Blizzard Reveals New World Of Warcraft Social Contract, Expect It In 9.2.5

Just in case you missed the news, MMOs are supposed to be friendly and welcoming places. That includes World of Warcraft. In an attempt to ensure Azeroth is a place anyone can call home – and likely as an attempt to rectify some of the issues people have with Activision Blizzard as a whole right now - the WoW developer is implementing a social contract in the game.

With the release of Patch 9.2.5, players will be asked to agree to a social contract before being able to play the game. If a player doesn’t agree, they can just close out the game.

While the overall gist of the contract is “don’t be a dick”, the first half puts a lot of weight on wanting players to go out of their way to interact with each other. It asks players to do things like answer questions in chat or stop and help other players fight monsters in the wild. This may be less appealing for the less outgoing players.

If you’d like to read the contract in full before you log into the game, you can find it in its entirety on Wowhead's site.

Note: Activision Blizzard is still under investigation by the state of California for serious harassment charges. CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about such actions within his company – and performed some himself – and shielded the perpetrators from consequences.