Time out
If you’ve ever played multiplayer games with chat functionality, you know how much of a wasteland it can become when communication is left largely unchecked and jerks, spammers, and bots come out in full force. For the average player, general chat essentially becomes useless at that point.
With a patch for World of Warcraft leading into Legion, Blizzard is adopting a new silence penalty. Players who are reported multiple times for “spam” or “abusive chat” and found guilty during Blizzard’s investigation will be hit with an account-wide penalty that restricts their ability to talk.
Specifically, silenced players can’t:
- Talk in Instance Chat (Raid, Party, and Battlegrounds)
- Talk in global channels that are auto joined (such as General or Trade)
- Create Calendar Invites/Events
- Send in-game mail
- Send Party Invitations
- Send War Game Invitations
- Send Invitations to Duel
- Update a Premade Group Listing
- Create a New List for a Premade Group
But they can still:
- Whisper to friends (both WoW friends and Battle.net Friends)
- Reply to Whispers from Non-friends
- Party/Raid Chat (with Invited Players)
- Create Parties and Raids
- Talk in Global Channels that have a moderator
- Share Quests
- Sign up for a pre-made group
The best part? The first-time penalty is a silence period of 24 hours, but after that, the duration will double every instance, and there is no maximum. “This means that players who receive multiple silence penalties may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.”
New Silence Penalty Coming to World of Warcraft [Battle.net]
