"If the devs never intended for us to do any of those things, the game would've restricted it by now. But the truth of the matter is, the game does allow it. [...] Sorry, but we all have a right to play the game within the rules (both written and coded) as we please. If someone can't handle it they need to adjust or find something else to do."

Sounds reasonable what Arolte is demanding, but then lets apply it to everyone. 30 users decided to mute Arolte. Its possible within the limits of the game, and its not against the rules of conduct. I believe the mute should be restored. If you agree, feel free to sign this thread.

Inc: Sorry for starting another fire :-(.
FM: Please try to keep the thread open. I don't mind if I get flamed, and I promise not to respond.

I concur. If the majority of payers want him muted, then that seems like a good reason for it to be in place.

It's not against the rules of conduct, but that's just because none of the devs have been around this evening to write it in for your benefit, as apparently needs to be done.

30 users decided to mute Arolte based not upon anything he was saying, but because he was behaving in a manner others did not appreciate. This is not the purpose of the vote-mute ability, simple as that. End of story.

Furthermore, the earlier thread was locked because it started a flamefest. The followup threads were locked for the same reason, as were the next followup threads and as this one will be.

[locked]

I understand the arguement, and as ctishman says, the original muting was not done for any sort of verbal abuse purposes, for which the mute command was intended. Additionally, it exposed a bug or design flaw in that the user's votes were not reset upon successful muting, and therefore once someone had been muted you could go on muting them indefinitely with only one or two people. This behaviour was not intended, so the command was changed to reset on successful muting.

Unless Arolte verbally abuses someone in chat, I don't see a reason to deprive him of it. Generally speaking, if the userbase chooses to mute someone, we don't intervene. However, in this case there was a clear technical problem demonstrated, as well as no evidence to back up why he should be muted, other than an extensively orchestrated campaign by a guild to exact revenge against someone they disliked (whether their dislike was understandable is a whole other topic).

I am not against the idea of democratic user management. It has been previously demonstrated in A Tale In The Desert, which is kind of a best-case scenario since it's a completely noncombative game, but still points to possible implementations of this sort of thing. The big flaw in a democratic system is that any large, organized group can abuse the system to penalize those who fall outside the realm of desired behaviour. Although Arolte may be playing in a rather annoying fashion, he is, strictly speaking, just playing the game.. fighting people, killing them or running away, etc. All behaviour that everyone has done at one point or other, but he does it constantly in a rather aggrevating fashion.

This does not, in my opinion, demonstrate a need to mute him or exact some other form of revenge. Rather, it shows a design flaw in the game. I had envisioned the "bounty" system to help deal with this sort of scenario.. if you disliked someone, you could pool finances to make their in-game life more difficult in an in-context manner. However, the bounty system is half-implemented and inherently broken right now, and I haven't devoted any time to it. Regardless, I don't even know if it would help much with this issue, but I do feel that that's the sort of direction we should take in dealing with this kind of behaviour. Arolte is playing strictly in-context. Therefore, we should respond with a method of limiting that behaviour in an in-context manner as well. The most obvious being for everyone to hunt him down every chance they get, but that's obviously a flawed prospect as "escape" is often all too easy.

In any event, the issue has been made clear to me. I've read complaints from several people who have contacted me directly, and talked to BLAK guild members and others about the problem. I am going to attempt to find a solution, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to present one immediately, as a Real solution will probably require additional gameplay features.

If anyone has generic, non-ranting-angst-filled suggestions on how to categorically deal with this sort of behaviour in an in-game context (whether Arolte or anyone else who appears in the future) please post to the Suggestions forum.

In the meantime, anyone who wishes to complain about the issue, or discuss it further, is welcome to contact me directly. I don't want to give the impression that you don't have communications channels available, or that the situation is not understood, or that we are ignoring the situation by locking these threads. The intention is not to limit your logical discourse, but to try and keep a lid on a situation that seems to constantly degrade into "everyone hates arolte and wants him dead".

So please, if you want to put energy into this debate, then respond constructively with a long-term method of dealing with this sort of debacle, as outlined above. Anything like a bounty system, or changes to faction, or.. whatever. If you have anything else to say about it, then shoot me an email and give me an earful. Thanks.