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

I’ve lost count on amount of tickets that I’ve written to Blizzard CS at this point.
However. Only -1- time did I feel that I was actually talking to a proper GM.

In most cases, GMs will tell you:

Hello, my name is “name”.
I understand that you have an issue with “issue”. That’s not good.
We will investigate but due to privacy concerns, won’t disclose what actions will be taken.

Remember to use /ignore function!
Let us know if anything else happens.

Have a good day.

That’s like… 99% of those replies, some lines vary a little bit but the “formula” is the same.

Then I had this one GM who would go into more in-depth explanation. For example, he said that I don’t have to provide evidence. Only timestamps of what happened / what’s been said. That GM went and checked logs of my stalker that were from 6-months old. Chat logs. GM said that editing screenshots is pointless too (I shared screenie with removing some names just in case, as same screenie was shared to others) and that GMs see everything anyway.

Yada yada, he end up with a hint that “This player won’t bother you for a while”.

That alone felt like a real response.

The rest of Blizzard replies are like Scam centers, literally. With bland, dry copy/paste options.
I also don’t like how they often say “We -will- investigate this issue”. Because when they reply to you, ticket is already “answered” and technically closed. You only can either confirm that it’s closed or -re-open- it (which means, it’s already been closed).

So it feels like they just copy/paste answers , close it. Do some lazy check (if any at all) and move on.

I remember one video explaining how CS works. That Blizzard mostly freelance it to other companies, employees of which, upon a certain amount of time, can be transfered to work for actual Blizzard. So it feels that we have what? 80% outsourced CS and 20% Blizz CS at this point.

Numbers are random, it just feels like that to me.

Still doubt me?

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Uh. Dude? Lenadra’s actually a victim of a persistant and unpleasant stalker. Probably best not to ask them to “sieze” their “arguement” when they’ve literally been through this for months, if not years.

:pensive:
I just wanted to help…

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So not only are you not making any sense, but you’re also seeing things, considering how you somehow see that i care about whatever you’re trying to involve me with, or a PCU guild tag next to my name! cool.

as i was saying

It doesn’t help that the TOS is very vague when it comes to RP realms. There used to be additional TOS code additions for RP realms, then they were scrapped for being a bit too much to apply at a mass scale for a high+ population realm.

As much proof as you might be able to answer, it does not matter; especially if you hit up a Support GM that really has 0 grasp on what roleplay is, and how petty roleplayers can be, which people are going out of their way in this thread to give a prime example of for everyone to see just to prove my point further.

It sounds a little defeatist, but I honestly think they should just completely revamp the reporting system, the TOS, and actually get people that are trying to fix what it is you have a concern with, which it used to be like once upon a time, but they’ve slowly scrapped overtime, like how to drop some feedback or a suggestion while outside of the PTR / Alpha / Beta, you need to make a forum post about it instead of just sending them a message directly through in-game which they CLEARLY have the capability to toggle on, considering they literally do that every few months or so.

Well, some of my threads/posts were ‘moderated’ today but I wasn’t suspended.
However, apart from my thread there is this thread that also raises general concern about the issue and while I don’t want to pull attention on myself, I do want to support OP and share thoughts/concerns and how things can be handled.

It’s, after all, an open discussion where one may hope, it’ll attract enough attention that blueposts can actually look into the matter. But one can hope.

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You qouted ‘‘Your’’ And expect me to reply to your nonsense reply to me making nonsense? Are you drunk Dreadscorh? The hell am i supposed to make out of ‘‘Your’’ alone? Couldn’t even qoute me right.

Does that edit help, forum ghost, or has playing FFXIV for too long completely fried your capability for reading comprehension?

It’s super vague and from the looks of it, it’s designed to be a case-by-case sort of approach. But it’s not being handled like that.

This kind of touches on a topic I think is worth discussing though.

A big pull of WoW (for me at least) is that you can do a bunch of alts and you’re kind of anon if you don’t tell others which your alts are. I started playing WoW way back with some severe anxiety about how to interact with people. Knowing that if I messed up royally (like what if I waved at someone and they hate that? Death, doom, end of world.) I could log out instantly and start over with a new alt some other day once the confidence recovers.

Online anonymity is great sometimes. It has many perks. It’s a layer of safety.

It can also be used maliciously. Bypassing blocks, pretending to be a stranger to get close to a person that told you to frick off, hiding after being caught doing something actually bad.

Drawbacks.

There’s ways to check other people to try and see what alts they have. Using pets, that pvp-checker site, armory and achivement points and more. There’s upsides and downsides to that.

Being able to look someone up means I can quickly check if that nice fellow being awfully cosy with me rn is someone I know that I told to piss off.

It also means loss of that precious anonymity. Sometimes people make stuff up, a rumour spirals into claiming someone did all sorts of weird and unacceptable stuff, or a stalker decides to follow you on every alt you make.

Upsides and downsides.

Just for the sake of argument and hearing some new opinions:

  • Would having your list of alts be open and checkable easy be good, removing the anonymity element? It would certainly force people to think a bit more about how they act, lest they develop a bad reputation.

  • Or would going the opposite direction help: banning sites that lets you look up people’s alts, undoing any system that allows this from blizz and hunting down sites that offer such services. It would be well and truly anonymous! Anyone could be anyone!

You all type so fast. Dreadscorch brings up good points. Maybe a full revamp would help. Would be a lot of work but I think, honestly, that the RP aspect of WoW COULD be a big pull for the game. I’ll make a separate reply for that cuz this got long aaaa

I suggest you drink some water and go to bed, being an angry drunk on a forum will do you no good frankly.

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I will advise ignoring the odd vulpera and focus on the actual important matter.
Engaging with them isn’t doing much other than causing bloat to the topic, a lot of bloat.

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Removing the anonymity WOULD be a good thing in some regard since it’d stop repeat offenders from continually coming back to stink up a person’s RP by following them around and harassing them or those they RP with.

But at the same time it’s a sort of double edged sword, some might use the anonymity to hide FROM said mean people, removing it would expose them to being followed once more.

While I’m not sure how frequent the second scenario is to reality, it’s simply something that came to mind as I wrote this.

Edit: Why did that quote twice… Forums pls, don’t be drunk again…

Knowing the cadre of people that sometimes lurk in RP communities throughout every medium, both in TTRPG, online TTRPG and videogames, I would much rather NOT have that be the case whatsoever, holy hell.

And, I am not talking about petty guild politics and such things here. There are lot, lot weirder and far more disgusting things than grown adults getting far too strung up on the writing equivalent of playing with action figures in a doll house (a group in which I include myself from time to time, especially in the past.)

There have been, are, and sadly will be quite a few vile people lurking in the shadows of a hobby like this, and I would rather not make things easier for “people” who would love to make other people’s lives a hell on earth.

That I am not a part of the PCU nor a damn messiah to make a miracle in which roleplay will be enjoyable for someone who doesn’t roleplay still getting strung up over that one time well over two years ago where they verbally brawled with someone who has been unsubscribed ever since while being drunk, but somehow cannot remember a sentence they’ve just typed out.

Yeah. Yeah, we can tell.

Even distantspark came to silence me. I feel honored. But I am Keti actually… Distantspark. Not just any odd Vulpera.

I am also Peroy.

What the hell is this even? Who even are you? And what are you even talking about and bringing up? can you elaborate?

The only thing that is really going to help is Blizzard hiring a lot more human moderators.

But we all know that that is not going to happen.

So, I have no idea, other than removing the collections tab and changing “show offline” into a proper “show offline” instead of a “somewhat offline lol.” This will at least make stalking far harder.

Please drink some water and go to bed.

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Having ignore work on a Battlenet level in game and on the forum would likely clear a lot of issues up.

And less automation.
Humans needed.

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Oh please… Scroll this up tomorrow and you will see I wasn’t even that wrong.

I think the best solutions would be blizzard actually giving a damn and hiring more GMs instead of relying on automation and community regulating itself, as it does oh so well.

Making ignore account-wide again would also be a step in the right direction, as well as adding that the ignored party cannot interact with the person ignoring them in anyway including toyspamming.

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