I caught some news recently on Massively. Before playing World of Warcraft, I used to engage heavily in Guild Wars (won a sigil once with my team in the Hall of Heroes before we stopped playing).
Anyway, they’ve implemented some pretty cool stuff in the game especially against cheaters. Dhuum is the god of death in the game (a Hades-esque figure). After ArenaNet banned 3700 accounts for botting and other cheats, they’ve decided to take a more public approach.
Any player that gets caught cheating gets a visit by Dhuum, who then proceeds to completely destroy the player (and their account gets banned as well).
It looks pretty darn awesome.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Blizzard implement something like this in WoW personally. Which NPC would deliver the killing blow, though? Perhaps it could be Arthas who emerges from the ground and cleaves a player. In Cataclysm, maybe Deathwing appears and can swallow a player whole.
I don’t know if this would actually deter players from violating the ToS, but at least they can go out in style.
I just read about this on Massively, too. And I’m getting incredibly interested in the GW side of MMOs. I keep hearing great things about it, but I don’t know where to find time to pick up another game. The team has a lot of great ideas that, like you, I wish more developers would listen in on and blatantly plagiarize.
I don’t think it would actually deter the cheaters, but I think it would make for a simply fantastic story for all the players around if Arthas or Deathwing would just come into Dalaran or Stormwind, pick off that one player, and leave.
What I want to know is how that person got a video of a supposedly random event.
.-= Professor Beej´s last blog ..Initial Impressions: Dungeons & Dragons Online =-.
Make a zone in their capital (dwarves, ironforge) that’s like an arena, where they get placed. Around the arena, there is a bunch of tomatoes. These tomatoes can get thrown at the players in the arena, dealing damage. Whenever the player dies, did I mention health regen is reduced to 0?, they’re forced to spirit rez, mostly because it’s automatic. The gold is subtracted from their most well off toon, then the next, etc. When the gold is all gone, start deleting equipment, starting with the best first(Bye bye Shadowmourne!). Also, all the players in the arena are automated in a huge pvp match, so lots of death from that.
Obviously, save this from the people who are actually being idiots – hacking, trolling, etc, not those who “make a mistake”, like figure out how to get somewhere they shouldn’t the first time, or loose it on a player(everyone crosses the line at some point), unless they’re a serious repeat offender.
We get amusement, they get mega ultra punish and lo’behold, a wonderful determent. Plus, gold seller collective!
It would have to be Saurfang the elder, no question about it.
.-= Carson´s last blog ..How quickly is it OK to judge an MMORPG? =-.
Unanticipated consequences.
I bet Guild Wars gets a massive uptick in members who do this. It’s NEAT to watch.
Educational computer games learned that particular lesson. Kids were intentionally making mistakes to get the NEAT visual/sound effects.
That said, since it’s accompanied by banning the account there is always the possibility of yet another unanticipated consequence — more people purchasing and registering just to screen-cap this event.
I was thinking about this – some sort of public shaming for cheating would be a very affective deterent. The problem in most cases though is how to prove it? All it would take is Blizzard to get it wrong once and it would destroy the entire system.
.-= We Fly Spitfires´s last blog ..Age Of Conan – Returning Review =-.