AreaNet Suspending Players For Inappropriate Guild Wars 2 Language
Guild Wars has officially released and players couldn’t be happier. Well, there are those handfuls of players who like to ruin things, but AreaNet is making sure they’re put in their place. It happens with any online game – you let some kid get on the internet and he starts spewing off obscenities left and right. Have you ever played Call of Duty?
AreaNet is taking matters to heart and suspending players who make any sort of insults or racist remarks within the game. They aren’t tolerating any sort of cyber bullying that players attempt to dish out. One of the developer’s team members even took to Reddit to explain why they’ve been cracking down so hard this early on into the game. The representative said, “To keep Guild Wars 2 a pleasant place to be, we take action against racist names, hate speech, and other unacceptable behavior. We’ve suspended some accounts involved in the use of offensive character names or inappropriate chat. The number of account blocks is miniscule: less than .001% of our total player base.”
Personally I think it’s good that AreaNet is smashing players who are inappropriate in-game. There’s really no call for it. I’ll be the first to admit that I rage when playing CoD. I get upset and yell all kinds of obscenities. Do I mean half the things I say? No. Do I say them to intentionally harm someone? No. But all of that is done through a microphone, saying things that immediately pop into my head when I get shot, or a guy knifes through an entire clip of my assault rifle. I think it’s different when you have to stop what you’re doing and type out a racial slur or badger someone. I’m not saying that because you say things through a microphone you’re exempt from being rude, I am saying that it takes more effort to type out something to someone. There’s more of a premeditated attack this way.
In response to the representative posting on Reddit, a lot of players commented with their usernames and asked why they were banned. The rep wasn’t shy at all in posting some of their comments on the site for others to see. I’ll warn you, they’re quite offensive. Some of the comments included:
- “This isn’t Africa, you don’t adopt black kids.
- “leave faggots the griffin is mine fa ggots”
- “Get out of here you gag faggot.”
Tons of other Reddit users came into the thread to criticize players for being banned, while others praised AreaNet for their ambition to make the game a better experience for other players. Some of the suspended players claimed not to know that their language was inappropriate, and for that they became chastised even more.
