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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."
Couldn't they just force all the griefers to be on the same team?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
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.
This sort of play has been going on since Starcraft first came out.
Dolemite
____________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Even though a lot of people seem to hate Blizzard, this just proves that they may actually care about their customers. I'm glad there's at least one game company looking out for their user-base.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Try this analogy for size:
Imagine you belong to a tennis club where you can play scratch games of doubles. Sometimes your doubles partner just deliberately throws the game. You'd probably try to avoid playing that person, but if he persistently did that he might well be subject to sanction and perhaps ejection from the tennis club for unsporting behaviour.
Does that mean doubles tennis is a broken game? Or does it just mean that you sometimes need extra social or organisational structures to make games work? On the 'net, those problems can be harder to solve because of the relative anonymity, so your range of solutions is narrower.
This is actually old news, but hey, whatever...
I fully support Blizzards decision, in fact, they just recently banned FFA (free for all) griefers... its SOOO easy to get into a ladder FFA with a "friend" if you click on the play game button at about the same time, since there are relatively few FFA's at any given moment.
Just for clarification, this is your typical griefer:
game starts, they (depending on race) either destroy all their buildings, or hero rush your base, or build nothing but peons.
An older trick was the get this one wand that teleported a unit back to your town hall, and right before you finished "creeping" (killing neutral monsters for gold/experience) they'd teleport your hero back to base, get the item and the xp for your kill...
These arent people that "suck" at the game. These are the asshats that would join your Diablo 2 game with hacked characters and then kill you "because they could".
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Putting all the teenagers who think soloing is gameplay on the same team for CounterStrike is a good thing. I think I played CStrike for about a month back in 2001, then I got fed up with all the teens and cheaters online.
You have no idea how difficult it is to "just fix it." You're asking developers to write an algorithm that recognizes bad behavior; that recognizes when someone is intentionally playing badly as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to play well.
The Athenians knew how to just fix it. Once a year they'd hold an election; the person getting the most votes -- ostrakons, for the shell or potshard used in voting -- would be ostracized, banished, for a year.
Do it monthly, and I bet you'd see a lot less griefing.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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
I can understand not wanting people to mess up the ladders. So why not have ladder bans? There are systems for this that can work without keeping people off B.net as a whole.
I can understand wanting good players to be able to play with other good players. Which is why said people catch on and play private games with people they know.
What I don't understand is how Blizzard can keep doing things like this, just snapping its fingers and banning thousands of people. 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? Banning a huge sum of players on the off chance that other players will have a better time is a flawed business model, and no competent business would ever do it.
And if this trend continues, how long is it until Blizzard EULAs contain rules and guidelines on how you can play the game? How long is it until people who don't play along are just deleted?
Wouldn't it be nice if there was an alternate Battle.net clone for people who want to play on a huge network but don't want to deal with Blizzard's rules? You know, like bnetd.
Whoops.
It keeps happening, a few people keep griping, and the mindless Blizzard junkies who have become zealous followers of every game the company makes keep praising Blizz for allowing them to play with less people. It's bound to crash and burn eventually. Right?
Glog!
First, this is how they are "fixing" it. Rather than patching to record the behavior or altering the gameworld so that griefing is somehow no longer fun, they are going to patrol their own gameworld and punish griefers. It's a fix with a meat space touch, but still a fix.
Second, Blizzard isn't just a game developer in this case. They are also a game host. Here they are not just selling a game, but a game world and a (must control gag reflex) user experience. As a result, it isn't enough for them to merely let their game out into the wild as it were. They have to provide the appropriate environment for most of their clients to enjoy their game.
There's an easy solution to that one, don't make an ally you can't trust.
And here lies the problem: battle.net players are randomly paired with a partner (or 2 or 3 ) for team ladder games.
There is nothing preventing the little griefers from organizing their own games on open or non league servers, so if they want to throw games there is nothing stopping them. But in league games?
Blizzard owns the servers, so you play the way Blizzard wants you to or you can go play by yourself. Getting the boot from battle.net does not make Warcraft unplayable, it just denies access to their matching service which I think is fair. Now is this whole thing going to blow up in their face? It could, we shall have to see.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
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
Actually, after seeing your post, I decided to check out the bNet Terms of Use. Basically, you're not allowed to be an asshole. A few things you can't do, copy-pasted:
"harass, threaten, stalk, embarrass, or cause distress, unwanted attention, or discomfort upon another user of Battle.net or other person or entity;"
"cheat during game play,"
"carry out any action with a disruptive effect, such as causing the screen to "scroll" faster than other users are able to type to it;"
"disrupt the normal flow of dialog in a chat room or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users, individuals, or entities, including, but not limited to, posting "Spam" messages on Battle.net. "Spam" messages as used herein include, but are not limited to, any effort to use a computer or other electronic device to post an unauthorized and/or unsolicited advertisement to Battle.net;"
I'd say griefing is covered by both the first and second ones I listed...Also, it says that if you violate any of those rules, you can be immediately, without warning, banned, permanently or temporarily. Of course.
Heh...I like it.
I think more games need a simple, easy-to-use "teammates vote moron out" feature like SOCOM 2 on PS2. On some online PC shooter games, I've seen such features, but often they require some typed command at the console that most people never learn.
The Athenians knew how to just fix it. Once a year they'd hold an election; the person getting the most votes -- ostrakons, for the shell or potshard used in voting -- would be ostracized, banished, for a year.
All right, so I used to work for Kesmai, who the people who are in the know realize that means that I have some idea what I'm talking about when it comes to multiplayer online gaming and customer support.
While your solution sounds hopeful at first, you really have to stop and think about the consequences of the solution in other terms, rather that just the problem at hand. See, you're trying to keep bad players out by making a system that allows for players to rid the system of other players.
Now, do you have some magic way of ensuring that the troublemaking players don't get to vote? Because here's pretty much what would happen: The troublemaking players would gang up and start a concerted effort to ban proper players. If the troublemakers could get a good head start, then they would quickly be able to outnumber the proper players.
The quick rule of thumb is to imagine that you want to make life miserable for other players. Then ask yourself how you can abuse the tools in the game. Presume you can find 30 other players who also want to abuse the system, 'cause you will be able to.
Automatic, player-controlled community tools are a nice idea, but you have to make sure that those tools can't be used to affect a player's experience.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
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