As you know I started my little SWTOR project “SWTOR Reported” where I spend a very productive time in my stronghold on Dromund Kaas trading on the GTN and safe-guarding youthful eyes from abusers of the ToS. I think it’s possible that word may have gone around (maybe in the forums although I have yet to check) the SWTOR community that there is someone on DK who is randomly reporting players who break the ToS to EA Customer Support. General Chat is so quiet now you could probably hear a Kyber Crystal hum. I think it might be a lot quieter but I also think this is to be celebrated. That said, however, I feel that my duty as the guardian of Dromund Kaas has only just begun.
I saw this post yesterday on Twitter where a couple of SWTOR gamers were talking about “the age of the ban”. Just by admitting that they are reinforcing every reason why “banning” players who can’t behave or who consistently break the ToS is a requirement of this “age”. If you can’t play responsibly like a normal person and you can’t follow rules (that is you don’t discuss raping your sister, your friend, your companion in General Chat or discussing BDSM while constantly harassing other players with even more inappropriate comments) then you should be banned, period.
This isn’t about restricting “freedom of speech” or “freedom of expression” either because even having freedom of speech has limitations and restrictions – take this excerpt from Wikipedia:
Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”[7]
If you come into my game spreading your obscenities around in general chat, I’ll do whatever it takes to see you banned. That’s it and that’s all.
darksiderconfessions.blog 
[…] I wrote a blog post recently about a certain “ERPer” (Erotic Role Player) that was causing all sorts of havoc in general chat on Dromund Kaas. I don’t mind ERPers as long as they keep their role-playing out of general chat. This particular person seems to think she can do whatever she wants when she plays including discussing sexual acts in intimate detail in a general chat channel.The EA ToS outlines quite clearly what is and isn’t allowed in the game so you know, there is that. I guess gamers like “XESHI Reborn or “Xeshi foh” or whatever she wants to call herself just don’t care about the rules. When I found out that she was an “ERPer” it all started to make sense. It didn’t stop me from reporting her again when she showed up in general chat on DK under a different name. She was gone for a good couple of weeks though, so I figured EA had probably suspended her account or that character. […]
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