Post:Hollow Eve 2015 - 10/05/2015 - 10:34

Re: Hollow Eve 2015 · on 10/05/2015 10:34 AM CDT	3899
>>Thank you for your honest explanation Persida. You're very welcome! >>As for the darkbox, if you are going to flagrantly afk, you need busted. I agree completely! And that's exactly what we did. It was pretty hard to keep up with, though, due to the sheer numbers of folks we were having to check (a lot passed, a lot got busted, but there was a ton of checking going on) vs. the number of GMs, not to mention things occurring during hours where there wasn't staff coverage or an easy way for us to rearrange things to ensure staff coverage, especially dedicated to doing nothing but constant monitoring. It was really such a drain that we had to do something above and beyond script checks that would have a bigger and more generalized impact, and we didn't want to have to just remove the game entirely. That would have stunk. We were happy people were excited about it and wanted to play it so much, but some sanity had to be restored. >> I think moving it just gives them a bye. Making it move actually accomplished two things related to the AFK issue. 1) A lot of people stopped trying to AFK it once the moving started, so that cut down the GM workload AND helped make things more fair on the player end. A deterrent is always helpful when it can be put into place! We didn't stop AFK testing folks once we put the movement mech in place or anything, though. 2) It made it much easier for us to catch and bust the people who persisted with the flagrant AFKing of the Darkbox. I can't go into details because doing so just gives people info they could use to more easily avert our detection, but it really, really helped. -Persida
This message was originally posted in Events and Happenings in DragonRealms' Elanthia \ Hollow Eve Festival, by DR-PERSIDA on the play.net forums.