Seriously... it is such a simple solution until you can get a better fix in place. Doesn't have to be an ongoing thing, just a temporary adjustment to procedures until a more appropriate fix can be put in place.
There is absolutely NO reason for anyone to sit around AFK in this game. All it is doing is killing the game for those who actually want to PLAY and not sit idle all day.
They can't set up a Bazaar---retainers handle that, and there is no need to watch a spawn area over night to catch the time of death for a rare monster like we had to do in XI. Why are they standing around all day, often times in the cities/sanctuaries at that?
Please, someone explain why in the world, given the current situation, are they being allowed to sit around all day doing nothing but preventing otherwise active players from logging in?
I am dead serious. It would be interesting to see an official representative of SE to try to justify that in light of the current situation.
Not only will this benefit the players and calm the angry masses, it will provide a superb opportunity for you guys to work in little tweaks every day as you have fixes ready to implement. This will go a LONG way towards instilling confidence with the players because not only will they see you addressing a very BIG problem, but they will also see you being proactive in fixing things on a regular basis.
It all leads up to creating a much more enjoyable experience for everyone.
And before anyone calls this a lame approach---it is nothing new, and has been very successful for other games. I have been in several that ran regular, scheduled shutdowns for basic maintenance. Everyone has advance notice of when it will happen, and for how long the game will be unavailable, so no one has an expectation of getting on during that time.
Again, this has multiple benefits--both for allowing players access to the game and potentially increasing stability in general, but also provides a host of positives for SE.
The only con may be the fact they would be rebooting more often than they may like to, but hopefully this would only need to be a temporary fix until they have more appropriate measures to put in place so they wouldn't need to continue flushing the AFK offenders in mass like this.
Please, SE seriously consider the potential in this approach. Pull in your IT guys on this too, not just the Dev's and Exec's.
Players, please like or /sign if you approve, and feel free to add additional thoughts/solutions as well.
Please, no trolling. We need to keep this conversation going in the right direction in the hopes that it might garner SE's consideration.
Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.