I'm banned

[Alrindel]

Call it an epiphany of tolerance. You don't like it, then turn your cheek and continue playing the game. If your delicate sensibilities cannot handle seeing a word that /reminds/ you of a curse word, maybe you shouldn't be playing massively multiplayer games.

Here's the thing.  Running around in a MMOG with a borderline-offensive name isn't funny in and of itself, it gets its comedy value from other people reacting to it.  Put another way, it's a very very mild form of griefing, and the "if you don't like it just ignore it" argument is a classic griefer's refrain (see also: DarkWolves).  The problem is that we've seen over and over in game after game that it's so highly visible that if the GMs don't crack down hard - even disproportionately hard - immediately, it balloons and gets out of control.  

Raph Koster talked about this in his "Small Worlds" presentation at GDC 2003 (highly recommended but you need MSIE to view it) :

- "Broken Windows" theory: criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling show that minor misbehavior triggers bigger misbehavior.

 - New York City reduced crime by cracking down on graffitti and subway fare-beaters.

 - This demonstrates the importance of the overall environment.

...

- If you create a setting where cheating is possible, everyone will do it. (Duh).

- Crack down on tacky names, petty crimes, etc, before you crack down on big cheats.

- Never publicize behaviors you don’t want repeated.

- Always publicize behaviors you want imitated.

The fact that they locked you out after the offensive characters were deleted looks ridiculous on the surface, but think about how it looks from the customer service point of view.  They can see in the logs that you created more than one "Captain A-Hole" character, so it tends to look like you were creating the alt, running around in game showing it off, and then deleting it afterwards so that if you're called on it you can play innocent and say, "who me?"

As far as I'm concerned, NCsoft did everything right in this case.  Ironically, they're much better at applying Raph's recommendations than SWG was, because despite SOE's announced good intentions to try to apply the "broken windows" policy, their GMs spent all their time for the first couple of months just replacing disappearing items due to bugs and database problems, and had hardly any time left over for policing community complaints like name violations.  And it showed.

[Sky]

Running around in a MMOG with a borderline-offensive name isn't funny in and of itself

Yeah, it was pretty funny imo. "Dressed up like that, you must be Captain A-Hole". It's not some high-minded humor, just a stupid chuckle. The way south park is great social commentary but also does fart jokes. Imo sometimes it's /ok/ to be silly, and where better than comic books?

As far as having two versions, I use one server to test new character ideas, so he existed on two servers for about a span of five minutes.

I know all too well about griefing, I can't stand it. That's another layer of irony, Cpt. A wasn't in any way a griefing character. Thus my old maxim, going back to a suspension I got in EQ, when I was harassed by several players. After a while I called one an asshole, and a GM popped out of hiding and bitched me out (actually like 3 GMs!?!). That's when I wrote the maxim "It's ok to /act/ like an asshole in a mmog, just don't /call/ someone an asshole." A line that holds up to this day.

That's why I say 'turn the other cheek'. That's the line I've heard from CS about behavioural griefing for years. A name you will probably never see again isn't griefing unless you take offense. I can see if I named a character 'CumSuckinCunt'. That's offensive. Captain A-Hole is funny. If you don't get it, why bother discussing it with me, it's been dealt with and you won't have to see the big bad name and thus you won't get scarred for life by abject terror.

After being through so many mmog abortions, I no longer really give a shit about building the virtual worlds Darniaq loves so much. I'm just having fun playing a game. Until you can filter out /real/ griefers, people who play the game to fuck with others to get their jollies, I just can't take them seriously. It's not like CoH is even a virtual world style game, I rarely see the same characters twice, because of instancing and people levelling past me.

Bah, the irony is lost, apparently, so why even bother discussing it any further, it was just a stupid joke. Stop taking shit so seriously for crissake.

[HaemishM]

"Sky's Abridged Posting History: The Angry Years"

That was pretty funny, though. Trying to not add any more chapters to that volume :)

Oh please, we both know there's plenty of room for the MMOG industry to add to its series of obvious fuckups.

[WayAbvPar]

I was in a pissy mood because someone stole my hotsauce from the break room :P

Office n00b! =P

My Tabasco is on my desk where it belongs.

[Sky]

Ecch...tabasco? I like sauce with flavor to go with the heat! It was actually a gift set my boss had brought in for me (woot! go me saving big bucks consistantly every year I've worked here!), and did have one bottle of tabascy in it. Not bad, but I don't like it as a primary sauce. My big name brand favorite is Frank's Red Hot.

Oh please, we both know there's plenty of room for the MMOG industry to add to its series of obvious fuckups.

Assuming I'm participating in the genre :)

[Aslan]

I make sure I visibly and stringily sneeze on every item that is mine.  That seems to keep the vultures off.