Mobs Move Into Sims Online Power Vacuum

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a San Jose Mercury News report discussing the rise of racketeering in The Sims Online. According to one of the afflicted, "[other players] ..show up at your house and they request protection money. `You have to pay me 100,000 simolians if you don't want your house torn down.' It's technically harassment." The reasons for this and other extreme in-game behaviors are also discussed: "Sometimes, [organized gangs] are a sign that the game lacks enough interesting elements to engage the players - so they create their own drama. More often, it means players are so attached that they invest the time to exploit its rules."

Comments

Surprised this hasn't already been done...

[Stonan]

This is not a problem with the game lacking enough stimulis. It's an inherent problem with the human mind. Some feel that because of the wires, they have complete detachment and can do whatever the hell they want.

I've seen a few MUDs that keep their users in check by having authorized people with 'superhuman' characters specifically designed to combat and destroy single or groups of pathetic little ankies who need to cheat at an online game in order to satisfy their egos. This really doesn't come as a surprise to me because I've been dealing with this since the time of the BBS. From my experience, the people engaging in these activities have absolutly no chance of intimidating anyone in the real world. With BBSs it wasn't really that much of a problem. The only access was a phone line and the number was easily traced.

It would be nice if this could be done again (showing up with 5-10 people on the doorstep of the offening ankie results in alot of pained expressions on the face of the guilty if not a loss of bowel control). But an up-to-date version of this would be to surround the twit as soon as he logs on with about 20-25 bots that continually push him around inside the circle while yelling at him such remarks as 'Who do you think you are? You think you're big and tough, huh? Well, how come you can't leave the circle then, huh? Not as tough as you thought you were, huh?' and others.

I guess another way would be to block the IP address. This would catch the ankies using Mommy and Daddys account but this can be defeated by those who know how to mask or broadcast a false IP.

I like my other suggestion better. It gives the gimp a little taste of his own medicine and don't think it would be that hard to program a bot to do this.