Breakfast topic: Welcome to /ignore
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Mar 27th 2007 at 8:00AM
Blizzard's ignore feature is a great addition to WoW. When someone is stalking you, harrassing you, or just bugging the crap out of you, you can put them on /ignore and delete them from your virtual world. Sure, they can still get to you through alts and such, but it can make Azeroth an altogether more ... harmonious place.
Currently, I have 13 people on my ignore list, and I don't remember how most of them got there. Previous highlights of my list included:
- A very young guildmate who kept linking every purple item he saw on everyone, ever.
- Two people having a very personal conversation about what they were going to do tonight in Orgrimmar general chat.
- An officer in a guild I was in, for about two minutes, to keep me from going off on him in chat and getting gkicked.
- A notorious spammer who ninjaed during raids from two separate guilds and is now desperately trying to sell someone, ANYONE, jewels.
- This kid who insisted that any woman who plays WoW has to be 400 pounds and desperate for a man.
The ignore list can be troublesome when you end up trading or partying with someone you ignored in the past, but otherwise, I think it's a fine feature. Who's on your ignore list and how did they get there? Do you know anyone who's ignoring you?
Filed under: Virtual selves, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tumples Mar 27th 2007 8:08AM
I only ignore people who yell for no reason really, if general annoys me I just leave for the time being.
Zuuler Mar 27th 2007 8:10AM
I only ever put 1 person on ignore, a kid named Grimshar (I think that was how it was spelled). He wanted me to summon him to Ashenvale, something I don't normally do anyway. But I checked to see where he was, and he was in the Barrens and was a lvl 20 Shaman. I told him to shift to ghost wolf and run there like everyone else in the game has had to do. At this point he started telling me stuff like "I hate people like you" and "When I was a lock I did it all the time".
He just couldn't understand that I was in the middle of the zone, far away from any other players. And the time it would take me to get a group together to summon him would be about the same ammount of time it would take him to run. I put him on ignore and told my guild about him. A few of them, who were already in the Barrens, gave him a hard time about being the laziest player in WoW.
A week later I took him off ignore to see if I ever ran in to him again and as of yet, I have not.
Dongyrn Mar 27th 2007 8:22AM
I generally only put people in ignore when they start spamming a general chat or trade channel, and I don't feel like /leaving the channel itself.
I haven't checked my /ignore list in awhile, I wonder if they're anyone still on it...
Randomdruid Mar 27th 2007 8:27AM
if somebody begs for gold I'll give them a hard time about how they need to earn it until they block me. If I blocked everyone who begged for gold my ignore list would be a huge clutter. Plus they should feel pressured into not panhandling for the most basic of armor repairs.
Lenny Mar 27th 2007 8:32AM
My ex-fiancee just landed on my ignore list after many months of her not saying anything to me. Our guild leader said that might not be too good since she's an officer. She did jump on her alt to tell me that it wasn't a good thing for me to ignore her so that made it easy to right click her alts name and ignore it too.
Ryan Mar 27th 2007 8:34AM
I found when I tried to put a whole guild on ignore one time that it maxes out at around 25-30 people.
Big.Daddy Mar 27th 2007 9:11AM
I usually ignore people for:
- constant begging
- spamming (any channel)
- general ass-hattery
- homophobia, racism, misogyny
anonanon Mar 27th 2007 8:57AM
@6 - The addon IgnoreMore is your friend. It will allow you to throw more than 50 people on your ignore list.
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/IgnoreMore
What would be great would be a little note you could add to someone's name when you put them on ignore, so you could remember why they're on the list. I'm pretty liberal with listing people, some of whom I'm sure didn't commit cardinal sins.
E Mar 27th 2007 9:12AM
I just wish the /ignored would get a message saying "You are now being ignored". Might be effective feedback.
BenMS Mar 27th 2007 9:27AM
@6: When did you try and do that? I think it was around 3-4 patches ago, definitely before 2.0, but Blizz made your ignore list effectively limitless.
For myself, I really only put the most obnoxious beggars on my ignore list. I have a 70 mage, and some lvl 18 hunter kept pestering me for a deadmines run. I explained to him why it would be better off for him to go in a group himself , so he could learn his class and be a better WoWer, and then he started abusing me. /ignore. A guildy was in Westfall at the time, and said to me, hey man, did you do something to piss off some huntard in Westfall? Apparently he started spamming /y how much of an asshat I was. He then made it onto my guilds' black list, of players we will never party with/trade with/help in any way. We're not the most powerful, but if he had acted a little more maturely, he could have maybe earnt some respect and learnt a little something about the game.
As it stood: Welcome to /ignore. Population: You.
Todd Mar 27th 2007 9:30AM
Cirk's BadApples
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info6478-CirksBadapplesContinued.html
Very good alternative to putting people on Ignore. I use this mod all the time. Allows for you to add a person, including reasons, to a list. Whenever you talk, group with, etc. with this person the mod will alert you and notify you of the reason (if you wrote one). So instead of putting people on ignore you can flag them as troublesome, ninjas, jerks, etc. for future reference.
Richard@Home Mar 27th 2007 9:46AM
What's really missing from the /ignore feature is an /ignoreaccount.
If I ignore someone, I'm doing it for a reason. I don't want to interact with that player, not just one of his toons.
Would soon put a stop to a great deal of the gold spam too. Most gold spammers create and delete alts with names like 'ksdfhkshdf', only to delete them once they've spammed. Ignore the account and all the other alts they make are auto ignored too.
Ghettohater Mar 28th 2007 9:51AM
Ghettomagic and anyone in the guild he had to create with his buddies because no one else would take him. A great pvp player, but also a loud mouth idiot and ninja looter. He's infamous on our server (Skywall) and is automatically added to any alt I create. I'm surprised he still has his account since he's been banned so many times.
Jason McLeod Mar 27th 2007 10:38AM
The last guy I ignored, was spamming the trade channel asking people to join his guild; in leet speak. Top of my list of annoying.
Mir Mar 27th 2007 10:31AM
There's this guy on Quel'thalas, who has a set of macros yelling the name of every spell he casts. Yes, that is yelling as in /y yelling. Go figure.
Brahmana Mar 27th 2007 10:53AM
Arygos has two folks that spam trade with inane crap.
One was named Drhuxtabol that would be logged in for hours at a time sending out eulogies about the untimely death of Bill Cosby (NO HE DIDN'T DIE) every 30 seconds or so.
The other is named Leetsauce, and his MO is asking what you put Leetsauce on.
As for me, I'm very liberal with my ignore list. Usually I'll put anyone who is rude to me on ignore. This is usually people who bitch when I'm fighting along and happen to kill a mob they were waiting to respawn stealthed, half a mile away. Or making my way around grabbing collectible crap that spawns all over the zone (zepplin parts, bits of metal and wood) and get crap from someone who inisists they were headed to grab the item, even though I can't even see them in the vicinity.
I've really only had one guy hop on an alt to have another go at me, and he actually apologized for being a jerk.
I play the game to relax, and I use the ignore list to cut off most extra-guild drama before it even starts.
Toolio Mar 27th 2007 10:53AM
The first person I ever had on ignore has most recently turned out to be one of my favorite questing partners. After putting him on my list (don't recall why) we ended up running an instance and we just kinda' hit it off in /p chat. He added me to his friends list, evidently unaware of our previous spat, and as I went to do the same I realized I had him on ignore. I quickly removed it and asked him if he had tried to pst me. He said no. To this day I don't think he knows how I initially loathed him.
Harpo Mar 27th 2007 11:11AM
Anyone who joins a group with me and goes "Wtf? Is the Druid healing??"
Karmakin Mar 27th 2007 11:41AM
First day playing WoW. Me and my wife were just getting our bearings, doing the initial quests in the Dwarf/Gnome starting area. This guy comes up to us, demands money. Sorry dude, we're new. His response? Go buy some.
Errr. No.
So he's running by us, yelling how he's going to report us for making lewd comments to him, and we're going to get banned unless we give him gold within the next 5 minutes. We both ignored him and moved on.
And that is the only person that I've ever put on ignore.
Sylythn Mar 27th 2007 11:40AM
I've only ever put one person on ignore - and then of course ran into them in PUGs about 5 more times. It takes a grave series of infractions before I'm going to put someone on that list...but this guy had totally crossed the line with some very inappropriate comments to my female alt and a female player I was grouped with. Thankfully it was directed at me, and as a guy, I just laughed and needn't take offense at his taunts. But even still, it was enough that he made the ignore list as the female player and I ditched the PUG to find something else to do. In the subsequent times I've PUGed with him, I took him off ignore for the duration - and he's still an ass.