Toxic Players

While writing our less-than-serious guide to choosing a character for WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria, I went back and forth over the Demon Hunter entry a lot.

Toxic players need to be dealt with.

We mentioned last month that Blizzard is working on AI specifically to fight toxicity in Overwatch -- but that doesn't mean they're not also working on other methods right now.

Abuse and toxicity have kind of become rampant in gaming, so much so that we're all aware of whose mother has done what in various competitive voice chats.

Overwatch has gotten a bit of a reputation for toxicity.

We've seen the Overwatch team working on various ways to deal with player toxicity and bad behavior recently, but it's not a new problem nor is it confined to that game. Hearthstone doesn't even let you talk to other players and you can still have some bad experiences with emote spamming and the like (like that one player who starts using up every last second on their turn just to annoy you) and if you've played Heroes of the Storm or World of Warcraft you've likely run into your fair share of disagreeable behavior.

As we approach the release of Kel'Thuzad in The Nexus, it's worth noting that Blizzard recently proved they're not going to mess around with toxic players in Heroes of the Storm.

While you can currently report players in Heroes of the Storm for harassment and general bad behavior, coming in the next patch you'll have a wide range of additional reporting options — and reported players will receive a new punishment with silences that greatly restrict their ability to chat.

Heroes of the Storm isn't even out of beta yet and I can't go a night without someone talking to me about playing it, so it's no surprise that the hype machine for the game is rolling on strong.