News 5 2 - HMC and you

NEWS article 5-2:

Dateline 7/30/2009: HMC AND YOU

EFFECTIVE January 1, 2001:

"In certain situations, the overall pattern of behavior on an account or a set of linked accounts may be determined to be disruptive or abusive, even if no one single act clearly violates any specific policy."

"In such cases, Simutronics reserves the right to determine what patterns of behavior are defined as "high-maintenance" or "disruptive" and may take action against the account(s), ranging from a simple request to moderate/control the high-maintenance behavior, to total lockout of all linked accounts."

What this means:

Sometimes, people insist on living in the "grey area" of policy, punctuating their "borderline" behavior with comments like "Well, I didn't ACTUALLY break any POLICY, so you can't do anything about it." The GM and Host staff spends excessive amounts of time dealing with these "high-maintenance" customers who continue to push the boundaries of appropriate activities, while still "technically" staying within policy guidelines. This time could be better spent planning and running role-playing events, developing the gaming world, and/or helping out customers who have legitimate needs and concerns.

Players who seem to want to do nothing more than cause problems or disrupt other customers in-game, repeatedly ASSIST or REPORT over inappropriate or trivial matters, harass GMs or Feedback with unsolicited or vulgar email, repeatedly "flame" or harass players or staff members on the message boards, or are habitually involved in "grey-area" or "judgement call" PVP/CVC situations will see the following happen:

1) First, the player will be advised to stop the activity in question and the player will have this "verbal warning" noted in their logs.

2) If the problem continues, the player will be removed from the game and consulted by a GM. Notification will be given to the player that continuation of this activity (or combination of activities) will result in further disciplinary action. This will be logged in the player's record.

3) If the problem continues, the player will receive an official warning and be placed on "probation" for 30 days. If ANY other "high-maintenance" behavior is exhibited during this period of probation, the player will receive a full-account lockout for no less than 30 days. (In some cases, such as continued abuse of REPORT or ASSIST, the ability to REPORT or ASSIST will simply be removed first, in lieu of a lockout, with additional inappropriate behavior resulting in the account being locked out.)

Players who are identified as "High Maintenance Customers" due to the amount of time the staff spends dealing with problems created by, centered around, or as a result of their behavior, can lose any or all benefits and privileges that are associated with "non-problem" customers including (but not limited to): the ability to ASSIST, the ability to REPORT, the ability to CURSE, SHUN, or THUMP, the right to have Feedback appeal/review any in-game decisions, the right for the Community Manager to appeal/review any Feedback decisions, the right to replacement or compensation related to item loss, or the ability to participate in large-scale events, quests, or festivals.

You may ask, "How will I know if I'm a High Maintenance Customer?" As mentioned above, players who are approaching this point will be advised of this fact by a GameMaster. If a player continues the same (or other) activities determined to be indicative of a problem, a Full GameMaster may request HMC status for that player. This request will be reviewed by the Senior GameMasters and if they agree with the FGM's assessment, it will be passed to the Community Manager for final approval. Any player labeled as a "high maintenance customer" will be told of their classification by a Senior GM and will have the reasons for this classification explained to them, as well as what the player will have to do to remove this classification. Depending on the severity of the problem(s), a player can have the HMC classification removed after a pre-determined amount of time has passed with no other problems.

Regards,

GameMaster Solomon,

Producer, DragonRealms

END NEWS ITEM