Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (
More info?)
Batchild (Sue M.) wrote:
> CNET has a story titled, "Inflicting pain on 'griefers' ", which talks
> about griefers and how companies are concerned about them driving away
> other players and are trying to take steps to stop it; EQ is
> mentioned in the article. The complete article is available at:
>
>
http://news.com.com/Inflicting+pain+on+griefers/2100-1043_3-5488403.html
>
>
>
http://members.cox.net/batchild1
>
http://members.cox.net/scorseseinfo
The griefer problem in EQ is described largely as players messing up the
game for newbies, who don't know whats going on and who will get turned
off by this sort of thing and decide to leave before getting used to the
game.
The solution is for players to form guilds, and rely on those guilds to
boot out griefers.
Whats wrong with this logic?
Well, it doesn't take a level 70 PC with raid sized forces to screw up
the game for newbies, it would be trivial to do with a level 20 toon,
and not really hard to do with an experienced level 1 toon.
They also go on at length about PvP attacks... only the vast majority of
EQ1 players were on non PvP servers, where there's very little chance of
doing this sort of thing.
Then they talk about COH's solution to the problem by saying they have
no PvP so there isn't any griefing. Well, there may not be any
griefing, but it isn't because there's no PvP, after all, there is no
PvP in most of EQ1, and there's plenty of griefing there.
SWG's solution is my favorite. "We can't be everywhere, deal with it
yourself". Thats not a solution, thats a hands off policy! And if the
principle problem, as far as the bottom line is concerned, is turning
off newbies, then it does nothing at all; yes, experienced players can
deal with this sort of thing, but they aren't the ones the article
suggests are being driven away.
The only actual attempts at solving the problem, rather than glossing
over them or addressing issues that aren't the central problem they just
discussed, were by the consol games; friends lists (but that doesn't
help with newbies, who don't have friends yet) and banning based solely
on bad feedback from other players. This last one seems to me an easy
route to griefing in and of itself; hand in bad feedback about some poor
innocent till his account gets banned, what fun! Of course depending on
how the feedback thing is implemented, that might not be possible
without a cadre of coordinated feedbackers, and the one advantage "good"
has over "evil" is that evil tends to fight and bicker amongst itself,
rather than playing nicely together.
Fun read, but ultimately a lame article because it doesn't address those
issues, and a sad note on the state of MMOG's if thats really the best
these people could come up with to say.
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