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Blizzard Punishing Griefing On Warcraft III Ladders
Thanks to RPGDot for pointing to a Battle.net forum post, in which Blizzard indicate they will ban Warcraft III teams for 'griefing'. This requires Blizzard acting on in-game tactics, rather than illicit software mods/hacks - they mention: "We have received reports and observed that certain Warcraft III players have deliberately caused their own teams to lose in team games. This goes against the spirit of fair play on Battle.net, and as such, we will take action on a case-by-case basis. In each case, if we determine that griefing is in fact occurring, the griefer's Battle.net account and access to ladder games will be subject to removal."
Sure, griefers are players with names like [jerk]IWILLDROP who go into random team games. As soon as a game starts they usually say something rude or racist or what not and then immediately drop from the game. I am sure Blizzard gets tons of reports about these jerks and is looking for a way for random team people to not get stuck with them. Thus, they are looking to ban accounts of people who routinely do this. I doubt this is a viable solution, since these people will just create new accounts, but at least Blizzard is trying.
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Called Greifers, these people usually tend to haunt MMORPGs but can be found in just about any game. They get bored with the "standard" gameplay, and so attempt to ruin the game for other players.
In MMOs, this can be anything from following around a newbie and killing anything close to them, preferably after it gets to about 25% health, to building many small cheap buildings in one area to prevent others from building there (a real example from A Tale in the Desert) - the harder it is for the player to get around the greifing tactics, the better it is for the greifer.
In RTS games, Greifing can range from the passive (disconnecting after 30 seconds (or 2 mins or whatever depending on game), sitting on one's ass not doing _anything_ until someone kills your town center and starting workers) to active (building an army, not attacking with the rest of your allies, then when they're armies are away you force-attack their bases with your anti-building troops) and generally ruin the game for everybody else. The winning team is robbed of a challenge, the losing team robbed of a decent chance.
I can see this policy only being exercised on solid cases, ie. multiple complaints for the account, with replays available. Just having a partner that sucks isn't greifing (though some greifers do intentionally play crappily to get under the greif radar) and I can't imagine any of those cases holding up to a blizzard staff member reviewing the evidence.
I play about a dozen WC III games a week and have encountered griefers on numerous occasions. It doesn't bother me so much when they are on the opposing team, but aggravates me to no end when they are on my team. Blizzard should not have a difficult time identifying the griefers since anyone that wants to report abuse can simply send a replay as evidence.
Now that I am above level 10, I encounter the griefers much more rarely as I am usually matched up with more serious players. However, in the lower levels I would probably encounter a griefer in 1 of every 5 games.
Look me up on BNET: Azeroth / Rusty.Cage
No Sig For You
Do they really think that by getting rid of those who "don't play nice," those who do will spend enough money to make up for the lost customer base?
Actually, since there is no recurring charge, they lose no business at all. The people who get banned (probably) already bought the game, and depending on how much they care about it, might buy it *again*.
I can't see how this is flawed in any way. Legitimate players pay to play the game in a legitimate way, cheaters and griefers *should* be thrown out. Why should they expect to get away with being assholes and/or cheating?
If Blizzard got terribly overzealous with these rules, then I can see why you would complain. But at this point, you are just being paranoid. Banning cheaters and losers is nothing but good for everyone.
I know more than you drink.
I was one of the members of "scbackstab," a group that ran a website (www.scbackstab.com, doesn't exist anymore) where we joined 7v1comp games in starcraft, killed our own teammates, and posted screenshots of the funny reactions we got. I continued this trend in warcraft 3.
Thing is, blizzard was always FINE with it. Even since those early starcraft days. They even posted saying "it's not against the terms of agreement, so we aren't going to punish it" several times. Then, they suddenly banned several hundred people with no warning. It was two days AFTER the ban when they decided to tell everyone in that post that they weren't going to tolerate it anymore. It's like putting people in jail for something before it becomes illegal, totally unfair
I completely agree. Face it people, public online gaming sucks! When there isn't someone on your team killing you and your teammates or making it hard for your side to win, cooperation is still a rare thing. People make comments just to offend and get a rise out of people. Griefing ruins it for everyone but the assholes griefing. People cheat not just to get an edge but to ruin the experience for other people.
The last thing I want to come in contact with when I'm trying to blow off a little steam after work are people ruining a GAME just because they like pissing people off.
I applaud Blizzard, they are one of the few game studios that (despite all the personnel turn-over) seem to consistently deliver quality games. In addition to their quality games though, they are TRYING to improve the online experience which is currently the wasteland I described. They are actually improving their communities by getting rid of some jerks, or at least making it a tiny bit tougher to be a prick.
Currently the only other way around the common online problems is to join a clan or guild, so it's nice to see a game company be a lot more active in their community than simply encouraging clans.
am i missing something here or could these grief players roleplaying an evil character? ok i admit that using a cheat is bad and not good. however using underhanded tactics and killing off your own team is well evil.
/. crowd is/was d&d players. i'm not sure how many of them played evil characters. i was one who did and at the risk of getting punched out for killing off our own party we didn't but that didn't stop any of my characters from plotting to do it. if any of you got along nice and did nice things, you were good even if you said your alignment is evil.
/. or something.
i know a lot of the
so in essence, minus the cheating, this is what these people are doing. i've found that a lot of people on the servers have no clue about what playing an evil character is like. i mentioned it to a friend when he played everquest. someone would lead people somewhere and they'd die, he'd bitch about it and i told him they were playing an evil character.
so here's a quick help on how to spot an evil character
no an evil character is not going to give you an item back
an evil character might help you if he need something out of you
an evil character won't think twice about killing you off, so stay useful
an evil character will lead you somewhere to get killed so they can loot you
i know it's not nice, hence being evil, but you can't expect everyone to act all nice, especially in a fantasy world, if you don't like it, leave the game, turn off your computer, walk away, go read