Blizzard to hand out Silence Penalties at World of Warcraft

Blizzard will temporarily impose a ‘Silence Penalty’ on players in World of Warcraft who have been reported as spammers or abusers of the in-game chat function on more than one occasion. During the penalty, the player cannot use many communication functions.

The feature will become active in the pre-update patch, ahead of the upcoming Legion expansion, which will be released on August 30. With the silence feature, players who abuse the communication channels in the game can be punished. They can only communicate with others in channels dedicated to raids, whisper to friends, and reply to whispers from non-friend players.

Players who receive the penalty will initially be unable to speak on general channels or send in-game messages for 24 hours. If this doesn’t help, Blizzard will impose a double penalty. According to Blizzard, there is no maximum penalty, which the developer says means players who receive the penalty often will be unable to speak for a “very, very long time.”