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Griefing Reports: EagleRock’s Mine and Capitol City Marketplace

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.

Griefing Report – dorde9’s house

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.