The Cranky Old Gnome

So as I watched yet another super cool dude showing off his pvp mammoth mount (by standing on top of the winter veil presents in Ironforge on Christmas morning) it occurred to me that a I’m not sure if a brief ban is really a good punishment.  Oh sure, when the ban/suspension lasts more than two days it’s probably long enough to actually disrupt the persons game play enough to actually feel like a ban.  But when it’s short (like the common 3-hour ban for spamming trade), I’m not sure as if it’s really all that much of a punishment.  Except for the most die-hard, addicted, WoW-crackheads 3 hours out of the game is just a quick break.  It might even be bed time for them so all they have to do is sleep it off and everything is fine in the morning.

Because of this I have come up with a few punishment ideas that are a bit more…creative.

The 3-hour ban:

This is a revamped version of the classic ban.  Only this time instead of not being able to log in to the game, you log in and get a debuff that lasts 3 hours.  The buff would be visible to everyone and called “Banhammered.”  This debuff would be applied to every character on your account.  The only way for it to wear off would be to actually be logged in for three hours.  But you couldn’t go <AFK> because you could still be auto logged out for inactivity.  The effect of this debuff would be that you couldn’t do anything. Except walk around.  And your movement speed would be reduced by 99%.  Your action bars would be grey out so you couldn’t use them.  You wouldn’t have access to any form of chat.  You wouldn’t be allowed to interact with any NPCs (including, but not limited to bankers, auctioneers, flight masters, etc).  You would just have to walk around at 1% speed, waiting 3 hours for the debuff to wear off.

You would receive this punishment for minor infractions like (non-gold) spamming or other chat related things.

The day-long ban:

A harsher version of the 3-hour ban.  Same effect just lasts for 24 hours.

You’d get this for more serious offenses like minor game hacks or player harrassment.

The multiple day ban:

This would be as it works now, you wouldn’t be able to log in at all for however long they decided.  But this would end with the 3-hour debuff.

The multiple day ban would be for the most serious of infractions that violate Blizzards Terms of Service agreement. (You know, the agreement that shows up each time there is a patch, the one you have to scroll all the way to the bottom off in order to get the “agree” to light up? Yeah that one.  I bet none of you have ever read it, let alone read it each time a new patch comes out.  In case you were wondering, yes, I read it each time.)  You’d get it for game hacks and botting and gold spamming and other really bad things.

Community Service:

When a player is banned because they were impeding the gameplay of others, they would required to perform community service.  The cause of this punishment could be anything from harassing other players, to ninjaing loot; from being a racist/sexist/etc jerk in trade to standing on flight masters/mailboxes/etc.  Basically anything that would classify you as a ‘fun sucker’.

People with this punishment would have a choice of community services.  The could:

• Pass on all loot in one randomly chosen heroic dungeon. (All loot, not just loot that is rolled over.  Even vendor trash and money.)
• Group with 20 randomly chosen low leves (below level 10) and help them get up to level 15.
• Clean all the trash around the capital cities. x number of hours sweeping things up.
• Lead 10 randomly chosen old ladies across…um…some sort of street I guess.
• I thought I had more ideas….I guess I’m out.

Anyway, just some thoughts I was having, mostly because I want the punishments to be more of a deterant.  I want it to be a much harder decision for them to decide that the consequences are worth engaging in crappy actions.  Yeah I’m sure a lot of you disagree with this and thing that these punishments would be unfair or unreasonable.  But it’s not like I’m the one deciding on them or applying them.  Blizzard would still be enforcing them….although if they wanted my help I’d be more than happy to wield the ban hammer for a little while.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]”

~Fizz

Edit: I’ve decided that there needs to be a unique punishment for mount blockers.

• First offense: 24 hour debuff that reduces character size by 50%.  Cannot use large mounts.
• Second offense: 48 hour debuff  that reduces character size by 50%.  Cannot use any mount.
• Third offense: Permenant debuff that reduces character size by 50%.  Also all mounts have their sizes reduced proportionately so that they can’t be used to block mailboxes.

I also think their should be some more unique punishments for people who ninja things (although it has to be very clear that the stuff was ninja’d–not just an accusation.

• If an item from a heroic is ninja’d, character must pass on all loot for the next random dungeon.
• If an item from a raid is ninja’, character must pass on all loot for the next raid they enter.
• Raid and Heroic level (and accompanying item drops) must be proportionate to the item they stole.

I was inspired by a post Big Bear Butt made where he described the key bear tanking abilities with a simple one line explanation, and decided I’d make my own version of this for warrior tanks.  There are plenty of great in depths guides out there, and most of them can be found over at Tankspot, but this little guide is meant to be a quick reference.  A way to orient yourselves to the vary basics of warrior tanking.  This quick-reference doesn’t involve any theory crafting, number crunching, or long winded discussions of the combat table.  It’s just a quick and dirty explanation of the ability and where/how to use them.

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