Blizzard Introduces The Silence Penalty For World of Warcraft

Tired of having to deal with grief or spammers all the time in World of Warcraft? Now there’s a new penalty that will be taking place on the video game to silence these players for a duration of time. Find out how you can submit these players into the penalty system and the restrictions that would be placed on accused accounts.

This new penalty, dubbed The Silence Penalty, will take care of the various players who abuse the open chat system in World of Warcraft. After a player receives an undisclosed amount of reports for spam or abusive chat, Blizzard will investigate the player before determining if they will be silenced.

From there, the silenced account will only have access to whispering friends along with whispering replies to players that start up a conversation first. This will only last for twenty-four hours, though, for future offenses, the duration of time that the account will be silenced will be doubled.

Blizzard broke down what the silenced account is able and unable to do.

Restrictions

• Talk in Instance Chat (Raid, Party, and Battlegrounds)
• Talk in global channels that are auto joined (such as General or Trade)
• Create Calendar Invites/Events
• Send in-game mail
• Send Party Invitations
• Send War Game Invitations
• Send Invitations to Duel
• Update a Premade Group Listing
• Create a New List for a Premade Group

Free Access

• Whisper to friends (both WoW friends and Battle.net Friends)
• Reply to Whispers from Non-friends
• Party/Raid Chat (with Invited Players)
• Create Parties and Raids
• Talk in Global Channels that have a moderator
• Share Quests
• Sign up for a pre-made group

There are still some questions in placed for how the system will work without being abused by players. Regardless, we’ll have to see how the new silence penalty will work out when it launches in a pre-Legion patch.