Ryan Thama
Blizzard wants to actively combat in-game toxicity and bullying by building a safer Azeroth with this new social contract which players have to agree to.
If players fail to agree to this new social contract, there will be punishment which includes account suspension.
But is it going to be that effective in eradicating in-game toxicity? Well, it all depends on the actual enforcement from Blizzard.
See below whether this new social contract is going to be beneficial to new and veteran players.
Impacts of World of Warcraft’s New Social Contract
The new social contract will ask players to essentially make Azeroth a better place. Be it from willingness to help other players or to make more friends across the game.
Current players are encouraged to be active in answering questions from new players and help them with various activities.
Additionally, in-game toxic behavior such as harassment, spam, hate speech and abuse will result in a punishment which is account suspension.
Unfortunately, to some players, this means nothing as this social contract is merely agreed to avoid the consequence of incompliancy. Much like most agree-to-this-term checkboxes on software or websites. But do people really agree though?
What actually matters is that, Blizzard needs to actively enforce this social contract in order to gain positive impact on the game.
Impact on the Communities and New Players.
Like many other online games, toxic player behavior is a rampant disease that needs eradicating.
In World of Warcraft, this results in the unwelcoming of new players and may even stop veteran players from playing. One instance is when new WOW players has not mastered or understood some mechanics of the game (particularly dungeon and PVP), they become easy target for harassment through in-game chat.
This will discourage new players to enjoy and progress further resulting in some sense of toxic community.
Hence, this new social contract will attempt to build a more welcoming world as well as creating a healthy and beneficial communities, if and only if it is enforced correctly and effectively.
With this new social contract, players will have to actively help each other and work together, and that will make this game feel more like a united community.
For now, we can only hope that Blizzard will actively enforce this new social contract and its repercussions.
This might be a wishful thinking, but we truly hope that the new social contract will actually helps clean and tidy up the community for the long run, or else this game will soon flop and abandoned.
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