Silence Penalty

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Silence Penalty!!

Wowzers! There will be a new Silence Penalty in WoW starting with the pre-expansion patch. MMO Champs has the blue post, you can (and should if you have not) read it here.

Thank Elune that it will be investigated. Praise Elune that no one else would know if I got Silenced (it is a thing now and needs to be capitalized).

On one level I’d love to see a player gagged in game but I realize that the idea is pretty darn cruel.

Now, I think Blizzard has to define the term “troll”, so we understand the nuance of the Silence Penalty.

My big question is: 24 hours of Play Time in game or 24 hours in Real Time? Can’t we get clear language or did I miss it: I only see the implication in “silenced for a very very long time” suggesting in-game play time.

I applaud this. Plenty of players seem to play with the intent of starting a ruckus. This, this is like Ignore Squared with twice the satisfaction and half the frustration. If I ever worked at Blizzard, I’d love to be the judge on these cases.

I think we all have levels of different tolerance. I don’t mind swearing, for example, especially creative use of language. And that is simply me. I have little tolerance for racial slurs and hurtful language and I freely report; it feels like a duty to me.

How interesting would it be to save the cases over the next year and put them in a time capsule to see how we judge or rule “correctness” as a standard. Ten years from now it will be different as it is different from ten years ago.

“Reported”. I’ve seen that in Trade Chat and mocked for years.

Now if we want to piss someone off; we have to be clever, sarcasm honed to a fine point.

Peace.
Silence.