That assumes facts not in evidence.
Yes...and Turbine also provides a way to report harassment/griefing. Use of forced emotes can be reported as such. If Turbine gets enough tickets saying so, the word may filter up the food chain vigorously enough for changes to be made. (And in the mean time, if the same people keep getting reported, just maybe they'll be pulled aside and told to stick to the willing as targets and leave the unwilling strictly alone.)Quote:
It doesn't matter what you feel or what I feel. It's all up to Turbine and ToS are dictated by them and the violations come from that.
You can report those things if you think they violate rules. If enough people agree with you--and add their reports to yours--you may get Turbine's attention for a change.
There is a work-around. It's an ugly one, on some levels, and it's one Turbine probably wouldn't like, but it's there.
Start a list of "known forced emote users" and circulate it. Anyone who wishes to pre-emptively put those people on ignore could use such a list to do so. What I would expect though, is that if anyone posted such a list in *these* Forums, the thread would be black holed very quickly.
Such lists would also be a source of abuse by maliciously adding people for reasons other than forced emote use.
If blocking forced emotes were to be added to /ignore, I would expect there to be immediate calls for a *greatly* expanded ignore list.
In terms of processor and database resources, I would expect an "opt out" toggle separate from the ignore list to be a better choice.
Hence my periodic note that, if Turbine can not (your point) or will not implement an "opt out", then (and only then) forced emotes should be removed from the game, root and branch. (Including, by the way, the class based forced emotes.)
You might try Celestrata, who doesn't appear to be as busy as Sapience.
As for publishing a PM you've sent...you'll probably be okay doing that (as the person who *sent* it), but there's no guarantee that you won't get dinged for it.
On the technical side...see my remarks above about a less desirable alternative.
On the social problem... About the only levers the players have are to make so much noise about it someone even higher up decides that implementing an "opt out" is the only way to shut up those that want it, and using the power of the purse--hitting Turbine's income and making sure that they *know* that's why they're taking a financial hit.
There is more than one way to make that financial hit. One is, of course, not spending any actual cash on the game, or even dropping VIP status. The others are indirect. Every post in every thread has to be at least glanced at by Forum Mods as part of their job. Lots of posts--and, specifically, lots of posts in controversial threads--chews up the mods time, time that costs Turbine money. Likewise, if you feel that you have been harassed, whether by one use of a forced emote or many, by filing a ticket you are eating up GM time. Granted, very little on a simple ticket ("Harassment by use of forced emotes"), but if enough people are doing that, it costs Turbine money. Unless Turbine is different from any other company that has a customer support group, there is analysis done on what types of tickets they get and what those ticket were submitted about. If there are *enough* such tickets, the word will flow up the food chain and the support department will start demanding a fix. In the mean time, the powers that be will understand that players are NOT HAPPY about the present situation.
--W. H. Heydt
Old Used Programmer