Blizzard To Ban Abusive 'World Of Warcraft' Players With 'The Silence Penalty'

By Emily Marks

Jul 14, 2016 12:31 PM EDT

Blizzard has recently announced a new penalty that bans abusive "World of Warcraft" players on chat. The announcement was made on Tuesday.

The gaming giant took to its blog to announce that the new silence penalty will be available in the pre-expansion patch for Legion. Players who are reported to be abusive in chat would be refrained from engaging in certain ways within "World of Warcraft."

Players who are reported to have violated the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will be investigated. If the reports hold true, they will get an account-wide silence penalty.

Silenced players will not be able to talk in Instance Chat and auto-joined global channels. They will also lose the ability to create and send calendar invites, party invitations, war game invitations, in-game mail as well as create and update a premade group list.

They will still be able to whisper to their "World of Warcraft" and Battle.net friends and reply to whispers from non-friends. They can also create Parties and Raids, Party/Raid Chat with invited players and share Quests.

First-time offenders will be restricted for 24 hours. The duration will double for each silence penalty received. This means that the second offense will last for 48 hours while a third will go on for 96 hours. Moreover, there is no maximum number of times that a player would be punished with a silence penalty.

The Verge noted that "really abusive players could eventually be silenced for years."

"Silenced players will be receiving a notification when attempting to send a message to a channel in which they have been restricted," Blizzard wrote. "By using the in-game report tool to identify players who may be engaging in inappropriate interactions within the various channels, you'll be helping create the type of community we all want to take part in."

According to Polygon, "World of Warcraft" expansion Legion is expected to be launched at the end of August. The game's most recent expansion, 2014's Warlords of Draenor, was added to the original game back in May.