WoW Forums: How does Blizz plan to police VoIP?

With World of Warcraft's patch 2.2.0 recently going live over at the Public Test Realms, one update that's been drawing plenty of attention is Blizzard's upcoming in-game voice chat support for groups and raids.

And even as the developers are already asking the player to assist in helping them spot any possible VoIP-related bugs, the community is also quizzing the devs for details for this new feature.

Such is the case of Artillicus, who dropped by the WoW official forums to make a couple of inquiries into how Blizzard planned to moderate VoIP:

1. Will party/raid leaders have the ability to mute somebody?
2. Will individual players have the ability to mute another player within party/raid?
3. Blizzard, with the design and implementation of in-game VoIP, has recognized voice chat as an almost undeniable prerequisite for raiding. This brings up a few additional questions:

• Does Blizzard plan on recording every session of voice chat for use in verbal harassment investigations?
• If not how does Blizzard intend to investigate verbal harassment made over in-game voice chat with no record of that voice chat?
• Will the in-game voice chat be subject to the same TOS Agreement provisions regarding verbal harassment as in-game text chat is?
  

What makes this discussion sensitive is that that while Blizzard can moderate the sort of messages being transmitted in VoIP, recording the actual conversations poses legal issues in certain states. There isn't any official word yet from Blizzard on how they plan to police VoIP, though Nethaera dropped by the thread to blue-post that details should be available soon. Keep an eye out on the WoW site and forums in case this update materializes.

Via WoW official Forums

With World of Warcraft's patch 2.2.0 recently going live over at the Public Test Realms, one update that's been drawing plenty of attention is Blizzard's upcoming in-game voice chat support for groups and raids.

And even as the developers are already asking the player to assist in helping them spot any possible VoIP-related bugs, the community is also quizzing the devs for details for this new feature.

Such is the case of Artillicus, who dropped by the WoW official forums to make a couple of inquiries into how Blizzard planned to moderate VoIP:

1. Will party/raid leaders have the ability to mute somebody?
2. Will individual players have the ability to mute another player within party/raid?
3. Blizzard, with the design and implementation of in-game VoIP, has recognized voice chat as an almost undeniable prerequisite for raiding. This brings up a few additional questions:

• Does Blizzard plan on recording every session of voice chat for use in verbal harassment investigations?
• If not how does Blizzard intend to investigate verbal harassment made over in-game voice chat with no record of that voice chat?
• Will the in-game voice chat be subject to the same TOS Agreement provisions regarding verbal harassment as in-game text chat is?
  

What makes this discussion sensitive is that that while Blizzard can moderate the sort of messages being transmitted in VoIP, recording the actual conversations poses legal issues in certain states. There isn't any official word yet from Blizzard on how they plan to police VoIP, though Nethaera dropped by the thread to blue-post that details should be available soon. Keep an eye out on the WoW site and forums in case this update materializes.

Via WoW official Forums