New Blacklist Update Problem

[Amarande]

If you blacklisted such a high amount, either you blacklist for petty reasons or don't cycle people out every major patch.

This is usually the problem - a lot of MMO players actually do use the block list as a solution for relatively small slights e.g. folks that happen to chat loquaciously but otherwise benignly, advertise (even politely) their FC/guild in public locations, etc.

Why this is a thing when JP has a community blacklist that is very public is beyond me.

That blacklist is posted to a 4chan-esque website - i.e., it is anonymous, to the point that you'd need police forensics to track down the poster, and let's face it, it's not the kind of post that would concern police. We're not talking threats here, we're talking "Joe did something annoying in a video game so you may not want to group with Joe" (even if it is combined with a very unified culture that gives it a lot more power than it would in the West). And they're not even naming Joe, just his ingame character.

If that's harassment (although most online social venues would probably consider it so in 2024, which I assume is a reason why anonymous imageboards are used), then you probably couldn't say anything negative about a person anywhere without it counting as harassment (but that's another topic).

I'm assuming it may create too many issues to deal with everyone's individual block lists for public matchmaking.

This. The dilemma is whether you respect the personal comfort of two people enough to make the other n-2 people have to wait (without explanation) longer in queue, and it's even worse in an MMORPG (where instead of just "let's match players" like League, we have "let's match players, also they have to meet role criteria, gear criteria, instance unlocks etc").

I'm actually just about convinced at this point for instance that it's why LFR in WoW has such table flippingly long queue times (as WoW does elect to respect ignore lists when matching), and I don't even want to think about Alliance Raid or Frontline queues if it were done here.

SE's choice is likely the least evil.