I’d go with warning and proof, I don’t want to waste time on interacting with anyone who could end up sending me unwelcome NSFW stuff. It’s different if it were consented first or came from a friend I trust not going overboard with it.
Same is certain other types of roleplayers, but there, it’s also my responsibility to take rumors and “word in the air” with a grain of salt until proven to be true /“grounded” with solid evidence.

I do agree that Blizzard has focused too much on insignificant red tape and letter of their rules, rather than spirit of their rules. The technical part rather than practical, unless the practical part involves whether they can rip more money off you or not. Or on the contrary push the responsibility on someone else, so that it’d be less work for them.

This, I absolutely agree. I rarely ignore people out of simple disagreement or one-off drama, but there are some cases where I know that I don’t want anything to do with them on any alt.

Also agree. As for me, I got a good memory - I can remember the reasons connected to any name whom I’ve added to my ignore list. However, when it comes to their alts being ignored with it, I wouldn’t know, unless I knew that they were an ignored person’s alts.

In this I disagree however. Especially in RP guilds and how petty people can be about using ignore, it would mean that if you join a guild (without being part of the reason why you once blocked them), would also get blocked by association. You may not be involved or even know if there has been drama between a decent person and them in the past, therefore being ignored by potentially good roleplayer because of this would be… eh. Not good for roleplay. I wouldn’t dare to join any guild if guild-wide blocks came into play.

Not everyone who joins a guild will stay there either. It may take a few months for them to figure whether they fit in or not. Also, not all guilds stay the same over time.

In my opinion, if I dislike how a guild functions, just seeing the guild tag would be my warning sign to stay away. And that’s my responsibility to preserve my own mood, energy and time. As long as the guild or its members aren’t going out of their way to do me harm, I can handle it.

This is what I’ve wondered as well. I’ve been hoping here and there that ignore would prevent someone from seeing your messages because then they wouldn’t be able to stalk you and spread gossip.

Yes. I remember in Swtor, if you try to /whisper to someone who has blocked you, you receive a red line of text which says unless I’m misremembering. A more visible indicator would be helpful of course. I get same thoughts which you expressed here:

However, ignore is also a double-edged sword in such situations if they expand it as account-wide or guild-wide ignore. AD is already full of bubble-RP where people aren’t willing to engage into getting to know anyone outside their cliques (ofc it’s different than priorizing on RP with your guild/friends etc). I think guild-wide ignore would further escalate the bubble mentality and “associate with the wrong people and you’re ignored by me”.

This, I 100% agree with. And it should be a no-brainer to begin with. An upfront “no” is a “no”, it should be enough, always. But some people on AD will always break the rules, not only the written ones but what is considered respectful towards another, just because they can. They may enjoy the attention which it brings to them or relieve their boredom - and since they can do it without consequences, they don’t see reason to stop.

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Most of the posts here have the big points put down well but I thought i’d add my two cents.

Blizzard claims their ignore is account wide now, it is not. Wholly agree it should be battle.net wide, its not like the technology isn’t there, Blizzard just has this weird anal retentiveness to being told to do something that is a net benefit and it takes them five or six years to do it, then claim it was their idea all along.

I also recall a really neat idea i saw passed around here a few times more than a little while ago, quite a while ago actually.

Ignore would -remove- the person from your world view. As in phase them out, you do not see them or interact with them in non-pvp phases. You do not get queued for them for PvE content, they cannot interact with you either. No more mammoths on top of you in RP, no more pumpkin throwing, no more footballs or any of that.
Blizzard needs to seriously consider better tools to allow players to curate their online experience as they want. The MMO tag isn’t a tabula rasa for basement dwellers to make your free time, your relaxation time that YOU pay for unpleasant or distressing.

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I think it’s one of things where it WAS in, it used to work but a patch or two later it broke, like how /who was fixed for a whole singular patch back in Shadowlands and has been broken ever since.

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My hoping is that the cross faction guild/community thing we’re getting will fix the internal coding for this kind of thing.
But what is more likely is it will just break things in five new ways.

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I fully support this one by the way. It would completely kill argent dawn and bubble us all up even that much more.

Imagine how frivilently this would be used. RP Would die.

And those who asks for this would be on the more receiving end of isolation than they had hoped for and thought about. Rather than the other way around.

Ask and you shall receive.

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Problem with implementing new or old features, is that RP & Argent Dawn aren’t really considered when this happens.

Think about heavy phasing during pre-launch / launch phases? It put entire RP in SW practically on a halt.

I believe that if you ignore someone, this person shouldn’t see/receive your messages either.

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Yeah I remember… And Blizzard saying that RP zones wouldn’t be affected and all but they did… Hence my confusion in Heramaar’s shard thread in the general section.

Blizzards sharding isn’t supposed to affect us roleplayers in our hubs. But it did and does.

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Eh, what?

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Did i stutter? I think I wrote in english… Whats wrong? :sweat_smile:

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RP will die when we can make people who harass and troll us disappear from our screen?

Uh?