Forum Post of the Day: is reporting AFKers counter-productive?
by David Bowers 
Jan 7th 2008 at 3:03PM
- Battleground AFKers want a limited amount of honor to purchase their gear.
- AFKers will stop AFKing once they get that amount.
- Reporting them slows down their AFK honor gain.
- The slower it takes them to reach their goal, the longer we have to suffer their presence.
- We should let them have their honor, so that they'll get out of the battlegrounds faster.
Besides, letting people get away with AFKing for their gear is inherently unjust. It may not be on a par with stealing the crown jewels of the Queen of England, but it's theft nonetheless. After all, in a battleground, other people do all the work, but AFKers get the benefit. They are effectively stealing the time and energy we put into the game, and making it doubly hard for us to succeed at the same time, just like a parasite which does nothing for itself except leech away the energy your body works so hard to create. We should never let passivity overcome our natural yearning to see AFKers fail in their goals, and should fight them with whatever tools we have, no matter how inadequate.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Charles Jan 7th 2008 3:12PM
Right on! AFKers are the worst kind of scum. Kind of like Alliance, only a little scummier. I hope they ban all the smartqueue users.
Smurk Jan 7th 2008 3:19PM
"After all, in a battleground, other people do all the work, but AFKers get the benefit."
u commie?
Tereth Jan 7th 2008 3:28PM
I fail to see how that has anything to do with him being communist, furthermore that sentance is one of the major flaws in communisim. So, no he is not. You lose, good game sir.
imparush Jan 7th 2008 3:19PM
would help if they make it to the good old bg type were u need to be in a raid(that needed usaul inv) and if u goes afk u can be kick out of it and therefor get 0 honor, that would help a lot on the problem
CthulhuCalling Jan 7th 2008 3:28PM
Is this such an issue that it needs two consecutive articles written about it?
Jasperwind Jan 7th 2008 3:45PM
Yes! LOL
No, not really.
Orestes Jan 7th 2008 3:46PM
Personally, I'd love to see them prevent chronic afkers from getting/using the gear in the first place. Say... put the now pointless bg rep system to a different use. Everytime you afk, or get reported as such by a quorum of your team mates, you lose rep. Lose enough rep to drop below neutral and you gain honor slower. Lose enough to hit unfriendly/hated and your welfare epics go poof.
Shiabre Jan 7th 2008 3:54PM
I don't think it would be too difficult to flag a character internally if they get the inactive flag applied to them too many times. Once that happens, they could simply be denied access to the vendors.
Having to sit through the constant aggravation of Ariathi Basin (Alliance side) is bad enough when you're actually trying to win, but to see 2-5 AFK in every one, makes you want to be able to free-for-all flag them.
And then there's the bot scripts that make it look like you're not AFK. They should just be banned outright.
Basic Jan 7th 2008 3:56PM
UH... bad logic
Serious players *also* only want a limited amount of honor to purchase their gear, and we will *also* stop playing once they get that amount.
The longer it takes us to reach our goal, the more frustrated we become, and the more likely we are to become AFKers.
REPORTING AFKers turns AFKers into serious players and prevents serious players from becoming AFKers!
Please report AFKers!
becool Jan 7th 2008 4:02PM
the problem with afking is the need to afk. i can afk a bg and not get reported. win or lose av bgs on average give 300+ honor, in an average of 15 min.
winning any other battlground gives less honor than that, even if its a holiday weekend.
thats the true problem with BG's honor and afking. making a premade sure does help with other bg's, but 5 caping ABs every game under 5 mins is the only way it can compare to the honor gain of an AV afking trip. and honestly 5 caping AB all day long is the worst most freaking boring thing in the world.
i honestly wish the most amount of people that can group que is 5 people max. get rid of full premades, it will make the battles fun, not too long not too short and give proper honor gains - winning should be 500ish and give the losing team a proper amount of honor for the acievments they made and how long they are able to defend.
ab and eye are pretty much perfect BG's in that sense of wining/losing but they dont yield enough honor for both sides to make somone wana do them to get honor as a reward.
warsong needs to be fixed - blizz sees it as a fast battleground - its now the longest do to retarded turtles, AV doesnt need "reinforcement" wins or losses, WSG would be fixed nicely if you included that mechanic to it. Instead of capping a flag 3 times make caping a flag give points and holding a flag a slow steady stream of points, along with kills.
all blizz needs to do is make all bgs give good honor and not force us to grind 120k per season in 1 bg
Wolfkin Jan 7th 2008 4:08PM
Maybe if they caused getting AFK flagged out of a BG to do the same amount of damage to your gear as a PVE world spirit rez, people would respond?
Plus, it'd be easier to pick out the AFK'ers... They'd be the naked ones with empty bags...
onyx.ceilican Jan 7th 2008 4:09PM
The AFKavers I love are the ones that sit and chat over the bg line and say things like "You guys suck, thats why I AFK if you start playing better than I will do something"
There was one guy in particular that always said crap like this, and was always talking about how he ruled in BG's before all the "losers" started to qeue up for them, etc etc.
Funny thing was he did nothing but sit in the cave and talk smack about everyone actually doing something - and still he ranted about how awesome he was.
General consesus was that we were all very happy when he got his pittance of honor and went away.
If you AFK just STFU and be useless, but please do not try and make it seem like you are the PvP god of all BG's when you just sit around and suck up space. Even if you WERE the best, you are useless scum now - and if you want respect then shut yer yap and prove you are any good, until then - you suck worse than the a 4yr old button mashing his Allie Rogue to leetness
Argent Jan 7th 2008 4:11PM
well, the fallacy with the assertion that letting people get their honro will gewt them all out of the queues is the notion that pthe afk'ers have a set goal in mind.
i very much doubt they do. they probably just queue ad naseum, regardless of necessity and thus by not reporting them, you gain pretty much nothing. best thing blizz could do is make it so that if you get flagged as afk in 3 or so games, you get a deserter debuff that lasts 168 hours for the first occurance and double it every time thereafter.
Argent Jan 7th 2008 4:12PM
and good grief, i can't spell today.
Naix Jan 7th 2008 5:58PM
Here is an idea. Once someone is inactive for 5 minutes/no damage/no healing. You can kill them for their honor.
Malachi154 Jan 7th 2008 4:22PM
The AFK issue is easily fixed, and the tools are already in place. Instead of being marked 'Inactive' after the initial reporting, simply boot the individual out of the BG, back to the battlemasters and mark them as a Deserter, not allowing them to re-queue for 15 mins. No honor, no marks, and no credit for Dailys... This allows for a replacement player, hopefully one who wants to participate, removed the AFK player from the game and inconvieneces them for attempting to gain something for nothing. Remove the rewards, and the behavior will change. This works for Society and Parents, it will work of WoW. PS. I really like the suggestion that only 5 players be allowed to Queue for any given BG....
Fizzle Jan 7th 2008 4:36PM
Yeah... because booting folks wouldn't be used to get rid of people you just don't like, or that you don't think play well, or... well.. just because. gg.
prefect46 Jan 7th 2008 4:24PM
How about the far better solution of don't give old Arena gear for honor? That's what AFKers are going for.
The process of getting the gear (BGs) is painful and annoying. The rewards are very good. People are going to AFK until the rewards go away. Inactive flags don't do anything for the person who is casually watching their character while watching a movie, or doing something nearby. Inactive flags for botters means that the botter looses 1k honor for the day. 1,000 honor out of 10,000+ honor.
I understand the whole "trickle down theory" of gear but arena points still flow from your 10 games a week. Arena points should be the source of epics, not honor. As long as people can get epic gear for no work, you'll have the problem. Alternately, you could disable AV. Much easier to report AFK players in smaller groups.
Rochmoninoff Jan 7th 2008 4:34PM
this is an issue that merits addressing by Bliz.
I played 4 AVs Friday and lost all of them due to 10+ jumpers in the cave and an around 5+ (based on no damage no healing done) bot users wandering around.
The claim that AFKers don't affect the outcome is true when both sides have a similar number and/or the number is
shoan Jan 7th 2008 4:34PM
If they started booting people for AFK'ing I am sure someone will script something that makes you move once every min or so just a nudge to keep you from going AFK or even have a little motor on your desk to punch the W key every few secs walking you into a wall or foward or what ever so as to bypass any AFK kicks that blizzard comes out with. I would never do this I have to much fun dotting people up in the BG and running around to be a drain on the honor system. My point is as long as there is a fix there will be a workaround to exploit it. May take longer but someone will figure out a workaround.