Blizzard casts silence on abusive World of Warcraft players

Since World of Warcraft’s launch, Blizzard has grappled with spamming or abusive players in the various chat channels of its massively popular MMORPG. Though the terms of service have long explained what is considered a violation of Blizzard’s social rules in Azeroth, the only tool Blizzard has possessed to enforce these rules has been to ban players from the game.

But today, Blizzard’s rolling out new tools to deal with abusive players. In a news post, the company announced it would be rolling out a new “silence” penalty in an upcoming patch, which will let the company mute players reported for spam or abusive behavior. 

Blizzard’s not the first company to restrict speaking privileges in online games, but the nuance and breadth of what this new restriction covers shows just how many social interactions Blizzard has built into its game over the years that need to be covered by such a feature. Online harassment frequently can be expressed outside of harmful messages, so companies can look to Blizzard's new penalty as a guidepost when building social moderation tools. 

Silenced players will be unable to chat in local instance chat and open global channels, create calendar invites and events, or make premade group listings. They also won’t be able to send in-game mail, party invitations, War Game invitations, or duel invitations.

They will still be able to send private messages to friends, respond to private messages, and interact with other players in the same party. These players will be silenced for 24 hours for their first offense, but each ensuing infraction will double the length of time their chat is restricted.