Who Is Behind The Fake Ban Posts In The Old Republic?
If you follow the forums for The Old Republic, you’ve probably noticed a strange trend over the last week or so. Namely, that there has been a lot of talk about people getting banned from the game for various offenses. First the Ilum loot containers, then dancing, and most recently, for playing the GTN.
Except for a few credit farmers, none of these people appear to have actually been banned. In fact, on several occasions, Community Managers from Bioware have stepped in and explicitly stated that the person in question has received no action against them. Furthermore, they have stated that not a single player has been banned for dancing, or for any actions carried out on the GTN. So what’s the deal?
Trolls are not all that uncommon on the internet. Why? I believe the phenomenon is best described by John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. However, in this instance, it goes beyond simple trolling for the sake of trolling. The sheer amount of people falsely claiming to be on the business end of a ban hammer tells me that there is malicious intent behind this trend. But who would go through this much trouble just to cause discourse among the ranks of SWTOR subscribers?
Conspiracy theorists would point to Blizzard. After all, they have the most to gain. The Old Republic has already become the fastest MMO to reach a million subscribers. There’s no way to measure, but one can only imagine that a portion of those players once rode through the land of Azeroth. And if the game they switched to leaves a bad taste in their mouth, maybe they will come back, right?
While that line of logic might make sense to some, it is incomprehensible that a company as large as Activison-Blizzard would stoop to such lows as this. World of Warcraft might have lost some subscribers, but they are hardly hurting in the player department. Last check showed that the game still had over 10 million subscribers. With Blizzard marked off of the list of suspects, who else fits the bill? The answer might be closely related.
My best guess is that the people posting these false claims don’t come from the company that made WoW, but players of the game, itself. While there’s no way to prove that these people have come from a different MMO, I have seen a number of references to how things are done better in WoW in these posts. These people don’t seem to have much of an agenda, other than trolling for the sake of trolling. After all, nothing seems to be more enjoyable to a fanboy than to get someone else upset about the game they love so much.
The other answer is that these are coming from people who are upset with EA. And quite frankly, those people aren’t exactly few in number. EA has done plenty of things over the years to get gamers riled up. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see some of those people setting out to turn people off to one of the company’s biggest potential money makers.
Wherever these people are from, and whatever their intentions, it does look as though their efforts are wasted. Bioware is doing a good job of keeping the community informed of the realities, and pointing out the people who are making false claims. After another month or so, it’s likely that these trolls will disappear altogether, as their “victims” grow wise to their game.
