If you’ve played a multiplayer online of any sort, from combat games like Halo to Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft, you’ve probably encountered griefers. Griefers are the players who get bizarre enjoyment from interfering with other players’ game experiences, causing them grief. One hallmark of good game design is minimizing the ways griefers can inflict unhappiness on other players. Star Wars: The Old Republic has done a great job so far but still has two loopholes.
Gold Farmers
Gold Farmers are groups of people who overwhelm areas of an MMORPG to gather game-world resources so they can sell them online for real-world money. It prevents regular players from having access to certain items, areas, or quests.
You can see in-game money for Star Wars: The Old Republic for sale on Ebay.com. I advise against buying them, however, since engaging in such transactions is prohibited by the game’s Terms of Service and can earn you a banned account.
Gold farming is a booming industry, especially in China, where warehouses full of gaming stations are in operation 24 hours per day mechanically farming every imaginable MMORPG.
Ninja Resource Thieves
Some games include player crafting. Players can create in-game items by acquiring the components and assembling them into worthwhile items. The more powerful the item the more difficult it is to acquire the materials necessary to craft it. Often these materials are found in areas that are difficult to reach and guarded by very powerful AI-controlled monsters, called mobs. Players must fight their way past the mobs to reach the precious crafting materials.
That is, unless they are Ninja Resource Thieves (NRT).
These players know where to find the most valuable crafting materials but do not want to risk their characters battling the guardian mobs. They wait for other players to go after the materials, patiently staying hidden until the legitimate player draws agro (attracts the aggression and attacks of the mobs). Once the mobs are engaged with the legitimate player, the NRT rushes past the battle, grabs the prize, and runs away – leaving the legitimate player in battle, at risk, and with no reward.
This is one of the few ways players can grief each other in Star Wars: The Old Republic. If the developers can lick that problem they’ll have created one of the fairest online gameplay environments around.