Posts from June, 2007

June 5, 2007

Gnome Rain: BlockChat™ moves to Worlds of Warcraft

As I wrote in a recent post:

By hook, or by crook, customers will always find a way to connect with each other.

As with all worlds, this is now demonstratively true in Worlds of Warcraft, where a new text-filter on broadcast chat messages was recently installed to supposedly prevent gold farmers from spamming users about their websites.

It worked for a few days, until yesterday, The Day it Rained Gnomes.

Watch the video and duck…

I often have a conversation with online community/product managers telling them that text-filters are a symptom of deeper problems in your product and are not a solution. They usually don’t belive me – but now I have the video.

(For the comments section: How many design flaws/weaknesses are involved in the chain of events that lead to the world raining gnomes? Here’s a hint about where to start counting…)