You bring up a topic that has been discussed here so many times.

I’ll go over things one at a time according to my viewpoints. No matter what any of us think it is always Funcom’s decision though.

Is it wrong to report?
I’m divided on that. Yes and no.

For PVE it is one of the only ways after all other options have been exhausted that clear violations could be rectified.

For PVP you have the option of raiding so could potentially deal with the problem yourself.

Having watched report wars happen and been the victim of dev wipes I do not report for landclaim.

The system:
The processes in place necessitate the current reactive system.

There are no active admins on Officials. It is up to the players to be responsible and adhere to the spirit of the Terms of Conduct (ToC). Because of that, in order to have Funcom deal with something you have to submit a report through Zendesk so they can investigate.

This comes with many cons. Some are: not providing enough information, overburdening of the amount of reports causing delays in response, misunderstanding the policies, by Funcom’s own admission “gathering” reports for a server and actioning possibly at a later date.

There are some 780 (if memory serves) Official servers currently. That is a lot to handle. It would be safe to say that there are not enough employees to fairly and accurately admin them other than via reactive administration. It would be an astronomical cost to actively admin.

It has been requested often to have a warning system instead. This itself would also be cost prohibitive as they would need to implement additional systems and ensure that the player follows up to whatever correction is required. Sort of like herding cats. I do have positive thoughts on how it could be achieved though.

It has also been suggested that there be a subscription based system with a grouping of servers where there are active admins. I’d be willing to pay a monthly fee to have this myself.

With that said there’s been many heated discussions on block limits. Myself I do not agree that it is the solution although I can see why many who want it believe it is the right thing to do. As with the behaviors of people, they would find a way to circumvent this block limit as well. I and others have suggested an upkeep system, while isn’t a block limit, could potentially alleviate the problems presented with serial refreshing and unnecessary expansion.

Another point is that it has been requested that players help the company to admin. I would never be ok with this for many reasons and I understand why Funcom has never taken up the many offers they’ve recieved.

So with all of this said… Ideas, thoughts, arguments, all of it has been had. Many times.

No idea if Funcom plans on implementing any other way of addressing violations in the future. They tend to be very quiet about this subject. Only yesterday was a Customer Support rep actually participating in a land claim discussion, providing some insight and clarity. This hasn’t been done frequently and often rarely.

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