Quote Originally Posted by Subliminal View Post
I think the cheating matter is a separate issue, honestly. Not that I don't sympathize completely. And Tynon will wave Kyleena in your face to prove they "handle cheaters".

People with tawdry names might be amusing to some. Obviously it's amusing to at least one person. My reports haven't been centered on people with naughty names, but rather, people making threats, sending patently obscene messages, refusing to stop when asked, making alts to circumvent blocks, harassing and stalking other members and so forth. In these matters, unfortunately, the servers themselves must act as their own police force and use a combination of peer pressure, blocking and ostracizing to get the offenders to go away.

I think it will be interesting when Tynon is brought to court as an accomplice to cyber bullying since many US states as well as other countries now have laws in place to try and deal with it. It is obviously critical for online companies to protect the privacy of their patrons. It is becoming more and more necessary to put things in place to protect online participants from harassment. Tynon has never indicated that they will take any steps themselves other than to "protect privacy" and I'm sure they have some sort of language in the terms of use that attempts to keep them free from responsibility if anything does happen. However, they would be naive to think that such terms are indisputable. Remember, there are lawyers out there who got every company in America who serves coffee to put 'It's HOT!' on the cup.
Will be interesting to see, I think the challenge is establishing whether some kind of preventable injury occurred due to the bullying. A good case to follow is what happens with the current Facebook suicide litigation, where an Italian family is looking at filing a lawsuit against the company for the death of their daughter due to harassment. The complaint there is that multiple reports were sent to Facebook about TOS violations, threats and bullying, which were not acted upon. The main issue here I believe is the involvement of minors. This is not an "adult-only" game, and as such I don't think the free speech argument really applies. We have rules in schools to protect against bullying people in their formative years, and while internet social safety is relatively new it's beginning to take on new prescience in light of such incidents as the above. Particularly in regards to protecting minors.

Totally with you on this. On one of the servers I play, there was a person posing as a 12 year old girl, trolling the server and trying to solicit sex among other things. Completely over the top, and in spite of screenshots, etc being sent in said person is still active on the server. His/her tactics have changed, maybe because of a warning, which simply spawned a number of alts with slight variations of the name, who now trolls via PM and the mail system vice realm/world chat. That is one example, but I have seen this person push others to absolute rage, as well as other flameouts that occur because of bullying and trolling. Cheating is indeed a separate issue, but I believe the continued success of alt armies, in direct contradiction to the TOS does set a precedent that the rules tend to be loosely enforced as is. Because of this, I've noticed that bullies and cheaters seem to grow bolder as they weather the threats of being reported, since those kind of people thrive in a vacuum of authority as it is.

Some might say it's hard to figure out where the line is, in a game based on war and conflict. I argue that it's not, and personal attacks and threats of an OOC (out of character) nature constitute bullying. I think we have to keep in mind that this game does attract younger players at times, who lack the maturity and analytic abilities to distance themselves from it, so protection for players should extend far enough to help those who simply can't defend themselves. A full grown adult trolling a chatroom of kids is just hideous. And it is pretty obvious based on emotional reactions and speech patterns who is an adult here and who is not. I don't see how the medium of a game should be looked at any different than any social media, as an MMO will always involve social situations. This is the draw to the genre, for both people seeking fun with others, and internet predators. As it is, the privacy-centric focus seems to provide a shield and opportunities for online predators to thrive. Ultimately this will backfire, unfortunately it may take a serious incident before anything is done about it.