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21Jun/114

Griefing Report: Trevor’s Warp Point

Posted by EagleRock

And so continues the endless cycle of griefers.  Just when I thought I had done enough "user weeding" to separate the proverbial wheat from the proverbial chaff (yes, it's a proverb...read Matthew 3 if you're so inclined), I am introduced to yet another individual devoid of intellect that believes he can pull the wool over my eyes.  Said individual received said wool up said person's ass.  And yes, it was painful.

The Case: Trevor's Warp Point, magicaltrevor

A particularly warm Spring Friday gave birth to this story, as I was signing online for an evening of Minecraft.  I was delightfully pleased to see many players online, despite the fact that Minecraft was already up to 1.6.4 and Eagleworld was still on 1.5_02.  To me, it was a sign that the general intelligence level of the human populace was going up.  Oh, but was I ever mistaken.  It was just fate taking a stab at me and reminding me at how stupid some people could be.

One of the server veterans, SilentCobra, was finally in a state where he was able to use his computer again for gaming, thanks to some brief instruction on how to clean out dirt and pet hair properly.  He was preparing to sign on the Minecraft server after a long haitus while I was conversing with in-game players.  While conversing with players as such, I generally "hop around" aimlessly and don't really play as much as I wander.  My wanderings took me to an unwelcomed sight.

I had seen Cobra's unfinished Link statue in the distance, but it looked like it was covered in water.  One of my moderators, SpaceNinja, recognized it as well.  I warped over to there immediately to inspect the situation.

While one block of water on the statue would not have bothered me as much, the fact that there was 10-15 blocks placed did.  The whole statue was coated, and this was beyond the usual playful behavior on behalf of the server players.  Naturally, my trusty bbstick would tell me who caused the issue.  I quickly found out it was deathsbones.

I figured this may have been an extreme version of playing around up to this point, until I found out Cobra's TriForce was also griefed, as well as his shore house.  His shore house was the worst.  Blocks broken, water poured all over inside...the works.  It was griefing, through and through.  Malicious intent was apparent.

I knew immediately that our community's favorite griefer would not sign on soon, because he was too inflicted with SNS Syndrome to bother staying on Beta 1.5.  So, without fear of him logging on soon, I would wait until I update for him to sign on.

The Confrontation

Here's the point where I would make you laugh your ass off.  He hasn't signed on since, though, so I can't do that though.  But I have not executed the ban yet.  I'm hoping I can still squeak a pwn out of this guy.  :-P

The Verdict and Aftermath

I think the verdict speaks for itself: deathsbones was permabanned.  Guilty as charged, and an idiot to boot.

And for my usual Jerry Springer "Final Thoughts" moment, I leave you all thinking of this: if you honestly and genuinely think you can get away with griefing on my server, please do yourself a favor and resign now.  It'll save you a whole lot of trouble.  I'll just undo everything you did (and I mean EVERYTHING...not just the griefing) with one command, and I will ridicule you in front of everyone.  You will be pissed off, you will hate me, and you will be reminded that it is not smart to screw around with someone smarter than you.

By the way, that's not a compliment to myself.  By me saying that I'm smarter than the griefers, that's like me saying I'm smarter than, oh, a papaya.  Not much of a compliment, is it?

Also, to those of you that like to screw around with other players: let's remember something.  There IS a limit of what I will tolerate, even if it's just for fun.  Placing a sign or two on someone's house, as described in the rules IS okay.  Using 20+ buckets of water and breaking glass all over...not so much.

Filed under: Griefing 4 Comments
17Mar/112

Griefing Reports: EagleRock’s Mine and Capitol City Marketplace

Posted by EagleRock

I meant to post these a while ago, but just haven't had time yet. They gave me a pretty good yuk, especially since I found them nominally difficult to manage and met my expectations that people just can't resist trying to lie.

First case: EagleRock's Mine

You have to be an idiot to grief the administrator's stuff. Either that, or you had better have balls of steel that would put Duke Nukem's to shame. Seriously. As if griefing wasn't a stupid idea in the first place, you are just asking for trouble.

I went down into my mine one day and immediately noticed blocks missing all over. While my mine is not particularly ornate, I have a glass floor under the ladder going down, which has lava underneath. Naturally, the area around the lava was screwed around with, and the whole mine was ravaged left and right.

It took me all of two seconds to determine who did it, thanks to BigBrother. It was Chronobodi. I have heard complaints about him doing stuff like this before, so it was a pretty open-and-shut case. I figured I would give the guy some leniency if he was willing to clean up his act.

So, our favorite metallic-spherical-object-bearing player joins up, and I nonchalantly juxtapose my question into another conversation I had with him. I told him there was griefing around the server and that I was looking for who might be doing it. I asked him if he had any idea who went in my mine. He said no, he didn't know.

Here's where it gets fun. I teleport to my mine, and I tell him I'm bringing him there to see if he maybe knew it by sight. I tp him to me and he says "I've never been down here." After I asked him he was sure, he says, "No, honest." Honest, my ass.

Obviously I wasn't drawing a confession from him. So, I hit him with my trump card. I told him that I used BigBrother to determine who did the damage and that he was the culprit. I got from him the best comment yet from any of the idiots that have griefed my server so far: "Shiiiiiit. *5 second pause* I didn't know you had that kind of ability."

After he said this, I told him "Had you told me the truth, I might have given you some clemency. Too bad." I kick him. He comes back and says, "Come on dude, don't ban me. Chill out." Yeah, right. Permaban.

Verdict on EagleRock's Mine: Chronobodi was the culprit. A very open-and-shut case. BigBrother tracked all the damage and his "Shiiiiit" was as good as a confession. Chronobodi was permabanned.

Second Case: Capitol City Marketplace

After a particularly bad day, I was welcomed to the cries of some of my regulars that BigX's tea cup sculpture as broken and spilling water. My ever-so-trusty BigBrother Stick told me the culprit was jamesnabbott. It was not a big deal (only two wool blocks), so I wasn't going to be too sore about it. However, afterwards, I go into my store (to retrieve items from a chest) to find my desk is missing. A quick bbstick check showed me it was the same person, jamesnabbott.

Now, let's pause for a second. How stupid can you really be? As if Chronobodi wasn't ballsy enough mining in my mine, this guy actually bothers to destroy my desk and BigX's sculpture? Griefing a Moderator, and the Administrator. If he was ballsy, he'd have to use a hand truck to carry his cajones around. However, I think he's just stupid.

Anyway, considering I found two instances of griefing within 10 seconds of walking distance, I was assuming the guy broke a bunch of stuff all over Eagleworld. So, I rolled back everything he has every done on the server. Ever. It makes my life easier trying to determine what he broke.

After 3 days or so after my discovery, Hand Truck Harry signs on. He immediately starts screaming "WHERE THE F*** IS MY HOUSE" to which I reply that we had griefing issues on the server and I had to rollback some changes and that I might be able to restore his house (not really, lol). I asked him if he could help me investigate.

His immediate response: "I wasn't online in like 3 days." Wow, what a guilty response. So I tell him it happened during the time frame he was actually on, and maybe he could help. I teleported him to my store, where I showed him the desk. I told him the desk was destroyed, and asked if he knew anything about it.

Here comes another winner of a repsonse. He replies "No." Two seconds later, he signs off, never to return. While I will give him credit figuring out that he was caught right away, it didn't exactly help him in the end.

Verdict on Capitol City Marketplace: Another open-and-shut case. All of james' work ever on Eagleworld was rolled back, and he was permabanned.

Moral of the Story

I WILL catch you. Don't even try it. When I say my server is safe from griefing, I mean it. If you're thinking of griefing, don't put any serious effort into mining, building, or whatever. I can wipe out everything you have ever done on the server with a single command.

On the other hand, if your life goal is to make it onto this blog in true "America's Dumbest Criminals" form, feel free.

Filed under: Griefing 2 Comments
4Mar/110

Griefing Report – dorde9’s house

Posted by EagleRock

Well, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this again, but that wasn't in the cards. We had another griefing incident occur after the majority of the users signed off early this morning.

As I was doing some testing in Capitol City, I received 5 alarms that Flint and Steel was used by champion1. I immediately teleported to where champion1 was standing, where I noticed dorde9's house burning down. When I showed up, champion1 indicated that he almost died and almost lost his stuff.

When I asked what happened, he claimed that a creeper came up to him, exploded, and burned down the house. Obviously this was a lie since creepers do not cause fire in the first place. Also, creeper block damage is disabled in Eagleworld, and towns are protected from monsters. I told champion1 that I got 5 alerts regarding him using Flint and Steel, which he denied. He claimed the logs were lying.

After a semi-coherent argument back and forth, we came to the conclusion that logs can't lie. At this point, champion1 stated he would rebuild the house and he wanted to drop it. I told him I did not as I wanted to know why he had Flint and Steel on his person. I also told him that lying to me further would be futile.

At this point, he confessed and stated that he intentionally burned down dorde9's house because earlier dorde said that "champion's house sucked." Once I heard this, I had enough evidence to warrant a permaban. When champion1 pleaded his case, I reminded him to read the rules, specifically the one that stated that griefing is zero-tolerance. Once he did, I permabanned him.

All damaage was rectified by rolling back the server to the 3AM snapshot. I do not believe any server work was lost during this time as users had already logged off.

In regards to how champion1 got access to Flint and Steel, I discovered that I omitted it from the item blacklist when I configured the protection plugin. I have retested the restrictions, and they are now as they should be.

To all members of Eagleworld (especially the new members): let this be a lesson to you all. Griefing will not be tolerated, and you simply will not get away with it under any circumstance. Attempting to do something against the rules will not fall under the radar, and lying to me just will not work. I've been running servers for too long to not have a complete history of what goes on, and I am not easily lied to.

I want Eagleworld to be a place where people can build without fear of griefing or bad feelings at all. I am also not too happy that some people are insulting others. This will not be tolerated. It is in the rules that you are expected to respect one another and not cause problems. If you do cause problems with others, you will be warned about your behavior and potentially banned.

Verdict on dorde9's house: champion1 was the obvious culprit due to anti-griefing logs and via confession. Since it was intentional and malicious griefing, champion1 was permabanned.

Filed under: Griefing No Comments
31Dec/100

Griefing Report – Liam’s Church and TIN’s Club

Posted by EagleRock

Hello, everyone.

One of the not-fun parts of administrating a server is handling unruly members and performing the inevitable banning. In Minecraft, of course, griefing is a huge issue, and as was expected, my server was hit as well. There were two buildings griefed on New Years Eve 2010: TIN's Club in Homeless Hill and Liam's Church in Tundra. I had to spend a good 5-6 hours performing investigations and following up on the matter.

Since I like to run a server in as fair of a manner as I can, here are the detailed findings from my
research into these matters, as well as the aftermath of the investigation.

 

Liam's Church

Liam reported that his church had a pool of lava on the main level. As a result all of the wooden
pews he had were destroyed. While the griefing was severe, Liam stated it was not as a result of a
joke or any kind of prank he knew of, therefore the nature behind the attack was purely for griefing.

Liam had already cleaned up the lava by the time I inspected the church. However, he was able to
show me the location of two lava blocks to the best of his recollection. I placed signs on the two
blocks to get a reading of the coordinates. Here is the log entries for the two signs I placed:

2010-12-31 14:53:46 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -448 70 -815
2010-12-31 14:53:47 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -448 70 -816

Brief persual of the logs showed that Toasty9896 was the one that placed the two lava in question.
While the coordinates were not exact to the ones Liam provided, they were within 1-2 blocks, and still within the church:

2010-12-31 03:03:52 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-448 Y=71 Z=-817
2010-12-31 03:03:52 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Toasty9896 used a lava bucket (10)
2010-12-31 03:03:54 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-448 Y=71 Z=-818
2010-12-31 03:03:54 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Toasty9896 used a lava bucket (11)

Verdict on Liam's Church: There is very strong evidence that Toasty9896 was the culprit.
Toasty's member rights were revoked immediately. All items on his person were removed permanently.  Toasty was granted the ability to defend himself to me and explain his actions. However, according to Runninghobo, Toasty stated he was leaving the server and did not deny the actions. He said he did not wish to return to the Minecraft server. Therefore, he is guilty as charged. Toasty was permabanned.

 

TIN's Club

The club was destroyed, presumably by lava or fire, since it was constructed primarily of wood.
Besides the obvious destruction of the building, there were two random blocks placed on the house, which were presumably placed to stop the flow of lava. Below is the log file output that shows where the two blocks are located:

Dirt Block Location:

2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -716 102 -354
2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Line 2 : Dirt Block
2010-12-31 15:16:11 [INFO] Line 3 : Placed Here

Cobblestone Block Location:

2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -709 102 -352
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 2 : Cobblestone
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 3 : Block
2010-12-31 15:17:10 [INFO] Line 4 : Placed Here

After investigating the GriefAlert logs for any kind of lava or flint and steel use in the area, I
found two lava buckets dropped by Hoolabaloo as indicated by the log entries below:

2010-12-31 03:47:27 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-725 Y=109 Z=-346
2010-12-31 03:47:27 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a lava bucket (10)
2010-12-31 03:47:29 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-725 Y=109 Z=-346
2010-12-31 03:47:29 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a bucket (11)
2010-12-31 03:47:51 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-713 Y=98 Z=-351
2010-12-31 03:47:51 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a lava bucket (12)
2010-12-31 03:47:55 [INFO] Antigrief incident coordinates : X=-715 Y=98 Z=-355
2010-12-31 03:47:55 [INFO] Antigrief alarm : Hoolabaloo used a bucket (13)

The next step of the investigation was to find out where the lava was placed. Since the empty
bucket was used 2-4 seconds after the lava was placed, that indicated that the lava had enough time to start flowing, but would have removed evidence of the source. However, placement was important to determine whether or not it appeared to be accidental or intentional.

I found the first spot, which was on the road overlooking TIN's Club. Based on the placement, it
is completely possible the lava was an accident:

2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -725 109 -346
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 1 : Hoolabaloo
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 2 : Exact Location
2010-12-31 15:25:57 [INFO] Line 3 : #1

However, the second lava was dropped on the spot in front of TIN's door. Since it was the second
lava bucked used in short time, the likelihood that this was an accident is very slim. Here's the
log proof that I found the spot:

2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Sign placed by EagleRock1337 at -715 98 -349
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 1 : This is the
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 2 : spot two
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 3 : steps in front
2010-12-31 15:28:47 [INFO] Line 4 : of Tin's door.

Verdict on TIN's House: Strong evidence shows Hoolabaloo was the culprit. Hoolabaloo's
member rights were revoked immediately. All items on his person were removed permanently. Hoolabaloo was granted the ability to defend himself to me and explain his actions. However, Hoolabaloo refused to speak to me regarding the matter. Therefore, he is found guilty as charged. Hoolabaloo was permabanned.

 

Aftermath

This was not a fun day for me or anyone else of the server. I did not enjoy banning either of these
two members, but the rules of the server are plain and simple, and they did in fact damage people's work. In response to this attack, I felt the need to restrict lava, flint and steel, and TNT to only VIP members, Mods, and Admins. That way, these destructive tools are in the hands of only a select few that are deemed trustworthy enough.

I don't like restricting items from people, as I wish for the server to be as open as possible.
However, I do not wish to see this occur again, as I am sure nobody else wishes it to as well.

Filed under: Griefing No Comments