Now that our legacy name is automatically visible, can we PLEASE have legacy ignore?

[AdrianDmitruk]

In the past, whenever we have requested legacy ignore to deal with spammers and assorted trolls (but let's be honest here, mostly the spammers that Bioware only seems to do anything about once every four months), Bioware has claimed that we cannot have legacy ignore because their lawyers are afraid it would violate the privacy of the ignorees.

 

Now, Bioware has undercut our privacy by displaying our legacy names to our entire guilds, and no we can't turn it off. I am then left to assume that the legal "privacy" issues that have thus far prevented other important legacy-based social features have then been surmounted.

 

Note also that legacy ignore can mean one of two things:

 

1) Ignoring a single character across YOUR entire legacy;

2) Ignoring EVERY character FROM a particular legacy.

 

I have always felt that the "privacy" concerns expressed by Bioware's lawyers could logically only pertain to the broader second option, and did not preclude the first. Because let's be honest, there are few things more annoying than ignoring a gold spammer only to still find mail from that spammer when you log on to the next ten characters. Ditto for fleet chat spammers and logging onto fleet.

 

But hell, if Bioware's lawyers have decided that privacy is no longer a thing, we might even be able to get away with the nuclear second option.

 

If Bioware is going to take away our character anonymity, the least they could do is let ignore mean ignore across all of our characters in turn.

[XiamaraSimi]

Legacy names arent unique, there could be 345 people with the same legacy name on your server. Edited April 10, 2016 by XiamaraSimi

[AdrianDmitruk]

Legacy names arent unique, there could be 345 people with the same legacy name on your server.

 

I imagine Bioware has the capability of distinguishing between those 345 people so a legacy ignore placed on the Smith Legacy (63) doesn't also ignore Smith Legacy (287).

 

If not, I would happily settle for the less-restrictive option of being able to ignore a single character across MY entire legacy from one ignore command.

[Theeko]

Maby if you put the character name there currently on along with the legacy name it will just ignore there's not anyone elses

[Lord_Thorne]

Odd thing about this: a while ago I used the Ban option on one of my Strongholds because one player was being a total jerk. I put his main on the ban list, then went to put on an alt of his and the response came back that he was already banned. Apparently, the stronghold ban was/is (I haven't checked for a few months) legacy wide? Can anyone confirm this? Because if this is the case, then the capability exists and should be accessible for ignoring a complete legacy based on ignoring any single toon.

[Master-A]

And then there are the people who can't decide on a legacy name. shame they are not unique tho... could totally use that considering I got a headache trying to ignor a kid that just wouldn't leave me alone even tho I was trying to RP....

[Blakinik]

Going to go with Star Trek Online but they got the whole add / ignore option down pretty good. Will get to that in a second.

 

But first...

 

There is privacy and there is playing a MMO. I can bet your private conversations in whisper can be snooped. If not, hello ISIL / Al Queda for a great way to have conversations online without anyone snooping in. Additionally I bet in the cause of harassment, fraud, or real life threats, access could be had. Finally, I thought there was something in the EULA that indemnifies EA/Bioware and states there should not be taken any assumption your private conversations are 'private'. If it is not there I'd be shocked.

 

Okay - onto the STO item. STO has it where everyone is @<username> for names. So if yo uwanted to add someone's whole account because you think they are a-ok! then you'd /add @<username>. Consequently if you wanted to ignore someone you could do /ignore @<username>. I don't see how that violates anyone's privacy to be honest. Same for a guildmaster (though with the legacy name its a moot point) in that they should have the option to kick an either account from the guild if they wanted too or set them to ignore. In fact, if it comes to privacy I don't care who the person is or who their other characters are - I want to outright block them to avoid dealing with them.

 

And if EA's legal team cares and want to limit their liability here is a reason they should allow for account 'ignoring' in this hypothetical argument.

 

Lets say I have a kid that plays the game. They are playing when some player makes a rude advance to them. As a concerned parent I block that character not realizing that the harassment or life threatening option is available (maybe I am said parent that doesn't play but found out because my kid said something). Soon they come back with another character and another and another until finally I miss it or don't notice it as a parent. Eventually they figure out where my kid lives, stalks them or worse including rape or murder. Since EA was the forum that introduced them to my kid - any bets on how fast EA gets sued? Even if they win the case they got to contend with extremely bad PR, massive expenses in a PR campaign to fight the bad PR, legal costs, stockholder devaluation, etc.

 

FYI - I want to note I hope the above never happens to anyone anywhere.

 

All I am saying is the legal argument is pretty weak.

[Aeristash]

I'm wondering why nobody has of yet mentioned the biggest issue with this idea. An ignore list is 100 people, while each legacy can be up to 12-14 characters. About 7 or 8 ignores and our list would be capped with everyone of their storage alts. They'd have to rework the ignore list to accept thousands in order to be equal to its current size.

[Blakinik]

I'm wondering why nobody has of yet mentioned the biggest issue with this idea. An ignore list is 100 people, while each legacy can be up to 12-14 characters. About 7 or 8 ignores and our list would be capped with everyone of their storage alts. They'd have to rework the ignore list to accept thousands in order to be equal to its current size.

 

Or tie back to your account name and have it be a many to 1 relationship if ignore lists were legacy based.

[AdrianDmitruk]

Going to go with Star Trek Online but they got the whole add / ignore option down pretty good. Will get to that in a second.

 

But first...

 

There is privacy and there is playing a MMO. I can bet your private conversations in whisper can be snooped. If not, hello ISIL / Al Queda for a great way to have conversations online without anyone snooping in. Additionally I bet in the cause of harassment, fraud, or real life threats, access could be had. Finally, I thought there was something in the EULA that indemnifies EA/Bioware and states there should not be taken any assumption your private conversations are 'private'. If it is not there I'd be shocked.

 

Okay - onto the STO item. STO has it where everyone is @<username> for names. So if yo uwanted to add someone's whole account because you think they are a-ok! then you'd /add @<username>. Consequently if you wanted to ignore someone you could do /ignore @<username>. I don't see how that violates anyone's privacy to be honest. Same for a guildmaster (though with the legacy name its a moot point) in that they should have the option to kick an either account from the guild if they wanted too or set them to ignore. In fact, if it comes to privacy I don't care who the person is or who their other characters are - I want to outright block them to avoid dealing with them.

 

And if EA's legal team cares and want to limit their liability here is a reason they should allow for account 'ignoring' in this hypothetical argument.

 

Lets say I have a kid that plays the game. They are playing when some player makes a rude advance to them. As a concerned parent I block that character not realizing that the harassment or life threatening option is available (maybe I am said parent that doesn't play but found out because my kid said something). Soon they come back with another character and another and another until finally I miss it or don't notice it as a parent. Eventually they figure out where my kid lives, stalks them or worse including rape or murder. Since EA was the forum that introduced them to my kid - any bets on how fast EA gets sued? Even if they win the case they got to contend with extremely bad PR, massive expenses in a PR campaign to fight the bad PR, legal costs, stockholder devaluation, etc.

 

FYI - I want to note I hope the above never happens to anyone anywhere.

 

All I am saying is the legal argument is pretty weak.

 

(Sigh...connection problem ate my post so I'll keep this short.)

 

To be clear, I am well aware that strictly speaking, playing an MMO is not private for the reasons you mentioned. The privacy argument is not my argument to begin with. It's Bioware's.

 

When I have asked Bioware representatives, in person, at Community Cantina events why we could not have legacy-based ignore features as other MMOs do, they cited privacy/legal reasons for not having it. Specifically, they brought up an example of a player wanting to log into a character they had told nobody about to do solo activities, and a guild finding out through legacy-based social features and harassing them into doing something for the guild, that said player didn't really want to do. (Let's face it: a common example of such conduct would be a guild pestering someone to tank an op.)

 

I believe they reasoned that if you ignored someone's legacy, then all of the ignored characters would show on your ignore list, and thus knowledge of their other characters could be reverse engineered from ignoring them. Convoluted logic if you ask me, but yeah.

 

For the record, I happily pointed out the weaknesses of this legal reasoning at the cantina events, and suggested that the ignore list NOT actually display the ignoree's other characters, that the list of ignored alts be kept behind the scenes while only the one character you actually clicked the "ignore legacy" command on showed up on the ignore list. But the Bioware reps were of course not empowered to do anything about it other than offer completely noncommittal responses about passing it up the line.

 

Now Bioware has gone and implemented something that makes it easier for that guild to pry tanking services from that player, if we are to use the above example. Unless we want to have to leave our alts guildless, which was never necessary before unless your guild was so power-hungry even submitting an invitation was a risk (let's face it, most people wouldn't want to be in that kind of a guild anyway).

 

Bioware's own actions of late have shown that they have disregarded any previous legal concerns (flimsy though they ever were) regarding privacy being a reason for refusing to implement legacy-based social features. And legacy ignore is probably the most important legacy-based social feature that Bioware could ever implement. It would make it easier for players to counter spammers, and it would make it easier for players to counter harassment. Everyone wins.

 

Regarding ignore list limits...the limit is too low as it is, I agree, especially if spammers are not timely auto-purged therefrom. We all know how diligent Bioware is about purging spammers.

 

A legacy ignore should only count as a single ignored entity against the limit...and yes the limit should be increased anyway if Bioware is going to leave spammers on our ignore lists for a year or longer.

Edited April 12, 2016 by AdrianDmitruk