Harrasing Problems.

[Jokerz_93]

Hello everyone

I’m sorry to bother the community with this grim thread. I tried to avoid writing there because I was hoping that everything would be resolved quickly and in silence but since this is my last chance I dont want let my stalker wins without saying anything.

I’ll cut short my story. When I started playing XIV, 3 years ago, I joined an FC and I had fun times there for an half year.
Then I and other fc members started to realise that this FC couldnt provide what we were looking for so we move on and decided to created our own FC.
There were some fights doing this process. Insults from both parts and eventually everything ended with us leaving.
I don’t regret what we’ve done.
We move on and started to focus on our game.
About a year later I had the chance to buy a house.
The fate wanted that house to be next to my former FC.
I didnt care as long as I had a base to free relocate when new plot would’ve been available, plus I didn’t had any interaction so far except some insults by them sometimes.
Eventually I thought we could live and ignore us next to each other, sharing the same pixels without any incident.
Again, the fucking fate wanted make more difficult this process when SE changed their Housing System with the Lottery System preventing me to insta free relocate.
After two years of owning an house I decided to decorate it and live there until new plots would became available.
This is when all the harassments begun.

After a couple of month I’ve been finished my house, a night while I was hanging out and chill with some friends the former FC GM came out from their house and started to insult me. I just did the manual and reported them.
The next day I witnessed them going around in Limsa and shouting defamation things about me, calling me a “sexual molester” and begging ppl to not invite me in their Pf.
Again I did per manual and reported them along some other friends who were with me.
This continued for a week with now other players coming to me and reporting these /shouts. (Tl:dr It was not the first time they did something like this).
Then everything stopped and offensive characters poped like moshrooms from nowhere. They started from having names like “This is a Molester” to “Tora Noyama Is a Perv/Pig.
These charas were put afking inside the major ARR cities in front of the Aetherite.
There were other characters created by the same person with different variants, some even carried my in real life infos.

It all started in the middle of December of the past year and they are still creating fake and offensive charas to harass me. I’ve been reporting this violation of ToS since when all it started and what I gained so far is a skyrocket increasing of these charas.
Last check I did was yesterday with 45 “Tora Noyama Is a Perv/Pig/Harrasser/God-at-least-give-them-some-creativity registered on the lodestone. You can check by yourself if you wish.
So this is the story, short version.

[Jokerz_93]

What I want to show beside my story is in first place my astonishment regards how SE deals with this kind of issues.
During more than one month GM team was unable to take the proper actions.
I don’t blame their work, I need to say this.
I blame the tools provided to them by SE, a multibillion company, which are inefficient to make their ToS respected, at least on the EU community.
I think all my reports were taken and bans were made and the result was nothing else than inciting this stalker (or a group of stalkers) to continue their own sick crusade, to continue calling me a “sexual harasser”, to continue creating offensive charas just because SE is incapable to deal at the root of the problem. SE can’t ban your hardware, SE can’t prevent someone to create infinite free trial accounts.

This is my second point: the free trial system abusing.
While the free trial system is a fantastic way for people to try XIV on the other hand at the same time it’s managed in a terrible way.
It allows bots and potential stalkers to spread out freely and unwatched disrupting the gameplay of others who wants just to chill and enjoy their free time.
It affects both sides, SE and the costumers and I still don’t understand why there isn’t a system which prevent instead of reacting.
For instances, an obligatory OTP based system where your account is linked to your phone maybe could help to alleviate the situation and help GM team to ban directly by OTP. In this matter you would need more than one phone to create more than one account.
Anyways, I think that SE have to revisit their tools in order to have something which doesn’t allow to a stalker to create hundreds of fake and offensive character to harass people.

My last point concern directly SE and it’s reflected to us, the players, since what happened to me may happen and happened to others.
Having a Term of a service not respected due a lack of tools it’s an huge pubblicity loss for the company itself.
Moreover, per ToS, GM team nor any SE employee can give you any feedback about any ongoing investigation.
This means that the offended part will never have a proper feedback if their case was resolved, if any action was taken and even if the abuse would stop.
I think most of the cases are about normal angry people and one ban it’s enough to end the thing but not all the cases are the same.
There could be more problematic people who could spread malicious behaviours and continue to act in the same way without being forced to stop playing XIV. The fact that SE can’t do anything with their tools to stop just a stupid kid that found a way to cheat the ToS, as a costumer and a potential victim, concerns me about the safeness SE should guard.

[Jokerz_93]

I think this is all.
A couple of thing before I quit this thread:
I want to say a big thank you to all in game community and gamers who came to me reporting all the defamations /shouts, caring about what’s going on and not taking everything for an absolute. It seems it’s becoming a rare thing having a brain and make it works.
I appreciate a lot all your reports and your kind words.
I hope I could be able to move from where I am right now with my house and hopefully see all of this to an ending but I do this with a taste of bitterness. They won, at least they’ll see me moving as a victory, a battle won for their righteous crusade.
This is a loss for the ToS and the community it would be guard, but I want to think there is still hope and that’s why I opened up this treated.

I was reluctant to write my story. I thought no one cares and it was a waste of my time writing and yours reading something that has surely already happened and will happen again in the future.
But this is the reason why I did it in the end.
Stories like mine happens daily, for this reason I decided to rise my voice.

The dream XIV has a great community where everyone loves each other is a bullshit.

XIV is not different from any kind of games or social environments based on the Internet interaction. It has its good and bad sides and clearly my story is one of the bad side, not because of community itself but because of how SE handle its own rules.
Before someone started to feel insult just because of what I’ve already said, I’d appreciate if this thread remained open to everyone who wants to share their own story, like I did.

I know that these kind of situations can lead to a loss of will to play, will to act, even to demand was it right by rule and if really the XIV community wants the best from this game they need to act as a whole group, not like random running headless chicken ….like every PF (bad joke).

If you ended up here, thanks for your time and have a nice day!

-Tora Noyama, The Harrasser of Light DC

[Reinha]

I think I saw that loser shouting a few times near Gridania's aetheryte. Don't worry, most people know that someone spreading a hateful message about someone day after day is usually the unhinged person. No one normal does that.

You are right in saying that square needs to do more to stop harassment, but I'm glad you have found support from players and I hope you are able to enjoy the game despite these incidents. Gz on the house!

[Jokerz_93]

I think I saw that loser shouting a few times near Gridania's aetheryte. Don't worry, most people know that someone spreading a hateful message about someone day after day is usually the unhinged person. No one normal does that.

You are right in saying that square needs to do more to stop harassment, but I'm glad you have found support from players and I hope you are able to enjoy the game despite these incidents. Gz on the house!

Thank you! In fact I'm not worried about my image. So far I receved a lot of in-game messages from people caring about this and I'll not hide it was a relief indeed.
What's worries me is that due to this ToS these people are free to spread around and continue their acting without any consequences.
A stalker could just create infinite accounts and harrass people up to lvel 60 and the most critically acclaimed expansion Heavensward without being banned on the main account.
And even if ToS bans them, they are just hidden under the surface not erased...like lalafell bots.
Bad jokes aside, a part of me wants to see if other people has witnessed a similiar situation so maybe we could build up the fundamental for a solid change regard this matter.

Thanks a lot for your words. I'll see if i can get that house this afternoon! ^^