Cleaning up Thunder Bluff

An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"

Just leave general chat

[WinterSolstice]

Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)

Re:

[Tofystedeth]

If only. I've seen so many atheism vs. Christianity debates over the trade channel. And that goes to all the cities. It's so irritating.

Re:

[fotbr]

Leave both, sell things in the AH, and leave the 13 year olds to themselves.

Re:

[Mysticalfruit]

The only thing I recieve at this point in WoW is guild chat, pm's and party messages. Everything else is ignored. Our guild is big enough (Dark Hand of Chaos on Gilneas) that anything you'd want to sell has a taker in the guild. Same with speciality services such as lock picking... there's always somebody in the guild that can do some obscure thing.

Yes, I know my aruguments are guild centric...

Re:Just leave general chat

[OglinTatas]

I have left general chat. I also left trade channel and defense channel, because there are few on topic postings if any. Trade and defense are mixed in with the garbage on general chat. I've never been to LFG channel. Face to face talking and obviously /p or /g are about all that are not full of trash talking. (Or not.)

That takes care of all the profanity, but now I get in-game spam-mail and spam-tells from 'xssdfjbv' or 'jwedexxsd' about gold prices. And if I /ignore, in 5 minutes I get "xlxsow removed from ignore list--no such player" then another spam-tell from 'wossdddd'

Blizzard needs to do 2 things: 1) a "mark as spam" button which automatically logs a complaint and the evidence, and ignores the user for chat, tell, and mail; 2) as another poster put it, if I /ignore a player, I want the option to ignore the WHOLE account, no matter how many alts the guy uses--chat, tell, mail, duel spam, plain talking, yells, and emotes.

Re:Just leave general chat

[Judg3]

Actually in 2.1 that's being implemented. If you get a tell, you can right click and 'Report Spam' it - this automagically also ignores that user, not just that particular player, but the entire account.

Re:

[Kozz]

Phew. Hopefully that "ignore" action is based on consensus (multiple reports). Otherwise it could be easily abused, couldn't it? Imagine a scenario where two players meet: Player A decides he doesn't like Player B for whatever reason. Later, Player B sends Player A a "tell" (maybe annoying but not spammy), so Player A decides to smack him down with a spam report. Insta-boot!

Of course I'm speaking from a position of ignorance, never having played the game (*gasp* blasphemy?).

Re: spamsentry

[SEAL]

Don't even bother reporting the spammers with spamsentry. Blizzard has already stated that they are overwhelmed by reports from that mod and their logging (apparently) isn't good enough to track the culprits - who usually fire off a barrage of spam and then delete the account.

Better use of spamsentry is this: /spamsentry options ignorebylevel 2

That'll ignore tells from all players below level 2. I have yet to see a spambot bother to level up a character. They may start doing that at some point, but by th

Re:

[_Sprocket_]

Don't even bother reporting the spammers with spamsentry. Blizzard has already stated that they are overwhelmed by reports from that mod and their logging (apparently) isn't good enough to track the culprits - who usually fire off a barrage of spam and then delete the account.

Do you happen to have a reference for that? I wouldn't be suprised if their logging is that lackluster. Seems security is often an after-thought (and by then its really difficult to deal with).

Better use of spamsentry is this: /sp

Re:

[devnull17]

I've played on both RP and normal PvE servers. There's no difference whatsoever, except that people whine about each others' innocuous names and force them to change them. No one actually role-plays. The general levels of player skill, intelligence, English fluency, helpfulness and friendliness aren't any higher than they are on other servers. If anything, the players are slightly more noobish (and insist that they not be held accountable for sucking, as they play for fun) in PvE, and downright awful in

Re:Just leave general chat

[Omestes]

So your argument is "Your a better man for being called a fag by hormonal 13 years who pee into their Mountain Dew bottles"? I disagree. I think that Blizzard, and other MMO makers, lose some degree of profit from harboring hostile player atmospheres. I know I finally quit playing, in part, because I started getting sick the growing amount of idiots out there, and my server wasn't too bad, even (Cenarian Circle [RP]), but the various PvP and RP/PvP servers I played on were just a place for anonymous idiots to inflict themselves on others for fun. Several of my friends refuse to play WoW because of the shear amount of uncouth children running about. Being called a "fag" 60 times an hour is not fun, I don't really care if it makes me a "tougher" person, I'm too old to really care about that anymore. I want to have fun, not build character.

Not saying that there isn't good people on WoW, over the year or so that I played I managed to get a nice friends list, and join a guild filled with very adult people. I did manage to have some very nice conversations while sitting around in Stranglethorn being bored at 3am. But the more populous places were almost unplayable, like the Crossroads.

I'd say this would fall into the "tragedy of the commons" ideology. Just because you can be a moron, doesn't mean you HAVE TO be a moron. Arguments of character building aside, why should I accept being called a "fag", ever? How is this acceptable in a polite society?

Re:

[deanoaz]

>>> How is this acceptable in a polite society?

The Internet is not a polite society. As the GP said, you just have to accept the fact that anything can be said there at any time and adjust to it.

In a way, the idiots are doing you a favor. How hard is it to find out that a random stranger is a sick loser who should not be trusted or associated with--if they are being restrained in what they can say and do? It can be hard enough to end up costing you.

Every time somebody lets you know they are a waste

Re:Just leave general chat

[C0rinthian]

Here is a better analogy: If you own a store, and someone is inside verbally abusing your customers, do you:
A) Tell the abuser to leave.
B) Tell your customers to deal with the abuser.

Which do you think is better for your business?

There is no solution but moderation

[drinkypoo]

If you want to control this problem, you will need moderation. That is simply the only way to achieve it. You can be just as offensive typing fvck as you can typing fuck, and it won't get caught by the majority of filters. And in terms of speech, well, why would you ever want to hear anyone who isn't on your team? And why would you want to play with a bunch of foulmouths unless you were one?

Now that's a timely article

[AKAImBatman]

I was just threatening to yank the impromptu slashdot chat room [slashdot.org] after a (literally) 12 year old chatter was getting out of hand. You know, I remember being a young teenager with loads of "hacking" scripts. I *don't* remember being so annoying about them.

On the other hand, it's always funny when they fall for the "Alt-F4 to kickban" trick. :P

Re:

[networkBoy]

I like telling someone to go \/quit when they are being one of those copy cat aholes.
-nB

Just give us the option

[Red Flayer]

the hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go

That's me. I prefer not to surround myself with all that negative energy, I generate enough myself. If an online game company wants my business, they should run a "play nice" server where players who act like that can be bumped to a regular server. I enjoy competition -- but I can't stand the racist, misogynist etc chat to be found in most games.

Re:

[Saxmachine]

Me too. I worry about what the future of video gaming holds for me when I read review after review forgiving a game's insubstantial single-player mode because "online play is what it's all about." What about those of us who play video games (as opposed to sports, board games, etc.) as a way to have a bit of fun without human interaction? It looks like the best I can hope for is that I'll become too busy to play before everything becomes a foul-mouthed back alley wrapped up in a thin MMO tortilla.

Re:

[Red Flayer]

I like to play multiplayer games, so I'm in a bit of a different boat than you. But there's always the 'no chat' or 'friends only' options in most MMOs; whether they have good solo content is another matter.

Re:

[Red Flayer]

Sorry if you just don't get it, that solution isn't good enough. It's not about naughty words, it's about hate speech. I don't want to see it, I don't want my kids exposed to it -- regardless of whether I (or they) can choose to add someone to an ignore list after the fact.

Re:

[necrognome]

Then your only solution is to game with folks you know or folks who have been vouched for (directly or transitively by n degrees*) by folks you know.

* n may have an upper bound of 6, if you believe the word on the street.

Re:Just give us the option

[Red Flayer]

You have no clue, do you? You've never raised kids, have you? Until you have, STFU and GBTW.

I have my preferences, you have yours. Big fucking deal. If there are a lot of people like me out there, why shouldn't a game company cater to us? It's not like the people like you and the people like me can't both be satisfied.

Or you could teach the children to ignore it and thicken their skins a little, but hey, since daddy can't and would rather be shielded from all the naughty words and thoughts than just do the same, why should they?

Seriously, get a clue before you spout off your nonsense. If you ever have kids, you'll learn that parenting is not easy, and that making sure your kids are exposed to the right influences is one of the keys to ensuring that they establish behavior patterns that are healthy for them. Teaching them to be able to handle bad situations and assholes is important, but I want to be able to do that on my own terms. Then again, I *care* how my kids turn out, so the above may not apply to you.

Re:

[Hoi Polloi]

I play FPS MMOs so I encourage people to constantly type messages. Anyone standing around not moving and chatting instead is a much easier target.

I find the people who spam-chat the worst. If it was mildly funny the first time, it isn't funny the 100th time. Then there are the people who freak out over it and by doing so only ecourage the spammers to keep doing it.

obPA

[Rob T Firefly]

Gabe said it best. [penny-arcade.com]

Re:

[Suertreus]

Twice! [penny-arcade.com]

There is a solution to this problem

[Control Group]

And it's the one that one of the people who commented on TFA proposed: do away with anonymity. Require the account holder's real name, address, and phone number to be publicly viewable. This would result in some real-world repercussions for the griefer, when those who had been griefed got torqued enough to go to the kid's house and beat him up. That happens a few times, and people will start being more careful.

This is not a good idea, of course, but it would solve the problem.

Re:

[Frozen Void]

This is very stupid.
Internet anonymity is a core principle which enables online communities.
WHat we need is system of reputation:
e.g. if you get ignored by 5 players,you get -5 score.if by 10 ,-10 etc that way player can judge people by their previcious interactions.
It needs to be more abuse-proof then simply counting ignores.
Auto-ban filters and auto-ignore filters,would be bettter in real-time.
Say something stupid,and you're banned/ignored before the message even reaches user screen.

Re:

[Control Group]

Yes, it is very stupid. To quote myself:

This is not a good idea, of course, but it would solve the problem.

If you're playing along at home, that's the last line of the post.

Re:

[orclevegam]

1) Idiot A mouths off to Idiot B on-line
2) Idiot B looks up the real name and address of Idiot A.
3) Idiot B drives to Idiot A's house and shoots him.

4) Jack Thompson threatens to ban all video games
5) Idiot C drives to Thompsons house and shoots him.
6) ???
7) Profit!

And no, before someone says it I do not condone the shooting of Jack Thompson...
Shooting would be too good for him. He should be disbarred and die a lonely broken man, although considering his mental state (I don't believe for a minute he's actually sane, whether he passed a psych test or not) he'd probably just retreat into Thompson land and sit gibbering in a corner... actually, that

Ignoreing them doesnt solve the issue really.

[Kaffien]

Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.

Maybe I'm just drunk...

[Fizzl]

...But what the hell is this article about? One more iota of randomness and the summary could be used as an entropy bucket for a PRNG.

Thunder Bluff?

[wbren]

But Thunder Bluff is full of easy-going Tauren. I mean, I've had people moo at me rudely, but I wouldn't call them "racist junk-monkeys". I'm sick of people stereotyping Tauren! First it's "Tauren are stupid cows" and "Tauren aren't allowed in my house because they'll break the china". Now it's "Tauren are racists". When will it all end...

Re:Thunder Bluff?

[vjmurphy]

I hear that Geico's next commercials will feature a new tag line "So easy, even a Tauren can do it."

Re:

[Hoi Polloi]

They just see the hot Tauren as pieces of meat anyway.

Re:

[notamisfit]

It's the capital city for the Tauren (giant man-cows) in World of Warcraft.

Maybe... just maybe...

[__aaclcg7560]

If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.

Re:

[moderatorrater]

Or maybe, just maybe, that woman lead tester was fired because she was assaulting the person she called an "a**hole" whereas the people calling each other hos and bitches were joking with each other. It's the difference between arresting someone for trying to beat someone into submission and arresting a few guys who are wrestling with each other for fun.

Re:Maybe... just maybe...

[__aaclcg7560]

In the professional companies that I worked in, you could get fired for either remark. It really comes down to whether you're a professional or not, how you treat people and how you want people to treat you. Professionalism is sorely lacking in the video game industry.

Re:Maybe... just maybe...

[Spy Hunter]

I think the real problem is that online games are almost exclusively about aggression. In almost all online games, the primary way you interact with the game world is a weapon. Even when you're in a party you're sometimes competing with your own party members. Until we have games that are founded on cooperation instead of competition, where your primary tools are something other than guns and swords, players of online games are going to be aggressive toward each other.

It's the nature of the games themselves, which is of course a side effect of the people who work in the game industry, but also a cause. It's a vicious cycle. However, there is hope on the horizon, and it comes from the (unlikely) direction of Valve software and Team Fortress 2. Have you seen the latest trailer for Team Fortress 2 [teamxbox.com]? The facial animation software is nothing short of incredible. This is a key tool that has been missing from games for years. If it can be merged with a procedural animation system, Valve will have finally brought down the barriers to creating movie-quality character development and plots in games.

Team Fortress won't have a movie-worthy in-game plot, to be sure, but the personality and above all *humor* infused into Valve's characters is already a welcome change from typical FPS fare. OTOH, something like Portal could be a breakthrough game.

Play more civilized games

[grapeape]

Try Settlers of Catan or Uno on Live, i guess they are too boring for the teeners every game I have played so far has been civil and even pleasant.

It would be nice to play a game against my nephew (the only person I know with an unhacked 360) without having to worry about colorful metaphors. Yes I know its nothing he hasnt heard before and its probably more distubing to me than him, but for grown-ups live is almost unusable for 90% of the games out there.

While I hate censorship, I do wish Xbox Live had some sort of rating system for games with a reporting structure for violators. I think it would work, they could still allow free-for-all matchups that let the explicatives fly, just allow an easy way to designate gamers that dont want to hear it. Maybe an icon on the gamertag? It just looks like there should be some way to do it that allows freedom for both people who want to hear 12 year olds cuss and those that dont.

Re:

[x-caiver]

Uno on Live is a more civilized game? More mature maybe, but more civilized no. As one of the first camera-enabled Live games, and a slower paced (compared to an FPS) game it quickly became a pool of nudity. And unfortunately not the "hot grits" kind, but the "dude, wtf!??!" kind.

Thunder Bluff?

[DurendalMac]

I think you mean Barrens General.

Ban cursing

[Jaeph]

Please understand that I curse all the time in real-life, play on PvP servers without problem (e.g. shadowbane), and so on.

That said, they really should ban people who curse in public chat (no, guild chat is not "public"). Someone who gets banned a few times for cursing ends up with a perma-ban.

Again, I curse in real-life. But I see no positive reason to allow cursing in general chat channels.

-Jeff

Lack of Accountability

[JoeD]

The problem is a lack of real-world accountability.

If someone were to act in real life the way some of those idiots act online, they'd get punched in the face pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there's no way to punch someone in the face over the net.

I'd like to see MMO*s with trial by jury

[spun]

Make a juried legal system part of the game. Let people press charges and sue people, in game. Conviction could mean anything from confiscation of in game resources through "imprisonment" of your avatar, all the way to the "death penalty" of losing your account. Heck, make people pay a month's deposit which is forfeit if you are convicted. Sure, people would try to game the system, but people have been trying to game legal systems since they were invented, I think we know ways to protect against that by now

Re:

[Renraku]

Great idea.

Because a population of mostly fowl mouthed racist sexist kids would make an excellent and unbiased jury.

Options in WoW

[wuie]

Since we're using "Cleaning up Thunder Bluff" as the subject, I'll assume that most of this is directed at the text seen in World of Warcraft. Here are a couple of things you can do to prevent seeing things that might be offensive:

- Use the profanity filter. This will block out the most offensive words that you may come across in chat.
- Put them on your ignore list. I know that there's a limited number of people you can put on the ignore list, but if one person's irritating you enough, put them there.
- Leave general chat. You can always rejoin it at a later time.
- Finally, you can report someone that's being excessively rude and using slurs. Bans are usually temporary, but they can get the point across. Too many temporary bans will result in a permanent one.

Of course, these are the options that are present in WoW, I can only assume that other MMOs have similar steps. YMMV.

Re:

[fotbr]

That'd work real well. You'd have a bunch of lvl 70 13 year olds ganking because they can, and no one can decline to duel them. And probably swearing up a storm doing it.

Re:

[Matthew Bafford]

There are addons that will remove this limit, and sync your /ignore list across toons on the same realm.

Yeah, I think I found out about some of those. I ended up using the ultimate mod, though - deltree. That solved all of my WoW related problems.

Thunder Bluff?

[richdun]

On behalf of the Taurahe people, I for one am highly offended at the implication that our peaceful, majestic city in the clouds needs cleaning up. Our Bluffwatchers are some of the most efficient custodians I have ever seen, and our program to recycle waste products into compost to aid in Arch Druid Runetotem's morrorwgrain research sets an example for capital cities across Azeroth.

Despite our bovine nature, and its accompanying production of large piles of waste product, we boast of the cleanest cities on Azeroth or Outlands, free from the usual blight of urban sprawl, like the putrid sewers of Undercity, the molten magma "waste processing" of Ironforge, or the dumbasses in Stormwind who let a dragon take over the city just because she could shapeshift into a "hawt bb." Meanwhile, we have continued to maintain a healthy tourism industry, and, unlike our druidic friends in Darnassus, people actually go to Thunder Bluff on purpose, not just because their cat hit the mouse and they were trying to go to Winterspring to farm.

In summary, I expect a full apology to be delivered to Cairne by the end of the week. Reparations in the form of well chewed grass, some decent low level balance druid armor, or a free pass to /spit on all rogues, both Alliance and Horde, would be acceptable.

Celticow
(Azjol-Nerub)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[egburr]

I'll defend your right to say what you want, but I won't defend doing so with a megaphone or loudspeakers, or broadcasting it on radio or TV. You may speak your opinion as long as I am not forced to listen. If you are speaking in a public area, I can usually leave. If you are speaking in my home, I can have you leave. But, if you are amplifying your voice somehow, then it becomes much harder to avoid and you are now in the wrong. There are many reasons governments require permits for large gatherings; one o

Re:

[geekoid]

You do NOT have the right to say whatever you want, whereever you want, espcially in someone elses home. OR in this case, on someone elses virtual worlds. It's there's they own it. It is not censorship, it is a rule. No one is making you play thr game, it'sd voluntary. In exchange for agreeing to play by the rules, and usually a fee, you can play.

"Would you like to be locked out of all games your favorite publisher makes for NOT using "profanity"?"
no, bur I wouldn't play, and I wouldn't tell them they can't

Go home care bear!

[earnest murderer]

Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...

I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.

It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.

So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.

In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.

The more you try to clean things up...

[moore.dustin]

...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.

What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.

You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.

Re:

[Pvt_Waldo]

Bullshit. Theoretically insightful because you're a troll who's posted but other than that, bullshit.

Not to put it in the same category but if your reasoning was true, we'd not have stories of civil rights changes for example. We'd be saying, "How can you really expect racism to vanish when it's just a fact that some people are racist. Just live with it, it's there, welcome to the real world."

Re:

[moore.dustin]

No. It is the factor of anonymity that makes it vastly differently. In the civil rights movement, if you called someone something, people attached a name to the statement. People knew what you did. Online, that is not the case, so things will not change.

You are the troll who should have read my post and noticed I specifically mentioned the factor of anonymity.

Re:

[egburr]

The guild I'm in has a rule about keeping chat clean. We have kicked people out for arguing and escalating after being reminded. We have had people leave because of the rule. Despite that, there are still over 400 people in our guild. We enforce this on our teamspeak server, too.

If only we could do the same for the world- and zone-wide channels and for yell. Leave "say" alone, because it is local and limited in scope, except maybe in high-population-density areas. As for group chat, well, I can always lea

Re:

[Pvt_Waldo]

The guild I'm in also has rules that are similar. The other day we had a new person who began to let loose with some pretty mysoganistic and homophobic comments. We called him on it, not by treating him as an idiot and telling him to shut up, but by treating him as a real person and saying, "This is not acceptable to us." It doesn't work every time but just acting like a real person and then treating others like real people is a powerful way to approach it. Sometimes the act of treating someone as a pe

Re:

[moore.dustin]

You can certainly enforce some changes on the small scale of a guild, sure. My old guild was the same way. It worked well actually, but to think you can apply the same standards outside of the scope of a guild makes you nuts! Really, all you can hope for is to keep your guild chat channels clean. Anything beyond that is a pipe dream.

Re:

[egburr]

It's only a pipe dream because Blizzard won't do it. What I suggested is certainly possible to implement, but Blizzard doesn't want to risk losing the monthly payments of a good portion of people who can't or won't exhibit any self-control mainly because there are no consequences to their actions. Behavior like that in real life would get them kicked out if they didn't stop and maybe even arrested if they persisted.

Switch servers?

[Oz0ne]

I've never experienced anything remotely like that anywhere in WoW. Not even close. The most offensive things I've seen are the chuck norriss jokes in the barrens. While they're annoying, it's a stretch to find them offensive.

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

Uhm, because we all know running away from the problem made it go away...

Solutions...

[Jerf]

Step one is to take the problem seriously. A lot of people don't. "Sticks and stones may break my bones" most properly ends with "but words can sear my soul." That one stupid saying (in its original form) has probably done more damage than good.

Step two is to create some sort of social mechanism. My suggestion, which I haven't seen yet, is a sort of social network where you can indicate which players you like to play with and which you don't, and automated match-making software will help you hook up with pe

One solution: An 'asshole' button.

[grnbrg]

Years ago I had a friend make a (completely unworkable) suggestion for cars -- an "Asshole Button". Some jerk cuts you off? Point the remote at his car and push the button, and a light turns on on his license plate -- and yours. The cops would be allowed to ticket (and reset the lights) of anyone with 5 lights lit. Fun, but it would never work in real life. Online, however, it becomes very possible.

It could be very workable in a MMORPG, though. Tagging someone with one "asshole" point could cost yo

I've only got one thing to say to this....

[Bourbon Man]

STFU nub, lolz, wtf luzer, kthxbye!!!1!

All joking aside (yes, I meant that humorously), you pretty much have to deal with it. Use ignore. Report offenders. Don't play. Quit the game and make sure you let them know you're leaving because they don't enforce their own policies. Make a guild of tattle-tales. Make up your mind to ignore it and not let it bother you, instead of letting it dominate your game experience.

To quote a good friend of mine..

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

... named Anonymous:


If you don't like the language or behavior of the people playing... go play something else? Or, leave the general chat. Or, only talk to people in your guild. Or, go play a RP server (blocking the griefing nubs who bother you when their server is down).

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Well, I fucked that up. I gotta learn to preview, the quote was "gb2gaia"

There are a few things

[thebdj]

1) As others mentioned, leave general chat. This should resolve close to 90% of the problems.
2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity.
3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears.
4) If people are being offensive, report it to the Moderators (or whatever your game calls them). I do not think an MMO exists where there are not moderators of some form. Most of them are willing to help and will resolve issues like this, if you present the issues in a calm and reasonable manner.

Now, you can almost forget everyone suddenly changing their ways, and unfortunately there isn't much you can do to force them to change. While people can be muted or temporarily banned, you will almost never get permanent removal unless you blatantly violent the EULA. Short of making threats or committing some sort of illegal act, they will probably return. The best you can do is limit exposure using the tools provided by the game. It is not the best solution, but if the people acting like total idiots find out they are without any friends and that no one wants to play with them, perhaps they will finally leave. (Though, that may also be wishful thinking.)

Re:

[aafiske]

"2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity."

So if your neighborhood is getting worse, you should just move? No point in trying to fund the police better to up patrols, etc? Moving is n

The U.S. Army solution

[Animats]

America's Army still has the best solution. Their in-game implementation of the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. They just put griefers in a barred cell from which there is no escape, and keep them there for a while. There's nothing to do in the cell, except peer out the little barred window and watch the sun go down.

Re:

[Phrogman]

And thats the best way to do it I think. These are roleplaying games, so institute instanced prison cells, and stick the offending people in them. Vary the amount of time based on the offense, and with a few strikes you are out (ie the company deletes your account and all characters, thanks for playing). People will smarten up really quick.

Example:
Offensive Language/Behaviour - your toon is locked in prison for X number of hours. 2nd Offense, its X *days*. Plus you get fined say 20% of your current bank acc

Tseric just quit WoW

[Jormundgard]

Very relevant sidenote is that Tseric just quit his community moderator position after two years at Blizzard. He apparently got tired of the extremely bad treatment he received on a day-to-day basis.

taboo words, racism, and trash talk

[Lord Ender]

I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.

Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.

Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.

The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.

If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.

Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.

Re:

[aafiske]

The difference is, in a basketball if someone mouths off nonstop for 15 minutes about how you are a giant fag for stealing the ball and getting two points, you can go break their nose. The implied threat of such an action generally keeps the taunting and trash-talking on a level that is feather-ruffling, and insulting if you are thin-skinned, but not 'fighting words'.

Online, there are no 'fighting words'. There is no barrier, no repercussions for actions, no tarnishing of your actual name by your behavior i

Re:

[Lord Ender]

I hope to God you're never picked for jury duty on a rape case. Harrassment (verbal or otherwise) is always the harassers fault, no matter what the target may have done to inspire harassment.

I hope to God you're never involved in a game of street basketball. What does harassment have to do with rape? Rape is a violent crime, harassment is not. They are totally different.

Also, harassment is certainly not always the harasser's fault. It's subjective. One person's insult is another person's friendly jab. I can

This the Reality of ANY Pick Up Game

[PM Guy]

Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.

Filtering Fun

[harlows_monkeys]

We once ran a small chat and gaming system where I worked. It had a general chat channel, and when people paired up to play a game, such as chess or checkers, it would make a private channel for them.

Because this was a family service, we had to try to police conduct in the general channel, and because we didn't have the staff to monitor it live 24/7, it fell to me to try to automate some of this. That actually worked fairly well. We had a very large dictionary of naughty words and phrases. When you said something, my filters basically looked for any of those things, and '*'ed them out. The filter ignored whitespace, and it also considered certain characters to be equivalent, so if you wrote 5h17, that would match 'shit', since it knew a 5 could take the place of an s, and so on. However, before filtering, it did a spell check on your text, and marked all the words that were spelled right and were not on the bad word list as safe. For example, if you said "wash it", it would not see the "sh it" as something bad.

This worked surprisingly well. It caught it when people tried tricks like inserting spaces to break up the bad words, but usually did not get false positives, because of the spell check protector stuff. Well, unless you were a lousy speller, but if a lousy speller got kicked off incorrectly for profanity, it still improved things. :-)

One other little trick it did. When it filtered out something in your message, it only did that on the message sent to other people. The copy that echoed back to your system was uncensored.

When you got caught, it would send you a message warning you to watch your language. If you ignored the warning, an admin bot would ban you for a period of time. Repeared bans would be for longer times.

One thing that disappointed me: no one ever tried to use Klingon profanity to get around the filters. I had that covered in the filters, and was hoping to see the reaction when the users discovered that.

Re:There's this thing...

[faloi]

All too often, it's not quite enough. Ignore would be great if, to use WoW as an example, you could ignore an unlimited number of people AND have it ignore the account as a whole, not just the toon causing the problem. I care less about profanity than I do people spamming channels, but when I /ignore someone...I want them completely ignored.

Re:There's this thing...

[TNTSoggy]

Actually no freedom of speech does not apply to game servers because they are the equivalent of private property, I'm a member of the gaming clan and we have a ZERO tolerance policy on racial terms and most profanity. if you use it your warned, the next time your kicked, and if you comeback and do it again your banned. we ban a lot of people but we gain even more because we run a clean server.

Re:

[MooseMuffin]

is there a way to filter out background noise or make it just broadcast my voice?

I implore anyone who uses voicechat to use some kind of push-to-talk button. I don't want to hear you breathing. I don't want to hear you argue with your mom. I basically don't need to hear you unless you saying something you want me to hear.

Other party-line systems solved this long ago

[Kadin2048]

This problem has been solved elsewhere. I used to spend a lot of time working in video production and in the theater; in 90% of theaters and studios, they use a headset intercom system made by ClearCom. It's a pretty simple "party line" (or sometimes 2 channel) system, where everybody has a headset and a belt pack, with a PTT switch. The PTT can also be locked on, if you need hands-free operation.

However, the designers realized that letting people lock on their mics could get pretty annoying in a hurry, for

Re:

[fistfullast33l]

Yeah, I really do think Trash talking is bad in general chat most often than not. I think it's the anonymity that's granted by being behind the computer. That's why when people find a good group of players, they stick with them. There was a great clan I ran with in Planetside like that which basically enforced the trash talk rules, and whose members were mature enough that trash talk wasn't necessary or tolerated. In general I don't participate in chat unless it's to coordinate strategy or whatnot, or t

Re:

[SlamMan]

Not really (its a TS/Vent issue - they don't implement it), but our solution is to just recommend using a push to talk key. Mouse Button 4 for me.

Re:

[toolie]

Are you saying TS and Vent don't have push to talk?

Re:

[SlamMan]

No, I'm saying Vent/TS don't do an especially good job at handling their VOX, so you should use push to talk (which they have and support).

Re:

[El Gigante de Justic]

Two more annoying possibilties - 1) Heavy breathers who have their mike threshold way to low 2) People that don't use push to talk and are using speakers and a mike instead of a headset.

My advice - move on

[scuba_steve_1]

Choose you servers more carefully.

For example, I play COD2 exclusively. I belong to a online gaming "clan" that hosts this game and a number of others (BF2, BF2142, UO). In support of these games, we maintain game servers, a Vent voice chat server, forums, and a public website. Our overall philosophy is to provide an environment for fun and cheat-free play. We do not allow in-game typed profanity or harassment of other players. As far as voice chat goes, we only allow profanity in our 16 and older Vent

Re:

[Coan_teen]

My boyfriend only voicechats with people he knows in real life, but I have no doubt the same would be true if he chatted with strangers and I came on the mic.

I avoid contact with people in online games. If this means I miss out on quests, fine. I didn't get into gaming to meet people - I got into gaming to get away from them. I've seen the way my fifty-something mother gets hit on by idiotic 17-year-old boys on WoW, and I'm not interested in that. I just want to run around killing things and gathering it

Re:They are just words.

[nomadic]

"Just words"? Language is the core of human culture. Language affects emotion, if it didn't literature, poetry, song--these things would be pretty much pointless. If language can create positive emotions, why is it so hard to believe it can create negative ones?

Plus I love the English language. If you have to put profanity in every sentence, you're doing a lousy job of speaking it, and that annoys me. It's like watching someone drive a ferrari without knowing how to shift; it makes me wince.

Re:

[untaken_name]

General rule: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Therefore: If 'poo' isn't offensive to you, and 'shit' is equivalent to 'poo', then 'shit' should not be offensive to you. There is no inherent property in words which makes them 'bad'. If there is a euphamism or generally accepted substitute for the 'bad word', then it is not really bad. Check your premise, 'offended' people.

Re:

[vux984]

I'm guessing you have no appreciation for poetry. Language isn't simple arithmetic.

a is sort of like b, and b is sort of like c, and a well its sort of like c too. They aren't equivalent. Even if they both refer to the same steaming turd on the kitchen floor.

'poo' doesn't equal 'shit' doesn't equal 'turd' doesn't equal 'feces'...

Words have all sorts of associative baggage, nuance, and other elements. If you choose to use a euphemism, that choice is carried along with the sentence, and adds nuance to it. Eve

Re:

[loafula]

I completely understand that people are offended by foul language, but I don't understand why. The only reason I see for people to take offense is that it's learned behavior- i.e. "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should."

Re:

[MBGMorden]

It certainly would ruin it for me. Using any word excessively just because you like how it sounds is aggravating. Case in point: my roommate a few years back just got his first honest-to-goodness girlfriend. He was happy. Good for him and all that. Unfortunately, due to watching too many TV shows or something, he insisted on calling her "baby" as often as possible. It didn't even sound natural as he always found some way to force it into the conversation. Conversations generally went along the lines

Re:

[Knara]

Um... you mean Deadwood?

Re:

[Knara]

I tend to agree, personally. One of the same reasons why I still use EFNet.

Re:

[SatanicPuppy]

Not to feed the flamebait, but he's right. If you don't like it, leave the channel.

The people who wish the internet was a sweet world of marshmallow fluff are doomed to perpetual disappointment; too much of our racial Freudian Id is floating around out there, and plenty of otherwise normal people can be complete dicks online. You just gotta learn to live with it, or keep playing neopets.

Capt. Shouty and Team Tourette's

[PhoenixOne]

For me, it's not that the internet isn't all nice (I accept and, sometimes, enjoy the hell out of that ;)), its just that I would like to be able to play a FPS online without being called a fag (or worse) by some 12yo.

The new Live rating system helps but, more times then not, I find myself in a room with "Capt. Shouty and Team Tourette's!". The only solution I've found is removing the headset.

Re:

[rootofevil]

i believe this is utterly appropriate at this time [penny-arcade.com].

Re:

[Puff of Logic]

Blizzard could solve most of the problems on servers by moving banning and ignoring up one level.

Ignores should be account-based, rather than character-based. This makes sense, as it's the player, not the character, that's the problem. Many times I've seen a player get ignored for harassing someone, then promptly switch to a new character and begin the harassment again. With nine characters per server and a tiny ignore list limit, the math just doesn't work out here.

Bans should not be by account (