World of Warcraft: Legion is approaching fast with its August 30 release date. As usual with the MMO's expansions, though, a pre-expansion patch will be released much earlier and Blizzard detailed one of the changes with a dedicated blog post.
Specifically, they will try to clamp down on the growing chat spam by introducing a silence penalty. It all starts with a player report, as expected, and depending on the report type the account might be restricted in the following ways (after investigation).
| Silenced Players Are Unable to: |
Silenced Players Are Able to: |
- 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
|
- 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
|
The penalty will last for 24 hours on the first strike. The duration will double for each subsequent penalty, with no maximum limit; as a result, spammers might find themselves restricted for a really long time.
World of Warcraft: Legion is the sixth expansion to be released by Blizzard. It will raise the level cap from 100 to 110, adding the Demon Hunter class in the process; players will find ten dungeons and two raids at launch.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.
In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.
Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.
His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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