One Evil vs. the Other

Argent Dawn
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It turned out to be quite the eventful Tuesday evening from what I was brought attention to, but not on a positive note. Usually I have avoided to give much attention to these “debates” as they rarely ever amount to anything good but this one has kept me somewhat bothered and I, much like many others on this forum, want to express my opinion on why.

To narrow in on the point, a post was made with documented evidence of certain cases of ERP made in public. I’m not going to defend the poor decision to engage in ERP in public in any way, and I’m aware of and agree to the arguement that to witness that as someone underage can cause damage, wether it be individual incidents or cases like Goldshire.

So could the promotion of a festival based almost entirely on the consumption of alcohol - which in a large amount of countries is not permitted under the age of 18 - which has been staged completely as something that is nothing more than amusement. I’m sure that those that suffer from alcoholism, or someone that is around an alcoholic, would agree to this, right? Or what about those that write out extreme, graphical violence to the point of detail that you would never see in any form of media beneath the age of 18 as well?

My point is that I saw repeated use of the “PG12 arguement”, which has grown old, but there are fewer voices of the other issue that came with this thread. What about those that the documented evidence were of?

Names were put on display on the forum in addition to the acts of these “culprits”, and what good has that amounted to? Yet another subject that is not permitted in the ToS; naming and shaming. Yes, someone made the poor decision to ERP in public - and that was dredged up now (though some seem to have been up to or over a year old evidence). Is this truly alright? Is it morally just to fan the flames of a witch-hunt that is more likely to do more damage to individuals and their guild(s) than deal with the issue itself?

Because it is just that; a witch-hunt. Someone has been designated that they, potentially, could ERP and so they have been followed consistently in an attempt to provide evidence of the “crime” - and now they have been ousted and left out to figuratively burn - the reputation of these individuals and their guild(s). Another term that I would use to connotate that is cyber-bullying; which is very real. You may believe you have made this post to simply oust them, ruin their reputation and that will be that. Has there been put any consideration into how they could be excluded from RP in the future? Or the whispers that other players could send them to drive it further?

The bottom line is and I saw this done before, do not believe that one act justifies the other. If you see ERP in public then report it through the report system. Send a ticket to a GM if you have a need for a conversation and/or affirmation, then move on with your lives. We are better than this, even on the Argent Dawn forums. Come together to create a positive experience together; not these cesspits of negativity and bullying.

Oh, and a Merry Christmas to you all and I do mean that in the least sarcastic way possible.

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I’m not gonna go into depths about the other thread’s OP and whether or not he’s been stalking these people in-game because I have no way of knowing.

Breaking the ToS for ERP and Naming/Shaming may carry the potentially same punishments, but one is far worse than the other in my opinion.
Your post compares exposure to a violence and alcohol culture as being parallel to sexual inappropriate content and that alcoholics and those around them would agree. I don’t.
I’m a child of alcoholics and have been a victim of inappropriate sexual advances and the latter is a lot worse than the former.
For you to sit there on a glorified intellectual white horse and claim anything else is an insult.
These people chose to publically expose children and whoever else walked by to sexual content. The consequences of those choices should be alienation from the community at the very least and Naming/Shaming is how the community is alerted.
You call it a witch hunt, it’s not. It’s a community service.

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There’s no justification against what happened and I wouldn’t bother trying to argue (in defense of) emoting weird sexual emotes / ERP in a video game for the ages 12 and up. As much as you consider the “PG12 argument” an old thing, I think the attempt to normalize such behaviour as wrong and severely damages our roleplay community.

There would be none of this had these people kept their smelly behaviour out of World of Warcraft. They knew the rules, they knew what they were doing and the risks that came with entertaining it.

The hot garbage you witnessed last night is more reason why ERP should be kept away from Argent Dawn.

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It was not my intention to draw a specific comparison between the subject matter of violence/alcohol culture as a comparison to inappropriate sexual content and/or behaviour nor do I claim to be, though if that’s the case then I have chosen my wording poorly. I brought that up as a counter to the usual “PG12 arguement” as I decided to word it, to connotate what I later wanted to point out that one evil does not justify the other. I’m sorry to read that you have had these experiences which, by any means, is not acceptable.

I agree and I have not said otherwise previously either; they made the poor decision to expose this in public. I do not defend that by any means. What I pose as the question is wether this specific case causes more damage to the individuals in question rather than good. If it is a necessity to oust specific players to bring attention to the subject issue.

I see where you’re coming from, I do. I do not say “do not voice the issue”, you should. In many cases that is the only way to bring attention to the subject and perhaps find some form of acceptable result. Do I agree that in this specific case that it will help solve the issue? No, I do not. Perhaps others that read this will take lesson from it and not engage in any acts of ERP in public, but I believe that could be done without dredging up someone’s past and targetting them specifically - as was done in the post that I refer to.

Thank you for your opinion and I do mean that sincerely, from atop my glorified intellectual white horse.

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In short, yes. Yes it absolutely is. There is no other way to warn the community against certain groups and players so that they can be avoided at all costs.

I think it’s safe to say that the average GM does not want anything to do with someone who has an f-list favoriting ‘ageplay’ and ‘r*pe’, or ‘forced incest’.

These people need to be known, so they can be avoided by those who want a healthy roleplay scene.

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Something worthwhile pointing out, though I generally agree with (and maintain) no ERP policies for my guilds, is that it’s not longer the case that ERP is explicitly against the game’s terms, at least nowhere near as overtly as it used to be.

The old ToS reference that we usually pointed to was one that prohibited “sexually explicit” messages sent using the game’s chat system, but as of the ToS being replaced with a general EULA and a Code of Conduct, this is no longer the case.

The EULA makes no reference to usage of chat besides “don’t harass/break the game with it”, and the closest counterpart to the old ToS is “You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others.” in the Code of Conduct.

To spitball a little, this could be because Blizzard’s parental control feature now allows parents to turn off the in-game chat entirely - so while in the past Blizzard have been potentially liable for 12+ content sent over the in-game chat system (even if “online interactions not rated” usually comes with every PEGI and ESRB rating), they now have a complete opt-out that they can point parents to while maintaining their 12+ rating.

There are plenty of valid and sound reasons to not to want to engage in, encourage or condone ERP in communities you run regardless - not least of all that the game does still have a population of players who’re below the general age of consent.

CoC: https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/42673
EULA: https://www.blizzard.com/en-gb/legal/08b946df-660a-40e4-a072-1fbde65173b1/blizzard-end-user-license-agreement

Edit - For people who’re curious, this is what the parental controls looks like:

https://i.imgur.com/4AY6Vs8.png

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I cannot speak for anyone else but I, at the very least, have made no attempt to normalize that behaviour. I understand that you have your own opinion on the subject but, please, do not read into my statement and proclaim my opinion as something else.

They should know the rules and definitely know the potential consequences of that from example the post that was made last night but I still do not believe that to dredge up someone’s past actions in this specific case would do more good than harm. Imagine if someone had pulled something from your past simply to have you shunned or become a laughing stock?

To err is human.

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It is pretty neat that more people are doing their research on the rules and doing what they can to mention rule breakers to GMs.

But there are some bad eggs who throw the chance to make a good report when screenshot are involved. When I see someone throwing around screenshots on the forums and on Discord, they don’t strike me as the fellow who bothered reporting the player earlier.

Stick with the routine!

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Spreading screencaps is a way more efficient way to solve an issue like that, I’d argue. It’s known that it takes a lot of reports and a long time for the GMs to fix something, but it doesn’t take much at all to make other players wary of feeding into a rulebreaker’s poor behavior.

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Indeed, I agree. I do believe to contact a GM would be the better way to handle the issue rather than to, as you point out here, throw screenshots onto the forums and on Discord.

While we disagree with those that break the rules we can nonetheless act as the betters. Thank you for that addition.

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Agreed - for a general observation on how to increase the likelihood that rule breakage is taken seriously, follow the guidelines that pop up when you open a GM ticket.

Include everything - realm name, zone, time-period where the action took place, and which character names were involved. Blizzard won’t take action against screenshots, they rely on pulling chat logs. I’ve generally had a 50/50 success rate with getting some disciplinary action instated when reporting this way.

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I agree with you there. I don’t really trust every player to be grown up about it and blank the person as you probably should imo. It’s often a few days of ridicule and meme-ing about.

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Unfortunate but true. It seems easier for some to resort to ridicule rather than to do what I, at least, would find a simpler solution; notify a GM about it. If more do so then they have no choice but to act on it, especially as part of their job description.

At least I hope it is part of their description to handle these issues.

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I think you’re also forgetting which one is more fun, here.

Essentially, there are two options:
A: You can report it, never hear from it again whether it achieves anything or not, and likely still see the offender around every single day without any change.

B: You can share it, have some fun at the expense of someone that deserves to be mocked, while efficiently ensuring that big brained people will know to steer clear of this individual.

Option A is blatantly less fun or effective.
Option B is fun, effective, and useful.

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Not the case if you open a ticket about it.

This potentially opens you up to being banned for harassment, as some of our forum posters can attest.

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That’s why ya gotta do it on discord servers, blizzbo holds no power there.

Aight so maybe in three years after another 20 people report them we might find out that a 2-day ban/silence or something rolled in.

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I’d rather stick to plan A. The problem with plan B is that people never plan on reporting like we are meant to before or after everyone has their fun. Even with the way the report system works (it’s not all great), it’s not a lot of hassle.

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I’ve had tickets closed with temporary and in one case permanent bans after - as far as I’m aware - one single report.

Now may there be a separate issue of things not being acted upon because they’re not explicitly against Blizzard’s rules anymore? Yes, and I’ve outlined above how (to take an example) explicit roleplay may not be against the game’s rules anymore.

I’d lobby Blizzard on that one - or, as has proven successful against game developers before, send tips to a few news sites to write a story on the detrimental impact of this rule change.

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Every instance documented in said screenshots were right-click reported, the majority of them directly ticket reported to game masters, and all instances raised to the current Guild Leader and Officers at the time (note some of these occasions actually were the officers/Guild Leaders, and the blatant disregard for those happenings).

I fully accept that naming and shaming is a bannable offence and I’m definitely no saint for doing so. However, after nearly three years of said Guild condoning the behaviour, that is why I believe the less-recent screenshots are equally valid.

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Ditto, couldn’t have put it better. Excellent post.

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