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Player vs. Player Play Examined
aws910 writes "An interesting story at news.com.com tells of the various efforts employed by various MMOG companies to abate the problem of Griefers." From the article: "Social miscreants can do more than ruin the game for better-behaved competitors. They can hurt game companies' bottom line by driving away customers and burning up support lines. Problems related to grief players often account for 25 percent or more of customer service calls, according to game publishers." Commentary from the old men of MMOGdom available at Broken Toys and Terra Nova.
Sigs cause cancer.
Another point is, couldn't the virtual police become corrupt (again, as is common in many societies), and wouldn't you need extraordinarily complex systems such as...
a judiciary
lawyers
ombudsmen
investigatory units
a bar association
...etc, etc... to eliminate the possibility of abuse by the "authorities"? How would you like to be "imprisoned" in a MMORPG by some rogue "virtual cop" who decided you were acting improperly? Something to think about.
Sigs cause cancer.
Exploiting of bugs could certainly be termed grief play, but this is essentially a game mechanics issue and should be addressed as such. The bottom line is, the game mechanics define the rules of the game, and if an action is allowed it is a legitimate part of the game. For example: if wildly unbalanced encounters between high-level and low-level characters are not desired, then they should be prevented by game mechanics.
In-game chat, and mechanics exploits are the only real tools of the griefer. An /ignore command, and timely patches in a quality game make this a non-issue.
The article doesn't even begin to grasp the scale of greifing in online games. Griefers are not lone misanthropes looking torture the weak, they just start that way. They form their own groups and then use these groups/guilds/mafia to "police" the server in the form of organised greifing. To make matters worse, they are usually the most likely players to take advantage of bugs and/or exploits, which often unbalances the playing field further. Not being discriminating in their associates often characterises greifers in MMOs. They don't care who their friends are, so long as they can maintain strangth in numbers, and their rules of conduct are so minimal, that they can grow to outnumber any other organisation on thee server, becoming an unbalancing force of extreme inconvenience to other players. Against such dedicated players, there is often no real recourse, or even means to ignore and avoid, so younger players who have been on the recieving end of greifing behavior often break down and become counter-greifers, themselves. Which just magnifies the problem until the entire server revolves around the personal conflicts of the players who least represent the intention of the game, or the majority of the server population. It then becomes impossible to oraganise events on a server, or do any of the really interesting "player created content" that MMO developers yearn to inspire. Want to have a well planned wedding? Not a chance when guild X shows up, and starts screaming obscenities at the crowd or attacking people, if the rules allow. MMO developers are often afraid to take real action against the players involved in a greif oriented organisation. They desperately need the dollars, and can't afford to ban players right and left. Often greifing organisations are led by players who have numerous accounts, and banning the leaders of these organisations would cost hundreds of dollars per month, per individual, and would eventually lead to a noticable drop in revenue. Greifers are also the most likely poulation to purchase items, characters or money outside of game, to further increase their disporportionate power. They drive inflation on a server, and can further tip the PvP balance towards their favour by means not available to most players, or by means that the majority of players, and the developer feel are unethical.
The main reason why grief exists in these games mostly hinges on human nature. The aspect of humanity that really resents being on the short end of the domination chain. This was explored in Lord of the Flies. When the kids come to realize that there is no authority to enforce the cordial rules things go south.
Players who realize that the only real thing at risk is their free time and money will feel a rush from doing questionable things. Their computer becomes their cloak of anonomity. Without some sort of "penality" for being a jerk there is little incentive for some to avoid being jerks. Often times the administrators are overwhelmed or powerless to make rulings let alone enforce penalities so players are left to police themselves.
Games that have large social structures like "guilds" tend to gravitate towards a more stable setup because "player enforced penalities" start to come into play. When leaders start worrying about their group being left out (everyone agrees GuildA55 are jerks and therefore will not share events with them) they are far more likely to be nice and seek comprise than to try and grief and punish everyone against them. Situations like these probably mimic some early human societies and social structures.
Once again technology and MMOGs have shown an interesting side of humanity. I'm sure that there are socialogy majors who could make some interesting thesis out of observed behavior in these virtual worlds.
Your post is riddled with statements where you justify your behaviour and bestow upon yourself various compliments. "Griefing is an art", "Griefing takes intelligence, ingenuity, style and thought",
All bullshit. You are in essence an asshole, nothing more. Nobody appreciates assholes. Nobody ever has and nobody ever will.
Lord of your domain? That's a laugh. Lord of a server somewhere that you don't own and have to pay for the right to use?
The real joy of all of this is that the game makers are slowly moving towards models that will make you completely irrelevent City of Heros was absolutely brilliant in putting up with none of the bullshit people like you create. The games are a business and you and yours have no place in the future business model.
Believe me when I tell you that nobody is going to miss having you around to "appreciate". You'll behave or you'll be gone.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I think this is a good idea. If you make a jail system where the player has to do a number of hard to script for actions in order to get out, the virtual equivalent of breaking rocks. The higher the sentence, the more actions needed to get out.
That way, just like in the real world, you can have anti-social types, but they're limited in the amount of damage they cause.
I don't read AC A human right