Chat Abuse issue, is there anything that can be done?

[doug01]

The last few nights on Riddermark there has been a poster who creates a F2P accounts then, as a level 1 toon, makes profane/adult "stories" in chat.

Reporting him usually gets him banned in 5-10 minutes, but thats 5-10 minutes of what some call entertaining, I call sick and demented, stories. It gets better; after he is banned he re-logs on, again on a new toon/account, usually less than 30 seconds later, to continue with his "stories".

Isn't there something that Turbine can do prevent repeat offenders from this type of behavior?

FYI: For the people who are about to say "/ignore"....We are supposed to not only abide by the terms and condition set forth when we play the game, but we as players have been specifically asked to report abusive behavior.

The sad part is...Other players repeat the "stories" or encourge this guy to continue. My /ignore list is getting quite large filled with players who have no respect for thier own commitments as well as respect for others. One note: these players aren't F2P, they are veteran players from other servers


EDIT: I see that this thread isn't the only one dealing with the offensive behavior that seems to be more and more the norm.

[BellusDuFenna]

With F2P, it creates unique circumstances such as this, which can be quite challenging for a company such as Turbine to handle. For now, all they can do is drop the Banhammer on each account, but as you pointed out... all they have to do is create a new F2P account and continue their Trolling.

One might consider an IP ban, but this isn't entirely effective if the Troll goes through a proxy. Turbine might be able to use the offender's IP (if they can trace it back) to contact his or her ISP and report the abuse to them, with the hopes that this gets their internet service canceled, but that would be expensive and take some time to accomplish.

For now, all you can do is /report the offender every time they show up. Even if they keep coming back, eventually they will run out of F2P accounts they have set up and available on-hand, and they will be forced to go make some more. This might be too much bother for them, though, and they will take their Trolling ways to another venue, at least for a while. Also, all of those /reports allows Turbine to build up an extensive dossier on the Troll, which they can take to his or her ISP eventually, should that become the only solution.

[JeanCarlo]

Right now, there's no telling what Turbine is Already doing. You have to take into account that they are Very Very Very busy, and has been since F2P launched. This in no ways mean they're (1) not doing something (2) or have something on the side that will do something, eventually. They've shown in the past that they can in fact ban accounts based on CCs or even IPs. But that takes time for them to (a) review all the reports coming in (b) Confirm said reports. Don't expect something to happen instantly just because a report has been submitted.

[Mircea12345]

The last few nights on Riddermark there has been a poster who creates a F2P accounts then, as a level 1 toon, makes profane/adult "stories" in chat.

Reporting him usually gets him banned in 5-10 minutes, but thats 5-10 minutes of what some call entertaining, I call sick and demented, stories. It gets better; after he is banned he re-logs on, again on a new toon/account, usually less than 30 seconds later, to continue with his "stories".

Isn't there something that Turbine can do prevent repeat offenders from this type of behavior?

FYI: For the people who are about to say "/ignore"....We are supposed to not only abide by the terms and condition set forth when we play the game, but we as players have been specifically asked to report abusive behavior.

The sad part is...Other players repeat the "stories" or encourge this guy to continue. My /ignore list is getting quite large filled with players who have no respect for thier own commitments as well as respect for others. One note: these players aren't F2P, they are veteran players from other servers


EDIT: I see that this thread isn't the only one dealing with the offensive behavior that seems to be more and more the norm.

This type of behavior by a small portion of the population is the main reason why f2p sucks so bad.

[mjk47]

Turbine can do IP bans, at least for the forums.

If you're wondering how I know, I was once staying in a B&B in the English Lake District, and while I could login to the game with no problems, attempting to login to the forums gave a message that my IP address had been banned by the administrators!

[EtherDragon]

Turbine can IP ban repeat offenders for sure...

Best advice is to keep doing what you are doing - keep submitting abuse tickets when appropriate.

[Khafar]

Turbine can IP ban repeat offenders for sure...

...which may not be very effective if A) the user doesn't have a continuous connection (nor a static IP) so his IP address changes each time he does, or B) is using a proxy of some sort. One additional measure that's possible is for them to use some sort of hardware signature (e.g. the MAC address on your network interface card) to permaban people. There are ways around that sort of thing too (including switching to another computer), but depending on just what's used to form the signature... it may not be easy to discover what's being used or how to defeat it. Certainly not for a typical internet user.

A truly sophisicated and determined problem child will be able to defeat anything they try, but hopefully those are few and far between .

Khafar

[TsarithArcher]

This type of behavior by a small portion of the population is the main reason why f2p sucks so bad.

QFT!

(Although I would like to reiterate that it is not all F2P Players, but again just a very small minority that ruin it for everyone else.)

Although in Pan-Asia it may be different, in the West we place intrinsic value upon that which has a dollar cost, which is precisely why F2P doesn't equate well in the Western World. We become emotionally invested in that which we have to pay for, but have little or no emotional ties to that which is freely given.

Case in point: I used to teach classes on a very obscure topic that you couldn't learn at any university in my spare time. I charged $1 per student, per term to cover the cost of print-outs and taught out of a Community Center. It's not that I didn't value my time and efforts, but I would rather pass on this knowledge freely to anyone interested. For three years and 9 terms I would be lucky to get 3-5 students per term, all of which were not very interested in the subject but only came because it was basically free. Of those 3-5 students per term, there would inevitably be one jerk who made life miserable for everyone. I was eventually approached by a Private School and offered an opportunity to teach the class there. They charged students $1500 a term to take my class! I was absolutely livid as I was not the least bit interested in money (I had a day job that took care of my financial needs) and this went against my entire reason for teaching this course which I taught in my spare time out of a sense of giving back. I almost canceled our agreement before the first term even started because of the ridiculous gouging they were giving their students. However, on the first day of class, I had over 90 people signed up for the first term! Of those 90 people, every single one of them took it more than seriously, worked diligently to understand the vast amount of material crammed into such a short time span, and had not a single abusive jerk numbered amongst them! My curriculum quickly expanded, and I was teaching 6 different classes by the next year, all of which became this Private School's most popular classes.

Moral of the Story: You give something away for free and people treat it like garbage. If you overcharge for the very same thing, people treat it like it is something special and treasure it accordingly.

So, people hear the word "Free" in LOTRO and don't value it as much as those of us who have gladly paid hundreds of dollars many times over for the same game. That is to be expected in Western Culture. When people hear "Free" it's like the dinner bell ringing to the lowest common denominator in our Society. That is to be expected in Western Culture.

Personally, I think Turbine would have been better off doubling or tripling the cost of LOTRO than going F2P in the West, but hey, we can't change that now, can we?

So, what do we do about people who create Free Accounts, have no financial or emotional investment in their Free Account, who decide to use it as an opportunity to get their 15 minutes of shame?

I have to agree with the others in this thread that said hold fast and true by diligently /reporting the worst of offenders. The majority of F2Pers aren't bad eggs, they just may not know any better. However, if we stand together as a Community and show no tolerance for the worst of the worst, we will find that many of the F2Pers will learn to be outstanding members of our Community in their own right. For the lesser of offenses, just give a short, polite blurb that "FYI, that's not considered acceptable here." You'll be surprised how many will either engage with wanting to understand why, or how many will just outright apologize. Save your /ignore spaces for the ones that retort with snide comments.

Although the Community looks to Turbine to do something, we have to come to terms with the fact that the Community needs to do something as well. We, as the existing LOTRO Community that has been the envy of every other MMO need to take some responsibility of our own to welcome new-comers and show them what is acceptable behavior and what behavior will either get them scorned and ignored by the Community or get them Permabanned eventually by Turbine.

It's not just Turbine's problem, but also the LOTRO Community's problem. We both share and have a vested interested in doing something about it.

[DelgonTheWise]

A solution is to have a channel something like "reallyglff". To use that channel, you must be VIP or premium. A need to have spent money on an account -- and hence have something to lose -- will go a long way towards halting abuse. A note could go out on that channel hourly that says:

This channel is for finding fellowships. Abuse or misuse will get you banned. Please put general chat in "OOC", and requests for advice in "advice".

I'd LOVE such a channel. Even before f2p, glff on meneldor is really inane much of the time. But is still needed to find groups given the lack of other good tools, so I don't want to unsubscribe

[Bradd]

My suggestion is to require a credit card to open a F2P account. If the account is banned, then no other F2P accounts can be created associated with that Credit Card. That should at least slow things down a bit.

[TsarithArcher]

My suggestion is to require a credit card to open a F2P account. If the account is banned, then no other F2P accounts can be created associated with that Credit Card. That should at least slow things down a bit.

That is a pretty good suggestion.

Of course, there are ways around that, like with Pre-Paid Visa Gift Cards, but honestly it seems like the best solution given thus far. It won't stop things, but it would certainly deter many potential abusers (and in the process save the Turbine GMs a lot of headaches).

[ArahadEketta]

About the only thing I can add to this is to continue to report/ignore. Do not at any time respond to this idiot at all in chat. This person is deliberately doing this to get a rise out of others and gets his jollies by doing so. However, if no one responds to his antics he will not be getting his jollies and will get bored.

[Mymir]

One of the games I used to play, I can't recall now, had a method to control the Chat Abusers that frequented Trial and Free Accounts.

Anyone that did not pay a Subscription fee was locked out of all Public Channels. They could not read or post to them at all.

Instead, there was a seperate Chat Channel that was set up for those that did not pay a fee. It allowed them to ask questions, and anyone, Paid or Free Members could respond. Once they subscribed to the game, the other Public Channels were unlocked.

Another game, Anarchy Online, limited Chat Channels to levels. You had to reach a certain level to be able to post in certain channels. Since the level cap was 200, the Chat Channels were broken up into sets of 50.

OOC, Trade, and others were locked until you reached the level required to unlock them. For instance, until level 51, you only had access to the OOC 1 - 50 Channel. Once you hit level 51, you had access to the Level 1 - 50 Channel, and the Level 51 -100 Channel. Those at the level cap had access to all channels and could turn off the ones they did not want to use.

I am not saying that LOTRO should use a level-based Chat System, but it might be a good idea to use a different Channel for F2P and those that have a Paid Subscription.

And yes, I now expect to be called an Elitist. But it's not for my benefit that these channels would help. I turned off all Public Channels more than 2 years ago when the Gold Farmers were the ones that we had to deal with Chat Spamming. I just did not see a reason to turn them back on after the Farmers were squelched.

And as I recall, this is not such a big change anyway. Free To Play have limited Access to the Lotro Forums, I really do not see an issue with doing the same with Chat Channels.

As was stated, there are a lot of good people that have come on board with the F2P change-over. There have also been a lot of bad ones. If something is free, some people will see it as having little to no value and will treat it accordingly.

I have a feeling that Turbine has some things in the works for down the road to fine-tune the meshing of Paid and Free Players. I hope some of them are put into place soon. Or at least they get more rabid on getting rid of the Rabble-rousers. It's not just the VIP's that are getting stressed over the annoying players.

There are future Subscribers that are watching how they handle the Chat Abuse. And you never know, that might be the determining factor as to whether or not they upgrade or just walk away.


And a side note to Turbine.

People that spend a large amount of time being abusive in Chat Channels and the game will probably never become paid members. Most are just bored because their normal Paid Game is doing maintenance or they just want to tick off people for a few giggles. Coming down hard on those that knowingly abuse the TOS and CoC is not a bad Business Policy. It lets your real customers know that you are serious about keeping the game as stress-free as possible.

Just a thought.

[Bradd]

And a side note to Turbine.

People that spend a large amount of time being abusive in Chat Channels and the game will probably never become paid members. Most are just bored because their normal Paid Game is doing maintenance or they just want to tick off people for a few giggles. Coming down hard on those that knowingly abuse the TOS and CoC is not a bad Business Policy. It lets your real customers know that you are serious about keeping the game as stress-free as possible.

Just a thought.

That is very true. +Rep

[Mircea12345]

QFT!

(Although I would like to reiterate that it is not all F2P Players, but again just a very small minority that ruin it for everyone else.)

Although in Pan-Asia it may be different, in the West we place intrinsic value upon that which has a dollar cost, which is precisely why F2P doesn't equate well in the Western World. We become emotionally invested in that which we have to pay for, but have little or no emotional ties to that which is freely given.

Case in point: I used to teach classes on a very obscure topic that you couldn't learn at any university in my spare time. I charged $1 per student, per term to cover the cost of print-outs and taught out of a Community Center. It's not that I didn't value my time and efforts, but I would rather pass on this knowledge freely to anyone interested. For three years and 9 terms I would be lucky to get 3-5 students per term, all of which were not very interested in the subject but only came because it was basically free. Of those 3-5 students per term, there would inevitably be one jerk who made life miserable for everyone. I was eventually approached by a Private School and offered an opportunity to teach the class there. They charged students $1500 a term to take my class! I was absolutely livid as I was not the least bit interested in money (I had a day job that took care of my financial needs) and this went against my entire reason for teaching this course which I taught in my spare time out of a sense of giving back. I almost canceled our agreement before the first term even started because of the ridiculous gouging they were giving their students. However, on the first day of class, I had over 90 people signed up for the first term! Of those 90 people, every single one of them took it more than seriously, worked diligently to understand the vast amount of material crammed into such a short time span, and had not a single abusive jerk numbered amongst them! My curriculum quickly expanded, and I was teaching 6 different classes by the next year, all of which became this Private School's most popular classes.

Moral of the Story: You give something away for free and people treat it like garbage. If you overcharge for the very same thing, people treat it like it is something special and treasure it accordingly.

So, people hear the word "Free" in LOTRO and don't value it as much as those of us who have gladly paid hundreds of dollars many times over for the same game. That is to be expected in Western Culture. When people hear "Free" it's like the dinner bell ringing to the lowest common denominator in our Society. That is to be expected in Western Culture.

Personally, I think Turbine would have been better off doubling or tripling the cost of LOTRO than going F2P in the West, but hey, we can't change that now, can we?

So, what do we do about people who create Free Accounts, have no financial or emotional investment in their Free Account, who decide to use it as an opportunity to get their 15 minutes of shame?

I have to agree with the others in this thread that said hold fast and true by diligently /reporting the worst of offenders. The majority of F2Pers aren't bad eggs, they just may not know any better. However, if we stand together as a Community and show no tolerance for the worst of the worst, we will find that many of the F2Pers will learn to be outstanding members of our Community in their own right. For the lesser of offenses, just give a short, polite blurb that "FYI, that's not considered acceptable here." You'll be surprised how many will either engage with wanting to understand why, or how many will just outright apologize. Save your /ignore spaces for the ones that retort with snide comments.

Although the Community looks to Turbine to do something, we have to come to terms with the fact that the Community needs to do something as well. We, as the existing LOTRO Community that has been the envy of every other MMO need to take some responsibility of our own to welcome new-comers and show them what is acceptable behavior and what behavior will either get them scorned and ignored by the Community or get them Permabanned eventually by Turbine.

It's not just Turbine's problem, but also the LOTRO Community's problem. We both share and have a vested interested in doing something about it.

Sad but true. At least in the United States. F2p doesn't work here like game companies want. P2p keeps out most of the troublemakers (WoW seeming to be the exception to this rule for some reason).

[Killien]

I'm with TsarithArcher on this one... I'm also confident that like any new shiney toy, the miscreants will soon get bored and move on if we continue to ignore and report where needed.

I like some of the other P2P only channels and credit card ideas too. All have merit.

[einhart32]

I like the idea of limiting F2P to local channels. This will cut down on the useless chatter in all but the starter zones. Requiring a CC will hurt potential subs as people will be discouraged by the requirement alone. It won't happen.

[Lohi]

This type of behavior by a small portion of the population is the main reason why f2p sucks so bad.

It's not F2P only. This happened before F2P too with trial accounts.

It's s tricky problem. I remember when I ran a MUD and I'd ban a player, only to have him come back under a different name. I'd end up banning an IP address, and occasionally an entire university (temporarily). If someone is intent on disrupting a game, and there is an easy way to get access (F2P or trial), then there's not a lot one can do except be vigilant about catching this behavior quickly.

One thing though might be to have a delay between signing up for a new account and actually entering the game. Or maybe say that it must be at least one hour between account creation on the web site and the time a character leaves the level 1 intro zone?

[Xzim]

Turbine might be able to use the offender's IP (if they can trace it back) to contact his or her ISP and report the abuse to them, with the hopes that this gets their internet service canceled, but that would be expensive and take some time to accomplish.

I literally peed all over myself... I laughed that hard.

There isn't an ISP on this planet that is going to hand out private information or shut off someone's service w/o a court order (barring China & N Korea but best of luck with THAT). And best of luck to Turbine on taking someone to court because of chat oriented conduct. Unless they're violating federal law of their country of origin (identity theft, hacking, credit card fraud) this will never happen.

I'm sorry my friend but your naivety is off the charts if you think this would ever... EVER happen.

One word:

4chan

'nuff said.

[BellusDuFenna]

About the only thing I can add to this is to continue to report/ignore. Do not at any time respond to this idiot at all in chat. This person is deliberately doing this to get a rise out of others and gets his jollies by doing so. However, if no one responds to his antics he will not be getting his jollies and will get bored.

I disagree with your advice in one aspect: people need to respond one time, best in a Tell, asking the offender to stop being a disruptive chatter. That's all, just one comment sent to the offender, and if they don't stop, /report and /ignore.

A /report is great, but it has more weight in my opinion if you can say "I asked the offender to stop, but they didn't". It shows that you aren't just reporting willy-nilly, and some games actually prefer this method.

[BellusDuFenna]

I'm also confident that like any new shiney toy, the miscreants will soon get bored and move on if we continue to ignore and report where needed.

Indeed. Remember, folks... WoW's next expansion "Cataclysm" is literally just around the corner, and that will surely take a lot of the offenders away from our chat channels for a good amount of time. I expect Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR will also have a similar effect, helping to keep the offenders to a manageable level in just a few short months at most.

I know it sucks right now, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel. And it isn't an oncoming train!

[Bradd]

I know it sucks right now, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel. And it isn't an oncoming train!

You promise?

All kidding aside, I can't wait for Cataclysm, and not because I am planning to go back to WoW.

[Thalifea]

You promise?

All kidding aside, I can't wait for Cataclysm, and not because I am planning to go back to WoW.

So the train of thought is:

Player X plays WoW and behaves badly in WoW.
Player Y plays LOTRO and behaves badly in LOTRO.
Therefore Player Y is the same as Player X?


Seriously...why do people assume that this bad behavior stems from WoW? Do you have any substantial proof that the offenders are WoW players. I personally think this is a ridiculous generalization with minimal if any sources of proof. I've seen plenty of bad behavior in LOTRO pre-F2P, and if anything I'm willing to bet the increase in "trouble-makers" is relatively the same per capita.

Why isn't it possible that Player Y is not of WoW origin and just naturally behaves badly? In relation I'd like to point out that there are WoW players who also act maturely and also stride to make the LOTRO community better but they don't fit so neatly into painting WoW players in a bad light.

[Zeowyrm]

So the train of thought is:

Player X plays WoW and behaves badly in WoW.
Player Y plays LOTRO and behaves badly in LOTRO.
Therefore Player Y is the same as Player X?


Seriously...why do people assume that this bad behavior stems from WoW? Do you have any substantial proof that the offenders are WoW players. I personally think this is a ridiculous generalization with minimal if any sources of proof. I've seen plenty of bad behavior in LOTRO pre-F2P, and if anything I'm willing to bet the increase in "trouble-makers" is relatively the same per capita.

Why isn't it possible that Player Y is not of WoW origin and just naturally behaves badly? In relation I'd like to point out that there are WoW players who also act maturely and also stride to make the LOTRO community better but they don't fit so neatly into painting WoW players in a bad light.

Yeah, that's how it has always been with this game. The WoW hate is strong in the elitist veterans. Especially in those who have never played the game.

[Sapience]

If you see abuse, violations of the code of conduct or terms of service; report it. That's what you can do. We'll take it from there. Making multiple threads to call out other players or posting "go back to WoW" aren't helpful reactions and may result in your earning your own infractions.