bsolutely not. It's a crappy thing to do to a group and it's happened to me

The reality is that it's exceedingly difficult -- and not very sustainable -- to try and micro-manage player behavior to the level you want, Allnepthys. Our Customer Support reps do not exist to police morals or, as you suggest, deny people access to content for long periods of time wow po because they can be mean and cause others inconvenience.

Is what that player did cool? Absolutely not. It's a crappy thing to do to a group and it's happened to me.

So what we've done is developed a hidden system that tracks player behavior in matchmade groups on a number of different levels. We don't go into a lot of details about the system for a few reasons: A) we've been constantly evolving how intelligent the system is, B) the system is dynamic so that it can apply penalties based on varying factors -- it's analyzing trends as they change over time and accounting for them in some fashion -- and C) we don't want players to know exactly how the system starts penalizing people for less-than-average behavior and then try to game it.

Suffice it to say, the things you do in a matchmade group matter. If you're above the average in kicking players out of groups, being kicked from groups, or ducking out early (as described in the OP),wow or deserter debuffs, kicking thresholds, and the like become increasingly less forgiving.

As for handing out suspensions or blocking people from matchmaking content for any lengths of time, that's a very different discussion. But the policies and procedures we have in place are considered with extreme care. We want to create the best and most fair environment possible in World of Warcraft, so friends and strangers alike can have a good time. And, as mentioned above, we try to put checks and balances into our game systems to ensure bad behavior isn't rewarded, and becomes very inconvenient for the instigator.

This is a social game and millions of people are playing. It just isn't feasible to expect us to have the personnel to judge every instance of player disruption and dole out whatever punishment the reporting player feels is warranted.

Note: Nowhere in my post did I say being a jerk is okay! I'm not sure how you were misled into believing that's Blizzard's stance based on the situation you laid out, Allnepthys.