Over the past few months we've been experimenting with having silences decay over time. After seeing positive results we've decided to adopt this as a permanent change to our silencing procedure. From this point forward, for each 6 months a player goes without receiving a new silence, a single silence will decay (meaning it is removed from the players total silence count). Why are we doing this? In a perfect world we'd love to see a clean and appropriate chat where nobody needs to be silenced. However, there still exist those who may not know any better, as well as those who are out solely to disrupt the gameplay of those around them. By having silences decay over time this gives players who learn from their mistakes a second chance. What about abuse? While we hope this doesn't happen, players who show a history of abuse by repeatedly waiting for a silence to decay only to then break the rules again will be dealt with on a case by case basis. This will be done at our discretion, and may result in a permanent silence depending on the extremity of the situation. What about permanent silences? Players who have been permanently silenced will need to write in to support to appeal their silence 6 months after the permanent silence was issued. Depending on the specific situation and players silence history, any action taken is at the discretion of the support team.