Quote Originally Posted by DDkiki View Post
Sexual harassment in mmorpg. Lol. Just blacklist ppl and stop being spoiled snowflake.
This attitude is exactly why victims are slow to come forward.

Blacklisting doesn't always work. Some are unfortunate enough to come across those who make alts, buy extra accounts, make several skype/discord accounts, and use their manipulative ways to get personal information such as email addresses from mutual friends. It can be especially difficult to get a player to leave you alone if the majority of their abuse was done outside the game. GM's can't act on information that isn't from the game.

Though it seems that this sort of harassment is typically done by guys, girls sometimes do it too. I encountered two who did to friends of mine, one who engaged in the stalker behaviour in the above paragraph. Harassment doesn't discriminate. It could happen to anyone.

I have personally experienced harassment completely based on my gender. There have been many incidents in which players who barely acknowledged my existence did a 180 when they found out I'm female, and bombarded me with offers of help, gifts, often inappropriate compliments and very probing conversation. Others were more clever. They slowly crept into being my friend before using claims of depression as a tool to get me to pity them enough to be their girlfriend.

These attempts never worked on me long enough to trap me but that didn't mean I found them comical or easy to deal with. Most guys just dropped the act and left me alone as soon as they saw it wasn't working, but a few felt the need to get revenge on me for daring to say no which usually resulted in rumours and exclusion. It's not easy to dispel rumours when you're the newer person in a community. The pressure of feeling disliked got to me enough that I left.

As a result of this I am very guarded around players I don't know, which is very frustrating because it can give the wrong impression and I'm painfully aware of it when it does. However the flip side is my experiences lent me knowledge in how to spot the signs of predatory and anti-social behaviour, and how to deal with it. Which is very handy to have as a fc leader.

All this being said the majority of player encounters in my very long mmo career have been mundane or good experiences. But I'd be lying if I said I went more than a year without encountering or hearing about someone who preys on other people. It is sadly pretty common.