Any threads on a "Play Nice Policy" from the devs? Kinda curious on what rules will be set in place for Pantheon and keeping the griefers in check.
I assume we'll be having a play nice policy in Pantheon, especially in the case of PVE servers where if you're griefed, you're typically helpless to do anything.
While I can understand a method of RP in some characters being "bad" or "evil", I personally can't stand those who lurk about to steal kills, cause other players to die through means other than pvp, and muscle their way into your enjoyment while pushing you out.
Nothing is worse than having to be the "little guy" being walked over by the "bully". This is usually in regards to better geared and experienced players taking advantage of newer players or those in smaller numbers such as guild populations. Having a top teir guild just "Play through" while your small guild is working its way to the boss in a raid dungeon, its frustrating.
People generally play MMORPGS to get away from RL troubles and escape to a fantasy where oppression is only part of the lore.
The fault, in my opinion, is mainly those few Elitists who play the game like it was a competatively paid sport who have distain for casual players who make up the bulk of players. While there is no way to snuff this type of attitude other than education (which usually fails more often than not in the face of the more stubborn of players), Pantheon should be hard on those few that ruin the experiences of others for their own enjoyment, ego and greed.
Intersting question for sure.
Pantheon should be hard on those few that ruin the experiences of others for their own enjoyment, ego and greed.
We are all human except for those of us that were dropped from the mothership. I think this community will also have a hand in keeping things in line. I don't think we will ever get clear of the nasty players out there but it would be good to have some ground rules.
Ox
Everyone line up! SLLLLLAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPP! "Everyone bleeds from the Lips" Just so you all remember to be nice to one another! And if not! SLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP again, this time that was Dalinsia " Everyone bleeds from the Nose! So don`t forget it! Play Nice Awards 2017 Brought to you by the Voices of Terminus Crew!
Im in favor of a community lead play nice policy, however, for those rare trolls who arent in guilds to be kicked out, or are already maxed lvl and raid geared and cant be shamed into changing, we should have a easier way for the Devs to be able to access the logs and figure out what exactly happened without having to ask the two parties for their sides of the story.
I am personally going to bump this thread,
I wanted to know if anyone of you play on the new EQ TLP server?
if so do you see what i am seeing with the problems first hand, chinese named bots, macro botters, 3rd part apps, all hogging areas and farming every location for days, weeks, months in multi shifts?
Some of these people are playing in top end guilds.
Play nice rules have been ongoing since 1998 -1999 and was later harder to control with the fact expoits where not expoits if the game had limits.
So
You exp with a group in the hole for instance, you tag a mob that maybe from docks and all of a sudden a monk decides to land 10 mobs on you. What do you do? since there is no camping rights to mobs, in many of the rules. Do you petition those players for trainning your group? Then it happens by another alt, or friend, or guild member. Until finally your forced to leave. You did nothing wrong.... but people can be annoying and decide to take matters in their own hands. How is play nice rules going to favor your group?
Play nice rules only work for so long, until finally there isnt enough employees to manage the over welming idiots. Your nice to people but play nice only effects those that have been around long enough to respect others.
What do you do if someone is camping an area for 4 weeks straight? these traded items can net those players 1000s of plat. So do we train them off the area and force them out?
I honestly dont get why locks are put in place anymore since play nice is the same as locking your door at night time. It only keeps the good people out.
What are your thoughts because i sorta am really looking for a fresh start.
I think we need to have GM players added to the game to enforce the play nice rules. They can solve some of the disputes, and if both disagree to move out of the zone, boot them out of it for a 24 hr lock timer.
GM players not guides but have limited admin tools to handle crisis in the game. I have ran my own servers in other games for years, sometimes you need to enforce these rules by the players. Granted it would be a single character with certain rights to port, report, and temp ban from the zone.
This has been discussed multiple times. Here is one: https://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2459/griefing-does-pantheon-have-a-plan
That thread includes this official quote from Kils:
Raidan said: I'm for community policing of griefing, which is why I want player/server rep to matter (non-identical first names), and if it becomes extreme, community controls are proven inneffective, and players (or groups/guilds) continue to grief - then the GMs/Guides would step in.
Kilsin said: This is basically my thoughts as well, the community is stronger than people realise and when in-game, small griefing incidents will definitely be punished by the community by refusing to group with the offenders, spreading the bad rep of that player, "discussing" it in chat etc. and if it gets too much out of hand, a GM, Guide or Team member will always be around to help settle everyone down and act if necessary.
devs should prevent people from using third party programs to grief. ie no computer AI controlled bots, invulnerability cheats, player killing cheats, loot duplication, etc
but systems built into the game.. normal gameplay mechanics used for evil should be community controlled.
Crazzie said:I think we need to have GM players added to the game to enforce the play nice rules. They can solve some of the disputes, and if both disagree to move out of the zone, boot them out of it for a 24 hr lock timer.
GM players not guides but have limited admin tools to handle crisis in the game. I have ran my own servers in other games for years, sometimes you need to enforce these rules by the players. Granted it would be a single character with certain rights to port, report, and temp ban from the zone.
Cautionary tale.
GM players can be just as corrupt as griefers, hackers and other such miscreants. I had specific interaction in EQ1 with a player who used his position as a GM on one server to massively enrich himself on another.
Granted he was not griefing or hacking per se, but he said he had used his access as GM to figure out how to acquire drops and items on his other accounts that he was actively selling for RMT. That was his story, but I don't doubt for a second he was abusing his GM account directly to get loot to enrich himself.
I remember my amazement that in early 2000's (2002 I think) that he was able to make $100's from selling pixels. In those days, it was something unheard of, brand new essentially.
He was a kid of 22 or so and those pixels managed to fund his trip(flight) from Eastern Canada to a guild gathering in CA purely based on his RMT gains.
And there were many other stories of players with GM power helping their own guilds, idendifying raid spawns, targetting certain players for whatever reasons and other such nonsense until they did away with "volunteer" GMing.
philo said:This has been discussed multiple times. Here is one: https://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2459/griefing-does-pantheon-have-a-plan
That thread include this official quote from Kils:
Raidan said: I'm for community policing of griefing, which is why I want player/server rep to matter (non-identical first names), and if it becomes extreme, community controls are proven inneffective, and players (or groups/guilds) continue to grief - then the GMs/Guides would step in.
Kilsin said: This is basically my thoughts as well, the community is stronger than people realise and when in-game, small griefing incidents will definitely be punished by the community by refusing to group with the offenders, spreading the bad rep of that player, "discussing" it in chat etc. and if it gets too much out of hand, a GM, Guide or Team member will always be around to help settle everyone down and act if necessary.
In some cases it won't matter that we "won't be grouping with the offenders", if the offenders are a full group of gold farmers on rotation. They just group with each other and lock content down.
Hopefully the presence of a GM or whatever will be as easily available as portrayed in Kilsin's answer.
I think people see griefers too much as a single individual doing "bad" things. It's a lot different when the people doing the "bad" things are a full group on rotation camping a mob 24/7 or worse, a full guild...
Community enforcement is a horrible idea if they have no way of enforcing anything. The narrative being pushed is that reputation matters and if people have a bad reputation, they won't get groups. This has been refuted countless times because the villains ultimately end up banding together and creating a borg-like farm/bot/box/denial empire that craps on the rest of the server. GM Enforcement shouldn't be viewed as "Martial Law" -- this is generally something that supercedes "Regular Law" during a catastrophe. Regular law won't exist outside of official guidelines.
Ludek said:philo said:This has been discussed multiple times. Here is one: https://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2459/griefing-does-pantheon-have-a-plan
That thread include this official quote from Kils:
Raidan said: I'm for community policing of griefing, which is why I want player/server rep to matter (non-identical first names), and if it becomes extreme, community controls are proven inneffective, and players (or groups/guilds) continue to grief - then the GMs/Guides would step in.
Kilsin said: This is basically my thoughts as well, the community is stronger than people realise and when in-game, small griefing incidents will definitely be punished by the community by refusing to group with the offenders, spreading the bad rep of that player, "discussing" it in chat etc. and if it gets too much out of hand, a GM, Guide or Team member will always be around to help settle everyone down and act if necessary.
In some cases it won't matter that we "won't be grouping with the offenders", if the offenders are a full group of gold farmers on rotation. They just group with each other and lock content down.
Hopefully the presence of a GM or whatever will be as easily available as portrayed in Kilsin's answer.
I think people see griefers too much as a single individual doing "bad" things. It's a lot different when the people doing the "bad" things are a full group on rotation camping a mob 24/7 or worse, a full guild...
Yes Ludek, there was that famous incidient on The Rathe, where BotS was griefing other guilds as a whole, trying to keep the planes to themselves. They would train and disrupt other guilds doing attempts on PoF and PoH etc.
It is famous because the entire BotS guild was force disbanded for violation of the "Play Nice" rules. But that proved short-lived as they did not ban the players and they just reformed another guild. They also had many alts in another guild that they had been feeding planar drops as well. I think it was called baby spiders or something.
Ran into this Policy issue with PFO, Shroud, and Elite: Dangerous.
In each case, paying customers exploited the game in some form or fashion, and the response from the companies varied. And it wasn't that they didn't respond, they all responded.
The problem was, the response was disproportionate, inconsistent, and illogical. For example, in Elite: Dangerous, flying to a system and buying a ship got you banned, even though the game permitted it, there was no reason or indication anything was wrong if you did it. All accounts had been inadvertently flagged to be allowed into that system, when it was supposed to be for backers only. So, some players, without knowing anything about any of that, flew there, bought a ship, and then got banned.
Their response? First two days, they banned all the non-backer players that bought a ship, without exception. Next week after that, they removed some of the bans, but only if you opened a ticket. Then a month later, they reversed all of the bans, except for players that participated in Beta, who were permanently altered so they could not obtain certain achievements. It was... horrendously handled and terribly confusing. In the end, they did all the wrong things to all the wrong customers for all the wrong reasons, and never once apologized.
My point? If they had a policy, it was terrible. If they didn't have a policy, they should have. It drove thousands away from the game. False positive bannings are among the most toxic acts a company can perform.
In PFO they pretty much never banned anyone, permanently, because they couldn't afford to. Exploit early, exploit often. In Shroud, they just left the money, items, XP etc from dupes/exploits in the game. They didn't/don't seem to care in the slightest.
Players have this insane optimism when it comes to the expectation that companies will act in the customers best interests, with Integrity. They do not, generally, do that. They will act in the best interests of the company. Which means, when you have a player base of say 20k customers, and you have the choice of permanently banning 5k customers (IP, CC, Name, Address) because they exploited a bug, what do you do? Do you voluntarily permanently remove 25% of your customers? Or do you simply do your best to remove the XP, gold, and items?
Integrity, in practice, means doing the right thing, even if it's always not in your best interests. I have yet to see any MMO company act with integrity, consistently, and I have no expectation, given the evidence of the past with EQ1, VG, and all other similar MMO's, that we would see VR acting consistently with integrity either. It's a company, not a person.
For Pantheon, without GM enforcement 24x7, a play nice policy will do exactly nothing. This is not 1999 when we're all wide-eyed and amazed by a 3D MMO that isn't Meridian 59. This is the era of RMT > All, and the attitude of " get the hell out of my way because I'm making my living here." will be typical, not exceptional. Expecting a live GM to appear and resolve a dispute in-game at 2am on a weekday? Naivety personified, imho. VR hasn't even committed to 24x7 in-game live GM presence on all servers, and they can't because they won't have the staff for it.
zewtastic and others who have alluded to the reality of toxic guilds being normal are 100% right. Social Reputation means nothing when you have 150 people to group/raid/craft with who don't give two gnat farts about reputation either. Kicking one of those people out from your PUG/good-guild group does absolutely nothing. Ignorning them does absolutely nothing. Their support group is larger, more efficient, and sociopathic. All you get from interacting with them is a negative experience.
Well said Vjek. I would like to think that VR can change the narrative but meh. They have been saying for a long time that they expect the community to deal with stuff. We'll see what kind of tools the community gets to make that happen. If we don't have meaningful tools, Terminus will be the Wild Wild West. There are many threads that say VR will step in when "things get out of hand" -- that's extremely subjective. The villainous types have been rubbing their fingers together, delighted by the prospects of Terminus Plunder for a long time now. One of the examples given for community enforcement was that people who are wronged can "discuss" it in chat. I would like to emphasize the air quotes.
Heheh, yeah, "Discuss" it. I'm sure that'll work when the FIRST guild policy for toxic guilds is: Do not use in-game chat for ANYTHING. EVER. With ANYONE (except to respond to direct /tells from GMs). I'm sure "Discussing" it with other players will work fantastic. :P
All toxic guild communication is done on private discord, mumble, ts, vent, etc. In-game chat is evidence, and the last thing they want to do is provide evidence.
I remember when KoS expansion released in EQ2. There were a couple guilds who found a way to get full sets of "relic armor" for their entire guild in 1-2 nights. This was obviously patched very quickly afterward as this gear was "designed" to take many months to acquire. What happened? They fixed the exploit, but allowed all of the players to keep their armor. Those same players go on to get world firsts for most of the content in that expansion and tell everybody else how bad they are at the game. It also put them at a massive advantage for killing all contested content for the next 12 months and furthering their insurmountable power gap. The "exploit early" narrative absolutely, positively needs to be changed. VR needs to take a firm stance when dealing with exploiters and their ill-gotten gains. I have seen economies crippled by duping exploits that weren't rolled back. I have seen the sense of "progression" completely trivialized by exploits, and all of the behavior associated with these things reinforced by a lack of crystal clear policy.
I concur with oneADseven, well said Vjek.
I have noticed some disturbing patterns in the last 10+ years with MMOs as well as other games. Mostly with PVP based MMOs and Shooters where the management essentially lets anything pass.
With the march of technology, the explosion of social media, tools of communication and coordination give more means for bigots, haters, cheaters and otherwise scumbags to find each other and prey on those that are not like-minded.
These are people that have zero interest in a game other than as a tool for them to victimize innocents.
With the rise of toxic reddit, 4chan, game streaming, we have seen the increase of a specifically ugly and effectively criminal behavior by so-called gamers that seem to exist to target people for punishment. And that punishment has no limits, to the extent that now "swatting" is almost a common occurrence, even leading to innocent deaths.
These are not always actions by a rogue few outcasts. Some of the time they are coordinated groups of players, organizing to target individuals. Streamsniping, griefing, doxxing, hacking them into despair.
Even though it has been over 18+ years since I first started EQ, I still remember some very seriously toxic players and events that they caused. Players that feel entitled, that rage, that think cheating is perfectly fine if you don't get caught. It was much, much harder to document and prove things back then and most of those people never got caught. Everyone relied on word of mouth and "reputation" to help police things. But that was an imperfect system.
A game with a persistent world, no instancing, is a target rich environment for insidious people. So many ways to grief. No where for players to avoid them.
Having a none-FTP game helps a lot in keeping away common trolls.
Personally I fear my days of playing and enjoying public games with other "anonymous" people may be at an end. I have turned to games where I can control the membership by running private closed servers.
I think it might be a good "test" to have some players attempt to be as toxic as possible during alpha, just to see how bad things could get. And maybe we can get ahead of the toxic wave.
Vjek -- You make a great point on how toxic players will stick to voice chat to prevent leaving a trail of evidence, but I was moreso talking about how the community would be able to respond. In Kilsin's message, he gave three examples of community enforcement. Refusing to group with people, spreading the bad rep of that player, and "discussing" it in chat. I literally imagined air quotes while I read that not only because quotes were actually used, but also the realization of how fruitless those discussions would ultimately be. Ever log into a game and see a ton of complaining in chat about the constant douchebaggery that is going on? That's "discussing" it ... and what does it accomplish other than showing new players what they can expect later on? If there was some sort of action being taken, the behavior would be nowhere near as common, and you wouldn't see people complaining about it so frequently in chat. The community enforcement angle is such an epic fail and I really hope VR is absorbing this feedback. Here is a quote from "The Pantheon Difference" page:
"You will need friends in the game and your reputation can either help you progress or hinder it."
Is there some sort of assumption here that toxic players can't make friends? Having a negative reputation with regular players will do absolutely nothing when it comes to "hindering" the progress of a toxic super guild. This reputation matters movement is a big part of WHY these toxic super guilds exist. They just band together and realize that they are completely self sufficient and have even more reason to trample over everybody else. Instead of seeing a few toxic outliers here or there, they are encouraged to join up and then it becomes a mini-game to see who can cause the most "butt-hurted-ness" within the larger community. I understand the argument of "There must be evil for good to exist." I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand the logic behind it. The problem with it is that historically, the bad guys run the show. If VR builds a world where you "need the good guys" to progress then maybe you have something to build off of. I don't think it's impossible to accomplish that but I have seen nothing to suggest that this angle is even recognized, let alone being considered with design implementation.
Bazgrim conducted an interview with Creative Director Chris Perkins that discussed feign death and its potential misuse to grief other players. Perkins’s responded that griefing will be a CS or customer support issue as it will not be tolerated. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vebn1AN6KY conversation begins approximately 5:25)
I think it’s hard for any MMO to have enough CSRs at launch to handle such issues in a timely manner. Over time bad actors can be weeded out though. That said, I hope Visionary Realms has a zero-tolerance policy on third party programs that permit exploiting and drops a permanent ban hammer on anyone caught using them. #NoMercyForTheWicked
oneADseven said: Vjek -- You make a great point on how toxic players will stick to voice chat to prevent leaving a trail of evidence, but I was moreso talking about how the community would be able to respond. ...
Totally understand your perspective, and I share it. I don't think community response would have any impact whatsoever, exactly as you've outlined, I agree with you.
And I also don't believe CSR's or GM's will be either available or able to respond in a timely fashion to the complaints of: Using abilities as they are permitted to be used.
What do I mean by that? I mean that (and I have said this before, and reaped the consequences from saying it) Feign Death, as demonstrated to date, is a griefing tool. So is mem blur, the ability to remove yourself out of combat without encounter resets (Like the current Rogue Flash Bomb), and a bunch of other mechanisms I'm sure haven't been discovered yet. You think just malicious monks are bad? Wait until both Monks AND Rogues can train your group with impunity. I'm sure that'll be a party. " No no, I'm just role playing a malicious Rogue "
Which is always where the silent toxic guilds have the most power; They are playing the game exactly as it is permitted to be played. They are using abilities exactly as they are permitted to be used. They're not exploiting, hacking, or doing anything the game client doesn't normally permit. That's the whole hilarious truth of it all. If the game permits it, and it can be done, it will be done, and they take that policy and run with it, because there is no other policy enforced. They're not breaking any rules. Not the TOS, not the EULA. And certainly not the firestarter a Play Nice Policy turns into.
The primary issue for me is that Visionary Realms is proud enough of Feign Death, as shown thus far, to demonstrate it in their first set of pre-alpha videos, repeatedly, and to even show off how it can be used as a griefing tool. Yes, I know they did it humerously. Yes, people will use it as a griefing tool. Yes, it can be fixed. No, there has been no developer post yet saying it will be fixed prior to launch so it canNOT be used as a griefing tool. If there was, I wouldn't be complaining about it. :)
In a larger sense, for MMO combat/spell design balance, the first consideration should be: How can it be abused? Then, after that, you consider how it can be used to provide class distinction, fun, challenge, and how it contributes positively to the design goal of a social grouping game. It seems like Flash Bomb and Feign Death are being put in place without asking that first question, otherwise, their descriptions would include the measures that will be taken to prevent their abuse. I sincerely look forward to the day Joppa updates them so they meet all the criteria of good design, including publicly addressing "How can it be abused?". That'll be a good day.
Most of these abilities or types of abilities have been available, and I don't recall greifing being rampant.
Yes intentional training happened, and usually it eventually got dealt with, but it wasn't a common occurance, at least not on servers I played on.
Now I will say the gaming population has increased greatly, and with that comes more bad people, but I'm not sure the ratio changes all that much. To me the more toxic issue will be the mindset of players who know nothing other than the current era of MMOs, and their lack of consequnces, which just enables bad behavior because most people can just shrug it off and go on about their day. And until these newer folks learn the consequences, they may do their thing with no thought to others. But that also doesn't make them bad people initially.
In a game like Pantheon, where death has consequences, there's going to be alot more voices speaking up when people do things intentionally.
In the case of FD, I'm not sure how you could fix it other than to remove it completely. If you basically make it so mobs won't agro a nearby group if a non-member trains mobs near them and FDs, then that will be used as a pulling exploit. So we lose one way or the other.
I'm just not sure there is an easy answer to any of it. We either have an open world with consequences for our actions, and actions of others, or we have a hand-holding zerg adventure where nothing really matters.
Kilsin said: This is basically my thoughts as well, the community is stronger than people realise and when in-game, small griefing incidents will definitely be punished by the community by refusing to group with the offenders, spreading the bad rep of that player, "discussing" it in chat etc. and if it gets too much out of hand, a GM, Guide or Team member will always be around to help settle everyone down and act if necessary.
This won't work anymore. Against a single person who is honestly just having a bad day it might work against/on them. And the threat of community might work against single people everytime.
However, this thread was necro'd with the concern that MMO's theses days are a revenue gererating venture for Korean/Chinese plat farmers. They won't care about community, they won't respond to threats, they won't do anything but be removed from a GM and come back 1 week later. The whole group of them, or all 2 of them who are all multiboxing.
Fulton said:I'm just not sure there is an easy answer to any of it. We either have an open world with consequences for our actions, and actions of others, or we have a hand-holding zerg adventure where nothing really matters.
The "consequences" are up for debate. Reputation is subjective. What one person considers evil, another person might consider awesome. There are plenty of players in professional sports who have a reputation that is widely viewed as negative or "dirty." They still go on to have long and successful careers where they are embraced by their team and often viewed as an "enforcer" type. Politics are a bit different in professional sports because the more dirty players you have, the bigger an issue it becomes due to the stage they play on. Teams will generally avoid having too many "bad actors" on their team because of the effect it has on sponsors and revenue generation. Ironically, the same thing happens in an MMO world. The bad actors cause plenty of issues and chase a bunch of good players away from the game. The difference is that you don't have world media involved shining a light on the bad actors in an MMO. Players are mostly isolated to their server and the collective voice of that server is only so impactful. Money talks. I really hope that VR utilizes a "Why are you leaving" type of communication if/when people choose to unsubscribe. Toxic behavior should be one of the default options to choose from, along with the ability for folks to notate a specific player/guild. At that point, you can now assign a "cost" for toxic behavior and investigate those who continually have their name popping up.
As far as the zerging comment, I'm not really sure how that's related to what is being discussed here. I agree that zerging is horrible, but isn't EQ the game where it originated? My definition of zerging is tackling content with more players than what it was designed to be challenging for. That means if a boss is designed to be challenging for a single group (like Gnasshura in the Halnir Cave stream, I assume) and you kill it with multiple groups (like what was done in the stream) you are effectively zerging. It does appear that they may be looking to take an active stance that would prevent this sort of behavior for certain encounters, including Gnasshura. A door locking mechanic was featured but they ultimately used GM powers to summon extra players into the room. I don't know what the design goal is for that door locking mechanic but I would hope that it would serve as a way to prevent zerging. The game would need to be able to recognize how many people are in a room and /kick anybody that exceeds the desired limit. I don't know how often we'll see this concept deployed but I think it's incredibly important when it comes to preserving the risk vs reward of a game built around challenge and cooperation.
Community policing didn't really work even back in 1999, which is why EQ ended up with a PNP to begin with.
Why “Play Nice Policies?”
— by Gordon Wrinn, Internet Relations Manager, Verant Interactive, 3/14/2000
Before we get into the wording of the “Play Nice Policies”, I’d like to take a moment to discuss their spirit, and why we feel that they are necessary.
EverQuest almost daily continues to astound everyone involved with it. Nearly one year since we opened our doors, EverQuest boasts a community of current players numbering nearly 200,000, most of whom still play on a daily basis. In all actuality, EverQuest has gone beyond what could be described with a term such as “community”. We are all, in fact, part of the EverQuest Society.
Like any society, each person has the ability to place his or her mark upon it. The vast majority of people in our society do their best to insure that their mark is positive, by abiding by the laws that we, much like the government, bring forward. Some of you choose to become pinnacles of honor, dignity and respect in your individual communities by forming guilds,promoting honorable actions by your members, and by supporting EverQuest on your web-sites.
Also like any society, we have our underbelly, a relatively small number of people who live to prey upon the honorable. It is frequently the goal of these people to see to their desires, no matter the effect of their actions upon others around them. They are the ones who claim ownership of servers, zones, or spawns, and cause or threaten harm to anyone who does not share their disregard and contempt. They are the ones who live, not to enjoy the game with everyone else, but to enjoy at everyone else’s expense.
For the first few months after EverQuest’s release, we felt that a policy of non-interference in many of these matters was warranted. However, we continued to lose good players. This was not due to any deficiency or dissatisfaction in the game, but due to dissatisfaction with the treatment that they received from their fellow players, and the perceived inability of our Customer Service department to intervene. Late last year, we made a commitment to our players to begin playing an active role in many of these situations.
The intent of these policies is to provide the players with general guidelines for what is or is not acceptable behavior in EverQuest, and give them the opportunity to work out differences prior to involving the EverQuest Customer Service Staff. Naturally, in a game as multifaceted as EverQuest, we are not able to cover every possible issue that could arise as part of these policies. In these cases, it is the spirit of a rule that will prevail over any discrepancies in the letter.
If you think players have gotten better/more respectful with time then you are mistaken.