Game Violations anyone?

** drags out soapbox **

Yes, indeed.

If I don't let you paint the side of my house with messages I find offensive (or with any messages at all for that matter), I am not infringing on your right of free speech. If you're a guest on my property, I expect certain rules to be obeyed or you will no longer be welcome on my property.

This not only applies to my house, it applies to my computer. If I allow you access to my computing resources, I expect you won't do anything I disapprove of, or I will lock you out of my own property. You have no right at all to do anything with my property without my permission or against my wishes.

This same right, the right to control my own property, my own home, my own computers, etc, is a right not only posessed by me. Other people have this right too. Including owners of forums like this one, and including owners of online games like ArenaNet.

There are no free speech issues involved when it comes to filtering in game names, in game chat, forum posts, etc. Nada. Zero. Anyone who asserts otherwise is completely deluded about their status as a guest on someone else's private or corporate property.

You have no rights to use other people's property beyond what permission they have chosen to grant you. ArenaNet did not grant you the right to create offensively named characters on their computers, or otherwise violate the policies they've laid out for using their computers. (And who gets to decide what is or isn't offensive? They do, as is their right on their own property!) If you don't respect their wishes as to what you can or can't do on their computers, they're perfectly within their rights to deny you access to their computers.

"But I paid them money!" Yes, and like the owners of an amusement park you paid to get into, they can still kick you out if you violate the rules, and they don't have to refund your money, either, because if you violate the rules, you're the one who broke the contract, not them. Paying money doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want, you're still limited to doing only what the owner of the property approves of. If you can't abide by that, don't go on their property. They would appreciate it.

("*gasp* But then they don't get my money! Anything that drives customers away is bad for business!" False, and one of the biggest misconceptions a lot of customers seem to have, particularly bad ones. There are many cases where you can increase your profitability by turning away certain customers and their money. Believe me, in cases like this, most business really would appreciate it if you took your money elsewhere. Your money isn't worth as much as the money of all the other customers you're driving away.)

If you were a friend's house, and another person was running around vandalizing things, or doing something the owner of the house said he didn't want done, would you refuse to tell the owner that one of his guests was doing so? It seems kinda silly to me to get upset about people reporting violations. It's what a courteous guest should do when he sees them.

Anything that reduces the number of downright rude, disrespectful, and ultimately dishonorable people who are wasting AN's resources, the better, and make no mistake, that's a perfectly accurate description of the people in question. They are guests who refuse to respect their host while taking advantage of the host's resources. Perhaps the real problem is, there aren't enough guests "trying to get people banned".

Reporting violations is a good idea. ArenaNet will appreciate it, and the community will appreciate it. The people who get banned won't appreciate it, but again, it's a case where ArenaNet is better off without certain people as customers. If they refuse to ever buy an ArenaNet product ever again, that'll actually be music to AN's ears. Future product launches will go much better that way. If AN could actually remove problem players from the pool entirely, they'd become the most popular and most successful game company in history. Alas, that's a rather Herculean task (indeed, "Quixotic" might be a better description of that goal).

But we can do what we can...

Okay, since two people went on rants about this (the last one being particularly long) I'm curious. What does the whole "rights" topic have to do with anything in this thread? Where did you guys see anybody say anything like that here? Who are you arguing against?

I don't see any of that here. At all.

And this surprised me a bit:
You flush with embarrassment while looking at words on a screen? Yikes! Sounds like an uncomfortable way to be.

Very well-said, Dreamsmith.

Well, Stauf, I think the point is that although words don't have the same meaning to some of us, they do to others. As I stated in my earlier post, my husband and I can very rude. With each other, friends, or where we feel we aren't bothering anyone. In a game is one of those places we feel it's inappropriate to spew stupidity.(and believe me, we can spew ) Because you are in a "public" environment. When I am at home, I do and say what I want. My home is mine. But when I am in public, I feel it's common curtesy to think of others' feelings.

And also, the thing that always occurs to me when I see dopey names is jeez, why can't people put some thought into an original name? Mine isn't that original, but I did want something "Dungeons and Dragons"-like.

Sure, I can see that. I just have trouble relating to people who get their "feelings" hurt so badly by a stupid name.

Yeah I roll my eyes at it too. Though, I'd never go seek them out, then join a party with them, then take screenshots, and then report them, because, quite frankly I don't really care about it that much.

I've seen people that were definetly out of conduct ingame but The pictures that are taken are 2.25 MB. ImageShack can only upload files that are 1024 KB or less so I was never able to report the people without any visual proof. If anybody know's a way to compress/lower the quality of the pictures down to somewhere near this or if they know of a free image hoster that can support 2+ MB picture's please let me know. I'd like to start contributing to the bettering of the ingame GW community if possible.

As reponse to another topic that seems to have become fairly debated, I personally am not offended by most names, as long as they don't appear in any way as racism/direct insult/unappropriate in a offensable manner. I wouldn't go insane over a name such as "Alotta Phagina". If they're disguised cleverly enough them children shouldn't notice them unless for some reason they already understand it or they're reading an entire websters dictionary and finds a phrase similar to it (I doubt they'll be playing GW anyway). However, just because it doesn't/shouldn't offend some people shouldn't make it allowed. In conclusion, I have no problem with disguised names with a minor sexual meaning or a humorous name, as long as it doesn't directly insult any person/race.

Thanks a lot for mis-quoting me there. If you look at my original post you will see that the person I was quoting was talking about just typing names into their friends list, that are offensive, to see if they are real people and getting up with them so he/she can take screenshots and report them. That person may have been joking, but I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me that someone is out there doing that. I do feel that what this person is doing (or suggesting) is completely unnecessary. The people that have names that are offensive will get themselves in trouble eventually.

You are trying to make me sound like I am against reporting people. That is not the case. However, I am not the game police and I generally stick to myself and my guildmates.

Take a quick look at these earlier comments Stauf:
I realize Darren was teasing a bit, but the point is made; "Who are you to take it upon yourself to police this game?"
And perhaps this quote answers it best:
Dreamsmith gets it. And I applaud him for the excellent example he gives.

Converting the file to a .jpg format (compressed) using photoshop or any variety of popular image software. (I use ACDSee myself - they allow a free demo version.)

Or reduce the picture size from your current resolution to a smaller one, say from 1024 x 768 down to 800 x 600.
Best results: do both the above.

I looked at the quote. Still has nothing at all to do with "free speach being trampled" or "civil rights being violated." No one ever made that argument.

The thing is its nearly impossible to regulate what people can call themselves, to how they behave. Myself I have been nice and gave a "begger" some gold when they needed 100gold for some armor. I know how that feels, I accidently bought a piece once that I already had when I wanted to buy the armor piece listed under it. I did not have enough gold and had a mass sale of items I had wanted to keep with the merchants.

But the names, now I have not run across to many weird or offensive ones, but I hardly spend any time in the towns or cities anyway. I do not look for parties to join as I have been in a group to do a mission and 4 out of 6 got pissed off over something and left. To me that seemed immature and I had to find another group. But how do you regulate how someone calls themselves? The only thing I can think of is since GW searchs for cheaters with bots and such, they should search names of characters if thats possible and trace them to their accounts and deal with it that way.

This game is not just for kids, its from teens and up. And as I read someone else saying... Its generally the kids causing the problems. Now I'm a male playing a female elementalist. First time I changed her armor I had to take a second look. "Oh... look... nice..." but that was the end of that. What bothers me is the "come join me at the gate, nude girls dance!" and you see a group of people standing around while several girls dance as naked as its possible in GW. Yup, 13 year old boys of the world unite right there... I find that really annoying after the first time I saw it.

And the emote /sit I use a lot say if I pause in a town, I find a quiet location and take a seat somewhere while I sort items and what not. I have had male characters come up and try and stand directly in front of my character to get a cyber... well I know I don't need to say what. I have always moved my character but witnessed some events where the person did not move their character. Using emotes, the guy stood there and had his guy /moan and /cheer to symbolise the wonderful time he was having at someone's afk expense.

This goes beyond the names. There is a lot more then just names and words that can offend people.