On the list of things that breeds toxicity, /spit was so low on the list to be honest.
Like, if people wanted to insult you, they would not /spit you. They would prolly /w all the worst thing they can to you. This change solves nothing and it shows once again how clueless they are to be honest.
And literally days after Blizzard had announced it was time to remove âtoxic elementsâ within the next couple of days.
By the way, did they actually do anything other than removing /spit? 'Cause if thatâs their attempt at reducing community toxicity, thatâs really weak.
Obviously I always knew it would be weak. Itâs pointless. I just think this is even weaker than I expected, but Iâm fine with them going no further than this. People are already talking linking DPS meters and items and /flirt and /fart and whatever else⌠like, please no.
The difference is whispering people can get you reported and banned. /spit canât .
Ahahahah really? I know ton of people that are freaking toxic when they pug keys and they never received a single punishment, despite raging on pugs every time they enter a dungeon.
I am pretty sure the only way you get punished in this game via reports rn is if you get mass reported in general chats or if people mass report your group title.
If real punishment was in place people would be way more reluctant to go and rage, but truth is, you are rarely punished for that.
if they really wanted to eradicate toxicity from the game /spit was prolly the 234785° thing on the list, lets be honest here.
Not everyone reports it. Also you can make tickets about abuse where it skips the automatic process. The mass report thing is more aimed at stuff said in server wide chats, Not private whispers. Nobody can mass report a whisper only one person sees.
It sounds like they are going to get more tough on people whispering toxic messages to each other. This /spit emote looks to go along with it.
Yes but aside from the report system itself, it is some part of the game that are huge toxicity breeders. M+ are the biggest offenders here.
They need to start sacking staff or we will end up with World of Rainbows - âUp above the streets and houses,
Rainbow climbing highâ 
So they think removing /spit will fix every bad decision they did? Blizzard will never changeâŚ
No? 
They probably think removing /spit will address every bad use of /spit.
Itâs one solution to fix one problem.
Itâs not one solution to fix all problems.
Be realistic. Itâs pretty dumb to start criticizing a reasonable and wholesome change to the game because it only aims to address one problem and not ALL THE PROBLEMS!!! 
Not really the change we were wanting Blizzard. I mean your company is drowning in sex scandals and worker abuse and you thinkâŚ
HMMM, LETS REMOVE EMOTES.
Why donât you remove yourselves? Like, remove your whole senior development team from the game and decouple yourselves from Activision while youâre at it?
Itâs fighting symptons and it wonât do anything
You can still absolutely trash someone without using spit on them
They say they want to combat toxicity but at the same time most of their report features are locked behind automated systems and what few moderators and GMs survived the actiblizz layoffs that happened in time of growing profits donât have the numbers to actually tackle the real cases of it happening.
And what would that do? Hm?
Youâre just making noise for the sake of itâŚ
Fresh hands, clean hands.
New insight, new blood.
WoW is a stagnant corpse being milked dry by corporate vampires and being mishandled by perverts at every turn.
It would at least restore a measure of trust from the people who made their game what it was - the playerbase.
I want it. Speak for yourself and donât invoke the âweâ to inflate your statement.
Itâll remove the ability for people to /spit each other.
Simple.
So youâre de facto wrong.
I mean, thereâs nothing wrong with wanting bigger and more impactful changes to combat toxicity in the game. But starting out with criticism because the first, simplest, and most immediate action taken isnât a magic wand that solves all the problems in the world if you just wave it around a bit, thatâs pretty silly.
Rome wasnât built in a day, and you shouldnât expect Blizzard to turn the digital space into 
& 
with the snap of their fingers either.
Itâs a long ongoing effort with a lot of small victories that pave the way toward a better digital environment.
If anything has changed from a week ago, itâs only that Blizzard have seen the need to prioritize toxicity higher as an issue to be dealt with. And thatâs good.
Spit is a sympton, it only works because people who want to spit type out the /spit command, those people are still in the game, the toxicity doesnât go away just by removing emotes and whatâs to stop anyone from making an /e spits on %t as a way to circumvent?
The issue I have with this is mostly that itâs disengenuous
I donât want them to wag their finger at the players before even a single head has started rolling over the recent allegations
What a load of crap⌠now youâre just saying every Blizz dev has âdirty handsâ⌠Are you just parrotting someone whos making these opinions up for you or did you reach this conclusion all by yourself?
Either way youâre wrong.
They can earn our trust back without replacing everyone. Bit like removing a worthless emote one day and doing something else the next 
Baby steps.
Okay, good for you?
Minimising the absolute horror show that Blizzard is turning out to be is what this move is meant to do. âOh look it shows they do care⌠a bit.â Which then is extrapolated by the corporate PR view of âhehe look we made reforms guys, we removed toxicity from the game.â
I think the term âphysician heal thyselfâ is a better term to use here. Again, removing emotes is just painting their playerbase as somehow being the problem, rather than themselves.
Donât misquote my dude. The ones who have filth on their paws should get the axe from the company, those who failed to report on it (especially if they were in a position to make a change) should be removed from positions of responsibility (they failed.)
The ones who are clean should be given a chance to shine through.
Fair enough.
Iâm pretty sure the amount of people who will resort to creating a manual emote to perform a spit on other people is significantly smaller than the amount of people who use the existing /spit command out of sheer habit.
So itâs pretty irrelevant whether you want to professor the topic and look at whether something is a symptom and what the root cause is and how best to address the systemic behavior of anonymous people in a digital world whereâŚ
The change addresses an immediate issue. People who /spit on each other.
Itâs low-hanging fruit.
Itâs an easy solution to an annoying problem.
Maybe itâs not the perfect solution and maybe thereâs a professor thesis that establishes that toxic behavior still exists within the game and blah blah blah.
But for a design change that probably took all of 5 minutes to implement â i.e. low-hanging fruit â itâs a lot of bang for the buck.
And thereâs some signal value to it, since evidently weâre all talking about it now. So thatâs good as well.
The issue you have is that you move the goalpost to preserve criticism for Blizzardâs toxic workplace environment. But thatâs pretty silly and itâs mixing matters that donât need to be mixed. Removing /spit is a simple and straight-forward solution to address issues with /spit in the game. Thatâs it. Thereâs no need to criticize it on greater symptomatic behaviors or refuse to acknowledge the practical simplicity of the change because it comes in the wake of a lawsuit.
Thatâs silly.
Yeah, it is. Blizzard makes a change I have previously requested and fully support. That is good for me.
Or you could just recognize the change for the simple solution it is to an in-game problem and not spin it off into the twilight zone of PR conspiracy? You might be totally right of course and itâs all an elaborate PR scheme to distract everyone, but itâs a moot point to present. It doesnât matter what conspiracy is going on. Fact of the matter is that thereâs an issue with /spit in the game and this change is a good solution toward addressing it. Simple. No need to overthink it.
When some player does /spit on me in the game I think thatâs a combination of the intent of the player and the tool provided by Blizzard. Now Blizzard are removing the tool, and I will acknowledge that as a good move on their part. It doesnât fix the intent of the player to be toxic, but I can live with the fact that the solution fixes one problem and not ALL THE PROBLEMS!!
Essentially this, it is text book corporate deflection strategies in action.