The shoe guy was around for years, christ I think I can vaguely recall him when I first moved to the server. As was the “come with me for some dungeon fun*” guy, fairly sure a few years ago when I played a different character I reported him with a few guildies for some of the creepy whispers he churned out.
Honestly it’s quite sad that these people just become accepted parts of locations, “haha, that’s just the shoe bandit!!!”. Absolute freaks tbqh.
*this is heavily toned down
“And if you look to your left, you’ll see Cathedral Square, the home of banner rp”
Ooooooo!
“And if you look to your right, you’ll see the lair of the infamous shrinking shoe bandit - watch your soles, ladies!”
Aaaaahhh!
https://www.cameo.com/v/_2CTUgk4N
The reason why they’re migrating from Goldshire to Stormwind Harbour/Lion’s Rest is because the public hatred against Goldshire is working. Goldshire has drawn in a lot of ire from the entire server, and with the influx of ‘Lollers’ and ‘Trolls’ in Goldshire, who go there for the fun, causes people who like to RP and immerse themselves to simply leave Goldshire. And Stormwind is known for being the biggest RP spot on the Alliance.
Lion’s Rest and the Harbour are both massive areas, from which they can spread out to avoid all the toy visuals, there’s RP for added immersion, the reason they’re even on Argent Dawn, and people have started telling others that Stormwind Harbour is the next best place because no one likes Goldshire anymore. Not even the ERP’ers.
So… It’s really just a natural conculsion to a on-going issue they’ve been facing.
Would it be better to ban them? Yes. The issue is that Acti-Blizz doesn’t have in-game interactions rated by the PG and ESRB, so there’s no incentive to monitor the chat beyond ‘Hey, just report them so it logs into our database, and we’ll write them a warning’. Why a warning? Because you can literally type a full-out 5 paragraph long ERP scene in Trade Chat and you wouldn’t get more, that’s how little they’ve shown they care.
Honestly, the only way we’ll get help is a literal mass unsub, and stay unsubbed until we get a blue post. THEN, they might consider things. They won’t move unless they lose money. This has been repeatedly proven as well.
Well yeah, they do say vote with your wallet.
Ultimately, it’s not really something that can be fixed by the community.
We ignore the issue and don’t talk about it and it gets swept under the rug and nobody cares.
We set the issue on fire and poop all over 'em and they move somewhere else or propagate and multiply, which is honestly, the case with a lot of similar issues. The more we actively stigmatize something on a community level, the more people who already do it seek to reinforce their habit and delve deeper.
I don’t really know which is better or which is worse. Ultimately, nobody really cares enough to vote with their wallet via un-subbing en mass because people care a lot more about playing the game and a lot less about these types of issues than the forums would lead people to believe.
This is entirely false. Back in WoD I was banned for typing a slightly colourful comment in trade. I see several people complain about being silenced in their bare-bones TRPs / crying on the general forums they were treated unfairly.
The system is automated too. You get silenced and then have to appeal that silence - which results in a GM deciding if you deserve it or not. Get enough reports and the system auto-mutes you.
Bit of speculation but I’m wondering - could people moving from there be because of lag issues etc.? I made a new character earlier this weekend and levelled them through the old Northshire start a bit and every time I approached Goldshire my laptop (which is a pretty good one, no issues otherwise!) started chugging really badly
The thought that there’s that many people to prompt it responding that badly is a really depressing one but I wonder if it could be tied to that as well?
Well, fair. I may or may not have slightly over-exaterated. But I’d also point out that WoD was… 6 years ago? A lot of things can happen in that time frame, especially at a corporate level where people leave or are fired in droves.
Though I will give credit where it’s due, the interactions I’ve had with GMs over the past year or so have been rather nice, which has led me to heavily suspect that it’s a high-executive mandate/memo that is keeping GMs from actively going out into the world. Mostly because that opens up a massive barrels of worms. We can’t expect special treatment in any given issue that takes more effort than half a work-day.
I am surprised that yet so few people have put “NO ERP” in their TRP OOC section.
I do feel it has worked wonders for me. I very rarely get approached by creeps. But, for some odd reason, I also get less random RP… hrm.
I doubt that will work, and Blizzard still won’t care. In fact, they may be relieved, even.
If I remember correctly, they did give a reason as to why they couldn’t / wouldn’t appear in game anymore, I don’t remember what it was though.
It disappoints me that someone should even have to type this out in the first place, but given the collection of extremely questionable whispers I have been steadily accruing I find myself thinking I’m going to have to do this eventually when my patience runs dry.
I on the other hand know people who put that in and the ERPers see that as a challenge.
This is the common way of things in the FFXIV community and it generally works. Spreads the message that ERP is inappropriate while turning away those who would try to pursue it with you specifically, etc. All without a poopstorm. Anyone who pursues ERP with you as a result of that tag is probably more poopposting than wanting to ERP and at that point all you need to do is imminently block anyway.
And yeah, I know NOBODY should HAVE to add that in their TRP because it’s like wearing the equivalent of a “pls do not fornicate with me” t-shirt irl but at the end of the day, it’s very much for your own benefit to do so.
I have this in mine. It doesn’t work. At all.
I keep hearing about this guy, he sounds like a meme I haven’t (thankfully) encountered yet.
Thankfully I was never subject to that one, just the person looking for a “fun dungeon run” together which always proceeded to go into uncomfortably explicit detail
I genuinely cannot fathom how people have both a social awareness and a self-respect low enough to whisper complete and utter strangers these types of things out of the blue
That’s how foot fetish goes, its not that obvious* (other than being, kinda weird) and it just gets worse and worse as it goes on.
*unless you play dumb at the 1st whisper where he kind of spells it out to you like I did when he /w my monk.
Why did Silvermoon have to come to this
“maybe your character could be on a beach and I’ll get stuck in her shoe”
Me;
I’ve had the displeasure of meeting the shoe guy. At least he took ‘no’ for an answer.