The Human Nature
A few days ago, I detected that a player had multiple accounts (3 of them). My community liaison sent him an unofficial warning to keep only one account, since multi accounting is ground for banning. Well , that player (who played ok and wasn’t a troublemaker) activated vacation mode on the 3d account , then he sent all he had from the other cities to a friend of his. However, he thought it would be nice to attack some random players and he did so! They were 2 lucky ones who received a full complement of spells for unsuccessfully living.
Now, why did he act this way? Why did he feel the urge to spoil the game for other players? Just because he was going to delete those 2 accounts? Because he got a warning instead of a quick ban? I’m amazed why some people who seem very nice, reveal themselves to be such assholes. I have no explanation for this behaviour, it just shows how fucked up human nature sometimes is. At least I’ve banned him on the spot for that, but who will be the next jerk?
The answer is pretty much “because he could”. It’s amazing the efforts some of those can deploy to ruin someone’s experience or trash a game when they feel it’s about to end. That’s the “if I go down then I won’t be the only one” mentality I guess.
It’s a bit cliché at this point, but it’s still true: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
Basically, the player in question knew he had an audience (the administrators), so he used that attention to thumb his nose at you. It was his way of saying, “Here’s what I think of your stupid rules; let me hurt someone else before I go.”
Funny part is, he might be a really nice guy offline. He was probably upset he got caught.
In fact he could have deleted those accounts and keep only the first one. He got a private warning and he chose to be a jerk, thinking he would keep an account (the one in vacation). I don’t know why he thought he will get away with that, perhaps I was too soft. But we all learn the hard way…