I really did not want to waste 10 minutes addressing this again but felt that I need to make it clear that I am not alright with people who purposely engage in this sort of targeted harassment. This will also be the last Devilian related post for awhile since I just need to move on from some of the idiots that I wished I had never gotten involved with.
It is is pretty much a continuation of this. Some time last week (before the Devilian 7.0 update went live), I logged into Battle.net to get some Necromancer play testing in when I was barraged by whispers from my friend/former colleague Giko (who is also in the beta). He told me to check my Twitter where to put it mildly, I literally could feel the heat from his tweets.
I told him that posting inflammatory stuff like that was not the best way to handle situations like this (so he took them down). Trion Worlds did contact him though to see how they could help so he is now in what I call the first step towards a longer term permanent solution when it comes to that individuals main account should the targeted harassment and policy violations continue.
Being fair, I mentioned that what does not work in his own favor is the tone of some of his own past forum postings when it comes to being critical of Trion. Doing it off Trion property (like blogging elsewhere like this) is fine but doing it on their property is not the best since they do use infraction points. Like I wouldn’t use the tone that I do here on their forums on even in-game where a lot things are more easily logged including any chat (though with Trion, people can get away with a lot due to the lack of qualified personnel to deal with every case that comes up).
To get to the point of this entry, what set him off was the following forum reply (which he should not have responded to):
Forum moderators had cleaned this up by the time I looked. My personal opinion/advice: it is better to refrain from feeding trolls like this by not responding. I actually recommended that he just stop reading and posting there (I stopped bother with the former and will only use the latter for account specific things).
He mentioned it actually began the day before after responding to a post in the PTS section by someone claiming they were a new player that was heaping praise on how the game challenges players. Giko said he replied because he suspected this newly created account was a sockpuppet; the reply he received back turned out to verify his suspicion. I asked if he had taken a screen shot like the above because it also looked like the moderators cleaned that up. He said he forgot to take one; rule of thumb is to always take a screen shot.
I presume Trion’s moderation staff follows the same standard operating procedures as most other companies where they don’t actually delete the posts but instead move them off into a quarantined area (since I know vBulletin has a specific function for that) for use as evidence. But it still helps to have your own copy of those posts before they are quarantined in this manner.
This person engaging in this bullshit has some serious comprehension issues. It doesn’t matter if it was quoting JFK or MLK. These alternate forum accounts are being perma-banned because he is creating them with the sole purpose of harassing an individual and bringing in his issues which has nothing to do with the topic. Trion Worlds does have a policy about circumventing permanent bans but like most of their policies, they tend to not hold any water due to the lack of follow through or severe consequences.
As I mentioned before, there is a line where this goes from being simple trolling, to targeted harassment. There was a recent high profile case with Twitter on this matter. So when an alt account is created with the name like BerkTheJerk and making replies like the above, that person is knowingly disregarding the terms of use and policies that are in place.
If this were Blizzard, this persons main account would have been dealt with by now (starting with a short suspension that increases in length for each additional violation, ultimately leading to a permanent account suspension). Trion’s infraction system operates on a similar principle according to those who have been permanently banned. In recent years though, this has not been as common because of staffing reductions in support which handicaps personnel who have to deal with situations like this.
Ignoring a troll like this is the best medicine because they are already aggravated that their alt forum accounts are being banned while their target isn’t. All that person wants to do is to fish for a response that gets their target forum banned as well. I jokingly told Giko he has a fan with an unhealthy obsession for him and mentioned from now on, to use that to his advantage. With that said, I did mention that he will need to go through the hierarchy before taking it up directly with Linda Carlson (the director of community relations) if he wants to pursue it.
I now regret bothering to reach out to this self-proclaimed jerk. I knew from before that he had this tendency because a player who tried to befriend him on Ravan (before the server merge), had to deal with all of his in-game bullshit where she eventually stopped covering for/dealing with him. I was just trying to be a nice guy by bringing him into a guild which I later learned, has other tossers like him.
This pathetic individual has deeper issues for becoming this triggered by a word that was not even specifically targeted at him personally. And he has held that grudge against this one person to where he has had this obsession of having to create multiple forum accounts while getting most of them banned in the process. Why? Just so that he can make posts like the above while also stooping as low to create another to lie by posing as a new player in order to make it sound like this game is on the correct track.
