Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

In School in was uncool to dob.

I learnt at around the age of 5 or 6 that you didn’t run home and tell mommy because then everyone would know that you dobbed.

I was reading in the Guild relations forums today about a guild that was writing in because another guild on their server was systematically harassing them, and the best advise was to use the reporting feature. Report Report report..  eventually enough of them will get banned for them to stop it.

Is raising a ticket asking Blizzard to play nanny when the kids are playing in the sandpit the right and only way to go?  It seems to be, but each time I escalate an issue to Blizzard by typing out a ticket- (and I’ve only done it a couple of times)  I feel like I am ‘dobbing’   ( not counting the report spam)  Its like being harassed in guild, or in chat, or by mail.  Bullied. You feel that you should be able to deal with  it yourself. ( Come on its a game!) We aren’t playing the tournament worth 200k , its not a grandslamn tennis match, or the Olympics, its a game, and yet we still need a nanny or umpire.

I’ve done many a BG where there is one person who is present enough to click off his afk debuff and he gleefully laughs at our attempts to actually play – I’m not sure what their motivation was, that they would waste their time being there at all, only to spent it fracking around. You can’t give then the afk debuff  – you can’t appeal to their better sence or even ask them to leave so someone else can come in – they laugh at you what else can do with them but put in a ticket. 

The ticket joins a queque,  which probably won’t get answered in the time your online, and he is still laughing at everyone in the BG, and you log off and get a non commital email hours later  from blizzard saying they will look into it,  and because of privacy reasons they cannot tell you what actions/if any they took.

 This doesn’t satisfy me that ‘justice’ has been done. There is no result to motivate me to do it more often. Yet, if you don’t tell someone,  don’t report it,   his behaviour goes unpunished, and unrecorded.

I approach any ticket I write the same way I would write a business email,  trying to keep the issue clear, with all the facts so it has a better chance of being taken seriously. I don’t take ticket writing lightly. I also need to be beyond reproach in my own actions, meaning no swearing at the person/insulting, or being the cause of their action. 

I haven’t put many tickets in, and I’m not complaining about Blizzards ticket handling,  and because I don’t see anything doesn’t mean nothing has happened,  we Know people get banned as punishments for things, and the best way to deal with any bad behaviour is to ignore it where possible. Player run courts are unreasonable, and the Terms of services are the ultimate law, but nor do I want to spend all my time raising tickets for the minor things which are technically breaches, but you can deal with to a point.

Beyond talking to the persons GM ( if they care) /leave the area,  and ignoring them,  raising a ticket is all you can do.

I don’t want to be a dobber, so I weigh up how important the issue is, who/what are the affecting and if its important enough I will raise that ticket, but for the most its less complicated to walk away, and thus nothing gets reported.