All chat/gaming. Underage & Adult players. SAFETY for both?

I play Guild Wars..and I know kids like to play too...

I have no problem with kids being kids..or teen agers..and wanting to play this game...Let me make the statement, I am not against teens/young adults playing..

I am raising the concern of young adults/teens...or even kids being able to talk to adults..or scarily enough adults being able to talk to young teens/kids in the game...and not have any sense of stranger danger..its an uncomfortable and scary topic...but I think it needs to be raised in this instance..

Perhaps? Guild wars, could consider>?....a split .. some how divide the underage from the over age?... ?-17 in separate district, with restriction to age..and 18 and over in other districts? restrict 17 and under from playing in districts that have adults 18 and over?

But that does come with the problem of kids who lie about their age..and it does go the other way...adults lie about their age too frighteningly enough.

Guild wars might consider finding a way to either split the districts into older and younger with age restrictions...that way the people over a certain age don't have to worry about bumping into someone underage, or unknowingly be talking to an underage young adult or child...and that could be misconstrued by an upset parent who didn't know their underage child/teen was doing..until its discovered..and that could be bad for adult players and those underage players...

Just a thought...can there be something done? about this?
Perhaps I am just paranoid...

Aside from the obvious safety issues for adults and young people who play...

I am sure some adult players over 21 get quite tired of the yelling and hollering, name calling and drama on the ALL chat that is obviously juvenile while trying to ask questions and get other information while playing, that doesn't have to do with their guild, trading, or team or whisper...but also there is as I said a safety issue...

I am sorry for the long winded approach..it was a discussion my guild members and I were having and are concerned about this topic...and have had this kind of thing occur..and we wanted to raise it as a subject of concern to the Developers that perhaps preventative measures and restrictions would be a wise idea concerning age and play in the game.

Thanks
Ladyrhavyn

It shouldn't be the responsibility of Arena Net to keep children "safe" online, or while connected to their servers. Rather, it is their PARENTS' responsibility to keep an eye/watch over their children. No one should be made to watch another's child.

Furthermore, it's a lot more effecient to teach these young children that there are dangerious poeple out there in the world, and sometimes their parents, or the police, or anyone else will always be there to protect them if trouble arises. Teaching young children to reconize these dangers, and to avoid them is of a much more importent task.

Lastly, I believe limiting chat, or servers like you're saying will, in fact, create a situation where both the children and the adults will be at a disadvantage. In terms of fair gameplay, and party support, both sides create a whole.

Well, separating the districts will not work because like you said, people can lie about their age. Personally, I enjoy playing with people of all ages and not being stuck with a certain age group. Some of the people that I am good friends with including my guild mates are adults and I have no problem with talking to older people. I am a teen btw.

I do not think that there really can be anything done about this. If something were done like this, I think it would be unfair to those that enjoy talking with all age groups. I myself would not like to be stuck in a kids/teen only area.

The only thing I can say is that we can hope that people will play smart. The basic stuff, don't tell your name, where you live, any personal info, be respectful.

I'm not going to instantly discredit this concept, simply because your intentions (read: safety) show you have some knowledge of the nature of most online interaction these days, and I appreciate this.

But, the juvenile nature of most town conversations can be avoided by checking off that arrow.

I don't think this should be implemented, simply because it's unnecessary. This game isn't myspace or anything. You're not broadcasting any personal information with your character, contrary to profiles in myspace and facebook.

Well it's definitely up to the parents to teach their kids online safety. At a younger age, some should even supervise their children while online and monitoring the chat.

There's not a lot that Arenanet can do about it. As you said yourself, it is far too easy to just lie on both ends to avoid any filters. The very least Arenanet can do is to quickly take action against suspicious people with such intents in mind. But that would also require people reporting and Arenanet actually reading the reports.

All in all, it's up to the parents to teach the children and the children to use this knowledge to be safe themselves.

If parents are going to let their kids get e-seduced by strangers on GW, then we probably have to rethink the whole parenting process, and not GW safety. They have a chat filter, which is nowhere near perfect, and that's about all they can provide.

I have to agree with many of the other posters on this one. I think it is ridiculous for a corporation, whose sole responsibility is to their shareholders, to be expected to also be part-time parents. Arena Net seems to do a decent job of filtering out a lot of really bad stuff as a courtesy feature, but they are in no way responsible for the actions of people on their servers, particularly when those actions violate the TOS. It is the parent's responsibility to monitor their child's online activity. This includes gaming online.

MMO's are social communities online with all the hazards and caveats of any other online social setting. That being said it should not be up to Arena Net to baby sit every minor that logs into their servers no more than it is yahoo, or myspace, or microsoft's responsibility to do the same. If e-predators are a concern for the parent then they should take the necessary precautions and be prepared to deal with the extra work that that kind of monitoring entails. There is simply no excuse for a responsible adult to half ass a job like being a parent and lay whatever they are either too lazy or inept to do at the feet of a corporation.

Well, its not up to ANET to seperate kids from adults. I talk to people of all ages on this game, and thats a good part of the game. Arena Net is doing fine by making the game, and working on reducing spam. There is no reason for them to parent the people in the game.

There already is a no curse rule, and a /report if you feel someone is violating you..just report them. If the parents let the kids play the game then I feel that they should be able to talk to anyone at any age.

I would hate being stuck with a certain age group. On my friends list I have kids and adults from a variety of age. If you don't like the bad chat, then just skip going to RA 1 or wherever, or just turn off the check mark for All Chat.

I know we live in a dangerous world, a world where e-seduction and sexual predators are part of "dayly life" so to speak, but like it has been said already, it's not up to a "stranger" to protect your children.
I know, one can't keep an eye on the kids 24/7, but parents should be more aware on what there kids are doing.

If anything, Anet could put a PA on there games to warn parents of this, but how many people take notice of that? For instance the +18 (violance) label.
Maybe it's time to, not only reëducate the kids, but also the parents

Parents have to be responsible.

From the Guild Wars: User Agreement

4. ACCOUNT

(a) Eligibility. Accounts are available only to adult individuals 18 years of age or older. If you are less than 18 years of age and wish to use the Service, your parent(s) or guardian(s) must complete the registration process, open an Account in their name(s) and accept full responsibility for all obligations under this Agreement. Those who have completed these steps and who maintain their Account in good standing are sometimes referred to in this Agreement as "Members."

By accepting the terms of use in the Agreement, Members represent that you are an adult 18 years of age or older. Only one person may use an Account. The registered user of an Account may use the Account or may choose instead to permit a minor child of the registered user to use the Account. You are liable for all activities conducted through your Account, and parents or guardians are liable for all activities of their minor child conducted through the Account.

At first I thought that this was a thread about an actual safety issue. That GW could potentially become a target for sex offenders, given the large community, many of whom are underage. And I was going to completely and utterly disagree with the idea even given those circumstances. A player's information is kept completely private unless that player decides to divulge his or her personal details. There is no profile that lists, age, name, location, or gender tied to an account. There is absolutely no reason to assume that there is an immediate safety issue. Also, it doesn't become Anet's responsibility to protect a player's identity. That is solely the parents' responsibility.

But then I read the rest of the thread, and discovered this was actually just a complaint about the immature behaviour in all chat. Yes, there is immature behaviour in some of the main towns. There will always be. It isn't just the younger members of the community participating. A system like this would not solve anything. In fact, it would create a rift through an online community. I would have thought that any gamer would protect the right to socialise online, no matter who the person on the other end is. The whole point in an online relationship is that it is purely based on the personality of the individuals, not their age, or gender, or ethnic background, or their physical attributes (and before anyone comments, I mean relationship in the broader sense. A friendship, or just some form of socialisation).

By the way, there is already a solution to the problem you are having. Simply untick the all chat box.

It is not A-nets responsibility to keep kids safe. It's their parents responsibility. If my teen were stuck in his room for hours on end playing a video game, you can be sure that I'd be checking out the game he plays. I'd be looking at the conversations he's having with others online and making sure he's staying away from the troublemakers. That's called responsible parenting.

Unfortunately most parents nowadays are too busy to care for their kids. That's sad and those kids likely have more problems than a district split can cure.

I have to agree with Meat Axe, I like how you took your issue with all chat and tried to make it into a "safety" issue. I also find it funny that you never actually state what this "safety" issue really is, you leave it to the reader to assume you are talking about sexual predators or whatever they may come up with.

I am sure that some over 21 players get tired of it too. I am also 100% sure that it is not just kids that are the ones yelling, name calling, drama...
If you have ever been in a large guild with a vent server you would be sure of it too.

None of this is Anets responsibility. The parents need to take up the responsibility for the kids and stop letting this or any other game serve as a baby-sitter and some of the adults that play need to grow up and quit acting like retards.
One of the best features of this game has been there from the very start, that little tick box next to the all chat button. I never turn it on unless I have a really good reason. Turn it off sometime and see how much better the game really gets.

Kind've like this one pro lifer I saw at the side of a main street with a billboard of a 3x3 messy abortion just wandering around school hours. Just because some people have no taste or discretion when it comes to other people's wanting to shelter young eyes and ears from a certain degree of vulgarity, doesn't make it 'sick.'

What of racial discrimination? do you Advocate saying 'n***er' around black children because the world can't censor you?

There is one thing called chat filter.
Anet can't do anything else.

The game has already a +13 rating, and Parents should know the common dangers of Internet.

Interestingly enough, the people shouting all the offensive content you seem to be referring to are under 18. For some reason younger teenagers think it's cool to talk and shout about "adult stuff" in all chat and be all "mature".

Right. /agree with unticking all chat, and it's not Anet's responsibility to force internet safety.

i agree, offensive/inappropriate language are said quite frequently (especially in major towns/outposts) and i think there should be some kind of warning system where if somebody says something offensive then they should get an immediate warning message on the screen. If they continue to provoke/offend people then they get kicked for two minutes or so.

Screw that. There's a filter for a reason. If someone doesn't want to see swears, they turn their filter on. If someone actively turns their filter off, it's not my problem. It's not Anet's problem. It's the problem of the person who turned the filter off, and the parents of said individual if it's a child. I wouldn't want the parents to sue Anet or me for subjecting their child to such language...but they would have no reason to. Turn the filter back on, and if the kid turns it off again just uninstall the game.

Parenting means getting involved with Children's hobbies. Play the game with your kid, have fun while protecting them from creeps out there. Guild Wars is like any other interactive software, there's always going to be a way for creeps to abuse the software to prey on others. Limit your child's time with these kinds of software is your best hope in protecting them. Fostering the mentality of being cautious and careful about what you say to strangers online is huge step towards protection. These are all common sense ideas that have been around since the dawn of chat software.

Wouldn't it be nice if the parents actually did this. I think it would reduce offensive behaviour in public dramatically.

However, that's not what I want to talk about. Someone joined our guild who said they were a 16 year old girl. Gave me a lot of information about their private life etc, and then left very suddenly with a weird excuse.

If I think about all the discrepancies in their story (this they, their etc looks very strange but it's the only way I can think of to keep it gender neutral) I wonder exactly how "16" and how "girl" they were.

I guess I'll never found out, but I'm seriously suspicious. The only young boy in our guild at the time was having internet problems, and wasn't online ever during that week, thank goodness. Only the 30+ crowd was around.

I couldn't agree more, and should I ever breed, I plan to.

You never truly know, it's a strange strange world out there. I know a lot of 'young girls' who tend to have very.. how shall we say 'vivid' imaginations regarding what they talk about as their 'private life.' How many girls sometimes even boys, as young as 13-14 brag about having gay friends, or being bisexual or gay//lesbians themselves? Or stories of 'molestation' as their way of explaining why they're such a basket case. (The last person I'd tell about being molested is a total stranger, I met online, least of all in Guild Wars. Things like that rarely sneak under my bullshit radar.)

Some young boys//girls and even OLDER boys and girls in the online gaming world just play the opposite gender character just because they think they'll receive different treatment. Girls playing guys so they aren't creeped on. Guys playing girls for jokes or to leech their way around, (or if you're like me, you play some girl characters because the sprites just LOOK better than the male of the same class. Prime examples being Ritualist, Assassin, Ranger, Monk.)

I cant say I blame you for being curious//suspicious of your former guildmate.

Just last night I was playing at 2:17 AM EST. At that time I just reached Rata Sum with another person, and I asked if he had time to continue on with the quests. He told me that he was 28 and didn't have a bed time since he was 14. He was clearly insulted. Anyway, that's not what I meant - only that in the American time zones most people would say that was enough time and log off.

In the past I've played with lots of younger people. Most are mature. I also played with someone who seemed to struggle to tell us that he was too young to be playing the game, but he acted mature. I don't know why he acted like he was a little worried that he'd be reported.

My other main experience is I joined a guild where people let their children play and made it a rule not to say anything obscene. I didn't like the guild because the few times I said something that would be considered offensive to children their age, they played it off as a guildie being silly and warned me. If they didn't have their young children playing, then they'd be fine. If they had the swear filter on, anything I say would be caught by it. I don't trick the swear filter like some do (e.g. shi.t ). Their kids probably gold farm for them! I can't understand why people let kids that young play highly addictive online games.

We already have a filtering system in place to protect the kids and we have /report to report those who behave badly and use bad langauge etc etc.

If we litterally split the ages into two camps, where would I go being 25?
As much as I prefere the older crowd cos their more mature (usually), what if no one of my age was online?
Who decides the devide?

Imagine trying to make a HM team when you split the ages up. Its hard enough already without splitting t hem.

They raised you so well that your response to people using words you don't like is to physically assault them, eh? Quite a job they did.

"Bad" words are bad because society chooses to view them as such, nothing more. As someone said above, if they weren't "taboo" they'd barely see use. As it stands, I just find the whole phenomenon of people finding one word that means something offensive and another word that means the same thing acceptable ridiculously funny.

All that said, respecting other people's beliefs (no matter how ridiculous) is just plain politeness.

/goat

Blech. This thread is just so uninteresting. Playing this game creates about the same risk level for your kid as sending him to the baker's. In fact less because most people on GW don't live anywhere near you. Strangers are either friends waiting to happen or rape in a dark alley waiting to happen but either way there's not much anybody can do about it. GW should not become a neocon police state where every player is checked for age, gender, sexual preference, psychological problems... I mean we could always try making a
"Little Boys Here Districts - English 1" and see what happens, but if I were you I wouldn't lose any sleep over this... It's trivial, at best.

This is the worst kind of parent. My mom is really too involved. I am 12 and I will amlost be 13. When I turn 13 and become an adult I can use swears but until then my mom is all on my case. If someone uses swears she makes me log off and I have to go to bed without supper.

When I turn 13 and become adult I will cuss out the entire world and I dont want to get blocked off my game when that day comes. I think its just part of being adult, you get to use swears and ppl that cant just have to deal until they turn adult. I am going through this now and I cant wait to be done with this. Not using swears is like wearing a diaper.

Seriously when I become adult I will marry britney spears and we will have 7 kids and I will make my own team and not have to play with stupid heroes all the time and I will use swears and laugh at my kids because they cant use them till they are adults. And nobody can say no to being in my team or they dont get pizza. And then they will see how it feels to go to bed hungry.

I wonder if Ladyrhavyn really lives in Alaska.

I don't think there should be a separation, it'll only keep the honest adults out of the younger kids servers. Same for the chat filter, you have a choice to see the swears and a choice to give out personal information. If you're smart you'll tell your kids not to release personal information out onto the internet, playing by itself doesn't release anything except a character.

splitting up by age is almost as silly as mature guilds or girls only guilds

There's nothing silly about a mature guild or girls only guild. There are way to many idiots **ahem** out there that can ruin fun because someone's being an immature jackass or there's a constant, annoying trend of boys hitting on your girl character. Feminists and adults need thier space from the 13 year old boys running rampant around GW. RAmen.

Splitting up the game into +17 and -17 may cause a lot of problems because it would advertise to the ones looking to exploit children as to where they are most likely to find them. Then, as the OP said, they could lie about their age. I agree that this is not ANets responsibility. I also think that most people with malinetntions stick to places they can go for free because they expect more children there. Yes, GW has no monthly fee, but it does cost more than simply getting onto a chat room.

Nooo. You're Just Going To Divide Districts So Much That I'll Never Be Able To Get A Group Without My Guild Who Happens To Be Younger And Older Than Me!

More of us do than you give us credit for, methinks. For what it's worth, I'm not a supporter of the OP's suggestion.

Vulgarity begets vulgarity.
You never got a spanking when you were a kid?

What sort of 'belief system' finds trashy language appropriate?
Think-for-your-selfers and bratty kids.
You're trying to make it sound like having potty mouth is a lifestyle choice like being gay or a vegan. The previous two are okay, and swearing is too, but theres a time and place for everything. Public school teachers dropping bombs in a kindergarten class doesn't strike me as the right time or place imo.

'Alright class! we're going to sing the alphabet! F*CKIN' EH!'