Bullying on FFXIV

[Gentaro]

SE does indeed do something against people harassing someone else. The problem is that many people getting into trouble with "bullying" people simply fight back. How should an GM handle that situation? Ban both? I wouldn't go that far to even call this bullying.

The other story are the ones really being bashed on by an individual without doing anything back. But blacklisting these helps for most problems, just leaving the MPK issue and the rumors such a person could spread. I personally haven't heard of any MPK bully in my entire time in XIV, but that is some issue GMs surely can help with.

About spreading rumors: That is some serious problem and the only ones who can change it is the entire playerbase. Don't judge people by questionable information of other players - make yourself an own picture! That player might be a LS mate or even more to you, but in many cases it still is just a person from the internet you don't know. By questioning things others say you're taking a bullys greatest power.

[Huginn]

Well, im done with this thread. I just wanted to go ahead and say that all of my posts were to show the ridiculousness of the whole anti-bullying movement and that the movement is counter productive.
most anti-bullying campaigns only serve to weaken the general audience they are aimed at strengthening and end up making people want to be the victims of bullying. note how some people's attitudes changed once i stated (falsely) that i had been abused and that was why i was posting aggresive content. a reason is not an excuse.

if you want to see the hypocracy of the anti-bully movement, just go look at the motivational anti-bully speakers who belittle and berate kind people based on their belief or the color of their skin. prejudging them to be bad people and therefor deciding it is ok to bully them, because they are most likely bullies themselves.

in closing: Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

[Orophin]

Hiding your real identity is all well and good, but when its linked to you you are much less likely to be a douche.

Apparently you don't see some of the things posted on people's Facebook pages. XD

Seriously, I don't know what's so hard about using the blacklist. If you're drawing this kind of attention to yourself in the first place, you probably deserved it. I've played online games since Diablo and Starcraft and tended not to engage in general jackassery. I've never had these kinds of problems with people bugging me in games, probably because I've never created a reason for them to do so.

[Kuzak]

The easiest and best solution to stop cyber bullying is to take the anonymity out of the web. Blizzard's Real Id plan was great unfortunately they caved to the pressure of people suddenly realizing they may have to own up top the things they said online.

This is so wrong in so many ways.

You really need to brush up on what social engineering is, and how taking anonymity out of the web can compromise your privacy and personal security

Facebook is your first mistake.

Please refrain from any logical fallacies while responding.

One of the big reasons that Blizzard decided to pull RealID was that one of their employees revealed his real name in support of the new feature. Within a short time his home address and vehicle information was posted. That can be very dangerous, especially when it's the WoW community you're dealing with.

[PandaTaru]

Bullies Online

First of all I will apologize in advance about my grammar. My primary language is Spanish but I will do the best that I can to express myself in a way you can all understand. ^^ I think this article will do well to some on the victim position. I’m very sorry about that too. As you can see on my profile I don’t post much but sometimes I feel the need to speak up and I guess this time I want to speak up for them.

I decided to post this article about bullies because I’m sick and tired of some pretending to be mental stable individuals and “boom” out of nowhere they become someone's worst nightmare in their free and supposedly relaxing time. The sad part of this story is that many of these people are adults and even professionals. Many of us were victims at some point and I’m pretty sure you were thinking “Oh My God, what’s wrong with this person?” I was there one time, can think of three names at this moment, and will probably be again because we are SURROUNDED BY ZOMBIES! O_o


[...]

here a link for you. http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

Some people simply don't care. Some think it's funny, or even cool when they're busted. There's a lot of very unstable people out there. And yes, some a bunch of them do play MMOs.

edited your quote from personal experience. just for XIV alone going from one sever to another was kind of scary when I think about the number of people showing strong sociopathic/histrionic/narcissistic traits I ran into on both servers.

[PSxpert2011]

Have you even seen the Ventrilo harrastment Youtubes? LOL
Why make a thread about "cyber-bullying"?
Kids get bullied in school... never heard of bullies on the internet!

How to recognize a Cyber Bully.
Online bullying can take many forms:

• Sending threatening, taunting or teasing e-mails to someone.
• In an online game use their character to make themselves known around you with the purpose of bothering you. Like emos actions or moving around you.
• Using any other tech to spread gossip or rumors.
• Pretending to be another person online so you can post or e-mail things that will embarrass or get that person in trouble. Very common on the forums
• Being a “pretend friend” online so you can later hurt or humiliate someone.
• “Ganging up” on someone in a chat or on a message board because the more people they have, the powerful they feel.
• “Grieving” someone in an online video game by constantly picking on a new or inexperienced player.

Practically all of the above are just some if not a few ways of real bullying I've grew up around(witnessed) IRL. Not necesarily can be done online but if it escalates, that's why the GM is there.

[Shougun]

Have you even seen the Ventrilo harrastment Youtubes? LOL
Why make a thread about "cyber-bullying"?
Kids get bullied in school... never heard of bullies on the internet!



Practically all of the above are just some if not a few ways of real bullying I've grew up around(witnessed) IRL. Not necesarily can be done online but if it escalates, that's why the GM is there.

Not sure if its still true but I did like that about FFXI's gms. They responded within minutes almost always in person.

And they read those chat logs and did something asap. (though because they dont have a replay system MPKing was hardly enforced unless they did it again while a GM was watching).

I've read that the GMs in FFXI and FFXIV are the same, so perhaps they are too spread out now. Or some powers revoked. Just know you can report a series MPK issues in FFXIV and they wont even come to check it out.

[Coldfire]

Hard to tell if GMs do anything. They can be invisible (and probably are most of the time) and already say in advance(with the nice standard text) that you won't get contacted any further even if something happens. Don't really like that but it's to protect privacy I guess.

[Gucci_Charms]

I have not come across any cyberbullies during my experience in FFXIV so far.

However, based on the comments and original OP post, I can definitely say this game's community isn't as bad as OP or some others might think. These forms of behavior are pretty unavoidable especially since social interactions take place online. Because peoples personal information is kept anonymous, there are some players out there who will take advantage of this and attack people online. The funny part, however, is that these abusive players would most likely NOT act this way offline because they know the consequences can be dire. Online, they feel invincible and the only real punishment they can receive is a suspension or ban. I have played various other online rpgs such as Guild Wars, TERA, and Diablo. The latter actually had a fair share of abusive players on there.

If you think FFXIV cyberbullying is horrible though, you are definitely wrong. I don't think there is any other online RPG this gen out there that has a terrible community in comparison to a PS3 game called White Knight Chronicles 1 and 2. Not only are there cyberbullies on there, but it also has large set of sick-minded players who enjoy stalking, trolling and online defamation. The drama and hate between players on that game should win "Award of the Year" for how sickening that game's online community is. Unlike FFXIV, there pretty much is no in-game moderators that actually care about their players welfare. Therefore, players abuse White Knight Chronicles' message board and online interactions to the max. Moreover, the bad players go beyond the game to attack others by posting YouTube videos and attacking them if they can find them on a gaming forum like GameFaqs or Neoseeker. It's really quite pathetic how immature these grown adults are on that game. If you want to see how bad it is yourself and have a PS3, just read the White Knight Chronicles' in-game message board. You will see exactly what I mean.

All I can say is that FFXIV cyberbullies are nothing in comparison to White Knight Chronicle's abusive community. For anyone causing problems for others currently or in the future of this game, I hope FFXIV:ARR will have a good moderation system that will punish these players.

My two cents

[Presbytier]

This is so wrong in so many ways.

You really need to brush up on what social engineering is, and how taking anonymity out of the web can compromise your privacy and personal security

Facebook is your first mistake.

Please refrain from any logical fallacies while responding.

One of the big reasons that Blizzard decided to pull RealID was that one of their employees revealed his real name in support of the new feature. Within a short time his home address and vehicle information was posted. That can be very dangerous, especially when it's the WoW community you're dealing with.

I like how I am not supposed to respond with Logical fallacies, so I will begin by pointing out your most obvious one. Appeal to probability. Just because something can happen does not mean it will. I would like to point out that in that case only one person revealed their identity(if both parties are not made known then of course it invites abuses; also social engineering can happen eve when pseudonyms are used). In an ideal scenario everyones identity would be made known; this would have the effect of removing the artificial barrier of anonymity. You would be less likely to to harass someone if they knew who you were(especially considering if i know who you are it is easier form to go about seeking prosecution in the court of law). I also want to point out that the Blizzard case is unique in that most other MMOs I played it was already known who the community reps where, and as far as i can recollect none or very few have been the victims of cyber/bullying/thieves. If revealing ones identity was such a threat then no public individual nor game developer nor actor would ever do it. if someone wants to stalk they are going to do it whether it be in cyberspace with your fake identity or in reality with your real one.