[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Derrick Jones <gunther at online1.magnus1.com> wrote:

>Most jerks don't see OOC verbal attacks (constant OOC insults, threats,
>etc) as harassment because there is no damage one _to_the_jerk_.
>Unfortunately, our ability to punish jerks is severly limited in that any
>punishment must remain within the gameworld(?), which most jerks haven't
>taken the effort of appriciating in the first place.

Good points, but I can't really say all "jerks" fall into this class.
Maybe some differentiation would make the discussion somewhat easier
to follow.  Right now, everyone on the list seems to stereotype
"jerks" into one homogenous class of people.  I can't really say that
this holds in my experience.

Let me try to describe the two typical classes of troublemakers as I
see them:

1. Players that have become bored with the system and know how to
   build a character in short time (or how to break the system).  Logs
   onto the system (and other similar systems) every once in a while
   to show off their power and get an adrenaline kick, then log off.
2. Players that are bored with the system right from the start and does not
   invest a lot of time in their character because there is a boring part
   in there that they are not willing to attack.  However, they don't
   really know about a better system so they insist on staying, try to get
   others interested verbally, but annoy instead, and get caught up in a
   personal war (or defence) in which annoying others is the weapon.

However, I don't think the majority of "jerks" included in this
discussions falls in these two cathegories. 

Ola.