I had something to say about griefers? No way!

Posted on June 15, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 21 Comments

A story ran in the Guardian this morning about what MMOs are doing (or not) about griefers and self-policing. Luminaries quoted include Richard Bartle and yours truly.

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  • zod

    u r teh famous!

    seriously though, I think designing “self-policing” tools that enable the population to self-police WITHOUT causing these tools to be used for griefing themselves is a big big hurdle to overcome…
    we shall see

  • http://www.slydesblog.com Slyde

    It really IS a double edged sword.

    I had ZERO problems with the way Old UO was set up, allowing players to police themselves. Did i at some points get madder than i have ever been in my life when someone came by and PKed me and stole my silver katana of vanquishing? sure, i did. But honestly, i wouldnt play it any other way. My moments in UO were to this day the best i ever had in an online game.

    The problem i have is with the griefers in these NEW systems. 5 idiots come by to steal your zone in WoW? Guess what? you just have to either bend over and take it, or log out. THAT’S the kind of stuff that drives ME batty…

    For me, its not the griefing that bothers me (we will ALWAYS have kids playing these games), it’s the inabilty to attempt to DO something about it that is just the suxxor.

  • http://ve3d.ign.com/ Apache

    No real griefing in Dark Age of Camelot. People complain about “ass jams” in rvr, but that’s really not the same thing. The closest thing to griefing would be battles for control of the Fins tree and warshades camp back in the day. :)

  • KilljoyX

    “LUMinaries quoted include Richard Bartle…”

    I don’t think you get to take credit for Bartle. Sorry.

  • http://www.mud.co.uk/richard Richard Bartle

    KilljoyX>I don\’e2\’80\’99t think you get to take credit for Bartle.

    I blame my parents.

    Richard

  • lisasdarren

    The most important detail, IMO, is to ensure you never give a player power that cannot be revoked by other players.

    This can be a simple term of office for elected positions, to assassination and bloody coup by the masses. There have to be multiple options, there need to be checks and balances much as there are in the real world.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    Only the CSRs get griefed in DAoC.

  • chabuhi

    Slyde> Agree with you on UO … I got ganked time and time again when I first started playing (’97-’98?) and that pissed me off beyond all reckoning (after all, it’s just a game, right?)

    Anyway, when the Trammel/Felucca split was announced, I was overjoyed … for about two months. And then I quit UO. Because the very thing that infuriated me was the very thing that made that world so compelling. In most of the major stuff that has followed UO there’s no real threat of anything but a corpse run.

    I’m not a fan of griefing, but I pine for old UO.

  • http://www.theworldtakes.com damijin

    >”The most important detail, IMO, is to ensure you never give a player power that cannot be revoked by other players.”

    Could “revoking” not be an actual game system, but by making the player so unwelcome that he actually quits the game (and have inactivity be the key to changing power). To me, making people quit is the MMO equivalent of real life death (since in-game death is more like getting beat up).

    I really think the way to go is games with bare bones systems that allow the players to establish their own societal rules and decide what “power” is to them.

    In Lineage 2, which I feel is one of the most politically driven (perhaps slightly behind EVE) games, power is typically only what the players make of it. It’s influence and control over the other players. Which, to me, is a much more interesting model than trying to actually implement policing and power as coded systems. Far more dynamic, as well.

  • http://tobolds.blogspot.com Tobold

    I always found that the worst griefers are those who had lost interest in the game, and for whom griefing was the last thing left to do in that particular virtual world. You know, the kind of people who can’t leave a party without setting the house on fire on the way out.

    Unfortunately as these people are already intent on leaving, no amount of policing, self- or company-, can really harm them. They would probably shout “W00T! I pwnd u!” when being told that they have been banned.

    The Guardian article wasn’t bad, except for the totally wrong paragraph about Blizzard banning 5,400 accounts for griefing. These accounts have been banned for cheating and botting, which is not really the same thing as griefing.

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  • Nicademus

    It just struck me the tenor of the “let players police themselves” debate falls pretty much on the same lines as the current debate in baseball over the fact that pitchers are no longer allowed to “police” the game by throwing at opposing players intentionally. Vigilanteism is far more dynamic but leads to inevitable excess and abuse. Obviously extremely imperfect “play nice” systems lead to less subscriber loss than mob justice, so all the other debates on it are kinda moot.

    Also, since when is designers trying to combat grief play a “new” phenomenon. Raph said UO had a PK problem in about 1997-8.

  • D-0ne

    One man\’e2\’80\’99s grief is another man\’e2\’80\’99s justice. Like so many things in the current realm of online gaming grief and justice are a matter of popularity. In once case a blind eye is turned and a snicker is had by the authorities in charge and in another case a person is permabanned for the exact same actions.

    From the days of watching one guild rezzed and rescued from The Plane of Fear while the very next day and over the following weeks another guild was allowed to lose all of their gear in the very same situation. Justice and grief are relative and rarely is a case of either clear cut.

    Hell does not our current host recall when Savant and other \’e2\’80\’9cgame devs\’e2\’80\’9d were griefing players of EA \’e2\’80\’98s Majestic?

  • Nicademus

    See now I realize I’m going to hell but I have to say I kinda laughed at this:

    “The players of World of Warcraft were left with a similar conundrum in March, when a group of gamers performed an act whose only purpose was to cause emotional pain. The death of a member of the community inspired her fellow gamers to hold a virtual funeral, which was raided by a malicious mob that made short work of the mourners, all of whom had relinquished their weapons as a sign of respect. Since the funeral was naively held in a zone designed for combat, few could question the legitimacy of the attack within the game’s rules. None the less, the mourners were outraged, not at the penalties their characters would have to suffer, but at the brazen attack on their feelings.”

    I mean… I know it’s fucked up and insensitive, but you held a damn unarmed event in a PK zone? Human nature is some group of red bull fueled pricks were going to seize on the idea of massacreing everyone. I mean when Haven did shit like this in UO they always either got smurf sanction or ringed the event with GMs to take care of any asshats.

    These people are veteran MMOG players and they apparently put faith in some communal recognition of common decency???? Here’s a newsflash without the peer pressure and potential for immediate person to person negative feedback that real world social interactions entail, a good percentage of people are souless pricks with near zero capacity for empathetic feelings.

    These people were like blood in the water.

  • http://www.theworldtakes.com damijin

    Oh, but before I forget.

    Anonymity is an issue that could possibly use a fix through coded systems. The fact is that in most games, the player can make a new character that the rest of the world cannot associate with a “main” or primary character.

    This means anyone has the potential to scam their hearts out and just switch to a new char. I thought that maybe this could be fixed by showing an account ID or something in player profiles… but that feels a bit restricting.

    Perhaps some sort of voluntary registration could be used where players would be willing to put an ID in their profile. This would say “Hey, you can trust me because if I ever log on another character you will know who it is.”, but other players could choose not to. Players who choose not to would but inherently less trusted, but maybe they just don’t care about random people trusting them.

  • scottj

    I mean\’e2\’80\’a6 I know it\’e2\’80\’99s fucked up and insensitive, but you held a damn unarmed event in a PK zone? Human nature is some group of red bull fueled pricks were going to seize on the idea of massacreing everyone. I mean when Haven did shit like this in UO they always either got smurf sanction or ringed the event with GMs to take care of any asshats.

    That’s pretty much what I told the reporter when he asked my opinion on the subject. His original description wasn’t as even-handed as the one you read.

  • scottj

    Hell does not our current host recall when Savant and other \’e2\’80\’9cgame devs\’e2\’80\’9d were griefing players of EA \’e2\’80\’98s Majestic?

    Not really, but you’re never going to get me to be a character reference for the person you listed, either.

  • bullet

    Gotta say I loved pre-Trammel UO, as well, even though I spent most of my time running like a scared little girl from town to town. Afterwards it was so safe and boring.

    I have nothing new to say about griefers. They will always exist because some people just need to fuck with other people. PKing, kill stealing, verbal harrassment, whatever.

    The Eve thing, though, was it griefing? When you base your PVP on corporate warfare, that seems to be playing the game at it’s highest, most sophisticated level. I don’t play, so I can’t really make an informed judgement, just read the article and the linked boards.

  • http://www.slydesblog.com Slyde

    chabuhi > – i agree with you 100 percent…..

  • Rad

    I still wish that the origin of the term “griefer” were acknowledged, even if the person’s real name is unknown. I hope Raph will mention it on his gaming timeline someday, at least.

    Early 1998, Crossroads of Britannia Dev Board. There was a Taiwanese guy (I know he was from Taiwan because he once mentioned going to Taiwan to visit family) who went by the aliases of TooKuhl4U, Billieamie, and Bolton (“Ur a Bolton”). It was he who started using the term “griefing” there, and then either he or someone else made a noun from it.

    Lum, if you ever run across the person who has the data from the CoB boards from that era, please ask them a) to make sure that stuff is saved. It’s history! b) to run a search for the earliest incidence of the words “griefing” and “griefer”. I am fairly sure that one of the Taiwanese guy’s aliases will turn up.

  • TPRJones

    Hell does not our current host recall when Savant and other \’e2\’80\’9cgame devs\’e2\’80\’9d were griefing players of EA \’e2\’80\’98s Majestic?

    Was this before they became developers, or were they working for the competition at the time?

    This makes me ponder another possiblity: hiring griefers to invade and destroy the competitions games. Hmmmmmm….