For those of you who haven't had the chance to go to a LAN party yet- it stands for local area network, and it's a big gathering of nerds where everyone brings their computers and gets their game on!

I find that LAN parties are an awesome way to meet a group of people who you know automatically share many similar interests with you. In day to day life I find it hard to meet people who play the same fps games that I do, and whenever I bring it up I usually get looks of disbelief.

At the March lan, though, there were still a couple incidents of disbelief. I wore my t-shirt that my friends had bought me for my birthday that said "Girls play cs, too" and one guy still asked me "Do you actually play cs?" I had to try really hard to keep my composure, because I felt like rofl-ing.

You really see every type of gamer at these kinds of parties. You will have your griefer- a big asshole who likes to ruin other people's fun, and somehow they will drag you into the middle of it, and you will be having such a good time that you won't realize what you have become. At one LAN a bunch of us went onto a server and meow'd until we either got kicked or banned. "What is with the cats?!"

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the rager who screams at everyone, because nothing is ever their fault. This person is the least fun to be around. The only upside is that they give everyone else a laugh for looking like a complete tool.

The ringer is the best person to talk to if you are trying to improve your game. This person knows all of the strats and is the resident pwner-er. When they're not playing the game they tend to be very quiet, so you'd have no idea what they're truly capable of. Meeting this kind of person is like finding a dollar in your pocket- a very nice surprise.

The creeper is possibly the worst kind of gamer for a gamer girl to run into (yes the genders can be reversed, but I’m speaking from my personal experience). The creeper is not even a real gamer; he has no friends or girlfriend, so he goes to the lan as if it was his mecca. The creeper will sit next to your computer while you try to game, and he will stare at you as if he was a turret in Portal, “I see you!” When you get up to “go to the washroom” he will take photos of you, and he will treasure them always. You might try to enlist your gamer friends for support, but he will inevitably creep them, too.

The non-gamer gamer has the best rig (or fragwagon) there. The case is brilliant, and the lights emanating from it makes the lan look more like a disco. You will probably be fooled into thinking that this is the new fatal1ty until they ask you how to run ventrilo.

Well that’s all for now :) To be continued!

(Inspired by Valkyrie's post on different types of gamer girls)

Impossible de retester Google Lively aujourd’hui. De mon poste je n’accède que rarement aux rooms même celles vides.  Je note que les premières room « Sexe » viennent d’apparaître et que ce sont les plus visitées. Comme je ne peux tester à nouveau je me pose quand même la question de la sécurité d’une room. Y a t-il des outils de modérations sinon les griefers de tout poils vont bientôt débarquer.

A contrario de Second Life, le griefer est pour l’instant limité mais que fait on de quelqu’un qui vient dénigrer en texte ou en mode voix  tel room ou marque. Je me rappel que dans second life j’etais arrivé dans un magasin où un ancien client déçus réceptionnait les clients en hurlant sa haine des produits en vente et du créateur. Il est possible de dégager cet opposant et de savoir en temps réel  l’arrivée  de quelqu’un sur un terrain dans le monde de Linden Lab. Je n’ai pas vu au cours de ma trop rapide exploration d’hier, d’outil de modération concernant Google Lively.

Les dérives dans second life ont souvent eu lieu parce que les propriétaires de terrains oubliaient qu’il existe des outils pour limiter les agressions diverses et surtout empêcher l’accès. Il semble que dans Google lively il soit possible de privatiser une room mais que fait on d’une room de marque ou de société en mode ouvert et visible depuis un site web. A suivre car l’aspect sécurité dans un monde immersif reste un gage de qualité pour une marque ou une société.

Other than actually playing and enjoying the game for what it's worth, my favorite thing to do with online games is to make other people miserable. Before WoW, I've played all sorts of different games. Sure, killing people is the easiest way to annoy them, but there's tons of other ways to cause grief too!

In Infantry, I'd sabotage my own team by driving vehicles full of party members into deathtraps or destroying our own walls and bunkers. In MUDs, I'd find mazes or rooms with no exits and summon people there. You know, just so I wouldn't be lonely. I also loved leaving poisoned food and explosive traps in newbie zones. When I was about to lose in games like WarCraft and StarCraft, I enjoyed sending my men to the most random parts of the map to hide and build worthless buildings. I'd make my opponent work for his win, forcing him to scan the entire map for me, which could take several minutes. Or even over an hour. Sometimes, playing "hide and seek" forced the other player to quit and hand me the win because he simply didn't have the time to deal with my childishness.

I don't know why I like to grief people. It's just fun! And I try not to think about it. I'm sure there's some deep sociopathic disorder associated with it.

Well, last Saturday, Miguel, Camron, and I were running around Mal'Ganis, doing stuff for the Fire Festival, when we arrived at the quest An Innocent Disguise. It started out as a crabtastic good time, but ended in screams, laughter, blood, and tears. Not particularly in that order.

It all started when I accidentally aggroed the mobs needed to complete the quest. They wouldn't get off me so I nuked them. I didn't think much of it at the time. Hell, I was spending most of my time chasing down and killing Alliance that wanted to get the quest done. Then I noticed more and more Horde appearing, waiting to finish the quest. I was ready to head out when one of them flipped out about the mobs being dead. Instead of taking off and continuing our Fire Festival journey, the three of us decided to stick around and see what happened if we kept killing the mobs.

The quest goes as follows: Use some orb to turn into a crab, listen to nagas talk about some evil plan, get out of crab form and warn the elders!

But with a bunch of dead nagas on the beach, all that's left are a herd of angry crabs. When I [Drilnos] started killing the nagas, Camron [Sukophantes] joined in. This made Miguel [Sangre] laugh so much that he couldn't help but play with us. In the process, we pissed off several people. How many exactly, I'm not sure. I did a "/who Ashenvale" and saw about fifty level 70's nearby. Most of the time, Miguel and I stood back while our pets/totems did the work. Camron, on the other hand, kept stirring the pot, pointing fingers at random people and pretending that he was "one of them" and just there to finish the quest. We got so many threats, insults, and pathetic pleas for us to stop that I don't even know where to start. Luckily, I took screenshots! Here, you can click on random ones and try to figure out the chaos for yourself. It's in chronological order in case you want to watch the whole thing play out.

>> triplejerk.com/wow/crabs

After about two hours of holding people hostage at crab beach, Alliance eventually got the best of us. As someone pointed out, "STOP ATTACKING ALLIANCE! They're here to kill the retarded griefers!" Which meant some Horde player called in his Alliance buddies to take us out. It makes me feel kind of popular and pretty good about myself that someone actually went out of their way to plan our assassinations.

We could have kept people there longer but Camron's internet went bananas, and Miguel and I couldn't run back to our corpses fast enough. We still had the last laugh. The same Alliance that someone brought in to help the Horde ended up slaughtering everything in sight! When we got back, all the remaining Horde were dead. It was so beautiful, so poetic! The cherry on top of our two-hour charade! I ended up logging off because it was impossible to resurrect without dying. When I came back thirty minutes later though, the Alliance were still there killing people. It makes me wonder which one of us was the lesser evil.

Throughout the entire thing, I had the Benny Hill theme song playing in my head. Well, that and the Mikado's "Three little maids from school" song. It was just one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in WoW. The incident left me in tears with a hurt gut from all the laughter. Here's to hoping I'll have a chance to do something so absurd again some day.

Anyways (as mentioned above), Midsummer Fire Festival is here!

I didn't think I'd be so into this WoW event, but some of the prizes they're offering are really cool!

Like Vestment of Summer, Sandals of Summer,

and the ever-pleasant Brazier of Dancing Flames.

I already collected all those items with my warlock because I'm a nerd with nothing better to do with my time. I'm slowly working on it with my druid.

Damn, I need to stop playing this game so much.

There's been a lot of talk lately in SL and the blogs about copy theft. Its becoming a real issue, as peoples work on skins, textures, scripts and even entire builds are being ripped off, stolen, and resold at lower rates, or worse given out full mods. I think most of us would agree this is a bad thing. I know some of you think everything should be free, some are big fans of the opensource movement, but this isnt a post about that. I wont go into the semantics of it, but as someone who builds a lot in SL, and is friends with a lot of people who make their RL living from selling goods in-world, suffice to say I think copy theft is a bad thing! I think opensource is cool too, but I think it should be a choice the creator makes as to whether their creation should be free to all - or not.

So, why isnt it being stopped? How are they getting away with it? One point of view, is that it's impossible to stop people stealing textures/models/skins. I'm not gonna go into details (please dont ask me - refusal often offends) , but yeah.. it is actually pretty easy to rip anything you want out of SL, because of the way the client downloads everything anyway. The thieves (damn you, thieves! - shakes fist) exploit this, and then reupload things, and reoffer them for sale. They usually get shut down pretty fast, but they pocket a fistfull of cash on their anonymous account, transferring it out as it comes in, then when the account gets banned for repeated theft AR's they just rinse and repeat with a new anon-o-tar. How can we stop that? Its anonymous, right? Meanwhile, someone somewhere is having their RL income destroyed. The beautiful builds and skins and textures of SL dont make themselves! Someone works lonnggg and hard to make all the lovely places we're so enamoured of. The situation is terribly unfair.

So what options are there? Make everyone provide RL details, to be able to log in? "No bank account, no entry!!"? It might work, but thats using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. SL is a place where you are free to create, free to be what you want. We're free of borders here, and to a large extent, the conflicts that can often arise over race and gender, too. We're beginning to collectivley define a third place, where we can meet other people like us, in a way we never could in 'Real Life'. If we crack down on the thieves by making everybody link their account to their RL identity, we risk some of that. So, for me, I dont feel that we can go down the 'RL verification for everyone route'

Others have suggested that only verified accounts should be allowed to build/create/upload. I'm against that too, for a couple of reasons. One of the things that makes secondlife great is the freedom to create people have. People who have never thought of themselves as creative have discovered a whole new side to themselves, some have even totally re-invented their real lives around their newfound creativity and talent. How many media items have there been along the lines of "my job was crap, I used to put the plastic bits on the end of shoelaces 12 hours a day, now I sell virtual hair from my cabin in the mountain" I love the fact that SL has liberated so many people from doing things they didnt enjoy, and empowered them to lead self fulfilling, creative lives. I'm happy for the people that have 'made it' and want to support the ones that are still trying. Stopping them from creating things in-world not only prevents them from accessing their creativity, it stops us from enjoying it too. These people don't come in-world with the intention of becoming a creator, they come in because they're curious, or someone told them it was fun, and they find a new depth to themselves, an ability they often never imagined they could have. If we restrict people from building, we're depriving them of that chance, and to be fair, I think its a chance that they're entitled to.

But all of that is negative - everything above is basically things we can't do. What about finding something we *can* do, to protect the rights of people that have worked long and hard to create something, without infringing the rights of the people who are innocent of any wrongdoing?

One system that I've come up with, (and this is the point of this post, to get this idea out there, and see what you all think) is this - to have a system wherby as an unverified user, you can create, and sell your objects, but cruicially, the money you make from selling items is held in a seperate 'pot' from your other L$ balance. It works like this. Lets say I'm a brand new avie, inworld for the first time. I make something, lets say.. a house - and its really good. People tell me they want to buy it, so I set up a small shop and start selling. Pretty soon I've racked up about $100 USD worth of sales, and I want to get that money. At this point, I have to verify, and when I do, the two pots merge, and the money made from sales combines with my other 'regular' L$ balance, and I can do what I want with it - Spend it in-world, or cash it our for RL funds. Until I do, it just sits there as a second balance at the top of my screen. I cant spend it, transfer it, do anything with it other than watch it sit and accrue. I can, however, continue to build things, to generate business, to prototype and improve my products, and improve my skills by learning, practising and refining what I've already learned at many of the excellent classes or online tutorials.

Here's what that second account balance might look like:

In the meantime, before I verify my details, I'm also free to camp to make money, or DJ or work in a bar, or any of the other many SL occupations - effectivley nothing else changes, but to get access to the money I've made selling things, I have to verifiy my account. My ability to create in and enjoy secondlife is unchanged. I wouldnt be able to bypass the Linden currency exchange either, by selling my L's on paypal, or through another bank, because until I verify, I cant transfer it, spend it, exchange it for RL funds, nothing. Just sell, and watch the money accrue.

How would this help? In several ways, I think. Firstly, if I did copy someones house and sell it, I'd have to verify at some point to get the money - leaving me open to reprisal for my illegal action. Thieves are greedy, and often stupid - the main, if not only, reason they rip off peoples work is because they want to make the money - if we take away the mechanism that allows them to do that safely, with no fear of reprisal or consequence, how many of them will really be motivated to continue? Even if I copied something, and gave it to someone else to sell, in order to get any money out of it, the seller would have to be verified. It doesnt matter what you do, how many alts you pass the copied things through the hands of, somewhere along the line if the money is to come out of SL, its going to have to be paid out to a verified RL person.

Could this work? How would LL tell what money was from camping, and what money was from sales? Well, if you look at your transaction history on the secondlife.com website, you can see that LL already has a way to determine what money is from sales, and what money is from say camping. All they'd need to do is apply that filtering to the grid, and presto - we have a way to see who is actually taking the money out. If they're thieves, we can start a RL action to pursue them. As well as being stupid and greedy, most thieves are also pretty cowardly. It'd only take one or two big high profile cases of people getting into major trouble for copyright theft for them to realise, "hey, you know, maybe its not worth going to court for the sake of making $100 bucks or so". And copyright theft would, with a bit of luck, come right down.

Of course, its only a partial solution. There'd be a lot of wrangling to prove who made what first, and then tracking people down with overseas law suits that'd probbably involve a few subpoenas. But at least, we'd then have the tools to hold people to account for their actions, and to stop them getting away with it, scott free. There would also be a lot of people trying to circumvent the 'filtering' system - and it'd probbably have to be refined a few times to get it working just right. But thats ok - nothing is perfect to start with, and even if it only cuts down on 75% of copy theft, thats a fantastic start and lets us clear our heads and go after the remainder of the thefts.

Some of you will hate this idea. Thats ok. Some of you will think its fantastic, thats ok too -

I've written this beause its just an idea I had. I'm not saying 'This is it, this is our salvation!!' but its a starting point - its where we begin dialog and a process to refine the original idea. I saw a problem, and this is my attempt at devising a fix. I want to put it out there, to you, the community, to see what you think, what your feeling toward this might be. Please do make a comment - but keep it on topic - I manually approve/reject my comments and any 'smash the FIC' or 'they shouldnt be selling anything, it should all be free' - thats not what this post is about - its about the system described above, and any flaws you can see in its mechanism. I'm not going to get into arguing the rights and wrongs of copy theft - as far as i'm concerned it is wrong, and it is theft, there's no point discussing that, here.

Thanks for reading, post a comment and let me know what you think. Lets have a well informed, non-emotional discussion and maybe when we have consensus, a developed idea/system that we all agree wouldnt be unfair to the innocent, but wouldnt protect the guilty, we can go forward again to lindenlabs as a group and with one voice say, "we dont like copyright theft, we want you to stop it, and here's how we think you can."

Thanks for reading this post and my blog,

All the best,

Neil.

We got to talking about how nice the chairs were and Alph told us our mate Rusty Heron had made them quite a while back.  Well Rusty has been missing from the scene for a little while now and we were all saying how much we miss him.  Alph then showed us the missing poster they had done when Rusty had been on holiday before.

Alph also got out this very scary poster of an anti-griefing picture. Don't know about you, but I think this is a work of art, well done Alph!!!

Got a messege from Head last night to come and see the street parade at the new Bay City sim.  I got over there and then tried to find where they were.  I decided it was best to chase them on horseback, so got my lovely horse Colin out as he is good in crowds.  Not sure if new horse Derrick is up to it yet, best to introduce him to smaller groups of people first!

I caught up with some of them, but as seems the norm in these events, the floats and other things in the parade somehow get seperated and all end up on different routs, this does make it all ever so funny though, especially when they disappear into the ground at the sim boundaries.

Thats Headburro above on the ball with his poster for 'The Show Must Go On' that he is busily rehearsing for at the moment.  I got off of Colin and stood by the roadside as Pinkie came to join me.

She too had missed the start of the parade, and one of the av's near by told us that griefers had tried to spoil things at the beginning anyway.  Think they soon got rid of them and the parade was a success, so it all turned out ok.  Head was back to his old self as his Mantelope av and came over to see us.

Head had to rush off to rehearsals and me and Pinkie went back to her place to chill, as usual, people worked really had to put the parade on, well done all of them!!1

Not so on Facebook, of course. Facebook doesn't rely on the uniqueness of names, simply because names are not unique in the real world. Anyone can open a Facebook account with any name - in fact there's more than a handful of Catherine Fitzpatricks on this community site. But, again, there's only one Prokofy Neva. And I don't think it's too much of a guess to say that the Prokofy Neva on Facebook is not the Prokofy Neva we all know:

Oh yes, we are sometimes made to believe that griefing in SL is a very interesting phenomenon worth five pages in a magazine once famous and respected (and nerdy) enough to be featured in The Simpsons as one of Lisa's reads (Homer - with typical acciddental aptness - misreads the name as 'Weird'). So tell me what's interesting about taking the whole business of 'attacking the seriousness of Second Life' off the world and into the Internet at large? That's not griefing - that's stalking, that's harassment, and that's sick. That kind of behaviour deserves that feared ride in the FBI party van. Or at least the party van of any of a host of mental institutions.

You can argue that Neva is partly responsible for such pranks - it doesn't help to shout 'terrorism' at the first sight of a lolcube - but isn't that argument dangerously close to saying that a rape victim 'asked for it' by the way she dressed or by being in the place she was in? Neva has the right to call it terrorism, or Communism (another favoured label of his), or Catholicism for all I care. Opinions, however overstated they are, are not invitations to stalking or griefing.

And it raises another question - who has the rights to our Second Life names? I do think that someone who's been using the name Prokofy Neva for such a long time should have at least some rights to the name, when used in connection with Second Life. I dare say that even I have some rights to the name Laetizia Coronet, being that I have been using it since November of '06. But is the use of my name protected in-world? I think not - only the name Linden is, and misusing it makes one a target for disciplinary action.

Maybe the ToS can be read in such a way as to prohibit misuse of names, but I am not sure that if I come across a Prokofy Neva Porn Shop, the Lab would take action. It wouldn't hurt to have it written in plain English somewhere in the ToS: use of the unique name of other Residents without their consent is prohibited.

Come on, Lindens. After all the protection you've granted yourselves it's time you grant us some.

(Second Life, SL and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.)

A while ago, Mentors at Waterhead were greeted with custom made gestures: a stressed-out voice going I'll report you! in a tone reminiscent of the teacher on Pink Floyd's The Wall album. Hey! You! Yes... you! Stand still laddie! Now of course you can react to that with an AR - for gesture spamming, which apparently is a reason to ban people - but it's good to ask yourself why people go through the trouble of making such gestures in the first place. Or group titles such as Second Life Mentard. And seeing some colleagues in action I know what's going on - they come to Waterhead or any other fairly unruly area and try to lay down the law. They do not allow any swearing, they issue warnings and threats, and they write ARs like there's no tomorrow. I know. I was once like that, in the very beginning. And that's what makes us Mentors such 'beloved' figures in the community.

Now it's easy for me to say that with examples like our own Mia Linden of the Volunteer program it's no wonder Mentors behave like coppers on Monday mornings. But seriously, any Mentor who wants to help new people in some places (and that's, shall we say, our core business) is faced with a huge problem - some of the regulars in those places. In order to serve the newbies who get kicked into the infamous Welcome Area by the exit signs on Orientation and Help Islands, we need to protect them from people of ill will - be that people who deliberately give out false information or people whose "funny" racism, homophobia and foulmouthed attitude is enough to turn any but the most fanatic neonazi skinhead away from SL.

To serve and protect - surely the good folk at Linden Lab must have read that somewhere on the streets of San Francisco. Leave out one of the two and you're left with a defunct system. What good is my serving the newbies going to do when, ten meters on, they walk into the corrupted world of fratboy pranksters like the man calling himself Ringleader (his alts go by many names - the group title is the same), whose whole existence evolves around continuously spouting horrificly vicious racist tripe in a fake British aristocrats' accent? I serve the new Resident as best I can with the purpose of keeping him in-world and interested, only to see him enter hell two minutes later. One can only hope that he'll TP out to a better place. I wonder how many just switch off, never to return.

On the other hand, if I am only there to protect, I am a security guard. A silent, unapproachable figure of authority - not the person to come to with your first questions. Imagine that: an empty Waterhead with five silent security guards, and the first visitor who dares say shit (before even knowing the difference between PG and Mature, mind you) gets it. I wonder how many would switch off then.

Therefore, we serve and we protect. Of course I can use other words to make it sound less like the motto of police departments all over the US, but that doesn't diminish it's meaning. So are we not the police?

In an ideal world, we shouldn't be. But in places like Waterhead we are. We stand around, sometimes outnumbering the new people, and watch, and listen. And yes, we report as well - I hope we don't all report like it's our favourite pastime, but from me you can count on a report for racism, for violence, and for threatening or otherwise unpleasant behaviour towards others. In voice, in text chat or otherwise, I don't care.

The regulars at Waterhead (some of them are really nice people when you talk to them, /me greets 13 Jun, Crunk Munster and Gnu Curry) tell me that the solution is to stop sending newbies to Waterhead. But are they the ones to tell Linden Lab what to do with their areas, on their turf? Should the Lab just beat a retreat and give up on a Welcome Area in one of the oldest and most pleasant areas of the Mainland, right in the middle of Linden Village? Even if - how many more areas are going to be taken over by these groups? Ahern is shaky at best, Hanja is scarcely visited by Mentors at all and I have seen some of the more notorious figures in Miramare, too. Retreating is an open ended option, of which the open end points towards Berlin itself, pardon the historical parallel.

I think the option is to stand firm and to stare down the pranksters until they beat a retreat. There are thousands of places in SL which are Mature (Waterhead isn't), open to everyone, not frequented by freshly minted newbies (or by Mentors for that matter), with building and/or scripting enabled. For all I care they can go there and be idiots all day long. I'd happily build them some infrastructure, too, if that's what it takes. But the Lab, and by extention it's volunteers, should draw the line at Welcome Areas and Infohubs. They are intended for everyone and especially for new Residents, and should never be relinquished for reasons of lack of manageability.

And so, for now, we need to be police. Call it what you want to, but policing is what we do in places like Waterhead. Showing up in numbers, sporting our group titles, just to make enough of an impression to take the sharpest edges off of the irritating behaviour. I tried to make do with other comparisons, like for example emergency medical services, but after all is said and done, that's just not the whole truth. In places like Waterhead, sometimes when the 'right' people are all there, we are an imperfect and virtually powerless police. Why? Because behind our backs the newbies keep dropping in, straight from Orientation. And without any people overseeing what's going on there, they'd leave in droves.

(Second Life, SL and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. This blog was written with the intention of not infringing upon any trademark.)

While Dr Freemont and I were working on the VF pill casing at Morris Sandbox we were “attacked” by “griefers”. We attempted to finish our work but movement eventually became impossible. This event was very memorable and brings up many issues that we will perhaps return to in this blog. Despite the opinions of some that griefers are “terrorists,” which we feel dilutes an already fuzzy term, the practice seems more like “noise bombing”. 

Arcanists, a game every Orber knows and knows well. The game was well received from the start of FunOrb, gaining a great response from the players and a perfect 10/10 from Planet FunOrb[1]. Over the next few weeks, the game received several tweaks and balances that only added to the fun and fairness of the game.

So on April 9th, along with the addition of Shattered Plans, and a multiplayer lobby update, came the news that free players would have access to unrated games.

But why? Arcanists was, and still remains, the most popular game on FunOrb, blowing away the several other online games by a long shot. In an attempt to grow a humble member-base, Jagex released a taste of the game to free players, in the hopes that this taste would give them more incentive to join members.

The forums were quiet for the first few days after the update was released. On the 11th of April, the threads started: F2p swamping the unrated games, spamming in chat, poor attitudes, and quite possibly the worst; bias towards paying members.

1.1 You're Too Good For Me

Part of the disadvantage of being a nonmember in Arcanists is that you can only play unrated games, which disallows for the obtaining of wands, which does not allow f2p'ers to obtain new spells. The base spell book can do very little against a battle hardened member with all kinds of new spells and books. Members also are the only players who can gain or lose rank, making them very easy to notice.

In order to investigate this, I logged on to Arcanists and was almost immediately invited to about 5 games, only one of them had an average rating of other than 1000. My first reaction is that the claims of kicking must be exaggerated, so I joined a game and played with a group of 5 free players, won the game to no effect of cussing or flaming coming my way, and headed back to the lobby.

This time I decided to enter a random f2p game, I entered the room and two seconds later-

Okay, one game isn't enough to confirm this claim, maybe I was just unlucky. I joined quite a few more f2p-started servers, and out of about 40 of them, I would say I was kicked out of about half, without anything said by the room owner, and the room usually went to private thereafter.

1.2 Light the Burner, the Flames are Coming

It is common knowledge that anything on the internet that is freely accessible by anyone will inevitably attract less desirable players, and the likelihood of flame wars becomes more and more prevalent.

Such is the case in Arcanists, where anything from the presence of members, to unbalanced games, or even losing the game will set off what can only be considered a smoking bomb. It's times like below that make me glad that Jagex has a censor in place:

And of course, when people get angry, every once in a while on Arcanists you'll see a random person that spams quickly, and then leaves:

1.3 Seriously? A Flood?

Throughout my time doing this investigation, I found that more than half of the lobby was generally people with 1000 rank (Default), but that's certainly not a guarantee that they're all free players. Most of the unrated servers had an average rating of 1000, which isn't a guarantee but is a sign that they're filled all the way with free players.

But would I consider it a flood? Probably not. Arcanists brought together a large portion of the members of FunOrb, but considering that FunOrb doesn't have very many subscribers to start with, that portion does not pull off large figures.

So maybe more members just need to start playing Arcanists to balance out the numbers.

1.4 Player Reaction[2]:

I get called a noob everygame or get teamed by most of them

When we are killed we get called losers, no lifers and nerds.

Every unrated game I play is a horror. I gurantee that 1 minute or less into the game some player says ''hey its a member lets all kill him/her''

every time i try to play one its with the free players and their like " omg its a member get him!" and they all team and pile on me!

The lobby is packed with people who have no respect and no grammar.

Wont be told by some freeloader, that I am hated in a game, I have paid to play in

1.5 What do we want?

So here we stand: How to fix this problem that is clearly plaguing both members and free players. The answer to many is simple, and it's the title of this investigating article: Segregate Arcanists. Members want their own servers, not unlike how Runescape is set up (Members can access members and freeplay, freeplay can only access freeplay). An addition to this option is for free players to be able to spectate on members servers but not join them, which would allow them to see the possibility of more powerful weapons and entice them to become members.

Here are a few more ideas that are on the table:

1. An option to filter out either members or free players in unrated games. I feel this would be better than segregating servers, and would be easier and more cost effective to implement.
2. Only allow subscribers (p2p) to chat in the lobby: One of the harsher ideas, but it would make sense, and the ability to chat would be just another perk of paying for membership, which is the entire reason Arcanists is available to f2p in the first place.
3. Remove the f2p option from Arcanists: Not going to happen.

1.6 So Where Do We Go From Here?

It didn't take long for this to gain attention from Jagex, what with the large number of threads on the rants forum and developers forum of FunOrb. Here's the official response, as of publication:

Hi Orbers!

You will be aware that non members can now access the Arcanists game.

We did this to let free players know what some of the benefits of membership are but at the same time we did not want to devalue the membership status.

By allowing free access to Arcanists we hope to give free players an insight to the game whilst still keeping rated games, wands, full screen mode, forum posting and so on for the exclusive use of members.

Hopefully, some of our free players will love Arcanists and sign up to join the elite FunOrb members group!

That will be good news for everyone as there will be more people to play against and the community will grow.

However we are aware that some members are unhappy with this update and we have noticed a number of threads and posts addressing the subject.

We always welcome feedback and we are concerned that the theme may be lost if it is diluted across many different threads.

For this reason we have created this sticky thread on which everyone can express their view.

This way all your comments and thoughts will be held in one place and it will serve as a 'one stop shop' reference point for the topic.

Please remember to always respect other players - you are free to share your views and opinions but please be constructive with your suggestions and comments.

Thanks,

Steve

At the very least, this means that Jagex are aware of player concerns and are listening to the complaints being raised. What will come of this? Only time will tell.

This is Omali, signing off.

Not satisfied? Want to see members get grilled next? Check out the followup to this article written June 2008! http://funorb.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/segregating-arcanists-the-fist-of-cash/

Hey! Are you a big fan of Arcanists? Join the Planet FunOrb Forums today, it's completely free and there's no annoying ads or popups! Join the Arcanists League, find a game, or just talk about your favorite FunOrb moments. Click on the "Forums" button in the links section today!

[1]: Review: http://funorb.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/arcanists-review/
[2]: The views expressed in this section do not represent the opinions of Planet FunOrb and are entirely for research purposes

Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World

Early morning, April 4

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

U2, Pride (In the Name of Love)

Because of Bono's stirring song I got my facts mixed up and I was staring into the sun to see his face appear, like it did last year on January 15th. It didn't, of course. Some other things however did occur.

I witnessed a talk between some people in Waterhead - one of them as black in real life as his avatar in virtual reality. Some others were ganging up on him, trying to make him lose his cool, teasing him with questions like 'Why is the hair of black people so dirty?' or 'Do you have a Jheri curl?'

I am not sure what they were trying to do, but part of it is probably because it is pointless to send abuse reports about things said in voice. There is no proof, there is no record, and so all of a sudden it is safe again to play such silly games. To say stuff to a black guy that you don't dare say to him in public, face to face. Or typed out in text chat with your avatar's name attached to it. And so I can only conclude that it is the cheapest form of cowardice - a comparison to gangs of men in white hoods is a gross exaggeration, but the basics are there. You pick a nigger and you go after him, hiding behind a mask or an avatar.

I know the excuse that they will have. The eternal frat boy excuse that it is 'just for the LULZ'. As if that makes it all right then. It's a joke, no harm done. Or maybe it's 'just roleplay'.

Well, fuck that.

I'll tell you what it is. It's sick, it's twisted, and I want nothing of it. It doesn't make you a better person, it doesn't get you brownie points, it is not funny, not new, not original, not intelligent. It is putting the nigger down, and nothing more. Reminding him that after all is said and done, he's one of them.

I think the people I heard talking didn't really believe all that crap they were spouting. And if they are smart enough to know that none of that rubbish is true, then I expect them to be smart enough not to go there.

There are no LULZ in racism. Just losers.

• For those who don't know me - I am a white guy in real life, not a black girl.
• If you want to quote from this piece, I recommend you quote it with the strong language included. I do not mince words on this issue.

Former Microsoft game user research head Bill Fulton recently did an article for Gamasutra.  In it, Fulton states that online jerks are having a significant effect on online game sales and are stunting the growth of the industry.

These days, when people go online to play, they encounter the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic comments, new player bashing and a colourful spectrum of language as well as behaviour that's just plain aggravating (team killing, in-action etc.)

They go online, play a few times, or even just once, then never come back.  When you're trying to expand your user base, this is not the experience you want for players--- new, casual and old alike.

The usual retort is that jerks are a part of the scene and if you don't have a thick enough skin, then don't play online.

But that's the root of the problem, isn't it?  People play online precisely for the experience of playing and having fun with other people. 

Such retorts usually come from more dedicated/hardcore gamers who are able to tolerate such behaviour because their love of the games they play allows them to.  But as much as they'd like to believe it, hardcore gamers aren't the centre of the gaming universe.

In the greater context of gaming as a whole, they are the minority of players and that's why something needs to be done about bad online behaviour if the gaming base is to grow and develop.

Fulton suggests behaviour modification through careful design of the game's social environment and puts forth some of his ideas.

Here are some examples of embedded systems that Fulton discussed:

Proportionate award system. 

"Kill stealing" is often a source of conflict.  That's where one player has battled an opponent and is about to deliver the coup de gras when another player swoops in and delivers the killing blow and thus being awarded the kill.  Fulton suggestion a proportionate award system where the player who did the majority of the work gets the majority of the credit.

Make bad behaviour risky. 

Many games have a "vote-kick" system where players on the server can elect to eject a player from the game.  This voting system can be abused by bad players.  Fulton uses Shadowrun as an example where the vote system was tweaked to make it riskier for abusers.   Players have to option to abstain, kick, or kick the one who started the vote.  That third option opens the possibility that vote system abusers could end up being ejected.

Feud detection. 

In the majority of games with a vote-kick system, when two players engage in a vote-kick war, neither player ends up being kicked if no majority is reached.  Usually players who are involved in such a spat manage to stay in the game and become a source of annoyance because most players will abstain from feud votes.

Shadowrun employs a feud detection scheme where it designates players as being in a "feud state" when two players call kick votes on each other.  A feud vote will always result in the server kicking one of the two players involved in it and this nips feud voting in the bud.

Reward good behaviour. 

This may seem like a no-brainer but a lot of games do not employ this mechanism to sufficient degree or are lacking it entirely.  Providing meaningful rewards for players who engage in positive team actions such as healing a teammate, or giving a teammate superior weapons/equipment can dramatically change the atmosphere of the game.

My Experience

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but a gamer nonetheless.  I only got a game console (a 360) two years ago if you can believe it and haven't been on XBox Live for long.  But bad online behaviour has made me seriously reconsider renewing my XBox Live membership.

Ultimately, I did renew so I could test drive game demos and maintain the ability to game with the few good people I know.  But I admit that I am actually reluctant to play online because it has come to a point where my hobby has almost become a source of aggravation for me.

XBox Live has a severe problem with bad behaviour, so much so that it was the topic of one of Oprah Winfrey's shows.  But a system such as XBox Live is very difficult to police since a lot of the bad behaviour is verbal abuse over voice chat, something which design-based behaviour modification systems can't control.

Sadly, Microsoft has not really taken much action in regards to enforcing proper player conduct.  While accounts are suspended here and there, it's obvious the measures are not enough.

No doubt, Fulton's ideas of behaviour modification through design would help.  But until Microsoft can introduce an increased level of accountability and moderation, XBox Live will forever be the rank gaming pit it is today.

Never without humour though, next thing Roy and Gunter decided to transform themselves into a giant Hamburger and milkshake.  Pinkie then arrived and we stood and chatted catching up with our news.

A couple of newbies arrived and suffered the consequences of being new, someone trashed the av's making them into stick insects.  They didn't really seem that put out, so perhaps they are not as new as they seemed.

Time was getting on so we had to go to the Combat Cards Arena.   I had the first game with Osprey, who is always on top form, so I lost as per usual.  

Pinkie and Head had quite a violent match, Pinkie is getting really good at this game, reckon next year she may well be champion.   I fought her afterwards and needless to say lost again!!!!

Might get some practice in before next week, wonder if Drax wants to practice as well, we usually have a wager, makes me more determined to win, doesn't always work though, lol.

We went over the stories that we had had published on the new Beta site, Nicole ireport filled us in on bits and pieces of how the site is going.  We still have problems with it, like the comments not getting on and stuff and other little bits that need tweaking.  Think they are quite happy with it so far though and I must admit I like to be able to publish on there without waiting for CNN to do it as on the other CNN blog page.   Someone mentioned the US election that is going on at the moment and coverage of that, which no one can doubt is an important event in the US.  However, Nicole suggested that the entire meeting should be based on covering it next week, which is great for the US ireporters, but I agreed with Headburro and might give next week a miss just this once, as being from the UK, it would not be a priority for us to cover, and US irporters have all the knowledge of their own elections anyway.  Nicole had done a good job with the meeting, quite a few new people there asking questions and she is good at covering all the points.  Head and I stayed for a chat with her afterwards and told her about some of our jaded history battling it out in Murray with the griefers, hope we didn't bore her to tears, lol.  It was late then and we all went on our ways into real life.

to let the real muthaphuckkin G's in" (Eazy E, Real Muthaphuckkin G's)

In the drab suburb of Rotterdam I grew up in we played soccer ('football' if you must) on the dog doo infested grass between some appartment blocks. One of the balconies adjacent to our playground belonged to an old woman and if your ball - the sporty kids always tried to outdo each other with expensive new soccer balls - landed there, it was said, she'd stab it with a kitchen knife before giving it back. I've never seen it happen, but you know the kind of old woman I am talking about. Tired of the world, vengeful, hateful, ever complaining about 'the youth of today'.

Enter Prokofy Neva's long rant about what he calls infohub infestations, or "The idiots who loiter around the Infohubs or Welcome Areas, Behaving Badly." Ah, we are talking straight griefing, Prokofy? I'm with you then. But no, "These hags stand around in little knots, cracking dumb jokes, acting faux-polite and faux-helpful in that really annoying hubber way to newbies, pretending to be good citizens, [...and...] play sound clips -- they've got the usual annoying repertoire, from tag lines like that idiot saying 'Oh yiissss' in WoW or various movie tag lines 'Houston, we have a problem'..."

The corner of the curtain behind the geraniums moves and Prok peeks out. "There's a certain type -- we've all seen them. A clear marker is having a deliberately ugly avatar. An avatar deliberately made very fat or very thin, misshapen, as if to say 'Fuck you, I won't do what everybody else is doing.'" And the problem is... what exactly? Ugliness? No, it's far worse: "The deliberately ugly avatar statement annoys or confounds or confuses newcomers -- they head swiftly away, sometimes never to return to SL ever again."

Now really. I wonder what type of person would run away from SL because of ugly avatars. Maybe some delicate little empty-headed Barbiedoll, "we've all seen them", stamping her little foot and asking hubby-dear who those ugly people are across the fence in her new suburbian garden. Or maybe indeed that old soccer ball stabbing sociopath.

Surely some Welcome Areas and Infohubs are a problem. Bumping people off, misleading newbies, shooting, what have you. Pity the newbie who comes from Orientation Island straight to Waterhead - but Prokofy's threshold is already breached in peaceful Ross and she wants not a sheriff but a Linden Lab goonsquad to come to the rescue: "And yes, the Lindens need to swoop down like a SWAT team [...] everywhere, and with surprise, and strategically..."

Whoa. Linden Lab needs to pay people (Prokofy makes clear he doesn't mean Residents of volunteers, but paid employees of LL) to come in and stop people from hanging around public areas. Everywhere, and with surprise, and strategically. I wonder what picture he has formed in his mind. Is it perhaps that of the Russian OMON beating up homosexual protesters? After all, their protest is a way "to say 'Fuck you, I won't do what everybody else is doing.'" Or is it that of the South African Police of the pre-Mandela era, firing shotguns at kaffers? That makes sense - after all, the South African Boere were just as fond as Prokofy of calling everyone a 'terrorist'.

Yes, I am grossly exaggerating, I know it. But it's Prokofy, the man who is calling people leninist, terrorist, communist, racist or antisemitic all the time, so I have a right to overstate my case as grossly as he does. The whole thing eventually boils down to this: if your way of enjoying Second Life does not comply with Prokofy Neva's standards, you should be muscled out of your favourite hangout. And if Linden lab is 'communist', then that is 'fascist'.

Really, I'd rather see Linden Lab crack down on the real problems of Second Life, and by that I don't mean the youth hanging around Waterhead or the frat boy pranksters of Woodbury, but the real griefers, the sim crashers, the Nightmare Dench types. And not with a SWAT team, because that is useless against throwaway alts, but with technology. But Prokofy hates technology because he doesn't grasp an inch of it - that's strictly for tekkie-wikis, who I'm sure are the next group Prokofy wants the Linden SWAT to go after.

Garic locked her in a couple of times because when he released her she started shoving again, but he finally gave up.  Headburro arrived and we told him about the little av being a pest.  She was obviously an alternate av of one of the Murray griefers as she didn't say a word to anyone.  She looked so cute though with her sulky little face, she even offered me friendship, cheeky little thing.

Well Head had to go back to the real world and we got tired of being shoved, so Pinkie went off to wander and I went home where I was delighted to see Drax had arrived.  Pinkie came over to my place and the two of them finally met each other.  Hope we can all get together in the future for some fun, horse riding or combat cards would be good, once Pinkie and Head have a bit more time away from the real world.         

That having been said…  In this month’s issue of WIRED magazine there is an article about people groups of clandestine hackers that commit cybercrimes on MMORPGs.  The article details who groups of people, “griefers” attack internet communities, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, in an attempt to, put simply, make the users cry.  According to the article, leaders of these groups have said that they attempt to blur the line between the fiction of games and the reality that people project onto the games.  In essence they are the school bully who makes fun of a kid for thinking Dungeons and Dragons is real.

Personally, I agree with their basic premise.  We do turn alternate reality into reality too much.  When we spend thousands of dollars a year buying upgrades for an avatar who doesn’t exist we are in essence, paying for a delusion.  While some people accept that, others actually attempt to profit off of alternate realities by selling alternate reality real estate, playing the game for people to increase their abilities, and selling characters who have advanced far in the games.  In the article it talks about how attackers in the digital world have attacked these Second Life moguls and harassed their clientele.  I understand the idea that it is all part of the game, but once you are actually disrupting real cash revenue doesn’t the real law have to apply?

As I sat down at my computer I came upon an article on Yahoo! News, reprinted from WIRED magazine’s blog with the title, “Anonymous Hackers Track Saboteur, Find and Punish the Wrong Guy”.  Basically what happened is: apparently a war between anti-Scientology and pro-Scientology hackers has been occurring on the internet.  One of these groups of anti-Scientology hackers, from the same community of people who are griefers, tracked an “enemy” hacker to a certain IP address in Stockton, California owned by a 59 year old man and his wife.  After posting their personal information (Address, Phone Number, Social Security Number) on the internet he received harassing phone calls and death threats.  Upon finding out about their mistake the griefers, also known as “g00ns”, promptly took down the information and issued an apology.

Fine, case closed right!  I say not.  If this weren’t cyber-crime but real crime the police (assuming they could find the culprits) would be breaking down doors and making arrests for harassment.  Instead, nothing.  This is a serious issue that will face the coming nation in the near future and demands the attention of lawmakers.  Of course, I think it is safe to say that few lawmakers would understand, let alone care, about cyber-crime.  As a nation we need to develop strict rules as to the culpability of crimes committed on the internet.  Where does the innocent interrupting an attack on another character turn into stealing upgrades that a character has purchased?  Where does the innocent (though not necessarily legal) messing with someone’s computer turn into putting a person in physical danger?

The story I told was about a man who got caught in the crossfire of a virtual war, why are the combatants who have harmed him less culpable than the gangs who hit innocent civilians during gang wars.  I’m not an expert, but I do know that something has to be done or else sooner or later, the internet will start claiming fatalities… if it hasn’t already.

[instrumental version here]
[normal version here]

As I walk through the sandbox with the cages of death
I take a look at my life and realize there's nothing left
Cause I've been sendin ARs for so long that
Even the Lindens think that my mind is gone

But I ain't never crossed a griefer that didn't deserve it
We be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of
You better watch how you talkin and where you walkin
Or you and your homies might be off the grid

I really hate to trip, but I gotta loc
As they croak I see myself in the particle smoke, fool
I'm the kinda mentor little noobies wanna be like
On patrol in the night
Spoilin' fo' a little street fight

been spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers' Paradise
been spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers' Paradise
keep spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers' Paradise
keep spending most our lives
Living in a Griefers' Paradise

Look at the situation they got me facin
I can't live a normal life, I was rezzed like a box
So I gotta be down with the V-team
Too much mental mentor talkin' got me chasin dreams

I'm a educated fool, with griefers on my mind
Got my Glock in my hand and a gleam in my eye
I'm a loced-out mentor, grief-bustin banger
And my homies is down, so don't arouse my anger, fool

Crashin ain't nothing but a heartbeat away
I'm livin life do-or-die, what can I say?
I got 'em down now but will they come back fo' mo'?
The way things is goin I don't know

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That noone gives a shit ‘bout you or me

been spending most their lives...

PN and the /b/tards, /b/tards and the PN
Goatse or those turtles, Ya don't know what ya seein'
Everybody's running, but half of them ain't lookin
What's goin on in the kitchen, but we all know what's cookin

They say they back me up but nobody's got the power
They went open source and now there's griefin ev'ry hour
So back me up? I guess they can't
I guess they front that's why I know my life is out of luck, fool

been spending most their lives...

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That noone gives a shit ‘bout you or me

What educators really need are VWs they control completely, regulating who has access as well as the pedagogy that is covered. Dr. Greg Jones over at UNT is a pioneer of this idea. Now, the potential for teachers to easily create their own online education worlds is proffered with a new service from VastPark, which bills itself as a “distributed virtual worlds platform.” Essentially, you design your VW using VastPark’s tools, invite users to stroll your virtual realm with their avatars, and achieve your online objectives whether that be making money or teaching students at a distance.

VastPark is in closed beta, but is available by invitation. For those who’ve seen the tools in beta, such as Jason Stoddard over at Centric, the worlds are amazingly detailed, and remarkably easy to work with. I’ve taken a look at CEO Bruce Joy’s video of VastPark’s Creator Tool, and can attest that it looks fantastic. Its feature list is also impressive.

If VastPark can help teachers easily make their own VWs, we may see a surfeit of online worlds dedicated to educational purposes.

When: Sep 28, 2007 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm (Friday)

Where: Useful Technology Second Life

Tags: Education NCI Writer Second Life Useful Technology

Description: NCI Class: Dealing with Griefers Instructor: Sally Savard Location: Big Top (Useful Technology) When: Friday, 6pm to 7pm, 1 hour

Sponsored by: Linxter

Second Life is full of wonderful, creative, intelligent, talented people who contribute positively to the content & culture, the economy & ergonomics, the diversity & direction of our world -- but if you do happen to encounter one of the sad few whose purpose is to diminish your enjoyment of Second Life, it helps to know how best to deal with the situation and what tools and services Second Life has in place to enable you to do so. This class will cover important tips and tricks for dealing with "griefing" activity in Second Life, including:

• what "griefers" want and how to thwart them

• how to use Second Life's Mute feature
• how to avoid being orbited/pushed
• ways to protect yourself on land you/your group owns
• how and when to file an Abuse Report with Linden Lab

Second Life URL.