World of Warcraft introduces 'silence penalty' for abusive players

Players who don't learn their lesson could be silenced for a very long time

A visitor plays the computer game 'World of Warcraft' at the world's biggest high-tech fair, the CeBIT on March 4, 2010 in the northern German city of Hanover. Some 4,157 companies from 68 countries are displaying their latest gadgets at the fair taking place from March 2 to 6, 2010. (NIGEL TREBLIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that it plans to implement a range of sanctions against players who are abusive in the World of Warcraft chat system.

Blizzard is calling the punishment “The Silence Penalty”, stating that it will come into effect when a player is reported multiple times under the spam or abusive chat categories.

In order to make sure players aren’t being unfairly reported and silenced, Blizzard says it will investigate a player after multiple flags are raised before deciding whether or not to enforce the silence penalty.

If a player is found guilty of abuse or spam it will result in some serious restrictions on their play.

The Silence Penalty won’t completely stop a player from interacting with others – they’ll still be able to do things like “whisper” to both World of Warcraft and Battle.net friends; reply to whispers from non-friends; and share quests.

However, under the penalty players won’t be able to send in-game mail; talk in global channels without a moderator; send party invitations; or send any instance chats.

Suffice it to say that the list of things silenced players are able to do is significantly shorter than the list of things they’re not able to do.

The first time a player is silenced the penalty restrictions will only be in place for a period of 24 hours. The duration of each penalty received after that, though, will double and there’s no maximum cap on how much the length can increase. According to Blizzard this means that players who don’t learn their lesson “may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.”

Blizzard didn’t reveal exactly when The Silence Penalty would be coming into place but it did say it would be introduced in a pre-expansion patch for Legion. As Legion is scheduled for release on August 30th, it’s likely we can expect to see it enforced some time before then.

Blizzard says that by introducing The Silence Penalty it hopes to “ help support positive experiences” for players and give them a chance to “create the type of community we all want to take part in.”