Slashdot Mirror
Cleaning up Thunder Bluff
An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"
Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
We call it the ignore button. It...ignores people. And amazingly enough...it works!
If you want to control this problem, you will need moderation. That is simply the only way to achieve it. You can be just as offensive typing fvck as you can typing fuck, and it won't get caught by the majority of filters. And in terms of speech, well, why would you ever want to hear anyone who isn't on your team? And why would you want to play with a bunch of foulmouths unless you were one?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was just threatening to yank the impromptu slashdot chat room after a (literally) 12 year old chatter was getting out of hand. You know, I remember being a young teenager with loads of "hacking" scripts. I *don't* remember being so annoying about them.
:P
On the other hand, it's always funny when they fall for the "Alt-F4 to kickban" trick.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Seriously, when I group with people and they have vent or Team Speak I am not amazed that most of them do not have any relationship except with their mom upstairs. When my girlfriend comes on the microphone at least half the time they make lewd remarks. I am using a decent headset is there a way to filter out background noise or make it just broadcast my voice?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Thats how I feel about profanity. Words. Nothing more, nothing less. Why the fuck do people get so upset when other people say fuck?
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
Gabe said it best.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
And it's the one that one of the people who commented on TFA proposed: do away with anonymity. Require the account holder's real name, address, and phone number to be publicly viewable. This would result in some real-world repercussions for the griefer, when those who had been griefed got torqued enough to go to the kid's house and beat him up. That happens a few times, and people will start being more careful.
This is not a good idea, of course, but it would solve the problem.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.
...But what the hell is this article about? One more iota of randomness and the summary could be used as an entropy bucket for a PRNG.
Bot Assisted Blogging
But Thunder Bluff is full of easy-going Tauren. I mean, I've had people moo at me rudely, but I wouldn't call them "racist junk-monkeys". I'm sick of people stereotyping Tauren! First it's "Tauren are stupid cows" and "Tauren aren't allowed in my house because they'll break the china". Now it's "Tauren are racists". When will it all end...
-William Brendel
If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.
Try Settlers of Catan or Uno on Live, i guess they are too boring for the teeners every game I have played so far has been civil and even pleasant.
It would be nice to play a game against my nephew (the only person I know with an unhacked 360) without having to worry about colorful metaphors. Yes I know its nothing he hasnt heard before and its probably more distubing to me than him, but for grown-ups live is almost unusable for 90% of the games out there.
While I hate censorship, I do wish Xbox Live had some sort of rating system for games with a reporting structure for violators. I think it would work, they could still allow free-for-all matchups that let the explicatives fly, just allow an easy way to designate gamers that dont want to hear it. Maybe an icon on the gamertag? It just looks like there should be some way to do it that allows freedom for both people who want to hear 12 year olds cuss and those that dont.
I think you mean Barrens General.
Please understand that I curse all the time in real-life, play on PvP servers without problem (e.g. shadowbane), and so on.
That said, they really should ban people who curse in public chat (no, guild chat is not "public"). Someone who gets banned a few times for cursing ends up with a perma-ban.
Again, I curse in real-life. But I see no positive reason to allow cursing in general chat channels.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Just leave gerneral chat when riding through the barrens, problem fixed.
I like the idea of online gaming being the "Wild West". It is one of the few frontiers left and I, for one, don't want it changed.
A Slashdot thread without a flawed analogy is like a frozen fishstick without a train conductor. - Odin's Raven
I must say, I was disappointed. I hate running around Thunder Bluff trying to find anything, and I'd love to see it cleaned up. And I've only played Tauren.
Seriously though, I play on a RP server, just so I don't have to deal with idiotic crap. Sure, we get plenty of dumb drama that keeps my playtime to less than 8 hours a month anymore. I do wonder, if the novelty of race-baiting and idiocy would be better than the age-old drudgery of dealing with tiny little egos crying to me about other tiny little egos crying to me. Word of advice, don't ever run a massive guild, don't ever sit on a playtest team, don't ever be friends with a successful and popular guild leader. If you do, you aren't playing a game any longer.
The problem is a lack of real-world accountability.
If someone were to act in real life the way some of those idiots act online, they'd get punched in the face pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there's no way to punch someone in the face over the net.
[Note: Ironic Sarcasm?]
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
This is a slippery slope. I don't know what server she is on but in WoW i'm on Magtheridon (US), Hyjal, and Whisperwind. I don't find the chatter on any of these servers very offensive. In fact, I find the chat to be quite tame in all of those aformentioned servers. Maybe this particular individual is cursed with being on a bad server. So, please, take advantage of Blizzard's for-pay services and transfer to a different server, or complain enough and get a free transfer. Even Barrens chat on Magtheridon isn't too bad. Chuck Norris jokes and Skullflame Shield links aside...
Moderating chat in an MMO environment would undercut Blizzard's bottom line a little, and that would most likely make them raise subscription fees. I'm also of the opinion that there is a block\ignore button, and a profanity filter, as well as the ability to leave General Chat, Trade etc. Really, I think what it comes down to is that Blizzard provides the user with the necessary tools, the user just needs to take advantage of those tools. Personally, nothing interesting happens in General chat anyway. This is why I personally gravitate toward a guild. Guilds are a more moderated environment in any case; you can bring guild complaints to the GM and hopefully they're a good person and they do something about it.
This issue doesn't ultimately have a solution, though, I don't think. Not a practical easily-enacted one, at any rate. You can put band-aids on the problem, you can assign moderators up the yin yang if you want, but it's the kids attitudes that need to be changed, not the game. When you're bringing up an issue like this you shouldn't be lambasting the game and blaming Blizzard, you should probably be looking at more of a widespread problem that seems to be a serious problem in America today: Parenting, and Big Brother. Letting a game teach your kids, letting snotty potty mouthed 12 year olds that need REAL parents teach your kids, and expecting the government or some sort of regulation to fix your own lack of parenting skills is not an excuse.
Make a juried legal system part of the game. Let people press charges and sue people, in game. Conviction could mean anything from confiscation of in game resources through "imprisonment" of your avatar, all the way to the "death penalty" of losing your account. Heck, make people pay a month's deposit which is forfeit if you are convicted. Sure, people would try to game the system, but people have been trying to game legal systems since they were invented, I think we know ways to protect against that by now.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Since we're using "Cleaning up Thunder Bluff" as the subject, I'll assume that most of this is directed at the text seen in World of Warcraft. Here are a couple of things you can do to prevent seeing things that might be offensive:
- Use the profanity filter. This will block out the most offensive words that you may come across in chat.
- Put them on your ignore list. I know that there's a limited number of people you can put on the ignore list, but if one person's irritating you enough, put them there.
- Leave general chat. You can always rejoin it at a later time.
- Finally, you can report someone that's being excessively rude and using slurs. Bans are usually temporary, but they can get the point across. Too many temporary bans will result in a permanent one.
Of course, these are the options that are present in WoW, I can only assume that other MMOs have similar steps. YMMV.
On behalf of the Taurahe people, I for one am highly offended at the implication that our peaceful, majestic city in the clouds needs cleaning up. Our Bluffwatchers are some of the most efficient custodians I have ever seen, and our program to recycle waste products into compost to aid in Arch Druid Runetotem's morrorwgrain research sets an example for capital cities across Azeroth.
/spit on all rogues, both Alliance and Horde, would be acceptable.
Despite our bovine nature, and its accompanying production of large piles of waste product, we boast of the cleanest cities on Azeroth or Outlands, free from the usual blight of urban sprawl, like the putrid sewers of Undercity, the molten magma "waste processing" of Ironforge, or the dumbasses in Stormwind who let a dragon take over the city just because she could shapeshift into a "hawt bb." Meanwhile, we have continued to maintain a healthy tourism industry, and, unlike our druidic friends in Darnassus, people actually go to Thunder Bluff on purpose, not just because their cat hit the mouse and they were trying to go to Winterspring to farm.
In summary, I expect a full apology to be delivered to Cairne by the end of the week. Reparations in the form of well chewed grass, some decent low level balance druid armor, or a free pass to
Celticow
(Azjol-Nerub)
Make people pay a nominal fee to join. To do that, they'll need a real name and contact information. If Johnny the moronic, racist, foul-mouthed 14 year old gets on and breaks the ToS for spewing more racist filth than a 1940s klan rally, blacklist him for a while. Yes, blacklist him as in ban him from that game, and every game the publisher makes for several years. Go one step better and share the list between publishers. Ohhhh little Johnny want to play Halo 3? Too bad, you shouldn't have been acting like a racist fucktard in World of Warcraft.
Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...
I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.
It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.
So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.
In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Granted I'm sure there are kids who are decent and fun to play online with. I'm talking about the vast majority though. This crap doesn't just happen online. The online factor is only spreading it to the masses. And souring many of the older generations online enjoyment.
As for WoW and all the rest it would be nice to see some features that allow you a global ignore list so regardless of which character you're playing or the asshat is playing they're still /ignored. GuildWars is one of the only MMOs I know of with a feature like this.
This new generation needs to learn some respect. Without it our future is screwed.
~Vexed and loving it!
Seriously. Don't play. If these MMOs saw a significant drop in its users due to this sort of thing I think they'd work to find some creative solutions for the problem pretty quickly. As it is, that doesn't appear to be happening. Even the author, rather than quit, is going to stick around and try to clean things up.
So either the problem isn't really that bad or the author gets entertainment out of acting as moral police and (en)forcing their moral views on others and would prefer it this way to begin with.
One of the things I've noticed as I've gotten older (I'm 24 now) and worked in an office environment is the natural tendency for people to be civil towards each other. There's some petty politics, sure, but this common courtesy is what keeps a collection of strangers (ie, society) together. It's instinctual, but can break down when one is granted anonymity. Teenagers just aren't like this. Some of the things I said - and were said to me - in high school really were pretty fucking mean. Most adults in the real world wouldn't last a second if they talked that way to each other and it's still hard for us to believe that kids say such graphic stuff to other kids' faces. Did some of you have similar experiences? Younger people just don't have the verbal restraint and consequences instinct that older folks do, so they have no reason not to spew the garbage that goes through their minds. If I'd had a large forum like an MMOG to be offensive when I was 15 I probably would have done the same thing; instead, all I had were aol chat rooms. Teenagers just don't have the same social wiring as adults do, and we're used to interacting with obnoxious teens on our terms... and it's alarming to journey into their world where civilized behavior isn't compulsory. I don't think the answer is more authority. When have teenagers ever responded well to that? They'll grow out of it eventually.
...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.
What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.
You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Not to feed the flamebait, but he's right. If you don't like it, leave the channel.
The people who wish the internet was a sweet world of marshmallow fluff are doomed to perpetual disappointment; too much of our racial Freudian Id is floating around out there, and plenty of otherwise normal people can be complete dicks online. You just gotta learn to live with it, or keep playing neopets.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I've never experienced anything remotely like that anywhere in WoW. Not even close. The most offensive things I've seen are the chuck norriss jokes in the barrens. While they're annoying, it's a stretch to find them offensive.
Step one is to take the problem seriously. A lot of people don't. "Sticks and stones may break my bones" most properly ends with "but words can sear my soul." That one stupid saying (in its original form) has probably done more damage than good.
Step two is to create some sort of social mechanism. My suggestion, which I haven't seen yet, is a sort of social network where you can indicate which players you like to play with and which you don't, and automated match-making software will help you hook up with people who have similar "tastes" in people. Thus, you don't have to "ban" the fucktards, you just let the system naturally put them together, where they can be immature at each other all they want (and continue paying subscription fees), whereas other gamers naturally gravitate towards people who want to play more like them. I don't know of anything that works this way; closest I've seen is ways to get some people "banned".
(It'd take some thought to make the system resistant to attacks, but to a first approximation, if you simply weight "I don't like this user" significantly higher than "I like them", then even a massive coordinated attack by the fucktards to "like" people won't work.)
It could be very workable in a MMORPG, though. Tagging someone with one "asshole" point could cost your avatar 5 points. Points could diminish at a rate of 1 per hour in-game. Anyone accumulating more than 25 points has an automatic 3 day suspension (or other punishment) applied to their account.
Yeah, it could be abused somewhat, but your gang of 25 griefers could punt a total of 5 people before needing to take a break.
User based moderation, with an attached cost.
There is nothing wrong with the system. Don't like general chat? don't read it! Don't like Dumb-b***ard's views, ignore him. It is not Blizzard's job to make sure we all feel warm and fuzzy about how different people discuss things in game. Nor is it our jobs as gamers to censor other gamers simply because they are being assholes, I'm personally busy playing the game. If you have a problem with it, yet the mass majority of players playing the game(wow is 7million now right?) don't have a problem with it. Then maybe, just going out on a limb here, maybe the problem is you?
Really, how did this article end up in slashdot of all places? I expect this to be an "breaking news story" on one of the major stations. "Oh no, little Timmy could learn the word "Fuck" from playing wow, news at 11"
My example is old, but with Battle.net for Diablo 2, anyone you squelch/ignore/block is only temporary. Next time you log in it's reset.
I haven't played that "soft crack" in a couple years (ok, not online...). Nor have I graduated to the "hard crack" known as WoW.
Choose you servers more carefully.
For example, I play COD2 exclusively. I belong to a online gaming "clan" that hosts this game and a number of others (BF2, BF2142, UO). In support of these games, we maintain game servers, a Vent voice chat server, forums, and a public website. Our overall philosophy is to provide an environment for fun and cheat-free play. We do not allow in-game typed profanity or harassment of other players. As far as voice chat goes, we only allow profanity in our 16 and older Vent channels. All other channels are rated G. Also, regardless of what channel you are in, harassment (sexist, racial, or otherwise) is NEVER tolerated. How do we manage it? Mature RCONs and Vent channel admins...who are on most of the time and available via IM, email, and phone when necessary.
Are we unique? Not at all. There are many mature groups of players who have banded together to form such positive playing environments.
If you are stuck on a Blizzard server, my sympathies.
Sure, a civilized community sounds nice, but who decides what is civilized? If we limit people to one person's opinion of propriety, many others will feel needlessly limited by it. One solution is to let everyone say what they want without filters, a radical idea called freedom of speech. The other is to eliminate communication altogether. Then again, if you do that, it's not really a community anymore, is it? As others have suggested, I recommend the "/ignore" command. It can work wonders.
We have to spend cycles worrying about childish behaviour on the internet? Last I checked, we* were in a war, poverty is killing people in "the greatest country in the world", oppression is rampant throughout much of the world...but hey, fuck all that. Let's worry about the language people in a FUCKING GAME use. Sounds more important to me.
*yes, I'm from the U.S. If you aren't, replace "we were" with "America is" and go on about your day. Thanks.
http://xkcd.com/386/
STFU nub, lolz, wtf luzer, kthxbye!!!1!
All joking aside (yes, I meant that humorously), you pretty much have to deal with it. Use ignore. Report offenders. Don't play. Quit the game and make sure you let them know you're leaving because they don't enforce their own policies. Make a guild of tattle-tales. Make up your mind to ignore it and not let it bother you, instead of letting it dominate your game experience.
... named Anonymous:
If you don't like the language or behavior of the people playing... go play something else? Or, leave the general chat. Or, only talk to people in your guild. Or, go play a RP server (blocking the griefing nubs who bother you when their server is down).
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Do you expect newcomers to /ignore 2 of the 3 hours they play?
You can't autoboot someone who is on X ammount of ignore lists. It'd make for some serious DoS potential.
Even on ignore people can still find a multitude of ways to be annoying.
The only sure way to assure the user community of nice and polite players is to have a RL mobile unit in each city that will personally visit the basement of the annoying troll and give him a nice and polite looking over with an aluminum baseball bat.
I personally do not want filters of any sort on the game as they hinder the communication that goes on between people. These are just words they can not hurt you at the very worst you are going to be offended but guess what... What you may find offensive I may find humorous and what you find humorous may be offensive to me.
For me, it's not that the internet isn't all nice (I accept and, sometimes, enjoy the hell out of that ;)), its just that I would like to be able to play a FPS online without being called a fag (or worse) by some 12yo.
The new Live rating system helps but, more times then not, I find myself in a room with "Capt. Shouty and Team Tourette's!". The only solution I've found is removing the headset.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
The sad part is how little developers and the various people involved do to prevent all the hating and racist crap in online gaming. I report the racists and such on XBL, does it do anything? I've no idea and I have my doubts based on how often I run into those folks. Could they stop it altogether? Probably not, but few seem to even try to do anything about it. I also would like to see some sort of system where you could choose to join games where people are just looking to have a good time without the childish trash talk, cursing at each other, racism and such. Some of my best gaming experiences are when you just get a bunch of folks together and everyone has fun together and we all enjoy the game and laugh together when something funny happens. On the other hand I avoid some games and playing online at times because of the pervasive jerk culture that has developed there.
This problem has been solved elsewhere. I used to spend a lot of time working in video production and in the theater; in 90% of theaters and studios, they use a headset intercom system made by ClearCom. It's a pretty simple "party line" (or sometimes 2 channel) system, where everybody has a headset and a belt pack, with a PTT switch. The PTT can also be locked on, if you need hands-free operation.
However, the designers realized that letting people lock on their mics could get pretty annoying in a hurry, for exactly the reasons you mentioned -- everybody else on the circuit doesn't need to hear you breathing, swallowing, talking to people not on the 'com, etc.
So they have a feature where the person at the master console can hit a button, and 'unlock' everyone's mics that are locked on. The way this is done is actually a pretty neat use of analog electronics, but it's not really relevant. The point is that the PTT-lock is a "soft lock" (the button doesn't lock down mechanically or anything), so it can be remotely unset. So that way if the person at the master console needs to break in, or just gets tired of hearing you breathe into your mic, they can just hit the button and shut you up (at least long enough to reach down and hit the button again).
Seems like this would be a good feature for video games that feature a team 'com, because essentially they're doing the same things as ClearComs in a production studio. You'd have a team leader, and they'd have the capability of unhooking people's stuck mics if they started yelling at their mom.
The only hardware change is that you have to have the PTT switch as a separate control line, rather than as part of the audio feed. (You have to have separate "headphone out," "mic in," and "PTT" lines, like most 2-way radios, rather than just "headphone" and "mic," with the PTT switch installed in the mic line.) This allows the mic keying to be done in the console, rather than in the headset -- which is really where it should be, even on a full-duplex connection. Also, it would let you actually use the PTT switch as more than just a switch for your own mic; you could set it up so that a quick double-tap of the PTT by the person in charge would unset other people's mics, and/or you could put the PTT switch any place you wanted, not just on your headset. (You could use it via a footswitch, or on your controller, or any other place you wanted.)
Anyway, 'teamspeak' and other systems are relatively new in the video game world, but the problems you're describing aren't new or very unique; they're all solved issues in other mediums, and hopefully someone in the video-game world will eventually take a look at some of those other systems and borrow the solutions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
whether you like it or not.
...
Just as my Care Bear guild leader Kehrbehr will get a group of Druid Taureans to dance as bears whenever it pleases him.
Just use Ignore. I'm far more concerned with Gold Spamming, quite frankly
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
1) As others mentioned, leave general chat. This should resolve close to 90% of the problems.
2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity.
3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears.
4) If people are being offensive, report it to the Moderators (or whatever your game calls them). I do not think an MMO exists where there are not moderators of some form. Most of them are willing to help and will resolve issues like this, if you present the issues in a calm and reasonable manner.
Now, you can almost forget everyone suddenly changing their ways, and unfortunately there isn't much you can do to force them to change. While people can be muted or temporarily banned, you will almost never get permanent removal unless you blatantly violent the EULA. Short of making threats or committing some sort of illegal act, they will probably return. The best you can do is limit exposure using the tools provided by the game. It is not the best solution, but if the people acting like total idiots find out they are without any friends and that no one wants to play with them, perhaps they will finally leave. (Though, that may also be wishful thinking.)
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
So WoW doesn't have a ignore function? Really if you don't like all the "incivility" you could always go play another game. You have free will go exercise it and read a book or better yet go outside. Clearly the game isn't fun anymore if you can't just ignore a few immature players.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
But if you had an auto-ban feature on WoW where if you get 10 ban requests from ten different people in a small enough amount of time you'll automatically get kicked.
/2, /3) other than Party Chat (/p) and Guild Chat (/g) for 72 hours. Parties (/p) are only 5 people and Guilds can always demote you to a level not able to post to Guild Chat, so those are self-regulating.
A better auto-ban is if you curse and swear and 10 total people report you in a 72 hour period, you lose the ability to post to Chat (/1,
One guild I was in, Femme Fatale, had to kick a n00b who cursed all the time. Guild chat is used a lot in that guild, so it just became too much. It was a guy, of course.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Long before WoW brought the graphical MMO into the limelight, text MUDs were doing the same thing with no pictures. They're still around, and in my experience tend to attract far fewer of the people TFA complains of. When the user interface forces you to use words and words only, the kiddies/spambots/racist losers usually get bored very quickly and leave.
Not to say that griefing doesn't happen--it just tends to happen in complete, coherent sentences.:)
Jesus. That's the dumbest argument I've heard all day, and I've just come from the WoW forums. The idea that the words "shit" and "poo" are linguistically equal is just mind-boggling to me. "Shit" is not equivalent to "poo". "Shit" is more vulgar. It's vulgarity is what makes it different! Our language allows us to speak in varying degrees of politeness and formality depending on the situation. A word may not be intrinsically "bad", at least in the moral sense, but it can certainly be impolite or rude. As a matter of fact, the presence of a euphemism of substitute for a word is a great indication that it might not be appropriate for all audiences.
I love to swear as much as the next guy, but you're overlooking a great deal of the richness of our language if you think swear words are interchangeable with their less offensive brethren. There is a time and a place for both. Let's not pretend otherwise.
For a second I thought this article was going to be about improving child safety around Thunder Bluff. As it has been observed the reason you don't see many Tauren children around is because they all keep falling off Thunder Bluff to their deaths. More railing around Thunder Bluff would alleviate this serious World of Warcraft issue.
I think maybe the article would have made better use of an appropriate game reference...like "Cleaning up the The Barrens".
Nobody hangs around Thunder Bluff long enough to needing "clean up".
.... ... }
int main (void) {
We can't help it if our older population doesn't drop their bovine excrement where it belongs.
As Taurens get older, they lose control.
How silly would a Tauren wearing a diaper look?
i believe this is utterly appropriate at this time.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
In practice, I've found that the best way to minimize the amount of 'negative energy' that you encounter in-game is to simply roll your character on a role play server. All of the teenie-boppers and frat boys who seem to live to spew bile and idiocy avoid these servers like the plague*. People are more polite and more helpful -- even the teenagers. Overall it's a night-and-day experience. The best part? Unless you're in an RP guild, nobody really cares if you role-play or not!
/ignore a much more reasonable tool, and you just won't run into them as much. Even Barrens chat is mostly tolerable, if you can believe that. Highly recommended.
It's not completely devoid of idiots, and no they generally will not be banned from the server for being idiots. However the greatly reduced volume makes
* I guess the theory is that in order to not feel like the giant dorks that they are for playing WoW they need to find an ever bigger dork to feel superior to. Whatever keeps them away, I say.
The enemies of Democracy are
Grow some balls, woman.
Newsflash: Civility on the 'net in games died in the mid 90's. Once the "user-friendly" bar reached a certain point where any dumb schmuck could play, dumb schmucks started playing. There were asshats before, sure, but the ratios were way different.
As for stopping profanity...well, good luck with that. Your only hope is to mask it from delicate eyes on your end, because humans have this thing about swearing to express strong emotions of certain types.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
...That will work, but nobody will like. Dispense with anonymity, use people's full names. The most civil forum I post on uses this rule.
From an Internet long, long ago ...
Chapter One of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life, 1998.
(First published in somewhat different form in The Village Voice, December 1993.)
Call me Dr. Bombay.
Mr. Bungle was a problem.
"They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room -- right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace -- of a house I came later to think of as my second home."
It's an object lesson.
If they start "meowing", well, it's time to leave.
http://gandalf.home.digital.net/trollfaq.html
~hylas
America's Army still has the best solution. Their in-game implementation of the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. They just put griefers in a barred cell from which there is no escape, and keep them there for a while. There's nothing to do in the cell, except peer out the little barred window and watch the sun go down.
Very relevant sidenote is that Tseric just quit his community moderator position after two years at Blizzard. He apparently got tired of the extremely bad treatment he received on a day-to-day basis.
A Rape in Cyberspace
(Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One)
Chapter One of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life, 1998
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
~hylas
What a total spazz of an article. Kids will be kids, as much as we all hate the "Lolz" and random racist comments, it is no ones job to nanny/moderate/ or block that content. Most devs have already included some kind of /ignore feature, or means of reporting that person to a GM. Thats as much as should be done. This "gamers unite, lets hold hands and eradicate the bad stuff" is so pathetic. Relax, go smoke a bowl and game.
I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.
Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.
Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.
The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.
Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.
This is not abuse-proof.What if griefers create throwaway characters,just to accumulate those points and spend them.
You'll get this anywhere, stick with your friends in a channel...just like you stick with your friends in a bar. How often do you go to a bar and find a Jerk? This isn't a video game only problem.
I've been in many a chat over my Internet career -- I've been around since the beginning. It is my understanding that the entire purpose for most of these games is to celebrate freedom -- in a world without restrictions. To impose those restrictions -- moreso to mandate them -- is just retarded (in the proper sense of the word).
Many seem to complain that the majority of people are offensive -- I use the word "offensive" instead of "assault" because my term anchors on the complainer without judging the accused. Welcome to word choice. "Objectionable" would also have worked -- perhaps even better.
If your complaint is regarding the "majority" then you're just an idiot trying to ruin someone else's fun. No one is being hurt against his/her will. You can leave at any time, and you are not forced to return -- you weren't forced to arrive in the first place.
So I leave you with this additional point. Where would you suggest that a person go to act out an otherwise unacceptable desire? It seems to be that killing cows is the choice for a would-be serial killer, and that hand-drawing child pornography is the acceptable version of photographing actual children. So what of the customer service call centre person? The guy who spends all day being nice to people on the telephone -- people who call for no reason but to yell at him for something that his company's client has done. If he wants to yell at someone, to where should he go?
You're not going to eliminate the desire for evil. Most of us have the evolutionary urge to strangle a person with my bare hands. It's a fossil-feeling, but it's there -- like my tail-bone. There are, however, numerous outlets in modern civilization for any would-be killer. I'm quite confident that if we suddenly dropped violent video games, and violent movies, there'd be a wave of destruction and rampage.
Same goes for verbal environments. What do you do all day that leaves you in such a perfectly content state? I can make a few educated guesses. Hmm, things that leave human beings perfectly content: abusing children, killing other people, and drugs. Personally, I do none of those things. So I have some energy left to be upset with people that I find dissappointing. And this, right here, is a wonderful way to focus that energy before I get back to work. Yesterday, I killed a dozen friends -- with lasers, cannons, fire, and this weird purple stuff, multiple times each as I captured a flag and taunted them with cheesy movie quotes. Yeah, I got killed a hell-of-a-lot of times too.
World of Warcraft has an "Ignore Player" feature for a reason. You ignore him, you'll never, ever, read anything coming from him again.
And for "physical" abuse (for example, entering a guild meeting and ruining the photo), one can open a ticket to a game master and have him deal with the annoying player. Not that this is much fast, but it's nevertheless available.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Simple fix, probably meant by the poster. Account wide. Done. If you are willing to pay for a ton of accounts to grief people, then damn, I guess you can abuse it, but at $15/month I doubt you will really see that.
Personally, I think being censored by your peers is a lot worse than having a watchdog do it. We all play because we enjoy it and just because there's an unwelcome element shouldn't prevent us from continuing to play. I've read through the posts and there are some ideas I really like.
These could easily be implemented and would give the world some self regulation (empowerment?). This would also make it easier for the game makers than to setup a rudeness police.
You see, *I* play (and in fact, am a member of the clan that runs it) Day of Defeat:Source on a server where there are these things called "rules". And people who do not play by these "rules" get banned according to their Steam ID. Seeing as someone in the clan is almost invariably on the server at least 20 hours a day (and some offences can be enforced automatically by the server), this keeps behaviour remarkably civil. People don't spew unending streams of obscenities and hate speech into their mics. They don't grief. They don't spam.
There's really only a few people that do this. Once they're gone for good, the problem goes away. Other people learn that it's not acceptable to grief even if they're having a bad day, and they stop. Or they just don't bother coming back to the server, in which case everyone wins.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
"To say that being offended by foul language is a learned behavior is obviously the case, but you present it as though only childish people would let a learned behavior influence them. The statement "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should." is obviously meant to belittle people who have learned that offensive language is offensive."
You learn not to curse from your mommy and daddy. You're reading something into it far beyond what he actually said, and that makes me wonder why.
"What purpose does the word fuck have in the English language other than to be offensive?"
Emphasis. Exclamation. If I stub my toe and no one else is around, when I yell "FUCK!" who is offended?
"Is it so unreasonable that someone gets offended by an offensive word?"
And there you admit the fatal flaw in your argument. Words don't offend, people ALLOW themselves to be offended by words. It is not the word, but the individual who ultimately decides if a word is offensive.
"Also for all those who get upset that crap isn't obscene while shit is."
My grandmother would vehemently disagree. Which proves my point quite nicely, while refuting yours as well.
Now go F yourself you F-ing C-sucking piece of dog S. (nothing offensive there, so no getting offended by you, your rules not mine)
Come on. It seems like everyone is posting "solutions" to the problem that recommend banning bad language or punishing offensive users. Am I really going to be the only person to say that maybe the author needs to grow thicker skin and not let these things get to her so much?
Are we really so easily offended by people playing a game?
Try that at my workplace.
I'll see you out the door, with cause.
Attitudes like yours routinely cause employers crippling lawsuits that get decided against them, because society is now highly intolerant of that crap.
Just ask Don Imus.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Yes, you can expect this from any online game. Stoping it altogether is 10X harder then stopping piracy, its not going to happen. What we needs is explicit groups like xbox live, and upon report of abusing the family section , just force them to only play in "underground", unless they pettition otherwise. oh and about in game verbal assault; type "/ignore name", now if only it were that simple irl.
"if poo = shit then we wouldn't have two different words for it."
That's just fucking moronic. Seriously, if you think you made a point here, punch yourself in the nuts for being such a god damned retard.
Ha! I don't even have to look, I know the exact strip. I was trying to remember the equation when I was typing: Normal Person + Internet = Total Asshat...Or something like that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
And I mean that to people on general. With the over-reaction we are getting to shock jocks on the radio...to the morons who say things in games...the easiest thing to do is just let it go. You aren't going to change them. Most games give you mechanisms to ignore the most obnoxious. Otherwise...just relax and try to see the humor. Yeah, to some people the guild name "A Naga Stole My Bicycle" is offensive. But it is meant in humor and should be interpreted as such. People are too sensitive about words lately. In general, most people aren't racist...these words have become slang to mean something else. I think people should watch what they say more and others shouldn't be so sensitive. But it isn't a problem that is going to go away. So either learn to deal with it or log off.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Because this was a family service, we had to try to police conduct in the general channel, and because we didn't have the staff to monitor it live 24/7, it fell to me to try to automate some of this. That actually worked fairly well. We had a very large dictionary of naughty words and phrases. When you said something, my filters basically looked for any of those things, and '*'ed them out. The filter ignored whitespace, and it also considered certain characters to be equivalent, so if you wrote 5h17, that would match 'shit', since it knew a 5 could take the place of an s, and so on. However, before filtering, it did a spell check on your text, and marked all the words that were spelled right and were not on the bad word list as safe. For example, if you said "wash it", it would not see the "sh it" as something bad.
This worked surprisingly well. It caught it when people tried tricks like inserting spaces to break up the bad words, but usually did not get false positives, because of the spell check protector stuff. Well, unless you were a lousy speller, but if a lousy speller got kicked off incorrectly for profanity, it still improved things. :-)
One other little trick it did. When it filtered out something in your message, it only did that on the message sent to other people. The copy that echoed back to your system was uncensored.
When you got caught, it would send you a message warning you to watch your language. If you ignored the warning, an admin bot would ban you for a period of time. Repeared bans would be for longer times.
One thing that disappointed me: no one ever tried to use Klingon profanity to get around the filters. I had that covered in the filters, and was hoping to see the reaction when the users discovered that.
For the whored!
You can't take the sky from me.
Site referenced in TFA appears to be slashdotted.
/grief
Look at our 1st amendment and why its so important if you don't believe they have strength.
As far as MMOs go, there are steps you can take like ignoring trolls and general chats, but there will always be intolerance. This is because the games have become a social setting massive enough to group together a demographic that incorporates some anti-social types that have the need to hate.
If you think its just happening in general chat or harrassment by some person with a carefully chosen name to offend that gets past the software filters then count yourself lucky.
I now belong to online tolerance advocacy groups (does it matter what kind of tolerance we're advocating?), and you'd be surprised at some of the crap we've seen. Most of the death threats are just email or game mail jokes. Some are more serious.
In a particular case a player was hounded by guildies and other high level friends for accidentally slipping up in TS and mentioning some information about their real life identity while waiting during a boring raid on MC. The guild leaders have some prejudice and the person ends up alienated, ridiculed and kicked out of the guild. On a competative server in a high-end guild the rumors fly and the player ends up some kind of outcast. Ok, that sucks you're a top level rogue with the best gear and weapons and can't get into any other guilds or get a name change so you move to another server.
Meanwhile the guild has its own website/message board, someone in guild management hacks the person's private email and starts the hate/death threats there too. The third party website has lousy security.
Getting a death threat with a mapquest map from some weirdo on the internet that has a highlighted path from his house to your house, plus a picture of his gun collection and a message "I will erase you because your kind shouldn't be in the gene pool" is not something you expect from playing a game. Yeah its hopefully worst scenario, but it happens. In fact it happened to me which is why I'm posting anonymously like a coward. I don't like having to move into a friend's basement until the guy is in custody.
In hindsight, the best defense is to keep everything about yourself completely private, avoid the guild websites? Yet in a game like WoW, to reach the high end bosses you have to play with a group that is organized and that tends to require a guild. WoW didn't have any way to provide the organization for guilds within its game, so most guilds had third-party sites to handle management.
The OP is right, its a real issue. If WoW can't unstick you from bugs, do you really think they can understand let alone handle hate/intolerance?
-some anonymous gamer girl with unipolar depression that mentioned to a guild buddy who's gf had just tried to kill herself that she had depression and would listen if he needed a friend
Oh, you meant actual physical contact. They'd enable that feature, but they're too scared it'll turn X-rated within seconds.
"The people who wish the internet was a sweet world of marshmallow fluff ..."
That's not what it's about.
It's like a private clucb. You pay your dues every month to go whenever you want.
Some other member start verbally harrassing you, you tell the owner you don't like it.
The owner can ask the person to be quite, ask the person to leave, tell the complainer to too bad.
This person is asking the owner to do something about the people down in fromt.
Just like you would if a bunch of people started yelling about Chuck Norris while you were trying to watch a movie in a cinema...unless it was Spiderman 3, in which case you would thank them.
Cryderman, Cry dear man,
everyone cries just like a baby can.
WATCHOUT it's cryderman,
hey cry dear man!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
go to the managemen and say:
"I don't like that behaviour, can you stop it please?"
Then if they don't, leave.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Reported.
when i played asheron's call i discovered that people who play MMO's and don't know me in real life are either jerks, wankers, or mentally retarded. even my guild was more than 50% asshats.
now i play lord of the rings online and city of heroes now, and while i have to turn of all chat channels but my kinship/supergroup, fellowship/team, friends and tells, i have to say that the level of asshattery has reduced significantly.
instanced event areas are a great invention. in AC if you entered a dungeon there was a good chance (especially in a choice hunting spot) that someone would already be there. they would invite you to a fellowship with a bunch of people who where obviously PLing squeakers and when you declined to join them they would get angry that you were hogging the lewtz. having a quest/mission where i can enter a "dungeon" that belongs soley to me and my friends is a real boon the the MMO experience.
the global ignore was also a good invention, where you can ignore the human and all of it's iterations, rather than his current instance on a specific server. COH has such an ignore.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Don't even bother reporting the spammers with spamsentry. Blizzard has already stated that they are overwhelmed by reports from that mod and their logging (apparently) isn't good enough to track the culprits - who usually fire off a barrage of spam and then delete the account.
/spamsentry options ignorebylevel 2
Better use of spamsentry is this:
That'll ignore tells from all players below level 2. I have yet to see a spambot bother to level up a character. They may start doing that at some point, but by then, Blizzard's patch with the in-house spam controls will be available.
A better question would be why that person believes that everyone else should conform to his or her view of reality and social norms? If I want to express myself in a certain way, what gives that person the right punish me? Or more importantly, why does that person's view of what's right and wrong hold more sway than mine?
If that person doesn't like it, there are tools in place to make their experience more enjoyable via ignore and leaving channels altogether.
World of Warcraft's forums have always been as vicious as the fairly high level of censorship will allow, but they have been getting worse recently.
There are five main areas where a chronic degree of player elitism, and other player attitude problems are (at least sociologically speaking) slowly destroying World of Warcraft.
1) If you don't have at least one, and preferably multiple level 70 characters, you're not acknowledged as a player of the game at all, culturally speaking. You're not considered credible in the area of forming a guild, even if you only intend it to be informal or for low level members, or have someone else to mentor you.
2) For those who don't know, every character class in the game has three talent or sub-discipline trees, where as players progress they can add points to specific talents within each sub-discipline tree, in order to gain bonuses or new abilities within that sub-discipline. There is an endemic attitude among end-game players that, at least in the case of some classes, only one (or at most two) of these three talent trees is in any way valid or legitimate. Players (such as myself) who create characters that specialise in the politically incorrect talent tree/s are vilified as ignorant, and told that they will not be accepted to participate in the supposedly all-important activity of end-game raiding. Peer pressure is used as a means of enforcing these biases.
3) There is a mentality among level 70 players that end-game raiding is the only thing in the game that is worth doing; if you're not raiding yourself, you are not considered to be engaging in any other legitimate form of activity.
4) There is an overwhelming tendency among players who are ignorant of the mechanics of their given character class, and who are performing poorly in the game, to enter the forums and attempt to complain to Blizzard employees that the character class in question is "broken" and needs to be "fixed" in the ways that they specify, rather than said players engaging in the requisite research/other effort necessary to learn how to be genuinely effective with their character class within the game environment. This is predictably more true in the case of hybrid classes such as the Hunter and Shaman than others, because in the case of these classes, their purpose within a multidisciplinary player group is not as immediately apparent as is the case of more single-purpose classes, such as the Warrior or Mage.
5) As far as the playerbase is concerned, The Burning Crusade expansion has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the expansion's release, player emphasis has been almost purely on competition and rivalry, rather than earlier forms of camaraderie and positive interaction. People in the game are less likely to help each other now to a large degree; it's become a lot more about how far ahead of the other person you can get. Blizzard themselves are responsible for other extremely detrimental changes that occurred just prior to the release of the expansion, namely the almost complete destruction of the in-game UI customisation and scripting system, and the abolition of the earlier pvp ranking system, which had also created a scenario where players had a concrete incentive for wanting to win games within the pvp battlegrounds.
You change the game!
Make everyone killable. If you don't like something someone does, KILL THEM(in game of course).
Games like Shadowbane(unknon to most people) had a system like this, if you messed up in the eye of the beholder, you were slaughtered. The righteous quickly outnumbered the few foul mouthed kids. The problem we see today, is in games like WoW, people are invulnerable online. This allows for abuse, and raging. Having everyone be killable has its downsides... but honestly, you can't outweigh the good of it.
a little humor break from off the mark
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
I flat out refuse to pay $30/mo to babysit. That is all you have suggested I do. It has turned from a "pay to play" to a "pay to babysit" scenario. I refuse. As much as I would like to play WoW - forget it. /ignore = babysit this little brat. /ban = babysit that little brat. /report = babysitting
What is so hard to understand about that? I don't pay to babysit... I should get paid to do it.
I spent 2 1/2 hours taking screen shots and writing up reports that took a week to be reviewed and in the end that player was sent a polite little letter asking them not to behave like that again.
I played for about 5 hours a week - max - on a slow week.
forget it. it's not worth it.
Blizzard et al. will continue to cater to these foul mouthed brats because they pay. The rest of us don't/won't waste our time.
If Blizzard did somehow clean up their servers for the rest of us they would have to kick those brats off and then where would they be? Trying to convince us to come back? I don't think so. It's stupid incarnate in there and far worse than a daycare...
children babysitting children... because they refuse to pay for daycare staff.
Why would Blizzard et al. even bother to try to clean it up when it's exactly those same idiots that they're making the money off of? Why should Blizzard pay staff to kick paying customers off of the servers? So they can loose money to loose more money? Once word got out that there were 'secret WoW police" wandering about handing out suspensions things might improve... but I doubt it.
I would encourage everyone to vote with their feet and quit playing all together.
I don't know about widespread or anything, but I know on the Sony Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG (which I don't play anymore), I stopped taking advantage of the player bounties because, as a female player and character, I was harranged with some pretty foul and offensive language by my targets (we're not talking the b**** word, but the c*** word, which was hardly necessary). I'm not easily offended, but it's hardly Star Wars RP to use any of the insults, and hardly in the spirit of play to do so.
In general, maybe people forget there's real humans on the other side, and do things they wouldn't dream of doing to people face to face. Not just in name calling and whatnot, but in general, the "that toon is controlled by a person and not the game" doesn't occur to a lot of people. *shrug*
or Universe for that matter. You know, the big "console mmorpg" that came out like 5 years ago and is still running strong?
In all that time, I've seen *1* GM. During a valentines photo shoot contest, on Universe, on X360. Let me tell you, everything she said was ignored, everyone was cussing in front of her, she couldn't even block people from spamming the other 200 users in the lobbys screens.
Games without GM's exist. I was addicted to this one for a long time. The game has had what, 10 bans, all of them being the one serious hacker or his friends he told too much too? (Broomop)
Just to throw in, being a previous Ragnarok Online hacker, and knowing one of the GM's personally... they have about 5 that cover all of their servers. Other games take a much bigger role in this department, but you can't say there aren't games without any supervision. And the ones here usually play, and don't respond to calls!
But to argue the other side of things (and please do NOT read this the wrong way, this is merely an example) there is definitely precedent for the allowance of such behavior. For example, being a member of the KKK is not illegal. It is not illegal to hate people for any reason; that falls within the realms of freedom of speech as people are perfectly allowed to think whatever they want. It is their *actions* that can potentially fall under the legal umbrella, as hating someone is not illegal whereas performing a criminal act for those reasons is.
With that out of the way, World of Warcraft's designers (to use an example) have implemented ways that every user can block out that sort of speech. Starting from the simplest to the more drastic measures, first there is the chat filter. This turns any "curse word" into a series of symbols such as $%^&*!! in order to censor certain terminology. Secondly, there is the /ignore feature, allowing you to simply filter out everything that is said by that person so it doesn't even appear. Lastly, and unfortunately this feature is hardly ever used enough, there is a way for you to report someone to the GMs for excessively vulgar language or verbal abuse/harassment.
OP, I know you wish to have things in place beforehand to ensure a more civilized conversational experience, but I believe Blizzard (and possibly other game developers) has made the best choice, and that is to leave it up to the individual user. This ensures that Blizzard isn't stepping on anyone's constitutional rights, while giving us the power to custom-tailor our own gaming experience.
Trash talk has been a part of online gaming forever. It's hardly getting worse then it has been since the beginning of online gaming. Don't let it get under your skin just ignore it. Thats the whole point of trash talking is to get under your skin. No need to get fucking Nazi about it and start banning people for speaking a certain way. I don't talk much trash(unless its just joking) because I think its lame. I mean I swear allot but who gives a fuck? Just let the 12-year olds have their fun and ignore them. Their only doing it for attention. i bet half the racist stuff you've read is from kids trying to shock people. I doubt they are actually racist.
freedom of speech. don't like it? move to north korea you red. i think its insulting to anyones intelligence to even begin to think that there should be some mass filtering of chat just because a couple of moms couldnt take their kids saying a couple of explicits. just because you can't tolerate it doesn't mean the rest of us want to cover our ears. i hate the average twelve year old on counterstrike as much as the next guy, but just because they have a vocabulary that covers all three and four letter words doesn't have an impact on me as a person or for that matter my gaming expierence. As its all a part of being a gamer. i am more than positive i was as annoying if not more annoying online. i had that freedom, so should they. its a part of culture to be rude just as its a part of our culture to be polite. without one you don't have the other. there are just as many rude, racist, sexist, homophobic biggots as there are online as there are in the real world and censoring either of them wont solve any problems. although i havent played wow in years now, theres always /report if you want to cry and have someone hold your hand.
and grow up. How are you going to defend against trolls by crying to the gms? You arent. There will always be trolls. Dont give them attention and they disapear everytime. I hate that everyones such a fucking sissy on the internet these days. The bloggers, the wow players... If this is what it means to have the masses on the information superhighway, I say kick them off!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
The fact that niggers, homosexuals and females are inferior is pretty much universally accepted. Everybody seems to living in a fantasy world where everyone is accepting and tolerant of everyone no matter how disgusting, or inferior their lifestyle is.
Surprise asshole, just because the government has legislated the bullshit that is tolerance doesn't mean that is an accurate depiction of society. Just because your neighbor won't admit in polite society that he hates niggers doesn't mean that he would welcome a black family moving in down the street.
To all those whiners that bitch about the use of "gay" in online multiplayer games, get off your high horse. Nobody finds the free expression of ideas intolerable except for you.
So it's ok to kill, pillage etc, but naughty words make you cry? It's not game makers fault that Americans have raised a hateful breed of vitriol spewing spawn, so stop demanding censorship from on high, there's got to be a better way.
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
Do you happen to have a reference for that? I wouldn't be suprised if their logging is that lackluster. Seems security is often an after-thought (and by then its really difficult to deal with).
Thanks for the tip! Reporting spam was sort of loosing its novelty value anyway.
norris
Dude, just get SpamSentry. You can even have it completely ignore any tells from someone under, say lvl10, if you wish (I don't use this feature of it because I find I don't need it at all). It also does a great job just filtering spam. You can have it notify you when it blocks something, notify you hourly, or not notify you at all (which is what I use, I never even know!).
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
[Zybl0re] get up :D- :D|- :D/-
[Zybl0re] get on up
[Zybl0re] get up
[Zybl0re] get on up
[phxl|paper] and DANCE
* nmp3bot dances
* nmp3bot dances
* nmp3bot dances
[[SA]HatfulOfHollow] i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet
It's Fuckwad, not asshat.
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
"... give permission ..."
heh, that implies that they don't already have the ability to listen in on your tender "cyber" in a secluded room in stormwind
Thats why after 2 years i have turned off both of my accounts and went to a private server.
I've reported plenty if idiots back in the days that I played WC-III, and say them happily floating around being f**ktards without any consequence. Some of these people even managed to get names like ChinxSukBalls without getting banned by Blizzard.
Blizzard does not care about game quality unless it prevents the amount of money they have rolling in. It's been this way since Starcraft.
Perhaps what the games need is a player-rating system. If you have a guy who is rated as a jerk on a RTS, you can choose to exclude him from games. In the MMO's, have an interface to indicate how the guy is being a jerk, and with enough unique bad criteria block his account (or have it submitted for blocking).
Okay, a million people want to play a game at the time, right?
:)
Tier the servers.
You set up a new account, you have access to all levels of the server. Grief too many people, you're only allowed on levels 2-7. Keep it up and you're banished to levels 3-7. Level 7 is a hell where there isn't even room for the word "the" among the obscenities.
Of course you can choose to visit a lower tier any time you wish (to play with your obnoxious classmate for instance), you just can't visit higher tiers than the one you've earned.
Also, you could have a level zero where people who have been playing level one for at least a couple of months with no problems could ascend to. (Also known as the "I just want to play." level.)
Do you happen to have a reference for that?
It was an employee posting on their forums but unfortunately I don't have a link. The post I'm remembering though, mentioned the problem being SpamSentry's queued-spam reporting. SpamSentry - by default, I think, queues up spams received and alerts you to them hourly. If you batch-report them to a GM at that point, the spammer is long-gone. That is: the character used to generate the spam has been deleted, so your report no longer helps Blizzard because apparently their logs don't correlate the character sending the spam-tells to the account name.
If you send a report the instant the spam is received, there's a chance that a GM will see it in time to do something about it. Based on their customer-service response time though, it seems unlikely.
welcome to our website: http://www.shoesmonger.com/ About our products,We have the following advantages: 1.High quality. All the shoes we offer are up to the Grade AAA. 2.Quick shipment. We have agreement with some International Express Corporation, the shoes will be shipped within 24 hours after we received your payment. And the parcel will reach your side in 5-7working days. 3.Lowest price. We can give you the best price based on equal conditions in China. 4.fast delivery, and guarantee on shipping.
...that having your character die while in the Wailing Caverns is actually a traumatic experience, because you are then abruptly thrust back out into the discordian maelstrom that is Barrens general chat. It's an experience that I've likened to suddenly and rapidly having your head plunged into a bucket of refrigerated vomit.
Interesting. Race condition. Thanks for the tips!
The thing is that these spammers spam from legit accounts. They keylog people and create lvl 1 alts and spam. One of my friends got banned for this because some gold sellers were spamming from his account. I personally am stumped for a solution to the problem. (and the ignore/report thing on the account level could mess up a legit player!)
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
Each of the groups you mentioned have contributed rather well to that mix we call society (without the last group you wouldn't even be here spouting this trollish drivel).
Here's the fun bit: various laws that try to help even the most bigoted idiot understand that we need to work together on this planet to make something make what you have just said in a public forum illegal. You seem to have trouble confusing freedom of speech with freedom to be an pathetic little idiot (aka troll) who obviously gets off on offending people to get a little bit of attention.
The post is logged, your IP address is logged and there is thus a chance that you may get a visit from a not-so-friendly local police official.
I think you deserve to be arrested by a colored lesbian cop. You will find out about a new right then: your Miranda rights.
I played WoW for about a year. I must agree it is sad if you're getting called names and such 60 times an hour. You have to remember, as has been said several times I see, there are a LOT of early teens playing. Now, I did notice that going from a PVP to a Non-PVP server, the IQ seemed to increase dramatically. Which makes sense to me. Younger kids seem to forget how to act towards people when they're able to pretty much whipe out whole zones of the other faction, then run around trying to dual everyone in their own once the zone is clear of the opposition. The epenis/mighty pixel disease spreads quickly when world pvp gets hot for long periods of time, too.
;)
As far as freedom of speech goes -- I had a guild for many months where I made it clear that we allow profanity in guild. We had rules and guidelines that we adhered to that kept guild chat fun and weeded out people who joined just to cuss nonstop. It turned into a well known starters guild, and a safe harbor for people's alts to guarantee their alt building would be fun rather than OMG PVP/RAIDS ALL DAY ALL DAY ALL DAY. Some GMs knew about it and thought it was a good idea seeing how it was governed and how everyone was kindly informed before they ever got into the guild. (a GM had joined it on an alt I guess, especially after hearing there was profanity allowed just because they were curious to see how it worked without people ever complaining. He had some great dirty jokes.) I'm all for IQ tests for joining guilds
One addition I would like is an auto-ignore feature for non-guildies that blocks people who type u, r, y, etc. -grin-
Actually, I think what i have as a tell interceptor now works quite well. I can just ignore anything from everyone under level 6, which takes care of (for now) all the gold spammers.
I wish Blizz would implement something along those lines, since the interceptor works through the who command, which isn't able to provide constant information.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
The only place I go online that has interaction is World of Warcraft. That's right, no chat rooms, no Instant Messaging, no other games.
.. look to your therapist, fool.
WoW has always had Ignore, and I use it extensively. Someone's a jerk? One warning, and then that's the end of THAT conversation! (Or at least the jerk's side of it.) And that works for all channels, all situations, all circumstances. Oh, he's actually a poor misguided youth who simply needs help and guidance? Dot's nice, mon
And now that I've found two Most Excellent add-ons (Spam Guard Plus and Spam Sentry), that takes care of the gold selling pukes (ptui, may they rot in hell) spamming on most channels and via whisper.
I still, of course, report each and every single one of them, by name, to Blizzard. Because it's fundamentally Blizzard's fault that they exist and that they proliferate. There are easy fixes, and Blizzard (in search of the almighty dollar and an ever-growing customer base) refuses to take them. So I'll continue to bug them until hopefully (some day) they do something about it.
But the spammers (and the morons) are no longer an issue to me. This is a non-problem. And certainly not the End Of Interactive Online Civilization As We Know It.
It's more akin to random people who are not playing constantly hurling abuse at players, getting in the way, stealing the ball, etc.
But I realized they are all foul mouthed youngsters (what a shock) so I built this box and now I live in it.... Seriously people, what the hell do you expect? This is the internet.
They send greifers to the Cornfield
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
i like it
welcome to http://www.funingame.com
Thank you, I didn't want to have to find that strip myself.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I can see how you all feel about behaviors of anonymous people on the net, I can admit that it does get out of hand at times. The issue I have with this type of complaint is that most of the poster's here have acted just like the people they're shaking fingers at. If you say you've never done it, 1. your either the pope or 2. your a bold faced liar. If your part of the problem you have no right to voice your opinions on a solution. They came up with a word for these types of people. Hypocrite.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
I'm not a fan of trolling, but I certainly don't like the self-righteous community police either - and at least when both groups are around they keep eachother busy rather than going after me.
Well that's a bad analogy. Since virtually every only game can mute people who annoy you. Some person starts harassing you you block them and never hear from them again.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
--Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
The chief problem is finding trustworthy people to do the moderation. My solution? Make it a hierarchy. Have the most trustworthy people in the company running the game each watch over a small group of people, spot check them every once in a while (to keep them from abusing power), and assign each moderator a specific location to watch. If the world is big enough, then those people might also watch subordinates instead of doing the patrolling themselves, and this could even get down to player moderation. As long as each person is fairly trustworthy, and as long as the untrustworthy people are weeded out quickly, this system should work. Theoretically.
This article sums up why I quit WOW and havnt played another online game since. Its not necessarily the developers responsibility but it is a real issue.
As a guild leader I could write an essay on the dramas that went on and unfortuneately it was not all from kids.
I saw people belittle others it the most horricfic ways, people be in the guild for months acting as a different person to get revenge on another member. Even a con artist that had ripped off many players in real life (pretended to have a child, the child got sick and he needed to get money for the operation). Luckily we found out about that one before he finished his con but others werent as lucky.
My point is that it is this lack of morality in online games that will the biggest barrier to its growth. Until there is some form of accountability in these games i will not be playing another hour.
wow, for all it's drama and idiots will never ever compete with CS in it's day when you had nothing but loud-mouthed pre-pubescent morons screaming racists insults once every 5 seconds only to be joined by their entire clan of loud-mouthed pre-pubescent morons.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Turn on your language filter. Simple.