It shouldn’t be so difficult.
Today’s plate of Hotcakes is inspired by World of Warcraft, the MMO you think of whenever seeing people troll global chat in new MMO betas. Blizzard is in the middle of what historians will refer to as its “extreme damage control phase,” in the sense that the company is burning everything to the ground in the name of positivity because their management couldn’t stop abusing women over the last decade or so.
The latest PTR patch notes introduce a concept that, on further reflection, should have been part of World of Warcraft and virtually every MMO from the start. When you /ignore a player, it ignores their whole account rather than just that character. Yup, this is where we’re at.
- /ignore now blocks all characters on the ignored player’s WoW account.
Simply the fact that this is just happening now, in 2021, highlights how ridiculous it is that this wasn’t already commonplace. Why wouldn’t it be account-wide? Why hasn’t every MMO or online game with an ignore list built this functionality in already? What purpose would someone have to ignore a specific character but not the player behind the character entirely?
Account-wide ignores should be something games have by default, not seventeen years after the game launches and only in the wake of the developer putting massive overtime into shedding its reputation as a genuine toxic cesspit. I’m not a game designer, but I’m willing to bet that for most games this would not be a difficult technical feat to implement.
And if your game already has it, good for you. You’re doing at least what should be the bare minimum effort.
MMO Fallout 