Which MMO most promoted griefing?

Desral

Topic. Which MMO do you think most enabled griefing / catered to griefers by design, and why? This has more to do with the game mechanics over bad support. It can be a MMO that's currently open or one that's shut down.

Dessl0ck

Shadowbane

wanderica

Maybe a touch subjective here, but I remember bad things from Age of Conan's FFA servers.  I remember people arguing that community would police itself.  Right.  That doesn't happen without incentive to do so in a post-WoW MMO landscape.  It was open season for griefers, and total chaos compared to it's organized faction-based counterpart.

k61977

One of the original MMO's Ultima Online.  It encouraged griefing with a full loot system.  Can't count how many times I went out of town and saw countless players just waiting for new players to walk out of a safe area so they could kill them.  If it had been more of a balanced thing were the new players could have had a fair fight wouldn't have called it griefing but most of the time it was 4v1 or more v1.  Hardly ever was a 1v1 ganking.  It was a great game an still is, but that kind of gameplay is encouraged by that type of system.

Octagon7711

Probably Eve.

TheScavenger

Octagon7711 said:

Probably Eve.

This is the game where someone can spend 1 or more years inside a corp, making friends and allies and pirating with them, then sabotage them within with no regard of the friendships made in that year (or longer if going for the "ultimate" sabotage).

Octagon7711

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

ConstantineMerus

Octagon7711 said:

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

Well that was either a fake story or these guys were very dumb and very obsessed--I can't emphasize on the word "very" enough. 

TheScavenger

ConstantineMerus said:

Octagon7711 said:

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

Well that was either a fake story or these guys were very dumb and very obsessed--I can't emphasize on the word "very" enough. 

I think I read that story on PCgamer or somewhere or on reddit, seems familiar. But I've read way worse and dumber stories out of EVE than even that one and they were true lol. So the story Octagon shared wouldn't surprise me.

There was even one (that was true) where a group of people had tricked people into a get rich scheme (which IS the persons fault) by giving them their ships. However, they then had them do things in real life that were degrading and borderline psychological torture to get the ships back. 

Not an accurate representation. But it was big "gaming news" on various sites, but I can't find it now on google and can't look more. It was something like that. Sounded really terrible and definitely psychotic. Maybe someone else can find it or remembers what it was. Supposedly I thought CCP got involved or something since it involved real life and went beyond the game.

TheScavenger

TheScavenger said:

ConstantineMerus said:

Octagon7711 said:

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

Well that was either a fake story or these guys were very dumb and very obsessed--I can't emphasize on the word "very" enough. 

I think I read that story on PCgamer or somewhere or on reddit, seems familiar. But I've read way worse and dumber stories out of EVE than even that one and they were true lol. So the story Octagon shared wouldn't surprise me.

There was even one (that was true) where a group of people had tricked people into a get rich scheme (which IS the persons fault) by giving them their ships. However, they then had them do things in real life that were degrading and borderline psychological torture to get the ships back. 

Not an accurate representation. But it was big "gaming news" on various sites, but I can't find it now on google and can't look more. It was something like that. Sounded really terrible and definitely psychotic. Maybe someone else can find it or remembers what it was. Supposedly I thought CCP got involved or something since it involved real life and went beyond the game.

Oh, here it is

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html

Finally found it. You can find other things about EVE Online "bonus room" or "bonus round" on google if you want to read more on it, that was just the first link I found on it

ConstantineMerus

TheScavenger said:

ConstantineMerus said:

Octagon7711 said:

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

Well that was either a fake story or these guys were very dumb and very obsessed--I can't emphasize on the word "very" enough. 

I think I read that story on PCgamer or somewhere or on reddit, seems familiar. But I've read way worse and dumber stories out of EVE than even that one and they were true lol. So the story Octagon shared wouldn't surprise me.

There was even one (that was true) where a group of people had tricked people into a get rich scheme (which IS the persons fault) by giving them their ships. However, they then had them do things in real life that were degrading and borderline psychological torture to get the ships back. 

Not an accurate representation. But it was big "gaming news" on various sites, but I can't find it now on google and can't look more. It was something like that. Sounded really terrible and definitely psychotic. Maybe someone else can find it or remembers what it was. Supposedly I thought CCP got involved or something since it involved real life and went beyond the game.

Yeah all of that happened in EVE. Also we had some major espionage going on. But it was about corporates and alliances. 2 dudes stalking another dude for 2 years doesn't sound right, true or sane at least. 

Octagon7711

Couldn't find the video but here's someone who wrote a story about it.  https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/14/eve-online-diary-titan-hunters/
It may have been two of the guys telling the story.  It was many years ago.


I remember that, @TheScavenger.  The person playing had to transfer everything he owned in Eve over to this group who did everything they could to make the person fail the challenge, if he lost he lost all his stuff, if he won he would get back double.  A lot of people lost.  Don't get me started about what went on in that game.

FlyByKnight

Somebody get the guy always crying about PVP some help or a lolipop and a hug.

ConstantineMerus

Octagon7711 said:

Couldn't find the video but here's someone who wrote a story about it.  https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/14/eve-online-diary-titan-hunters/

I remember that, @TheScavenger.  The person playing had to transfer everything he owned in Eve over to this group who did everything they could to make the person fail the challenge, if he lost he lost all his stuff, if he won he would get back double.  A lot of people lost.  Don't get me started about what went on in that game.

The guy hadn't logged in for 3 years. That's very different than stalking someone for 2 years. Yeah this kinda stuff happened in EVE, I was involved in many. But to be fair to EVE, it had and has lots of bigger stories going on. 

Mange1

I'd so age of conan before the murder system, guards were insignificant at the time and there was nothing protecting you any where in Keshetta.  Even the rez pad could get camped, your only option was to Path out as soon as you rezzed or make a desperate run for the gate.

MrMelGibson

Some of the worst griefing I saw personally was probably launch of Tera.  I know it's not close to the worst.  Just the worst I saw personally. 

Akulas

UO - Picking pockets at the bank.

ConstantineMerus

MrMelGibson said:

Some of the worst griefing I saw personally was probably launch of Tera.  I know it's not close to the worst.  Just the worst I saw personally. 

You're cute. 

Grimula

Lineage 2 had some insane griefing

couldn't even leave town sometimes without fights breaking out

Phry

Octagon7711 said:

I once saw a video where a couple of guys were telling how they stalked a guy for two years before they caught him finally bringing out his expensive ship and how they destroyed it, in Eve.

In Eve, you just buy another ship, assuming of course that you didn't already have half a dozen more of the things, honestly i have lost track of the number of ships i own, its really not a game where you just have one, or where you get attached to that one particular ship.
Eve has a simple credo, don't fly what you can't afford to lose, with emphasis on the 'afford' bit, because everything is replaceable.

Loke666

Pre-Trammel UO but Shadowbane was rather bad as well.

Buccaneer

Age of Conan was just a murder simulator on the PvP servers.  The game play mechanics assisted the would be ganker.  I lost count how many times I got killed whilst zoning into another area, for example the tunnels under the newbie area and how many times I got killed whilst locked in talking to NPC's.  Unfortunately it was just too much and with all the other problems the game suffered from I just moved to another game.

Renoaku

As far as MMO "Arche Age" is by far the worst I have had that promotes both Pay 2 Win / P2A, and Griefing, they basically allow dictator guilds to take over a entire server, force pvp on smaller guilds too if you are unlucky to find yourself in that situation this is what turned me away from the game was their update doing this.

As for other games "Currently Hi Rez studios" supports Griefing in Smite & Possibly paladins, currently a number of toxic trolls in this game will spam the report button on people for (other) on anyone who plays a god, hero or champion people don't agree with and eventually lets say that happens over 3 games and your good-will manages to hit 0 due to false reports you may find your account automatically suspended for a set number of hours I have actually encountered this myself, although the company publically has denied an automated system it has been tested twice, so I am waiting for a reply by Hi-Rez on the issues, but its something their games need to work on because apparently others think its okay just to report people for playing bad in an online game.

http://forums.paladins.com/showthread.php?54466-Does-HI-Rez-automatically-suspend-in-Paladins-too

Will wait for Hi-Rez response on the issues that plague and promote griefing in two games so far but its rather shocking to see that two community actually believe its okay to support griefing of other players just for having a bad game or disagree with one another let alone a game company that seems to promote this, and its really hard to get hold of customer service too.

Vasel

Eve wins hands down. If you get greifed in most games you lose a few items get annoyed move on. In Eve you can have your entire games time and effort wiped out. This leads to most fun loving average players leaving the game. All that remains are a high concentration of griefers, scammers and scumbags of the gaming world. I say let them stay there and scam each other.

Slapshot1188

In Shadowbane you could force people into formations.  I'll never forget doing that to my friends on the newbie island to make them drown.  That was probably some of the biggest laughter ever.  Technically not griefing because we were just having fun but anyone could have done that to newbies.

Then there was the fact that you could be a thief and just invisibly steal loot from both corpses and backpack. We made a guild of Scouts called ThievesBane and used to just hunt Thieves all day.  The responses were pretty epic when we would pop out of stealth and insta-kill some Thief that had been stealing from a group.  The groups usually would panic and try to attack us so we had a big speech prepared via macro where we called out Thieves and explained our sacred duty to hunt them down.

My favorite in Shadowbane was right at launch and I was like lever 5 on the newbie island (no pk  allowed). I was playing some kind of mage and killing lizardmen when some warrior type came up my my camp and started pulling.  I explained to the guy that there was another camp literally 30 seconds down the road and I could easily kill this whole camp solo so could he please take the other one (this one had a Lizard Captain a level or two higher so I could level higher). Well he got pissy and said something like "Screw you it's a free world and I want to stay here" and proceeded to pull mobs as they spawned.  Well being a mage I could pretty much instantly  target and hit the mobs so it quickly became apparent that he would never get another xp kill.   After a few minutes a GM popped out.  They guy started to complain that I was stealing his kills while I also explained the background.  The GM told him something along the lines of "We encourage conflict among our players and once you leave this island he would be able to kill you and take all your stuff.  I suggest you stop whining and move over to the other camp.  Play 2 Crush!!"  That was awesome.

Then of course in Darkfall (not unique) bankjacking was an actual thing.  Where people would spend weeks or months in a guild just to get back access so they could loot it dry...

Slapshot1188

Oh yeah... in Vanguard on the faction PvP server things were so ill thought out that there was no unique faction chat.  I remember fighting my way into the NPC chiefs house at one of the enemy cities, killing him and the guards. We could see enemy players call for help in chat so we just responded saying things like "No we killed the enemy, all is safe now", or "Looks like a big group outside town Let's meet at the chiefs house and group up". Or just shouting random orders into chat to confuse them. Total chaos... We stayed there for over an hour before mounting up and riding away. Kind of griefing but it was damn fun at the time.

Also in Vanguard you could be an invisible mage... walk in the middle of a group and chain AoE to wipe them out in seconds before they could even respond.

Probably the number one griefing tool from any game though was in EQ2.  I forget the class, but at launch you could cast it on someone to return them to their home city.   Not even on the PvP server. You  could just walk up to a group pulling mobs and port out their tank, or cleric mid pull.  There was no player confirmation you just got ported home... Not even a message saying "So and So ported you"... just suddenly found yourself a hundred miles away...