http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=Champion&Number=5139510&Searchpage=4&Main=5134443&Words=CuppaJo&topic=&Search=true#Post5139510

Face it COH is bad. Go try and farm in WoW on a PvP server. Die come to life hes there to kill you again. Come to life: him and his buddies are there to kill you now. Its PvP anything within the rules is fair game. So who really broke the rules? The players with threats or the guy that did what the devs said was ok. Twixt killed me 100’s of times. I got mad but I never threatened him plus I remember the devs saying his play style was fine.

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/7/7/dr-house-and-the-professor-who-played-to-win.html

Discussion thread: http://forums.sirlin.net/showthread.php?t=2218

Players will steal kills, steal loot, kill other players using exploits, etc. If the game design allows a behavior, players will engage in that behavior. Twixt’s argument that he was playing within the rules of the game echoes the same kind of justification that many PKs in Diablo II used to justify their exploit of game mechanics (the teleport PK, wherein the PK lures monsters to the teleport site so as to kill players) or shooting arrows that will go into the safe zone. In both cases, players are being “fair” within the broad definition of doing what the game allows them to do.

At the same time, those actions have an impact on the broader social interaction of the players. Now, in Diablo II, Blizzard’s Sirian argued that the Hostile button created an interesting dynamic. It did. It created a game culture founded on paranoia. Even though player communities evolved systems of passworded games, all player communities needed to be on the lookout for people who intentionally trespassed on that community in order to PK the players.

Developers need to determine the kind of community they wish to have in their game. If they wish to allow certain types of gameplay to emerge, they also need to determine where they wish to draw the line. EULAs aren’t worth much, but a line or two about player behavior that depends upon exploiting game mechanics will allow for players to have their accounts banned. Thus, until the fix can be coded in, the only recourse that the majority of players have is to report the behavior to the GMs, who should investigate the situation.

I do have to wonder, though, what Twixt would have thought if he’d pulled the same sort of behavior in a game like EVE. I’d also like to know if he would have considered it safe to do so, from a game perspective.

And that leads to the more interesting question. It’s not a case of whether or not players in an online game go to extremes when presented with someone who violates the social norms of the game, but what resources do online gamers have to enforce social compliance. In real life, the penalty for being an unrepentant jerk is to become a social pariah. Yes, the jerk may not be breaking any laws, but at the same time, the victims have some social recourse. They can avoid contact. They can tell their friends, family, and co-workers about the jerk. There’s a heavy social penalty for going against social mores.

In the online world, players have little they can do to curb antisocial behavior. From that kind of impotence, it’s not hard to see that publishing the home address of the player is a form of trying to tell the player that online anonymity is often illusory, and that there is indeed a consequence for violating social norms.

Of course, such a response is equally anti-social, which brings us back to the issue of fixing the game, not the player. If players are allowed to be jerks in the game, then the game needs to allow other players to have some sort of recourse as a response.

LOL. People in that thread discussing if they can get him written up on ethics violations. Maybe his research will TRULY be vindicated.

Prof seems to be arguing that because the games are so open their rules are not sacrosanct and individual freedom is repressed because the more important player-mob community rules which emerge dictate the real rules. The funny thing is that to those who play MMOs this behavior is known and a given. Enough cry nerf you get your nerf (except I guess enough didn’t cry to ncsoft about TP killing). Majority rules (because that’s where the most money is) and everyone else is marginalized. Sort of like real life!! MMOs truly are the next step to virtual reality. Of course real hardcore RP’ers know you handle business with death threats and no matter what ALWAYS stay in character. If only this blog was written in character for his twixt persona. Would make this even more ubar.

P.S. I will applaud ncsoft for siding with the tp killing mechanic. Red = dead indeed?