Should we reward players for being nice?

A recent thread on the WoW forums suggests that the game has gotten less social over the years… and that we should reward players for being friendly and outgoing. While I have to agree that groups are more likely to be dead silent or filled with annoying jerks who are only interested in spamming DPS meters, I’m not sure if rewarding the nice players would really help.

I used to chat a lot more in WoW, but these days, with so many annoying and abusive players, I stay quiet and keep my head down in group content. I’m here to play the game, not have someone yell at me for not healing them enough. (To the person who yelled at me in Warsong Gulch recently: I can’t heal you when you’re out of range and line of sight. Either stick close to me or get over it.) Sometimes people who talk down to the jerks in groups are simply inviting more abuse, getting vote-kicked or reported. I just want to play the game, not get involved in drama.

But when the drama inevitably arrives, you have little recourse to handle it. You can’t stop a vote kick if there are enough players who agree to it (or simply want to shut up the person yelling about it). And if you’re being harassed, Blizzard doesn’t have your back. Their harassment policy isn’t consistently enforced, and so all you can really do is ignore the players who harass you and hope for the best.

That’s not exactly what I call fun, and, yes, it means I do my very best to avoid drawing attention in a group situation.

So I think the first step to encouraging people to be nicer is to actively punish people who jerks. Both Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm are working to fight player toxicity, while World of Warcraft doesn’t seem to pay it any mind. Toxic players can poison a game by alienating friendly players of the world — and even if those friendly players stick around, their voices can be drowned out by the toxic players. If WoW would take player toxicity more seriously, I feel we could take better steps towards encouraging positive community. If we don’t curb player toxicity first, the voices of friendly players will only be drowned out by the voices of less friendly players.

So, my friends (at least I hope you’re my friends), how do you think WoW could encourage a friendlier player community?