Thou shall be banned
Saturday, January 12, 2008
We can all agree the afk reporting feature in 2.2 patch didn't help much - in the first few days after the patch hit everyone was eager to report people and it did help a bit. If nothing else, I felt like I could finally do something about the afkers except live with it. You can't spend half of the time checking the map and see who's inactive and who is not, and even if you did report them, they just got in combat to remove the debuff and kept on afking. There's been a lot of requests and suggestions on how to further improve it (such as kicking players out of battlegrounds), but up until now Blizzard probably didn't know what to do.
Finally, it seems they got tired themselves and announced the following:
In our continued efforts to support fair gameplay in World of Warcraft and to provide a positive experience for players, we are currently taking steps to ensure fair and enjoyable competition in the Battlegrounds. Starting immediately, we will be issuing warnings and penalties, including suspensions and the removal of Honor points and recently acquired Honor rewards, for non-participation in Battleground games.So, issuing warnings and penalties eh? That doesn't sound so bad now - it's certainly more than I expected. I guess it will be again very forgiving, your account won't be suspended for doing it a few times, but those who constantly abuse the system will sooner or later be caught.
It's nothing special really, but I've figured this out awhile back. If I'm too lazy to do battlegrounds, I just don't do it no matter how much I need the honor. Or if I'm too lazy to fight, I just defend. Standing still on farm in Arathi Basin doesn't take much effort, and killing some random hunter or rogue from time to time who tries to take the node ain't that difficult.
That way, I can watch TV but still contribute in the game.
I'm glad Blizzard finally did something serious about this issue. I doubt this will really end the leeching in battlegrounds, but it sure will help.
But I wouldn't mind if inactive players got kicked from the BG as well. *hint*
> Thou shall be banned