Account warning with almost no information.

[LittleChickenNugget]

Welcomed to the "Warned Kids Club" OP. Don't worry, you get used to it.

[Darthgummibear]

Welcomed to the "Warned Kids Club" OP. Don't worry, you get used to it.

I already turned off shout chat. At least now I don't feel like I need a shower every time I have to visit uldah.

[Ceridwenae]

As I sometimes can do, I might get a little on the personal side here, OP. If I'm too much, feel free to ignore me. But I'm doing this from what I believe is a good place, because I don't like seeing people in these sorts of situations and want to help.

I don't especially like how they don't tell you what you did wrong, but I understand why they don't. For you, OP, you'll likely never know exactly what it was that you did, said or danced that was unacceptable, but I did take a swift peek at your post history to see if I could garner any hints - apologies for this, it's creeper-ish, and at best a scattershot approach to see if anything obvious sticks out.

Without any context, you've called someone an "asshat" here, said someone's parents failed, and often seem to be somewhat combative with other posters (there are more things I could point at, but you can read your own posts and see what you think); that's without even going past the first few lines of the posts, and in just August alone. Again, however, I'll stress that's all without the context of why you wrote those words, so I'm personally not saying whether or not you're right or wrong in the spirit of the discussions you were having, nor whether I agree with you for doing so.

My tip, should you want it, is not to call anyone anything that can be seen as pejorative at any time. If you happen to talk, when you talk, in-game as you have here, then you might've caught someone who was already having a bad day, or genuinely found what you said upsetting. If SE's moderators/GMs review the logs or forum posts and decide the person(s) who lodged the complaint has a case, then you have yourself a warning (or ban, in the worst cases).

This isn't a thing where you can't talk to anyone. I want to gently urge you to see that as a fallacy of thought; a self-defense mechanism which isn't really helping you. What I want to encourage you to do is take a moment to read your posts or comments and imagine how other people might respond to them. Ask yourself have you ever enjoyed being called an "asshat", when you were just trying to put across your thoughts, however ineptly? It's not that you can't speak with people, but that sometimes, a little reframing is instead required. It might be, for example, beneficial to ask people how they reach specific conclusions so you can gain understanding of their perspective, rather than just going in full-throated judgement of a position. Admittedly, there's some SE-based irony here.

Only you know you here, so maybe it's worth taking some time for self-reflection; no one here can really help you as much as you can help yourself in that regard. It's something we all should do regularly anyway, so it can only be a good thing for you - and that's where I'd suggest you steer yourself: towards something more positive, rather than the negatives it's so easy to drift to.

[keichirou]

No, it's objectively not. Putting in tickets against people who have not committed any violation of the TOS just because you happen to have a personal beef with them is in and of itself an action that should be discouraged because it both wastes the GM staff's time as well as puts other people's accounts in jeopardy for petty vindictiveness.

There is a difference between a ticket where you and the GM staff simply do not see eye-to-eye and an actually outright bad ticket put in in bad faith to try to get back at someone you personally dislike.

yeah makes sense...
i hope is just is not like 1 bad ticket and then you get a warning ,because thats a detriment for future tickets with actual hacking or cheating issues

[Darthgummibear]

snip(post limit and didn't want to selectively edit)

That's an understandable connection due to the often heated nature of forum conversations, but doesn't apply to this situation. In the game, I generally speaking go out of my way to help people and avoid getting drawn into conversations which would have that result. In-game actions more often than not have a more community feel to them. No name-calling that I can recall. I've only had a direct issue with someone once the entire time I've been playing this game, over this past winter. Only time I've had to block someone.

Someone would probably ask why such a disparity, and I really can't answer that except to say that in the game interactions are generally more organic and feel much the same as they do with people I deal with in real life, whereas the forums are more like facebook. At least that was the case before today since I don't feel like I can comfortably interact with the community in the game anymore.

[Avoidy]

Yeah you can't even exchange game related banter with your friends if there's a random present, because something as basically sarcastic as "healers????" when you kill yourself on purpose might be misconstrued by the random as an actual attack. And if your resident random decides he's offended hard enough on someone else's behalf, then he'll report you and the GM won't even care about the context and now you've got a warning. Doesn't even matter that you're just joking with your friend, doesn't matter that the comment wasn't even directed at the random, doesn't even matter that the comment in itself was completely harmless. A random was offended and if anyone's offended that's literally all that matters. I saw an email exchange several years ago where someone was warned for this and when he tried to tell the gm like, "no it was just an inside joke with my friend," the gm legit just told him "doesn't matter, the random was offended." And this was back when they actually gave you a little feedback about what you even did. Now they won't even tell you what you did wrong so you can avoid doing it a second time. Meanwhile, you have legit stalkers harassing people for months and nothing is done about it. It's a damn joke. The community aspect of this game is incredibly damaged because people are afraid to have any kind of levity or provide any sort of feedback or advice, lest anyone be offended and leave a permanent strike on their account.

Did you know that the very first dungeon in the game has a rape jail in it called "The Hole," and in it are a bunch of female NPCs crying about their lost virtue and saying they can't take another night in the captain's quarters? On behalf of other people who never asked, I'm feeling really offended by this! Who do I complain to??

[Angellos]

And people wonder why "gamers" are pushing for single player MMOs, lmao.

What?

...................That's called an RPG.

[SturmChurro]

I already turned off shout chat. At least now I don't feel like I need a shower every time I have to visit uldah.

That's just chat. You can still be banned for "grief tactics" for how you play as well.

[LianaThorne]

No, it's objectively not. Putting in tickets against people who have not committed any violation of the TOS just because you happen to have a personal beef with them is in and of itself an action that should be discouraged because it both wastes the GM staff's time as well as puts other people's accounts in jeopardy for petty vindictiveness.

There is a difference between a ticket where you and the GM staff simply do not see eye-to-eye and an actually outright bad ticket put in in bad faith to try to get back at someone you personally dislike.

They get too many reports to actively investigate each individual one. Context means nothing, it's just a cut and dry "This person did this, it violates some section of the ToF, they're guilty."

We'd have to get an increase in moderation staff to start seeing anything different.

[Jessica_VS]

As I sometimes can do, I might get a little on the personal side here, OP. If I'm too much, feel free to ignore me. But I'm doing this from what I believe is a good place, because I don't like seeing people in these sorts of situations and want to help.

^This entire post is the best one in this thread, with great advice.

I find the number of people writing "Just don't talk in-game" to be interesting, because I talk all the time in this game, other MMOs, and other online games in general, and I have never, after decades of gaming, received a "warning" or anything of the sort from any company. I feel like as long as one speaks or writes with kindness and positivity (the main elements of being a likeable person, really), then no reasonable person would find fault. But some people online throw out disparaging remarks, casual rudeness, and profanity-laced diatribes about whatever they have issue with that very second, to the extent that these people cannot even remember and recognize what they might have said or done that offended someone else.

Just treat others as you wish to be treated, which includes speaking to others the way you wish to be spoken to, and there will be no reason why you cannot chat with other people in the game. Then again, there is that other traditional saying: if you have nothing kind to say, keep it to yourself.