A new change now censors certain terms in World of Warcraft – At least on the US servers. Not only individual words are obscured, but whole sentences are deleted, which are never sent.
What is this change? Blizzard has apparently introduced a new list of “reserved words”, which are words under reservation that are automatically blocked in WoW chat. Players have been observing this for some time now.
On the US servers, players receive a message in the chat when they use such a word. The message says something like: “Could not send the message to the player because your message contained prohibited words.”
The filter applies when a player tries to write someone else something in the game – for example, by whispering. However, if the sentence is sent from Battle.net to WoW, there is no censorship.
What words are blocked? According to wowhead, currently there is only a single word on the list that is not specified. The authors only mention a “racial slur that for obvious reasons will not be repeated” – presumably it is the “N-word”.
However, some users in the US forums reported weeks ago that they encountered such blocked words. One of them is the word “moist” (also in German: feucht; via WoW forums).
Does this also apply to us? At the moment, it appears that there is no filter on the German servers yet. We tested it with several insults (of course with friends, whom we asked for permission beforehand).
However, users in the EU forums are already complaining about the censorship (via WoW forums). However, we have not yet been able to determine which words are affected.
Players react mixed to the censorship
The reaction to Blizzard’s new chat censorship is mixed. Many wowhead users agree that racist terms do not belong in the game and can be censored and deleted. They believe this will curb toxic behavior.
In the forums, users tend to think that such functions should be reserved for guild masters so that they can ensure a positive atmosphere in the guilds. A general filter drives players to other chat options like Discord.
The user MORFOS1910 on wowhead even goes a bit further with his criticism. He writes:
You will remember this day, when they ban more words.
This is only the beginning.
Why do they care about a single word? It doesn’t.
They start with this word, then it will become more political. […] Just look at the word ban list from Battlefield 5, that could happen.
Battlefield 5 was heavily mocked by players for its chat filters, and MORFOS1910 apparently sees the same danger for such filters in WoW. Furthermore, players would simply find ways to circumvent the filters with creative solutions. A ban is simply not sustainable.
Moreover, there is the difficulty of applying such filters universally. WoW is played in many languages and terms in one language can sound similar to an insult in another. Often developers only consider English and block everything that might be insulting there.
In the EU forums, for example, the player Ishayo notes that the Danish and Swedish word “slut” simply means end there, whereas in English it means slut and is thus banned. A player in Apex Legends has also experienced such a misunderstanding with a ban:
Apex Legends allegedly bans players for saying “Lauft!” in the wrong language
