Bullying on FFXIV

[Ingolf]

If I was being legitimately hassled and worried about online bullying i'd:

1. Report the person to a GM/moderator/person in charge
2. Block the person

If they made a new account to harass me i'd follow the exact same steps, the amount of work needed by the person to keep harassing you would make it absolutely not worth it if you:

DON'T REPLY.
DON'T INSTIGATE.

Those two rules are the most important to follow. When you're in school, if someone bullies you then you have to stand up for yourself.

If you're online you can simply avoid the issue entirely. If you're replying then the person is getting exactly what he/she wants, and will keep doing it for fun.

So just stop.

[Ingolf]

It will always come down to:

[AmyNeudaiz]

It will always come down to:

I would very much so agree, but sometimes it doesn't work. That's where SE needs to step in, IMO.

[Ingolf]

I would very much so agree, but sometimes it doesn't work. That's where SE needs to step in, IMO.

Well yeah, if there's obviously some harassment going on there should be a suspension or ban put in place.

SE should do a pretty thorough checkup though, It's no good if the wrong person gets in trouble.

[AmyNeudaiz]

Well yeah, if there's obviously some harassment going on there should be a suspension or ban put in place.

SE should do a pretty thorough checkup though, It's no good if the wrong person gets in trouble.

Completely agreed. It does more harm than good if they just ban people for getting reported like some other MMO's do.

Also, never say "I don't care."
ANY reaction is grounds for them to continue.

Also completely agreed.

[Gramul]

I would very much so agree, but sometimes it doesn't work. That's where SE needs to step in, IMO.

Also, never say "I don't care."
ANY reaction is grounds for them to continue.

[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.

[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.

[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