Greedy Goblin

Thursday, October 28, 2010

LF addon writer to make WGClean

My previous request for addon design met with total success, creating a great addon for gold bid raids.

So here I am again, outlining an addon to perform social aggression against M&S in Wintergrasp (and soon Tol Barad). Yes, the M&S is so encroaching that we need an addon to handle them.

The idea came by accident: I was a raid leader in WG and a moron was spamming some nonsense. As an impulse action I did what I used to in VoA raids: opened raid interface and removed him from the raid. It worked! But not only the moron was removed, his fellow lolkids shut up. Also the "don't ride catapult" warning was no longer ignored by scrubs.

The trick is the mentioned "social aggression": kicking the player from the raid do not remove him from WG. He still gets honor points and can keep doing whatever he wants. He is merely stripped from the /raid chat. So if someone honestly wants to farm honorkills or play his unique way for fun, he is not at all damaged. However the M&S never wants to farm honorkills or play for internal fun: his "fun" is coming from peers see him "pwning" either enemy players (pointlessly, ignoring objectives) or "elitists" by trolling on the chat. The "I play 4 fun stfu nolifer" means "look at me, I'm a strong person doing what I want, uncontrolled by authority figures". Kicking him from the raid strips him from the observing peers and nothing else!

So here what an addon should do:
  1. The addon has a trust-list of players. One can include guilds to the list too, trusting everyone in this guild. The addon accepts blacklist information from the trusted players.
  2. The addon has a blacklist of names, reasons for being blacklisted and time of last change.
  3. To make it work, the raid leader must be an addon runner. If a group is fairly active in WG/Tol Barad, it's common than one of them is the RL.
  4. The raid leader's addon automatically kick all blacklisted players from the raid. The player get's a whisper "WGClean: you have been kicked from the raid for [reason]. To remove yourself from the blacklist, contact one of the players below [followed by the list of players who are present and on the trust-list of the raid leader].
  5. If any of the trusted players forgive the M&S, he un-blacklist him and this info is distributed. If another trusted player blacklist him again, always the latest change is accepted.
  6. There is a button or /command to invite all trusted players present in WG/Tol Barad to the raid.
List of reasons:
  1. Trolling: "You posted primitive language, abusive comments, or off-topic stuff on the raid chat. We don't need trolls"
  2. Being unresponsive: "You did not respond to requests of veteran players. While you can disagree, simply ignoring strategy is unacceptable"
  3. Being suicidal: "You rushed into the enemy alone, dying pointlessly. Currently you are a waste of tenacity".
  4. Being anarchist: "You can play for fun, but your ways damages our fun. So have fun alone!"
This means that the M&S is automatically kicked from the raid until he contacts one of the veterans and convince him that he learned from his removal and stops being useless.

One can ask what happens if the local "i play 4 fun" kids form their own trust-group and whenever the rng give them the raid leadership, they kick the veterans? At first, that assumes they have a brain and able to think ahead. They don't. But if it happens, the auto-invite feature is implemented for a reason: the kicked veterans form their own raid and at least they can play without the M&S trolling the chat.
---------------------

You are not sending me proper morons, so I had to find them myself. Well, it wasn't hard. Google sent them to my site:
PS: I'm pretty curious about Tobold's search results.

77 comments:

Espoire said...

Is there any compensation available for the author of a quality addon matching the above specifications?

JG said...

I wonder what Blizzard's response would be to such an addon were it to become popular. I imagine that it would just invite M&S to complain all over the forums when they're always kicked from WG/TB raids, since, as you say, their primary fun is derived from showing to peers the size of their... prowess.

Given that the those raids are automatically created and who leads it is determined either randomly or by whoever happens to queue first, I'd say Blizzard doesn't intend for or expect that leader to exercise much power over the group. I can see them eventually disabling the addon or altering the way the raids work in WG/TB so that the raid leader can't mess with the makeup and M&S no longer feel bad when they're kicked and fill the forums with more poorly spelt and punctuated rants.

Gevlon said...

@Espoire: he can enjoy WG without morons.

@JG: it's possible that they change it. Then we have to accept that WG/TB is intended to morons and don't go there.

Anonymous said...

Kicking them out of the raid is hardly a null effect, it effectively locks them out of giving or receiving any healing by negating raid frames. That's a big deal, especially as the side that has high tenacity, since longevity through healing is the primary advantage the side has.

Are you even sure the catapult people didn't simply rank up enough to switch and start using siege during this time? That hardly seems like anything more than censorship.

Riptor said...

@ Gevlon
I think Espoire was taking about G/Hour. I find it strang that the greedy Goblin himself would hint someone to invest time in a Project without rakeing any form of material Profit (be it ingame Gold or hard Currency).
Doesn't that directly contradict your base Philosophy?

Anonymous said...

You have kicked me from WG before Glotan, despite the fact I was being useful. Merely because you branded me M&S because I disagreed with your tactics and tried to offer you advice. You are merely trying to be a bully on the Internet, I don't have to point out to your readers how pathetic that is.

Your guildmembers may be happy being in your dictatorship, that's fine, but those in WG are not. Any one that doesn't follow your orders gets kicked? Laughable, and I very much doubt what blizzard had in mind.

Andru said...

I am afraid your plan can't work for some reasons.


1) An addon can't 'automatically' do anything. So, it can't kick players without human interaction. Someone would have to be there and press the actual kick button.

2) Even If they were kicked, they can requeue and rejoin. Which means you have to spend 1-2 seconds kicking them again. A griefer can just sit at the edge of Wintergrasp and just pop in and out.

3) Even without being in the raid, they can sabotage your attempts. They can just make Catapults and drive them to the end of the map, leave them there, rinse and repeat..

4) They may switch to a horde/alliance character and divulge the plans of your attack.

5) They can troll on General Chat.

Sure, a M&S might not do all that. But god forbid you set an anarchist's pants on fire. (I mean one who does not agree with you.)

An anarchist will not stop because authority forced him to.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: they are free to form a raid with their own healer. Oh wait, they have none as "heal iz a job lol i wanna hav fun".

@Riptor: his addon will be populated here, giving him more downloads. He can ask for tips from downloaders and use the high download count as reference for other projects.

@Second anonymous: You were simply protecting the cata driving M&S. That's trolling. Also, you did not provide WG strategy.

@Andru:
1: several actions don't need human interactions like whispering (DBM whispers "X is fighting with Y boss" without human interaction. Even if kick is a protected function, the addon can target the person, so the leader just have to press a hotkey for confirmation.

2: see above, rather 0.3 sec, more than he has to spend with jumping in an out.

3: they can't sabotage more than they already do. The catapults will destroy 30 secs after abandonment

4: they don't know the plans as they are kicked. BTW any hordie can make an ally just to "spy" so no extra loss here

5: no one cares

Visalyar said...

Anonymous@"That hardly seems like anything more than censorship."
Since you share the WG questobjectives by raid, they´ll be on their own to achieve them (killquest tower etc.).

OT: The idea is quite interesting and could actually work (more based on psycology). But I exspect Blizzard to deactivate the RL´s ability to kick raidmembers just like they did in BGs (QQ alsways does something).

Should there be nobody coding this little piece I´ll do it for self purpose at cata release. Until then I´ll be too busy to do any programming without profit (WG is actually of no big interest since we have a 2:1 winrate at our server).

For upcoming coders, there are several tutorials out there, just use google an don´t buy the shit you can get for free (guides). LUA is a pretty simple code compared to industrial/commercial coding.

Anonymous said...

How is defending a siege trolling?! You are losing it Glotan. Let's get this straight, defending a siege engine (and making it as far as the courtyard) and not giving orders means I am not worthy of being in your raid?

There is no room to give orders, it would just turn into an argument with you. Unfortunately you had Raidleader powers so it didn't last long.

Gevlon said...

@Trolling on the chat is trolling. While I don't remember what you said, it must be not very helpful. Note: I kick 1-2 people/raid, so you must have done something to be visible. Most probably something along the line "u haz no right to tell us wat 2 do lol"

Kring said...

In raid instances, the "lolkids" use /1 to annoy others *). They will probably do the same in WG.

*) The others not smart enough to turn /1 off, of course.

Anonymous said...

Just like someone already noted, kicking them from raid does few things, actually. Other than not receiving heals:
- bonus honor made by other poeple in raid/range (you should remember it Gevlon, you're [ab]using that one on BGs sitting under the bridge)
- quest objectives (they do care about amount of honor)
- HKs ( more HKs -> higher rank -> higher end bonus if I remember correctly)

As for addon itself and some of it's limitations. Currently, addons can autopromote people, mark them as tanks/assists. There is also a way to get autoinvited on whisper. So kicking should be doable too, but might (as other poeople noted) require confirming.

Anonymous said...

I said no such thing, stop putting words in my mouth. I suggested you would be far more successful if you were less rude, and stopped ranting at people not doing what you told them. After kicking me you said "did you enjoy getting kicked 20 seconds before the end so you get no bonus honor". I would say that's just spiteful and childish.

If people chose to be in your company, yes you could set your own list of rules and kick people who didn't abide by them. As it is, people don't. Many would rather not be in your company. However not being in the main WG raid is not really an option. If you want to lead a raid under your rules, do premade battlegrounds. WG is not the place for it.

Ephemeron said...

History is full of people who set out to change the world for the better (according to their definition of "better") through aggressive means. The vast majority of them are now universally reviled. Their message of change is long forgotten, but their oppression is all too well remembered.

I fear that you are about to make a terrible mistake, Gevlon. The moment you step onto this path, the message that you sought to deliver through your projects and your blog will cease to matter. You will cease to be a visionary/philosopher, and become yet another common power-tripping bully. No one will remember your ideas, but everyone will remember the kicks.

As you've said yourself, the only reason for you and your guild to participate in WG is recruitment. Every victory is a PR statement: "Join our intelligent, rational and organized community, and be victorious again and again". Once kicks come into picture, the message changes to "Fear and obey the big apes with big sticks. Join us, or we'll stomp you". To say that this will negatively affect the quality of new PUG recruits would be an understatement.

-Eph.

P.S. While I wish that you would reconsider this course of action, I have little hope for it. Like Blizzard, you are always ready to admit and learn from your mistakes once you've made them, but appear to be far less capable of avoiding making them in the first place, despite best advice. So I guess the best I can hope for is that you'll abandon this plan before your reputation and integrity is damaged too much.

P.P.S. Before you say "but it works for EJ!", remember that the hammer-swinging moderators of EJ and their actual theorycrafters tend to be different people, and consider the reason for this.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

Reading over your description of how you would like the addon to function, I see some spots in which it might be unclear how you want it to function. I will try to describe some of these below.

To be clear, I want to describe my understanding of how the addon would keep and use two lists of people. First is the whitelist (ie, 'trusted' people), which records the names of people that the user trusts. Whitelist people are auto-invited to the raid and, if they also have the addon, asked to share data (more on this below). Second is the blacklist, which records the name, reason and time that somebody was put on the blacklist. If the user is the raidleader, blacklist people are auto-kicked. Furthermore, anybody on the blacklist of a person trusted by the raidleader is also auto-kicked.

Here are some questions that it might be good to clarify:

1) Does my blacklist get updated by my friend's blacklist? If not, then I have to have my friend in the raid to know if somebody is bad or I must manually update my blacklist (annoying, likely to not get done). If so, it will be both important and tricky to prevent one bad decision by your friend's friend's friend's friend from cascading through all the blacklists. Possible solution: include a 'blacklisted by' field in blacklists. Only blacklist entries created by somebody on your whitelist would be shared. This would greatly slow down the sharing of blacklist information, but would prevent false positives from propagating throughout.

2) What happens when blacklists and whitelists collide? As an example: I am the raidleader. Player A and Player B are on my whitelist, nobody is on my blacklist. Player C is on A's whitelist and B's blacklist.

3) For a player to be removed from the raidleader's blacklist, they are instructed to contact a subset of the people on the raidleader's whitelist. If the blacklisted person contacts the trusted person and the trusted person agrees to un-blacklisting, but the raidleader has logged out, how does the addon communicate this back to the raidleader's blacklist?

Overall, I think this is a very interesting idea. I'm unsure, though, if it will be useful on larger servers where there are thousands of names to sort through. Even if you blacklist somebody every day, after a year the addon is still filtering only a tiny fraction of the player population. I'm not sure this issue can be solved, either, because the problem is pulling any solution in two directions: in order to be useful it must share a lot of information widely but in order to be trustworthy it must put limits on how much and what kind of information is shared.

Xerian said...

Well there is an addon (I believe it is ora2 although I am not sure) that is also able to automatically disband a raid - this involves kicking people.

Anonymous said...

the auto-kick shouldn't be to hard, even with protected command.
You could just put it on a button and highlight it whenever there is someone you can kick -> hotkey -> done.
I'm more concerned about the part that a single person decides whether another one is blocked or not. I would suggest to change it to a kind of quick-consensus of the veterans. just like a vote in 5man.
another design issue is how the veterans get assigned. who manages the fixed list?
the last point you could add is an auto-lead function so that non-veterans promote veterans to lead.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: Regarding Andru's point about sabotage, they can drive there and sit there. They don't need to be in raid in order to hog vehicle slots.

Having said that, I agree with JG - my guess would be a quick hotfix that changes it from /raid to /bg instead. Given that it's a public environment, I don't think that Blizzard ever intended for random raid leaders to take raid control in a traditional sense.

Also - people can use General to equally stupid effect as Raid. I don't think your approach will actually do much.

Gevlon said...

@First anonymous: while he doesn't get honor from the kills we make, we also do not get honor from his kills. The same for objectives. The very point is that he is a leech and got everything by being carried by us.

@Ephemeron: you did not read yesterday's post careful enough. The people you mentioned performed real aggression. Social aggression (exclusion from our circles, calling names) do not harm people in reality. It does not stop them to achieve goals, it just stops them to be carried by us. It also doesn't stop them to form their own circles and by doing so, giving everyone the option to vote with their feet.

If I wrongfully believe that they are just useless M&S, their group will be more successful and soon everyone will leave me.

I also find the action of kicking a PR event: we show the people that - unlike many guilds that have a nice ruleset but they "make exceptions" - we really don't tolerate M&S, so joining us is an M&S-free action.

@Lujanera: the raid leader is the one-person leader of the raid. His blacklist matters. Also he can decide to add people to his trust list and accept their blacklist. If one of them wrongfully blacklist people, it's the RL's problem that he trusted in such person.

@Squishalot: while they can purposefully occupy a vehicles slot, they are currently doing the same. My claim is that they can't be more useless on purpose than they are already.

It is possible that Blizzard hotfix it. But that's at least a clear message to us: WG/Tol Barad belongs to the M&S, we shall avoid it like the plague or only go there once a week.

Visalyar said...

@Ephemeron: I think we´ll get a bit dramatic here...

The message by kicking the M&S is: "We don´t want you!" the same message is inside the guild- and raidinvite politics of endless RLs. When a RL kicks out a raider who hops into fires/void zones or agreesivly over aggros, I think nobody cares (okay maybe appreciates). Not taking clueless players into premade BG groups is also recommendet.

So whats the big deal kicking them out of the raid if they don´t obay the raids rules? They can form up themselves easily.

Please keep in mind it´s not about harming M&S, it´s about getting them to reason. They can contact the RL anytime an say that they will work as a teammember. Inside a team, by using a resonable language you can discuss tactics an strategy, but infight you should never question, but act with swiftness. When the given tactic was a failure you have to learn, but discussing tactics infight ist just lost time. That´s basic on premade BG groups.

I´d try the dramatic way...
I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Anonymous said...

"Please keep in mind it´s not about harming M&S, it´s about getting them to reason. They can contact the RL anytime an say that they will work as a teammember. Inside a team, by using a resonable language you can discuss tactics an strategy, but infight you should never question, but act with swiftness. When the given tactic was a failure you have to learn, but discussing tactics infight ist just lost time. That´s basic on premade BG groups."

WG is not a premade. I got kicked by gevlon for presenting a different point of view. I was not trolling, I was polite, and I was even following his orders. I was kicked anyway, out of spite. This is not the purpose of raid leaders in WG. Someone mentioned that gevlon will simply look like a power hungry bully on the server, that is already the case. Because of gevlon's actions, PuG members are looked down on.

If you honestly think that Blizzard will allow this add-on, I don't know what to say. Allowing people to make 'blacklists' that autokick people from WG? You have to be kidding me. You look just like stereotypical wow elitists.

Many of you have no idea how gevlon appears in game.

Campitor said...

Although I don't condone harmful aggression as a means to an end sometimes it is needed.

History is full of people who set out to change the world for the better (according to their definition of "better") through aggressive means. The vast majority of them are now universally reviled. Their message of change is long forgotten, but their oppression is all too well remembered.

Alexander the Great was one such person but yet when he is spoken about today its usually in positive terms in regards to his "military brilliance", etc. Most modern countries who were born of revolution also used violent means to achieve a just end but yet their founding fathers are spoken of fondly. Sometimes they only way to stop an idiot from doing you harm is to humiliate him and being aggressive. Although you can argue that a M&S isn't doing real harm by acting the M&S, he is still ruining the experience for others and helping you to lose the encounter.

In real life if you worked if a coworker was actively dragging down a project or being counterproductive to a task - what do you think would happen? If a bunch of kids were playing basketball and suddenly a moron ran out into the middle of the court, running around like a chicken and flapping his arms, what do you think the other kids would do to the chicken arm waving moron? Or how about the idiot who starts talking on his cell phone during a good movie? What do you think happens to the cell phone talking idiot? What Gevlon is doing, in my opinion, is no different than what anyone of us would do if we were sitting next to the cell phone talking idiot - unless of course you lack the mettle to speak your mind in the face of stupidity.

Yagamoth said...

"If I wrongfully believe that they are just useless M&S, their group will be more successful and soon everyone will leave me."

Even though that statement is most likely correct that they would leave you if you lost, you shouldn't neglect the possibility that you/a leader could kick/blacklist ~1 out of 10 wrongfully. Meaning: You kick way more M&S than 'others', but these 'others' do not even have a remote chance to form a proper group - Thus your group will always be the 'best' per definition and you can't lose.
People that want to win have to join your 'gang'.

My main question is: Who is it to decide, whether someone is an M&S and who's not?

Out of this results my main concern: How can anyone prove he is not M&S even though he may disagree with your opinion?

Somewhere you once wrote, that probably no one is 100% right or wrong. Classifying people says somewhat along the lines: That's how it is.

Loozerr said...

The idea is okay in theory but I wouldn't enjoy having the "obey me or else..." sort of atmosphere in WG.

Gevlon said...

@Yagamoth: answering that is a post I'm long planning. I'll post it on Tuesday or Wednesday

Visalyar said...

@Anonymus: "Many of you have no idea how gevlon appears in game."

Yes, that´s a good point, but I´ll be honest, I don´t care mouch. At last as mouch as he cares how I appear in the game. I think you can grade this down to zero since I´m on a german sever far away (and not involved in any of his projects).

What I´m interested in are ideas, philosophy and economic facts/theorys. I´m not into marrying him or giving him the state of my personal hero. I consider him as an intelligent person with some revolutionary ideas.

I can understand the difficulty of making differences between theory and practice. We´re discussing the theoretical usage of this addon and not some specific case of kicking raid members. If we do that we´ll be stuck here about 200 years only discussing every unclear moment.

I´d give the advice to you, that you get into an educated conversation with Gevlon about your WG tactics & strategys. Maybe you can learn from each other. If you want to stay on the base of pointing out failures, you will never be able to get any profit from each other an you should consider the /ignore.

I´ll quote Gevlon from yesterdays comment, since I think you could be the same person: "I never said I'm perfect. I was upset and saw another 0/12 noob doing nonsense. "

So he starts considering he could have misjudged you. The educated reply would be not attacking the possible failure, but replying on the possibility that the big flaw of this system is misjudgeing in special situations.

I´m not into defending anyone. I´m just giving another point of view (can´t believe I´ve got to write the obvious).

And to go further (sorry for the huge text) WG is NOT a premade, yes. But the raidgroup should be able to choose their members.
And since I remember correct you´re not disbandet from WG by being kicked out of the raid group. Correct me here please if I´m wrong, but we´re often in WG in a premate 3 of 5 man group to practice teamplay (season 5 until start season 8).

Anonymous said...

Why have it just for wintergrasp? Keep it generic so you can use it for a PuG raid. Let you enter your own kick reasons in a list stored as a drop down.

I can't say I find it interesting to kick people, however I would very much be interested in a feature that can scan your raid for offenders and warn you about them. It's hard to remember so many names and the reason I don't want to group with them. If you're going to be able to make notes on bad players, you should be able to also make notes on good players (or basically everyone). Being able to store alt names would be a plus too.

Healer24 said...

Yagamoth brings up an interesting philosophical point, though he didn't really word it in a way most people would recognize. It's basically a question of which philosophy do you follow: is it better that 10 guilty men go free in order to avoid wrongfully harming 1 innocent man, or is it better that no guilty men go free while wrongfully harming the one innocent man?

It seems to me that Gevlon prefers to follow the latter philosophy as his addon and strategy would remove 100% of the people he doesn't want to play with while occasionally wrongfully removing someone who really shouldn't have been removed.

Lilianne said...

That's the reason why I brought up the 'vote' or 'veteran consensus'. I also had once a discussion with Gevlon after a WG where I and some others worked on the towers instead of doing something else.
First he was kind of aggressive but in the end I believe we came to a mutual understanding.
The problem is this 'first reaction' which might lead to a kick for 'not obeying me' instead of 'ok, you see the situation different and therefore follow another strategy'.

Michael Young said...

I don't trust the trusted-list people. Giving anyone authority over other players creates pressure in them to adopt abusive practices. I suspect that were I in such a group, despite excellent play, a cooperative attitude, and proper spelling/grammar, I would be blacklisted for being a pleasant individual who enjoys chatting with friends about random stuff, and laughing at their jokes.

If I met you, Gevlon, I'd be hesitant to smile, suspecting it would make you angry and contemptuous of the friendly gesture. o.O

Also, I don't understand the M&S picture. Looking for porn isn't something that suggests you're an idiot or lazy. Stumbling on this site is clearly a mistake, but that's the search engine's failure, not the individual's.

Anonymous said...

I would love an addon like this just for raiding. I play on Thorium Brotherhood where the M&S run wild. Would help me keep up with who not to raid with.

Soge said...

An improvement would be that anyone that has the addon installed, even if outside the "trust list", would automatically leave the default raid and join another one in case the leader ain't on the trust list.

Andru said...

I am still saying that this is an absolutely terrible idea. Should someone be pissed at you enough, they may even report you for griefing for repeated kicks out of a blizzard automated matchmaking system.


Think about it. *You* do not own the WG raids. They're not *yours*. Blizzard will likely think you have no right of kicking those people out.

In BGs, the BG leader may not kick people out of the BG. In order to remove griefers, a majority of reports must be filed, and even then, there are ways to veto the reports if you're the one reported.

LFD provides more power with Vote Kick, requiring a simple majority for a kick to pass, only once, and only after some time has passed.

I know that WG matching is stupid. But there's a way around it. Make a pre-made and join with that.

Yucko said...

I have been a long time reader of your blog and gain a lot from it. I have used many of your anti M&S tactis to better my gameplay and so I am not in favour of M&S in any way other than making me rich on the AH. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

However .......

Ephemeron was 100% correct in how he likened you to a dictator. This project started if I remember correctly by people saying "QQ we never win" and so you set this up to show how an organised group can take on a big army. From this good idea and good intention you are now moving into the phase that Ephemeron has likened you to.

Wikipedia's definition of dictator is "A government controlled by one person or a small group of people. In this form of government the power rests with one person. Such power is often obtained forcibly."

This tactic to kick and not put up with people works in your guild or your raid, because you set the guild up, your guild is governed by rules that you define and you can rule with an iron fist because people have joined your guild/raid and have selected you as their leader.

However in these WG raids, the raids are not formed like they used to be. They are now automatic and so everyone who signed up for WG will now be autoplaced in the same raid. This means by you and your followers kicking people for not following your rules, you are now enforcing a non elected rule over every player = dictatorship.

Your ideal of social aggression is flawed because you are not ignoring someone, you are activly excluding them. The idea of social aggression if I have understood correctly is so that you can force people to improve and better themselves by not including them. However they are already in the raid when WG starts. They are in the group. You have to kick them. Social aggression works in your raids and guild because you have the final say and they agree to that by joining. This does not work in a server wide event and doing so will make you a bully and a dictator.

A simple solution would be when WG starts, someone from your guild says in raid, w/me for inv blar blar blar. That way good players can join your raid and then you can enforce these rules. That way the good players will want to be in your raid, and the M&S can mess about killing NPCs while getting ganked. It is not up to you to opt who gets to be in the blizz made raid, it is set up to allow everyone to get into it.

Gevlon said...

@Andru: BGs are different as I can decide to never go there with a random group, only with premade. Same with raids. I can experience both content without interference from the M&S. However I can't go to a different WG battle as there is only one WG battle exist. So someone will surely be griefed, either the good players by the M&S or the other way.

Rather them than us!

Visalyar said...

"Ephemeron was 100% correct in how he likened you to a dictator."

When Democratic coutrys go to war they turn into a dictatory since ancient greek.
Why?
Because you have to do decisions in short time and act united. Why is that so hard to get into WG?

If his opponents would group up he´ll never get the RL. His election is that way democratic. People who choose not to vote don´t group up and don´t get a choice.
I´d recomment that you drop the dictatorship-argument because the RL gets elected every battle. By the way it´s the usual RL-Hitler discussion we get at german servers when the RL does somethin more than 2 people don´t agree.

It´s easy to say that it´s no your fault because you didn´t vote for the RL, but when you don´t vote against him... ...well that´s what says I don´t care. Thats democracy.

Simple problem simple solution.

Wilson said...

@Visalyar-

"When Democratic coutrys go to war they turn into a dictatory since ancient greek."

Completely, horribly incorrect. Please read up your history and note that modern democracies have routinely managed to hold free and open elections during wartime. The British even voted Winston Churchill out of office while World War II was still ongoing. If the tide of the US Civil War had not turned, Abraham Lincoln certainly would have lost the election of 1864. When was the last time a dictator was voted out of office?

@Gevlon - As I have stated before, when I go to Bgs or WG I am there as my own agent. I don't owe anybody else there anything. If I am in the mood to work with a winning strategy I do, but if I am in the mood to blow off steam by simply whacking whatevers closest until I die, I do that. I have no doubt that I would quickly end up on your blacklist. I also have no doubt that when I reported you and your associates (using the conveniently provided list of names) for griefing that the GMs would agree, and probably commence with the banning.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

The thing is, you don't own Wintergrasp/Tol Barad. You don't own battlegrounds, and you most certainly don't own the groups that form because of the matchmaking systems in place.

Becoming a battleground leader when using the queue system is luck. Becoming a Wintergrasp raid leader when using the queue system is luck. Just because you got lucky does NOT give you the right to say that everyone that doesn't listen to you or annoys you in some way should be removed. You are just another player in the game, and the fact that you have more gold then other people do does NOT and will NEVER give you the right or even ability to remove them from an automatically formed PvP raid that only exists because of technical limitations.

Besides... Catapult zerg rushing is a fairly effective tactic for destroying towers if you have the numbers. Saying that people should be kicked from the raid for using them is a bit laughable.

Gevlon said...

@Wilson: using a feature is never bannable. The kick is there, if they don't want us to use it, they will disable it.

Also, if you just want to gank, why do you care if you are not in a raid? It doesn't stop you from doing it.

Visalyar said...

@Wilson:
- Dahir Riyale Kahin (Somalia)
- Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (Maldive Islands)

"British general elections, postponed during the war, were then held in July 1945. The wartime coalition government had broken apart after the defeat of Germany, and Churchill ran in the election as a Conservative."
This was only possible by the deafeat of Germany, since the elections go (as you can read) postponed... ...very democratic indeed... ...for most of Britan WWII endet with the defeat of Germany as main goal.
Please don´t insult me if you aren´t exactly correct.

Visalyar said...

Oh yes, sorry for forgetting the Lincoln statement...

"Perhaps most important was the fact that the election was held at all. Before this, no country had ever held elections during a military emergency. Lincoln himself said, "We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.""

As you see Lincoln decidet to have an election. Nobody forced him.

Wilson said...

@Gevlon,

You are confusing "bug exploitation" with "abuse of game mechanics":

"This category includes using/distributing game mechanics in a manner unintended by their design that ... Damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy"

I'd say your proposed add-on falls into the "damages their gameplay" category quite neatly. You own your guild, or your ICC raid, and can exclude whomever you want. You don't own the Wintergrasp raid channel.

As for why I would care? Doesn't fucking matter why. I have a right to be there and you have no right to exclude me.

Anonymous said...

Seems this addon would just be a tug of war between groups of people. I can see it now. Out of pure spite vets start getting added to lists and get auto kicked by a disgruntled group or groups of people when they get RL.

Gevlon said...

@Wilson: no bug exploitation or game mechanics abuse here. The "remove player" function is implemented exactly to remove players from raid.

You have the right to be in WG. No one violates that. It's NEVER been stated by Blizzard that you have the right to be in my raid.

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting Idea, and I do enjoy the concept, but there are a couple things I don't agree with inside your list of reasons.

"List of reasons:

1. Trolling: "You posted primitive language, abusive comments, or off-topic stuff on the raid chat. We don't need trolls"

-I can't argue this one.

2. Being unresponsive: "You did not respond to requests of veteran players. While you can disagree, simply ignoring strategy is unacceptable"

-There is no decent way to tell a good player apart from a bad player. When you have 30 people whispering you asking you to do something, at some point you just start ignoring them, mainly because (in my experience) when people tell you to do something in a place like WG, it is generally wrong (why aren't you making a train/stacking like the rest of us??? LOLOLOL NOOB).

3. Being suicidal: "You rushed into the enemy alone, dying pointlessly. Currently you are a waste of tenacity".

-This could easily be mistaken for martyrdom; early in the game this is bad, since it will give the enemy ranks, but if you're late in a game, and defending something, constantly running into the enemy slows them down by a lot, since the whole team of 30+ players feel it's necessary to chase the single player and eradicate them from the base; which wastes their valuable time. Of course this strategy fails if the whole team does it, it's really a role meant for a small player base and at the right times.

4. Being anarchist: "You can play for fun, but your ways damages our fun. So have fun alone!""

-No argument.

Of course all of these are just experiences from my server alone; I play US so I can't participate with you or see what WG is like on your server.

What I really would like to know, is how would you deal with this situation in accordance to the addon, I can very well see these situations happening:

Trusted player A bans player C for suicide runs.

player C is unbanned by trusted player B after explaining his strategy/what he was doing

Player A bans player C for suicide runs.

-or-

Player A is doing something abstract, a strategy never seen before but one that could work (ie: hiding behind a tree with a demo).

Veteran player B asks what he is doing, player A explains.

Veteran player C asks what he is doing, player A explains.

Veteran player D asks what he is doing, player A is tired of explaining and ignores him; Player A gets kicked.


both of these situations have more or less a 'loop'. How do you fix that?

Wilson said...

@Visalyar-

I did not insult you, I said you were wrong. There is a difference. Also, your (unnamed) source is incorrect. The United Kingdom held parliamentary elections throughout the Napoleonic Wars, resulting in several changes in Prime Minister and ruling party. Unless you want to claim that being at war with the entire continent of Europe was not a "military emergency", which I'm sure would come as quite a surprise to the people of the time.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymus: "Many of you have no idea how gevlon appears in game."

Yes, that´s a good point, but I´ll be honest, I don´t care mouch. At last as mouch as he cares how I appear in the game. I think you can grade this down to zero since I´m on a german sever far away (and not involved in any of his projects).

What I´m interested in are ideas, philosophy and economic facts/theorys. I´m not into marrying him or giving him the state of my personal hero. I consider him as an intelligent person with some revolutionary ideas."


Theoretically, total dictatorships, communism and libertarianism works. Corruption, abuse of power, imperfect or incomplete knowledge, all that matters and keeps those things from being implemented. They matter.

"I can understand the difficulty of making differences between theory and practice. We´re discussing the theoretical usage of this addon and not some specific case of kicking raid members. If we do that we´ll be stuck here about 200 years only discussing every unclear moment."

Except he's looking for someone to code it, it's not theoretical, just not yet implemented.

"I´d give the advice to you, that you get into an educated conversation with Gevlon about your WG tactics & strategys. Maybe you can learn from each other. If you want to stay on the base of pointing out failures, you will never be able to get any profit from each other an you should consider the /ignore.

I´ll quote Gevlon from yesterdays comment, since I think you could be the same person: "I never said I'm perfect. I was upset and saw another 0/12 noob doing nonsense. "

So he starts considering he could have misjudged you. The educated reply would be not attacking the possible failure, but replying on the possibility that the big flaw of this system is misjudgeing in special situations."


That was yesterday's post, today he's putting words in the guy's mouth. Yesterday was "I'm not perfect and could be wrong", today it's "you must be wrong, because it couldn't be me". He's not half as logical as he claims to be and even from this blog I've always gotten the impression he was extremely moody and merely goes to unusually long lengths to rationalize it afterward. The other anon's experience says he's even more so in game where he lacks the benefit of self editing.

"And to go further (sorry for the huge text) WG is NOT a premade, yes. But the raidgroup should be able to choose their members.
And since I remember correct you´re not disbandet from WG by being kicked out of the raid group. Correct me here please if I´m wrong, but we´re often in WG in a premate 3 of 5 man group to practice teamplay (season 5 until start season 8).""


The core issue is that the automatically put together WG group isn't their raid group, it's essentially public domain that includes everyone. If Gevlon's crew said they're forming their own raid group for non-idiots, dropped from the raid themselves, then started a separate raid group, there would be no problem. This is blindingly obvious to me, that it hasn't come up yet simply tells me that the people involved either aren't as smart as they claim to be or they know exactly where the issue is and are being dishonest because they want to abuse it.

Anonymous said...

@Gev

By my raid do you mean one you created or the raid everyone is put in to when WG starts?

Anonymous said...

Its not YOUR raid, it's everyones. What about Raid Leaders who remove anyone from WG who is in The PuG, just because of their association with you? Thats fair enough, right? It is their raid after all.

Blizzard also gives me the ability to spam channels with abuse, i dont do it because it is pathetic. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Vesoom said...

I just have a nit to pick with Visalyar:

"Lincoln himself said, "We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election..."

This quote in no way implies that Lincoln had the power or ability to forego or postpone the election. Lincoln himself even said, IF it COULD, implying the opposite of your assertion, that it can not or would not cause us to forego or postpone the election.

Visalyar said...

Saying you´d insult me is caused by my lacking skills in english language I apologise for that.

"This quote in no way implies that Lincoln had the power or ability to forego or postpone the election. Lincoln himself even said, IF it COULD, implying the opposite of your assertion, that it can not or would not cause us to forego or postpone the election." (maye he saw a revolution coming IF he´d delay the election or maybe he was moral bound on democacy?)
"The United Kingdom held parliamentary elections throughout the Napoleonic Wars, resulting in several changes in Prime Minister and ruling party." (you apologize if I´m not willing to discuss the whole human history here. I´m referring to that pint later on...)

Okay, we an play this game days on, could we agree here? (if you want to take this further I´ll give you an fresh email address where we can take this on but I´ve been in that debate before)
I´m admitting that I used the wrong words, it should have been this:
"When Democratic coutrys go to war they give their leader special rights to !almost! rule as an Dictator." (If you disagree here that´ll be something for email, too)

So my point is, and that´s the relevant shit not the historical chitchat we where picking out. It´s that in times wenn fast decisions have to be made (war, wargroups, military orders) a single person is a better leader than a dozend of debating "people".

I´d like to hear what of a more "proper" solution you´d have. I hear the claim that taking over command and getting rid of the "unwillig to learn" or "I don´t follow you"´s is an "evil" and dictatoric act. I´d rather say its efficient and I think we should focus on that, I´m sorry that I started a turn into the wrong direction, this was also my fault.
(If now somebody claims I´m retreating because I´m to face an argumental defeat we could have 200+ posts here and I don´t think any of us want that kind of fussy shit, so I´ll ignore that and refer to the email-offer again)

Visalyar said...

"Theoretically, total dictatorships, communism and libertarianism works. Corruption, abuse of power, imperfect or incomplete knowledge, all that matters and keeps those things from being implemented. They matter."
Raidguilds are often total dictatorships raidgroups also. WoW is bound to personalitys who take ethically doubtful positions. That this is not the optimum is quite right but utopia is not in oure reach as long as we keep to be selfish... ...just my 2 cents about that...

"Except he's looking for someone to code it, it's not theoretical, just not yet implemented."

Yes, but the art to use it is practical use. If he cooses to kick you because he doesn´t like your hairstyle well, yes that´s shit. But theoretical we want to use it to keep M&S out of our raids.

"The other anon's experience says he's even more so in game where he lacks the benefit of self editing."

Okay but do you think it´s clear to Gevlon you´re not the same person since you have the same "identity" here.

On the last part:
As far as I can interpret Gevlon, he´s trying to educate and find potentally good players. And he wants to motivate M&S. Kicking people out of the raids seems to motivate. A motivatedt team would be of benefit for all members.
But we can agree at the point that sacrifice few for the good of many is far from perfect. But maybe it´s just a step into the right direction? who knows...

Bristal said...

Interesting that you seem to blame your readers for not sending you "proper morons".

It's like the military dictator who screams at his lieutenants for not bringing him any revolutionaries to publically punish, when there are in reality no revolutionaries to punish.

You know what those lieutenants will do? Find revolutionaries.

Is it possible you are fighting an enemy that exists only in your mind?

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: "@Squishalot: while they can purposefully occupy a vehicles slot, they are currently doing the same. My claim is that they can't be more useless on purpose than they are already."

I'm impressed by the amount of discussion you're actually participating on this topic. You should do this more often.

My point (and that of Andru's as well, I assume) is that you're not solving anything. They'll be just as useless. You'll still need to put up with their trolling. They will still hinder your performance just as much as if they were in your raid. You are undertaking actions that result in no net benefit.

So what's the point? Your return on investment is negligible, and quite probably negative. And, if I may say, highlights how social aggression is not good strategy for dealing with such problems.

Vesoom said...

@Visalyar,

I was simply disagreeing with the conclusion you came to based on the quote you posted. I actually agree with pretty much everything you said in your last post.

"in times when fast decisions have to be made (war, wargroups, military orders) a single person is a better leader than a dozen of debating "people"."

In the US anyway, that's what the president does. War decisions are not made democratically. Presidents are elected democratically, and are empowered to make quick unilateral decisions (yes, some checks and balance...) representing the people.

I agree that one leader is best, and agree that that would improve your odds in WG. I'm not totally sold on Gevlon's social aggression, but I have confidence that if it doesn't work there'll be a post about it.

Anonymous said...

So... I have a blacklist of few people. Battle starts, the addon compares blacklist to my current raid composition and executes /kick for blacklisted players. The kick-function is there and it can be used. Comes GM saying otherwise, there is no use for this add-on and one should do something else as stated by Gevlon in comments. Nothing to see here then. Shoo. Though, at the moment, this very present day I can manually use kick to disband my whole WG raid and afterwards feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If it cannot be automated, the confirmation box appears as in auctioneer. (Do you wanna kick Ihazpurblez?) However if Im not the raidleader I can see if the current leader is on my trusted list. If he is, all is good.

If the RL isn't in my elite group and refuses to pass leadership, I can form another raid. Addon then compares the people in WG/TB and whispers everyone but blacklisted to join in elite group. This will probably rip everything apart but there really is no other option except staying in the horribly driven facade of fail.

There could be a gatherer-like share function of players, nodes, where they have values 0, 1 and 2. (MetS, not classified, trusted). List can then be shared among the trusted players as schemed below. However updating should be done after the battle.

In elite raid, after the battle the RL will get lists from players who have edited their own lists during/after the battle, and in return updates other players lists after the info is compiled.

There should always be some sort of "overseeing" elite player/group who/which upkeeps the updated masterlist. This kind of add-on cannot live without supervising. Otherwise there will be several different lists which can (and will because some elite players are offline during list update anyways) cause troubles among revised players because they get kicked after being forgived. ("but he promised D,=" ) The elite list holder group (ELHG) will however minimize these incidents.

Info distribution could be done by raidleaders addon wisping to the currently online trusted players that it wants update the list (if the addon interface needs to be active or something clicked to make it work as it was in gatherer few patches ago) and then share the list with players like in gatherer. The new list is then compared to the old. As every change in players list has a timestamp, so the most current value (0,1,2) will stand. The update can also be targeted to one player only (info to raidleader).

Only the god-elitists (me and my buddy if-he-is-no-drunk) have a possibility to elect 2 "trusted", because the infiltrators distributing forgived lolkidzlist can fuck the list up and on the other hand status 1 "not classified" can play among trusted elites anyways. They dont have the power to kick but benefit from the labors of addon -wielding elites as long as they behave. Addon should keep backup lists of some sort. Forgives should have limit. I have a feeling that Gevlon isn't Jesus.

So the social experiment must be controlled by the small group of elite players who are decent strategists and capable to gain reputation on server. The status 1 players are the gray mass who can play with elites as long as they dont do anything funny (no pun). Zeroes can play snakes and ladders unless they repent their sins and even after that it can take time to have good standing in all lists (and vice versa).

Technically... not letting an elite to become RL will make you zero, because obviously you don't want to win this shit. In the end only elites and their collaborators remain, making sure that elite becomes RL in every WG/TB.

Optimally theres lots of trusted players who follow simple strategies and win battles. Others are also ok players, not able to form a strategy but capable of following advices. The addon will keep it this way. Rest of the population has been shot at the dawn.

FoF said...

Did you ever consider the fact to most people you are trolling? You created a guild of a subset of a larger community (meaning you are in the minority) and decided to force your rules on to everyone else. To the general community this could range from trolling to being on a power trip (or abusing whatever power you have) to straight up abuse of game mechanics.
None of these statements have to be M&S (an aside this term kinda bothers me because if you are communicating in any shape or form you are being social) and are all inherently accurate.
As an MMORPG this is an inherently social game (see deserter debuffs) so if you want something without social aspects you should probably avoid these type of games.
Your definition of trolling is yours alone yet you strive to force upon anyone else. Your plan on how to win WG is yours alone, it may be the best plan but you are not the sole deciding force of what way to do this.

Anonymous said...

So you claim that removing the M&S from your raid group changes absolutely nothing, yet you do it regardless. It either hinders their gameplay, and would most likely lead to them attempting to grief you back (these are socials we're talking about), or it does not hinder their gameplay at all, which makes it a power trip (which is a very social thing for you to do). These two things are mutually exclusive, as if you aren't hindering them at all, you're doing it purely to flex your muscles

Anonymous said...

Raidguilds are often total dictatorships raidgroups also. WoW is bound to personalitys who take ethically doubtful positions. That this is not the optimum is quite right but utopia is not in oure reach as long as we keep to be selfish... ...just my 2 cents about that...

There's no real reason to tolerate unethical behavior in a WoW guild. I've left guilds for that type of thing in the past and they're ticking time bombs for collapse, it's better to leave early.

Part of the problem is less selfishness and more a matter of scale. In something like a 10 man group, it's fairly simple to build familiarity with each person's differences and capabilities while also directly observing the fight. Kiting 20 horde away from an objective looks identical to road fighting on the minimap. I've run into no lack of AB generals that scream and pout about take 3 and hold, which, while generally a good strategy, gets directly countered by roaming zergs that have to be handled differently.

Yes, but the art to use it is practical use. If he cooses to kick you because he doesn´t like your hairstyle well, yes that´s shit. But theoretical we want to use it to keep M&S out of our raids.

If I don't think Gevlon is capable of using it responsibly, then it's still a terrible idea so long as the plan is to put him in charge of it. There's not much more to say than that.

Theoretically, the Ford Pinto is a fantastic vehicle, it just has a tendency to explode in a collision. That doesn't mean I want to ride in one until they fix the gas tank.

Okay but do you think it´s clear to Gevlon you´re not the same person since you have the same "identity" here.

For all I know my IP address is logged every time I hit the submission button. If my points are valid, it shouldn't even matter either way.

Let's flip this around, how do I know you and the other supportive comments on this page (including other anonymous posts) aren't Gevlon posting under an assumed name? He's even said in an older post not too long ago that it's ok to lie to promote yourself so long as it's unverifiable. It'd just be too paranoid to be a practical belief.

On the last part:
As far as I can interpret Gevlon, he´s trying to educate and find potentally good players. And he wants to motivate M&S. Kicking people out of the raids seems to motivate. A motivatedt team would be of benefit for all members.
But we can agree at the point that sacrifice few for the good of many is far from perfect. But maybe it´s just a step into the right direction? who knows...


Games are played for fun and Gevlon's never claimed to be in the majority, he wouldn't need the mod if he was. I don't see how you could call this the sacrifice of a few for the majority when it's pretty blatantly a minority trying to force their views on the majority because they're part of some self-proclaimed elite.

Which is still funny as hell to me, honestly. As I said in response to yesterday's post, there are much more competitive and skill based games out there people have moved on to if they want winning to remain "meaningful". Tyrannical king of the kiddie league, here. I'm not sure how many times you need to proclaim your superiority over "lolkids" before you realize comparing yourself to 12 year olds isn't setting a very high standard for someone who's probably well into their twenties.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: even if it's given by luck, it's mine. Just like the /roll that gives me the loot. Others also have their chance. The post exactly mention what will happen if some M&S gets the leadership.

@Bristal: go to a random BG and tell me again that there are no more morons in the game!

@Squishalot: you would be right if they would play for some kind of internal fun. But they are socials so their fun is coming from peer respect/acceptance. Maybe they sabotate once or twice. But they won't have fun sabotating because there won't be audience. They will be sitting in a catapult in the middle of nowhere and can't even be sure that anyone noticed them! Soon "i don feel like going wg itz kinda lame lol"

@Anonymous: kick from the raid does nothing in REALITY. However the point is that the M&S is social and lives in a social world, not in the real one. So kicking is like placing a woodoo doll to the door. The normal people ignore it, but the morons who believe it are scared away.

Espoire said...

Along the lines of Ephemeron's post, despite that I'm capable of producing such an addon, interested in using its success- if any- as part of my real life resume, and interested by the technical challenge of it, (sharing data between multiple players' copies of the addon is something I've never done before,) I'm wary of doing so, for fear of letting such a monster loose.

I feel such an addon, were it to rise to prevalence, could do as much damage to the community as gearscore has.

Visalyar said...

@Vesoom: Good to read that an good that I could correct the misleading statment.

@Anonymous: I´ve been in a very successful guild in BC (my alliance days) and we were very succesful in BGs. We hat about a 95% winning rate.
Why?
Because everybody knew what to do is part one and the most essencial part. BUT the second upcoming is to accept orders. It´s the same way in raids.
When you think you know better and get kicked, well meaybe the RL was wrong...
...but he takes responsibility by standing up for the whole group. He can lose his reputation by using wrong tactics or simply make wrong desicions.
You could judge him by calling him a dictator or an evil person. But getting the picture that he wants to do the best for those who are willing to proceed is rarely seen.These so calles "generals" of AB who scream out fancy 3 base holding tactics are simply the same as the EJ-Fanatics. Repoducing theoretical tactics in ervery situation. Yes they have no real worth (most of them).

The ford-problem is a manufacturing failure. It´s not produced by the user, so it goes another way... ...but yes I understand what you want to say: producing a relative mighty tool could always be misused. But the "law" if it is ok to have it on WoW or not is up to Blizzard.

In the Identity-problem, yes you are right. I could be... ...I can prove not to be by simply answering in german since he can´t speak german? give you an confirmed charakter? well, I think you are right to drop this point.

I look at the pint in a different way. If you join WG you are joining to win. That´s it. That´s Blizzard´s defenition of joining any not specially announced dungeon, raid or BG. So if gevlons goal is to win WG he wants the good of (theoretical) many. The (theoretical) few who don´t care if they win or not are simply leeching. Leeching is a confirmed reason (by blizzard) to get kicked from any group or raid. Staying in dungeons / raids / BGs by using some glitches or something is called harassment by Blizzards general business terms.

"I'm not sure how many times you need to proclaim your superiority over "lolkids" before you realize comparing yourself to 12 year olds isn't setting a very high standard for someone who's probably well into their twenties."

Yes theoretical a very interesting term... ...until i found some 20 to 50 year old "lolkids" (the guild I joined for further research). Why do I compare myself to any other player anyway? Why des anyone do PvP or competitive PvE? Well competition is in human nature.
An I don´t pretend to be "superior" I pretend that they have to be educated. For that reason I have to get the difference between them and "us(?)". It´s not about making a happy world, but make progress.

@addon-thingie: you can get the confirmation for kicks done by an macro gevlon posted here some days ago. So the confirmation shall be no more than spamming the "confirm"-button

Visalyar said...

@Vesoom: Yes proper expression is essential for debate. thank´s for pointing me into the right direction.

@Anonymous: (hope it´s ok not to requite but simply put numbers up)

1) Yes total dictatorship without an ear for your members is fatal. We agree at that point.
But a leader who takes responsibility and risks his reputation should at least get some appreciation. When he listens to alternative tactics and dbates about that, then he´s probably a good leader.
The yelling AB-Selfcalled Generals who quote "almighty" tactics in any situation are simpls the same kind of drones as the EJ-Fanatics are. Lacking of interest or insight.

2) I´ll ignore the vehicle-thing because its a manufaction failure. But when you say you don´t want a maniac to have an GMG, then, yes I understand.
If the addon will be "judged" as an "danger" Blizzard will simply ban it or make it useless (no more WG kicks). (What we think of Gevlon is pretty irrelevant because it will be accesable to everyone)

3) Yes right at that point, I could try to prove and you are right to drop that point.

4) The interesting part.
I´ll try to make this one short...
...everyone who joins a regular dungeongroup, raid or BG (such as WG) is willing to "wing" or get the job done. Leeching is, as Blizzard says, "illegal" that´s why you can kick-vote in dungeons and report in BGs. Leeching by using some glitches or other ways is, in Blizzards term, harassment. So (theoretical) the majority wants to win and only some "illegal" leechers want to have a "catapul-train of death". If there are more who don´t care than those who want to win, then they simply violate the "laws" given by Blizzard.

Comparing myself to a 12 year old "lolkid" would me harsh, yes. But I´ve already met 18-50 year old "lolkid"-guils (they don´t recute anyone under 18 to tell sexual jokes on /g).
As you might or moght not know I´m very interested into changin the whole M&S thing. I want them to change mind and I want to encourage them. But how to do that? I tird to praise them get, flame them, get them into an educatet coversation and some things more... ...maybe you could tell me a way to encurage them, that doesn´t take me 16 hours a day, if not I keep um exploring the diferences between "them" and "us(?)".

Anonymous said...

I don't think you are getting this quite right. Gevlon doesn't kick people for leeching. If someone was just sitting at the base camp/fortress? Yes, kick them, by all means. Gevlon however kicks people for merely saying 'yeah I play to have fun'. Seriously. He'll kick people for disagreeing with him, and for not following his orders.

Fighting on the road is sometimes acceptable, as is fighting on your own. However gevlon will look at the map, make a snap decision and berate/ kick someone. They are not leeching, they are not "lolkids", gevlon just decided they were worthy of his derision.

Gevlon, 'winning' raid leader in WG still does not mean you are actually in charge. It's not a premade BG, how is that hard to understand? This add-on would turn into a pointless war. If someone you disliked got RL, they would boot you. It would all depend on which 'side' got RL for any given match. Pointless.

Kicking someone from WG does inconvenience people, a lot. They are kicked from the zone, and on zoning back in, they automatically rejoin the raid to be kicked again. Can you not see this is wrong? Bear in mind that these people have likely done nothing wrong, they have just fallen foul of gevlon's arbitrary laws. Is WG really worth all this? I think your hatred for "the social" has clouded your judgement.

Visalyar said...

saying: 'yeah I play to have fun' and keeping my team from winning is leeching in defenition.
Disagreeing with the RL should be always okay, but, as I still claim, it is counterproductive infight. A kick because of that may be harsh but in raids I always accept that. WG is something else, yes, but maybe it´s all about communication...
...to keep the RL in mind that you are on a duty.

A raidkick is pretty hard to call derision... ...I´d agree if he´d post the people on this blog or pronounce them on /2. I´d call it banishment.
Fighting on your own is sometimes needet, to dirstract the enemy or take a stregic valuable position, yes. But said decisions can easily go wrong.

I´d try to encurage you to listen to Gevlon... ..if you follow his orders and WG is lost, you have a mouch better agument for further debates. By just saying 'yeah I play to have fun' and not even testing his tactics you could be consideret as ignorant as you claim him to be.

In the easy way to say it, what could you loose?

Anonymous said...

I do follow his lead, his tactics are usually sound and what I would be doing anyway. You can play wow to have fun ( it's a game!!! What else reason is there?!) and still win. This is what I have been trying to say, I was kicked for saying that, while playing well that's my point. Gevlon is doing this to spite and grief people who don't obey his every command, or dare say something he disagrees with.

Put this into perspective, it's a game.

Visalyar said...

Chess, foodball or other compative games are also played for fun. But, well everyone has to gown way.
And I think I got the picture now. The sentence "I play for fun." gets a deep cut into competative players. It´s interpreted as "I don´t care if we win or loose I want to have fun, so shut up!" It´s a classical misapprehension between two different attitudes.

Anonymous said...

As per above, being kicked has many downsides, heals, hk, share quest, etc. In particular, the odd persone outside the raid group is the only person in any BG who is not in my raid/healbot frames.

So much so that the winning strat is to use an alt of the other side and if they get RL to kick everyone ASAP. In fact there was a griefer RL who kicked everyone upon entering WG; we had one of our rare losses. If you are going to use /kick to help yourself, sabotaging the enemy is the best idea.

In a rated BG, a rated/winning% RL is fine. In WG now, kick is used far more for griefing than gameplay and I am surprised it is still in. Until then, your /kick is more effective when you are the enemy RL.

Anonymous said...

You could always use ORA3 with its keyword invite system - set up the keyword, then it will invite everyone that whispers you. All the Morons you put on your ignore list, kick them manually, when they whisper you, the system ignore will stop ORA3 from inviting them.

Anonymous said...

"And I think I got the picture now. The sentence "I play for fun." gets a deep cut into competative players. It´s interpreted as "I don´t care if we win or loose I want to have fun, so shut up!" It´s a classical misapprehension between two different attitudes."

I see what you mean, but that was one quote from a larger conversation, please don't take it out of context. Believe me', I like winning too, but the fun Is in the challenge. My main is hordeside. If I just wanted to win, I would just play him and steamroll alliance. This lead on to PuG members accusing me 'loving to lose'. And the quote from Glotan "if you don't play to win you have never won anything in your life". (not overly sure what that means, but glotan has admitted on here that he was upset by this point). I was playing to win, this was just a strawman.

Again, playing a game for fun does not mean you don't want to win (or are not capable of winning). I would argue that if you are playing this game for reasons other than enjoyment, you need to reevaluate things.

I do have some respect for you for putting these comments up here gevlon, I will give you that.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous: I´ve been in a very successful guild in BC (my alliance days) and we were very succesful in BGs. We hat about a 95% winning rate.
Why?
Because everybody knew what to do is part one and the most essencial part. BUT the second upcoming is to accept orders. It´s the same way in raids.
When you think you know better and get kicked, well meaybe the RL was wrong...
...but he takes responsibility by standing up for the whole group. He can lose his reputation by using wrong tactics or simply make wrong desicions.
You could judge him by calling him a dictator or an evil person. But getting the picture that he wants to do the best for those who are willing to proceed is rarely seen.These so calles "generals" of AB who scream out fancy 3 base holding tactics are simply the same as the EJ-Fanatics. Repoducing theoretical tactics in ervery situation. Yes they have no real worth (most of them).


The WG and BG raid leaders are selected mostly at random, not by the people that play under them.

People could leave a raid leader with a bad reputation, but re-organizing takes time. WG takes a half hour at most, frequently less if the keep is taken or towers are destroyed. If it takes 5-10 minutes to rally under a new leader and condense into one raid group, the battle is going to be half over and probably lost because your ability to play is crippled during that time.

Splitting off to join a separate raid started by gevlon would be an actual choice and he already has guild members that would seed the new raid group.


@Anonymous: kick from the raid does nothing in REALITY. However the point is that the M&S is social and lives in a social world, not in the real one. So kicking is like placing a woodoo doll to the door. The normal people ignore it, but the morons who believe it are scared away.


There are multiple gameplay effects mentioned on this page. It disables the ability to give or receive healing or monitor debuffs, it also locks people out of quest completion.

What are the effects for someone that wants to show off? They can still brag in /yell, and become even more visible for it. They're still visible on the minimap and game field. It does nothing socially. Social pressure comes from either a majority or because they otherwise value the opinion of the person they're following. This really doesn't do much more than flag you as a douchebag that's abusing a broken system where it's easier to ignore the person because the game mechanics will shoot you in the foot if you do anything else.

My faction dominates in WG, but I had a guildmate that would disband the raid, cause a loss, and enjoy the hate whispers he got. Nothing really happened because they couldn't stop him from getting assigned raid lead and got kicked as revenge occasionally, but not often because he was essentially harmless when not arbitrarily placed in the raid lead position and not actually even a bad player as long as he was kept out of any position of griefing/trolling. It's a very east niche to abuse.

Ephemeron said...

"Social aggression (exclusion from our circles, calling names) do not harm people in reality. It does not stop them to achieve goals, it just stops them to be carried by us. It also doesn't stop them to form their own circles and by doing so, giving everyone the option to vote with their feet."

"Virtual aggression" (sabotaging raids, leeching honor, stealing accounts, launching DOS attacks) does not harm people. It does not stop them from fulfilling goals in reality. All it does it prevent them from collecting meaningless pixels and fake achievements.

"Theological aggression" (visibly defiling the symbols of others' religion) does not harm people. It does not kill, wound or deprive them of their property. All it goes is demonstrate the ridiculousness of their baseless superstitions.

Bullshit justifications, all of the above (including yours). If you deliberately set out to cause anguish and distress to other people, you are an aggressor, no matter what fancy labels you attach to the term.

Claiming that your activity cause "no real harm" just because your personal values happen to be different and such an attack wouldn't harm you doesn't absolve you; it just marks you as a coward and hypocrite. Like a playground bully who got caught and is trying to weasel out by claiming that his humiliating pranks were just harmless jokes.

If you intend to wage war against the socials, please have the courage to openly declare your intent. Don't hide behind transparent excuses. Lying to trade chat populace is acceptable, but lying to your readers is plain insulting, and lying to yourself is a recipe for disaster.

Yagamoth said...

I finally found a way to express in words what I was thinking about:

I don't like to concept of "Guilty unless proven otherwise"

I do like your basic idea, Gevlon. But my suggestion is to make it 'the other way around'. Let the addon make your whitelisted people leave the WG raid and invite them afterwards.
For other raids I do not see any problems though.

Cyrell said...

Addons like this are what destroyed the DotA I used to love and play. The WC3 banlist ended up being used not against really crap players and quitters, but anyone who the guy didn't like. I couldn't play on the US servers after it came out because people would insta-kick me for my European IP and then I couldn't play on the EU servers either, because half the M&S using it didn't know that GB was Great Britain. I can only imagine the misery players in Hungary must have felt, or countries like Slovenia, where most people have 10MB broadband Internet connections but were assumed to be high latency "Russian trash".

I hate these kind of addons. If you want to win WG then keep doing what you're doing and organize the raids the way you are and making a name for yourself on the server. If you want to play WG on your own terms - well then you can set up a private server like loads of college kids I know do so they can play for fun within their community.

Visalyar said...

"I see what you mean, but that was one quote from a larger conversation, please don't take it out of context."
Yes, exactly that´s the big point. This "I play for fun" in any way (no matter if "lolz I play 4fun!" or "calm down this should be fun" always hits like a hammer. By that way it is always taken as out of context.
I´ll tell you why, saying "I play for fun!" is a kill-argument. It stops the whole debate and says "I play for fun, thats my way, and I don´t want do do this over any more." Well maybe you don´t want to say that, but that´s what gets in my mind...
...naturally I can´t speak for Gevlon but I assume it go´s the same way.

"I would argue that if you are playing this game for reasons other than enjoyment, you need to reevaluate things."

Especially when you pay 13 euro... ...but since playing over 3 years I started to hate the M&S for being pure waste of my time, no matter where.
I´ll get some real-life comparison:
You´re walking down the street and somebody clings round your leg and screams "drag me Asshole!"
Well, thats the way I feel in almost every BG / Raid or ~third dungeon. Well naturally not everyone who I meet there acts like this but in every 25 man raid and every BG I get somebody like this.

And, naturally, I want them to stop that shit. I don´t care if they simply vanish or improve... ...I want to have fun, you know.

"I do have some respect for you for putting these comments up here gevlon, I will give you that."
Aw, I hope you don´t mix it up in thinking I´m Devlon you can send me an IGM at Durotan anytime (well just guess the charname), that´s my home.

Anonymous said...

""I do have some respect for you for putting these comments up here gevlon, I will give you that."
Aw, I hope you don´t mix it up in thinking I´m Devlon you can send me an IGM at Durotan anytime (well just guess the charname), that´s my home."

Eh what are you talking about? I meant gevlon, the writer of this blog. He has to approve these comments. I have no interest in sending you mail.

No one was dragging me in WG, I am a perfectly capable player. I just don't enjoy being insulted by a manchild for no reason. That's why this all started for me, I told several PuG members to stop being insulting and arrogant.

I don't like carrying people either, but it's a fact of life playing MMOs. I am sure you play with people better than you, and therefore they do the same to you. Play a single player game if you don't want the pros and cons of dealing with people.