◊ Boethius

As you are all aware, WotLK is now in beta, and, as such, there's a large volume of new talents, abilities, and other effects around to model and discuss. And, understandably, most people are quite excited about this, and it has spawned a lot of discussion. Unfortunately, not all of this discussion has been positive and/or constructive; we have seen a marked increase in the number of useless and whiny posts in recent weeks. As such, we are laying out the following guidelines for future beta discussion.

The following behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in a minimum 2-point infraction:

1. WotLK wishlists - While it's fine to discuss how an ability could be changed to bring it more into balance, we're really not interested in your ideas for new talents, abilities, inscriptions, or anything else--particularly since they're not nearly as brilliant as you think they are. Hence, please confine discussion to stuff that Blizzard has actually released, talked about releasing, hinted at, and/or mentioned, as there's plenty of that without also discussing everyone's random crazy ideas.
2. Assertions without evidence - If you are going to say something is good, or bad, or whatever, say why. If you're not providing any new content or analysis, you shouldn't be posting.
3. Miscellaneous whining - This includes, but is not limited to, threatening to re-roll, griping about future loss of raid spot, or asserting class weakness relative to some other beta class which may or may not be at the same level of tuning. We are still quite early in the beta. There are at least 2 months of additional balancing to be performed before this goes live. Whatever problems you think exist are likely to be fixed between now and then, and aren't half as bad as you think they are anyway.
4. Trolling/flaming in any form - This includes, but is not limited to, repeated restatements of previous points made by you or others without additional analysis or contribution, any degree of name-calling, implications of stupidity and/or drug use on behalf of people who disagree with you, and assertions that Blizzard doesn't know what they're doing.

It is, however, perfectly acceptable to:

• Request clarification on or testing of existing mechanics.
• Post about new mechanics that have recently been released on beta that have not yet been mentioned or discussed.
• Provide analysis, numerical or otherwise, on new mechanics, and any conclusions that might result therefrom, including suggesting that a mechanic might need to be changed. This includes providing reasonable suggestions for modifying the mechanic in question, though not making up replacement abilities from scratch.
• Discuss the implications of said changes in terms of PvP or raid balance, so long as such discussion is performed in an analytical, non-whining fashion without violation of rule 3, above.

 

◊ Boethius

We have high expectations of you here. We’re elitist jerks, what can we say? Follow these rules and I assure you your experience here will be as painless as possible.

1. Use proper English grammar and punctuation – Our wish is to see intelligent discourse, not chat room banter--"u," "lol," and the like are not acceptable words here. Please take great care in making your post as easy to read as possible. We're aware that we cater to a world-wide audience, but non-native speakers are not exempt from the basic rules of capitalization and punctuation.
2. Do not over-use acronyms & abbreviations – These are painful to parse when abused. Write your posts as if you are addressing someone who is new to the game, or kindly type out the full term to start and shorten later instances of it if you feel you must for brevity's sake.
3. Avoid whining – Outright crying will earn you no love here, but it's ultimately our decision if what you're saying can be construed as whining.
4. Do not beg for hand-holding – We are not here to teach you how to play the game, nor do we want to rehash what's already been discussed. These forums are a depository of information to be gathered of your own volition if you so choose to seek it out. Unless a thread calls for it, we don’t want to see your Armory and/or combat logs and we don't want to be asked to make your tough gear decisions for you.
5. Don’t post-split, post consecutively, or over-quote – Addressing multiple people in a single post using multiple quotes is fine; replying to one person’s post piecemeal, or posting back-to-back because you don't feel like editing, is not fine. Also, avoid quoting the entirety of a 5+ paragraph post just to leave your reply of two sentences; this helps no one.
6. Fill out your profile in full – You are being held accountable here. And while we do offer a “No WoW Account” option for folks who no longer play, most of those people still have main characters on the WoW Armory they can use as a reference.
7. Do not sign your posts – Your profile and username (which links automatically to the Armory) are directly to the left of your post, so showing your name a second time is unnecessary.
8. Contribute to the flow of discussion – Quality of content is key here. If your post is useless then it will get snipped. Simple accolades of just "thanks" should be kept to private messages unless you have input or feedback to add along with it. Trolling, pointless back-story, repetition, cross-posting, personal post bumps, quoting for truth, back-seat moderation, personal attacks, and baseless speculation will all be purged and perpetrators of such will be disciplined.

If you should violate a forum rule, you will receive an infraction. Most infractions are worth one point, although we reserve the right to give you more at any time if we feel you deserve them. If you accumulate too many infraction points, you will receive an automatic (usually temporary) ban, as follows:

• 5 Points - 1 Week
• 8 Points - 1 Month
• 10 Points - Permanent

All new accounts are muted for a period of one day following registration. After this, these accounts are on reply-only probation until 10 successful posts are made, so you can't make a new thread until you've proved your posting capability while conforming to the aforementioned rules by contributing to established discussions. In addition, familiarize yourself with The Banhammer, an archive of all infractions given by the moderators here; it will give you some examples of what not to do. Also feel free to take a gander over The Dung Heap, which will give you a good idea of what these forums would look like if we weren’t such jerks.

Thank you for joining the discussion!





N.B. The most recent revisions to the forum rules are highlighted in red.