Crime & Punishment

[GM-Ayu]

Neither did we know about the two names until mentioned. We thought that Jason was making fun of Swift/Jose instead since the names sound similar. Urbandictionary is indeed like wikipedia where anyone can add to it. So, we did investigate if it's a genuine coincidence that they stumbled upon a word with a meaning they don't know, or are they fully up to bypass the rule while obeying it. GM Auron and I splitted up the logs around the day of annoucement of name changes, up to 1 week (approximately) after that.

I found nothing about Fainn, as I pointed out how I furthered my research in the other thread and found Fainn to be an accepted and used last name originated from Dublin. But GM decision is a group decision and not just calling of any one particular GM. I will let the other GMs speak for Fainn's case.

As for Jason's case, Mercador from LoA as well warned Jason that the GM team will not allow his name, also saying that urbandictionary will show offense. If this event didn't exist, true that maybe Jason just happened to be unlucky to choose a name that happens to have a sexual overtone. However, his very own guildmate warned him about it. He could have checked, and asked the GM about it at that time. This is said on Jan 11, at the advanced fishing spot with Mercador. On the 15th, Jason mentioned that he should have picked another name which was definitely blunt in offense that has the same definition as his previous name, except that he plans to use homonyms. Jason never contacted the GMs to change to a new list of names either for possible offenses, except to change Joose to Juice but that was after name change deadline. Aki declined his request at that time, since all the GMs are still unaware of the name's meaning. She declined on the basis that free name change deadlines are over.

Name changes did not solely rely on urbandictionary, but also the context of the case as well. Context points for this particular case that this character name was thought of while trying to push the rules to its very limit.

As for other characters whose names are offensive in the future, likewise we will use similar treatment. We first research the name, then judge depending on context of the character name creation, and put both of these factor together.

It maybe worthwhile to note that some reports are indeed rejected because they find some party names belonging to LoA characters offensive. None of the GMs can find faults with them, and while I was asked by Pandora to help GM-Auron to look up the context of Jason's character, I also looked up the reporters' context. Some of them have admitted pretty well that they are trying to find "excuses" to "do the ex-LoAers in" within the logs for a 'finishing blow' after the recent events. These rulesharks' (people who uses loopholes and rules to their own advantage against other people) future reports will be deemed weak and mild, treated with far less priority in the future.

Guess that there are subjective elements when it comes to interpret what is "acceptable" (even IRL, anything regarding what is acceptable is highly debatable), but we try our best to serve all players equally and fairly. heRO is pretty clogged up with rules already for a list of guidelines for what is appropriate or not. We do realize that the rules are still unclear in some parts, and that's why we are slowly adding bits and parts to the rules lately to reduce the gray area.

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Now for the password issue, yes we admit that we should be treating with a lot more faster speed. However, instead of making some short term solution to the problems, we are trying to get our long lost Control Panel back up so players can change their own password bypassing the GM's manual changes. This has long been a significant problem, but sadly we have little technical luck. Hopefully password problems will be short term if we can fix up the CP.

For Buddha's individual case, I went to bed already after restoring her Champion, and we cleared the problem with the Champion's account. As for the High Priest, I just got back home and have close to no deep understanding about it. I'll need to talk with Buddha and the other GMs about it first. Since it does not only involve the character deletion but item transfer and multiple other accounts this time, it makes investigation lengthy and difficult.

However, I doubt that anyone can say sharing password with other people is NOT part of the problem. This is not just to heRO, but anything regarding passwords and online accounts. You should *never* share your password or beware to face full consequences of whatever happened on the account as a result of the other controllers to the account doing horrible things on that character. There are previous cases regarding fishing macros and sharing accounts already, and we will ban the character that committed the act, regardless of who is the controller of the account. [There are rare, extreme, exceptional cases of course, such as hacking and so on]

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For Silvanel's case, it is already being worked on actually. The problem involves Silvanel's IP showing up as logging on to more than just his own account. We are reviewing his case already, as he requested and cooperating with us.

For Ryan's case, I know as much as what the ban thread reads o_O; Some sort of violation on the special conditions placed on them for their return. However, seems like he admitted to rulebreaking already. If he did that because he gave up or anything, I encourage him to PM us (I don't think he's banned in forum) about it.

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EDIT: I didn't see Kamina's post when I started typing. We considered the time factor before. Some of us GMs think that if a report is sent in but the date is back months ago, then it is the players' fault that they did not report as they should have at the time of relevancy. Some of us GMs think that time should not matter, as for example a theft committed in real life, even if it was committed a year ago, it is still treated as a crime. There is indeed much debate about the 2007 Oct comment. In the end, we decided that as of that one incident alone, Jason was to have the one week ban and one week mute on that particular character who said the comment. This punishment satisfied both sides of the GM team that it is a heavy punishment over a racist comment, but punishment was lowered due to the time problem.


(I probably left out a lot of other things I should answer to o_O; Did I miss anything?)


Thanks for your concern and suggestions about heRO server. We will certainly take them up with serious consideration. ^_^