Those who abandon their dungeon colleagues in World of Warcraft will be punished. Blizzard penalizes anyone who leaves groups regularly.
In World of Warcraft, there are some behaviors exhibited by players that turn out to be particularly annoying. Especially when visiting a tough “Mythic+” dungeon, it can be disheartening when the group dissolves early. Now, Blizzard has recognized this issue as well – and has started punishing people who leave dungeons prematurely.
What has happened? In the official WoW forum, Blizzard surprisingly posted a message. They have imposed account penalties on accounts whose associated characters have recently abandoned “Mythic+” dungeons regularly.
Will everyone be punished? No. Blizzard emphasizes that these bans target players who have abandoned “Mythic+” dungeons in “large numbers,” meaning it has become a regularly occurring behavior for them.
Blizzard will not generally take action against people who leave a dungeon prematurely once in a while, as it is stated:
We understand that occasionally dungeon runs are canceled. Players can have unexpected emergencies in real life, there can be internet outages, or the group may collectively decide to abandon a run. Today, we banned individuals who repeatedly and recklessly disrupted dungeon groups for Mythic+ in this manner.
This is not a one-time occurrence, by the way. Blizzard will increasingly take action against such dungeon offenders from now on:
We will continue to keep an eye on groups, and with repeated misconduct, the penalties will become harsher.
So, those who got away with just a few days of account suspension today might soon find themselves excluded from World of Warcraft for several weeks if their behavior is not corrected.
Is this a new rule? No, the rules or guidelines have existed for a long time. They fall under “griefing” and are indirectly described in the “Social Contract,” which players sometimes have to agree to when logging into World of Warcraft.
Both there and in the terms of service, it is stated multiple times that it is not permitted to negatively affect the gameplay of other players through misconduct – leaving dungeon groups prematurely clearly falls into that category.
This is how the community reacts: Depending on where you look, the reactions to Blizzard’s behavior are drastically different. On wowhead, Blizzard’s actions are celebrated and termed a “big win.” In the official WoW forum, the story looks quite different. Many feel intimidated and worry that they “won’t be able to leave keys anymore when the run seems hopeless.”
Only in the Wow subreddit, the discussion appears to be a bit more sober. People are pleased with the actions but also have concerns. Ruined_Frames writes:
Well, intentional leaving when the key has just started or after a single death is deserved. I had several tanks troll by starting a key and then just hitting Alt+F4 and never coming back.
However, how they actually find out who gets banned worries me a bit when thinking about how they handle other bans.
It will definitely be interesting to see how many will be affected and how many “I just left once and got banned” posts will appear from now on.
However, the general sentiment seems to be that Blizzard is being praised for finally taking stronger action. Those not playing with friends or guild members in World of Warcraft will more frequently have bad experiences in dungeons. It was about time that the biggest trolls faced penalties. Currently, many WoW fans are also dealing with a large puzzle – as it is just about to be solved.
