Popular Twitch streamer Zack ‘Asmongold’ slammed Blizzard’s spotlight on the company’s tools and suggestions for handling harassment within World of Warcraft.
Asmon called the company’s guidelines to deal with online harassment in WoW ineffective, and suggested his own way of dealing with constant infractions that streamlines the process of blocking communication with another player.
The WoW developer’s monthly spotlight for September reminded players about Blizzard’s Code of Conduct as well as what they could do to combat problematic players. Among others, the ignore features, report functions, and filters are some of Blizzard’s ways to keep harassment from others in check.
But as a longtime resident of Azeroth, Asmon thinks there’s a much more efficient way to let players control who they can ignore – and for the most part, Blizzard agrees.
“Are you guys dumb?” Asmongold replied to the Blizzard spotlight. “Make ignore list account-wide and add an option to ignore an entire bnet account.”
The streamer got right to the point of how the World of Warcraft filters should act when blocking a player from communicating.
An account-wide ban would prevent all of a malicious player’s characters from interacting with any of the characters from the person that put them in an ignored list.
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This is where Blizzard’s method and Asmongold’s idea of censoring differ slightly.
While Blizzard noted the Ignore feature was account-wide, the person who Ignored another player will still be able to talk to them on other characters.
Are you guys dumb?
Make ignore list account wide and add an option to ignore an entire bnet account.
You're creating unnecessary work for yourselves when you could give players better tools to solve these problems without having to open a ticket
— Zack (@Asmongold) September 9, 2020
But Asmon thinks the devs are “creating unnecessary work for (themselves) when (Blizzard can) give players better tools to solve these problems without having to open a ticket.”
World of Warcraft encompasses millions of players, and the game’s issue with harassment has lasted for decades. “With so many diverse people throughout the game you will encounter folks who share your views and who you may get along with, and others you do not,” Blizzard wrote.
Both Blizzard and Asmongold want better ways to combat online harassment in WoW, and the community is hopeful that the studio will implement those kinds of solutions soon.
