That’s right. 
That setting is disabled by default and would need to be toggled on by us for our hosted sites. Let me know if that’s something you’d like us to do. 
I think if you do swop over you may need to convert all of your existing watched words into the regex format and reapply them.
The regex can be trickier to nail down than the simplified version but can be more versatile as long as you get the regex expression right. For this, you’d want something that could identify multiple workarounds (f**k, f%ck, f&@k, fu<bla>ck). Though catching them all can be a game of whack-a-mole (especially if someone is deliberately trying to sidestep the word block rather than use it as a guide of what is/isn’t acceptable).