While Blizzard does take harassment and other issues seriously, many may find their methods of handling it, or the outcome to be less-than what they were expecting. Why does it seem to work for some and not for others? The reason is simple.
Blizzard views response to harassing whispers, insulting whispers, or otherwise as “engaging the individual causing a problem with equal language, and therefore it nulls the report.”
Infuriating? Of course. The first reaction many have when confronted with behavior that attacks us is to go on the defensive, to retaliate against the individual expressing this behavior with a rebuttal. The problem with this is that Blizzard Game Masters can not file the report and are forced to null the claim when a response is given to the offender. Their reasoning is that once a response is given and they show favoritism for one side of the argument, it can open up a completely different and more harmful situation that the company does not want to deal with.
So with that stated, what can you do?
If someone sends you a whisper or something in /say or /emote that is baiting you into an argument, do not take the bait. Place the individual immediately on ignore, right click their name, click report, and report them for language. Do NOT forget to place them on ignore- this step is very, very important.
SCREENSHOT the interaction and the messages sent, and place them in a folder. If the harassment continues or moves to other members of your guild or roleplaying group, strongly urge them to not respond to the messages, and repeat the same steps. Note that if anyone responds to the initial dialogue, it can and will null the report.
Now, why take screenshots of the interaction? Not only does this show that the interaction occurred, but it will help you if a report for ongoing harassment needs to be made. It is always good to keep records of harmful interactions with other players, not only for your own personal use, but in case things need to be taken a step further.
REMEMBER:
TAKING THEM OFF IGNORE AND RESPONDING TO THEM WILL IMMEDIATELY NULL ANY PAST/OPEN REPORTS YOU HAD AGAINST THE INDIVIDUAL.
Do not under any circumstances remove someone off ignore for the reason of sending them a response, especially if you have reported the person in the past, or have reported them recently.
If someone contacts you about having you take someone off ignore, politely remind them that asking on behalf of someone on another person’s ignore list to get them removed from said ignore list is against Blizzard TOS. While they may not be involved in the situation, it’s still important to inform them, especially if they were being used by the person as a middle man without their knowledge.
If you respond with hostility towards any harassing or offensive messages, you also open yourself up to being reported, especially by bystanders witnessing the issue. It’s always best to not feed into the issue by adding gasoline to the fire.
We hope this post helps you out, and we wish you a safe and enjoyable roleplaying experience!
Something to add to this: make sure you have the times and dates of the occurrence(s), as well.
In the past, it’s been said that CS does not accept screenshots of harassment as evidence for a variety of reasons – the main one being that someone could doctor them in some way.
Should CS want to hunt down the actual chat logs to prove harassment was happening, providing the timeframe and date to them so that they can actually look it up themselves is a very important resource in your favor.
However, taking screenshots isn’t a bad idea and won’t actually hurt either. Assuming you have timestamps enabled for WoW’s chat, that’s a big plus for you for finding the exact time it started. Screenshots are also organized by date, so if you happen to forget it, then you can pull the file from the folder to see when it happened.
Screenshots also help with the whole “name and shaming” thing too.
Vaknosh Blackwolf's Refuge 