HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM GETTING STALKED / HARASSED AND HOW TO BE A NICER PERSON IN A MMO

Hello everyone,

We all know that MMO's universes aren't always troublefree and sooner or later most of us end up having problems with some people.
Often people end up upsetting and harassing eachother over the fact some of us are too social or antisocial, or too dramatic and so on. Often people get jealous on each other over certain things thay can't have or control. Often people get jealous over a certain person or group of individuals. Often people end up hating eachother over the fact that some are too bad or too good at the game. Often people end up arguing over certain gameplay aspects such as classes, skills, sets, or content lore, mechanics and difficulty.

I learned a lot of hard lessons from this game in the past few years and I only wanted to leave all that behind and move on but not before giving a chance towards others to learn and not repeat my mistakes again. We aren't perfect and if you read or heard some of my stories you know what I mean with that. We can't live in an utopia. Life will be boring and meaningless that way, if we can't make a difference between what is good and what is bad.
“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.” - George Bernard Shaw
Just like that, being the black sheep of the family doesn't mean we don't want and don't deserve to be better persons or that we are always wrong. Just think about this.

As a sign of good will and gratitude, I made this small guide for you mostly from my own and my friends experience. I made this small guide about how you could protect yourself against stalkers, people who keep harassing you over and over for some reasons or anothers, weird, crazy, clingy, dramatic, unwanted, ignorant, toxic people and so on. I made this small guide to prepare you and help you to prevent some of my own and others mistakes and to offer you a much friendly and better experience in this or any other new game.

Have a good laugh if you want but I hope this will enlinghten you just a little and make you a better person towards you and others as well.

EASY WAY - NOOB WAY / COWARD WAY / TOXIC WAY
- Block the person in question.
- If he/she comes back under a different alias, block him/her again.
- Block his/her friends if they continue to harass you and if he/she harass your friends ask them to block him/her and his/her friends as well.
- Remove him/her from your circle of friends by any means, by reporting him/her to an officer from your guilds, or Game Moderators or leave the common guilds you two share.
- You might also consider taking a break from the game and switch to something else until the things cool down. But usually you will not do that in this case.
*NOTE* This might or might never solve the issue in question, in fact it might cause even more problems for both of you the more people get involved (the ripple effect), thus it will be nicer to move to the next level.

MEDIUM WAY - RIGHT WAY / BRAVE WAY / FRIENDLY WAY
*NOTE* Consider asking for help around the community if you can't deal with this by yourself.
- Confront him/her and see if this person is reasonable to deal with, point out towards what this person is doing wrong and ask him/her to stop doing so in a nicely manner.
- Confront him/her about what is causing you problems, about what makes you feel unsafe, insecure, afraid, etc... and why would you like to be left alone.
- Confront him/her and see if you or him/her are in any imediate danger.
*NOTE* If things get serious and goes out of your control and this person starts to stalk/harass/frighten/threaten you, talk to your family and friends about and seek protection from the person in question. Same way try to get in contact with his/her family or some of his/her IRL friends. And report this person to the Game Moderators with as much details as possible.
- Ask him/her what does he/she want from you and how could you help him/her.
- Try your best not to be ignorant, rude or toxic as this might cause more problems than fix for both of you.
- Give him/her something he/she wants, play a bit with him/her, talk with him/her but remember to keep a certain distance.
- Set some rules and boundaries.
- Make sure you have a trusted friend or several by your side, who you might ask for their help to push away your unwanted friend, but remember to do it in a nicely manner. Never use force or your influence in a community to push someone away as you will only cause even more problems for both of you.
- Consider inviting this person into a larger community where he/she might easily find someone else with whom he/she might spend some more time together.
- Do your best to not mix up friends, valable both ways. Try to avoid getting in contact with his or her friends and try not to invite your friends into same group.
- Do not play alone. Have at least one two friends nearby as this might discourage your unwanted friend.
- Play in offline mode.
- Before logging off, leave the group, go offline and port away, pref to a location this person doesn't have access such as one of your houses if possible.
- If you do not follow a certain sheddule, you will make things much harder for your unwanted friend to follow and harass you.
- Be spontaneous. Be random. Be annoying. Nothing works better than wasting someone time. Try to take long breaks during the gameplay sessions and always jump from one thing to another. Like now you are doing a quest, one minute you are going afk for like 10 minutes or so, next minute you want to do a raid, after that you change your mind and log out for a while etc... Remember however not to be abusive towards that person.
- Be understanding, your unwanted friend might have some problems he/she might need help or want to distance himself/herself from something or someone and for some reason he/she enjoy your company and think you might be able to help him/her. Whatever the reason is, be reasonable. Don't cause him/her even more grief than they might be dealing with. Don't be rude, judge, threaten, reject or ignore him/her.
- If you still feel uncomfy playing with this person then you might consider ignoring the person in question, pushing him/her away from your community or leaving the game for a while or play some different games.
- If this person gave you something valuable, such as resources, time, feelings, etc... both in the game or in real life, be sure to give something back and be nice about that. Take your time. Don't just leave in a heartbeat and announce your intentions from time.
*NOTE* Be nice and don't make abuse of power and influence you have into your community to harm someone even more than needed, such as removing him/her from some large guilds, splitting him/her from his/her friends, trashtalking this person, sabotaging this person. Just because you don't like this person, doesn't mean others shouldn't either.
*NOTE* Please respect privacy! If this person comes towards you with a personal problem, don't be rude and make his/her problem public or use it against him/her.
*NOTE* Don't turn yourself from the victim into the agressor.
*NOTE* Always have a good and serious talk before blocking someone.
*NOTE* Most MMO often put you in the position of sharing some time with certain idividuals, such as ending up in same dungeon or raid team, etc. If such situations occurs in your future, try your best to put your past missunderstandings behind by not causing each other even more problems, and do your best to play together and not drag yourself or others from the team into your personal problems as well.

EXPERT WAY - HARD WAY - NOT THE SAFEST
*NOTE* If none of the above working the only way to protect yourself is by dissapearing. In order to do that in a safe manner it would be nice to follow certain steps.
Before changing your identity it would be nice to consider taking the following steps:
- Prepare. Tell your friends about your intentions to leave the game. Make some gifts if you like, pay your debts if any, fulfill your promises, play a bit more together, etc...
- Take your time. Make sure you don't forget anything or anyone and try your best to avoid any mistakes. One day you might regret your decision.
- Leave an open door towards everyone, such as leaving a way to be contacted outside the game if lets say some of your friends might miss you. It doesn't have to be your main address but a secondary one. Believe me someone will miss you sooner or later, especially if you two shared a lot of good times together!
- Go offline mode.
- Zone out, port all your characters in a safe location, preferably into one of your houses if possible and make sure nobody have access over there.
- Remove access to all your residences.
- Change your characters appearances, take off their gear, change your characters titles if any show up.
- Leave all your guilds.
- Remove all your friends from your friends list. You might never know.
- Leave all your third party applications, discord groups, teamspeak groups, facebook groups, websites, etc...
- You might consider leaving a note considering your choices, invoking that you would like to take a break from the game, or you are busy IRL, etc... before leaving like that...
- Make sure you are no longer in any leaderboards.
- Make sure you did not sent out any mail for the last 30+ days and accepted / returned all your incoming mails.
- Before a name / char change make sure you consider Beta / Test Server might have a backup copy of your main account. Thus it might betray your new identity!
- Take a break of 30 to 90 days at least from the game so all instances where your name might appear will get lost. Such as guild joining / leaving / deposits / sales, etc.
- Consider deconstructing / using all your crafted items that might show your old name on them.
- Preferably you should return only after a major patch. There is a big chance that all history might be erased.
Upon returning with a new identity keep in mind that people might still recognize you so:
- Change your gameplay style!
- If you played a certain character or role make sure at least for a while you switch for another character or role.
- If you played a certain content try swapping for something else.
- If you played in a certain area make sure to swap to another area.
- Make a new identity, game tag, character names, character appearances, third party application profiles.
- Make sure your account and character naming structure is entirely different than the previous one. If you were a "Kitten" before you might consider not using the world "Kitten" / "Cat" / whatever with your new identity.
- Do not talk in voice chat by any means! Unless you are sure nobody knows your voice or the person in cause isn't around anymore.
- Change your way of communicating via text chat and not only.
- Consider changing your language in case you know more than one.
- Make new friends, join new guilds, be a new and different person.
- Don't try to contact old friends from your new account, some might not be proven to be trustworthy to trust them with your new identity. Some might just leak by mistake your new identity towards others.
- Play on a different server if possible.

EXPERT WAY - HARD WAY - SAFEST WAY
- You might consider instead of renaming your old account to start a new one, a new life, without any ties towards past. This way you will be certain nobody can track you down anymore based on all the informations above.

EXPERT WAY - SHADOW WAY - PREVENTION
*NOTE* Best way to prevent any sorts of harassments towards you is to take care about your privacy.
- Keep your personal life away from the virtual life.
- Don't share pictures of yourself online.
- Don't share pictures of your pets, house, car, locations you like to attend, holidays, etc.
- Don't talk in voice chat.
- Don't chat in text chat.
- Don't disclosure anything about your personal life.
- Don't disclosure anything that might reveal your physical locaiton.
- If you open yourself too much to people don't be surprised if someone might become interested in you for one reason or another.
- If someone try to get close to you, remember to protect yourself and refuse to share those informations with him or her, even if they start first. Be nice and direct about.
- Play alone, or with someone you really know and trust IRL or from some other games.
- Play in offline mode.
- Turn off text chat to not get distracted and block any incoming mails. Keeping your your inbox full for example helps with that.
*NOTE* Be prepared, learn how the game works, learn how to communicate with players, etc.
- In case you want to do group content keep the communication to the minimum, don't argue, don't complain and don't join discussions of any kind that are not game related.
- Don't choose account name, character names and character appearances that are too provoking. Try to be as neutral and distant as possible.
- Try to cover your character face and body as much as possible by using a helmet for example or an adequate costumation / armor.
- If possible do your best not to use similar names over several platforms and games. This way if you encounter a problem in one game, it won't cause you problems in other games as well.
- If you are new to a game, let others know about, be nice and ask questions if you do not understand a certain element of the game such as, race, class, skills, gameplay, mechanics, guilds, socializing, dungeons, raids, PvP, end game content, in game shop, etc...
- If you encounter a person who is new to the game and ask or not for help, be nice and offer your some of your time to help and tell them how the game works.
- If you notice this person does something wrong, even repeatedly, be nice and try to reason with this person and make him or her understand how the game is played or why something he or she is doing is wrong.
- If you have a personal life that prevent you for doing your best or be on time for certain group content, let others know about. Also try to be mode understanding towards people with one or several health problems, social problems, private life, job, etc... Keep in mind that not everyone is willing to share those informations with you.
- Play together and have fun. Everyone is here for one reason or another. Because they love this game or simply because they need to distance themselves from certain IRL problems. Be nice! Talk with each other and play with each other!
- Everyone should be treaten as equals! If you are an end game player don't make fun of those less fortunate, use them, abuse them, bully them, make them feel inferior, etc. Not everyone had the same privileges with some of you so please do your best and don't look at them from above.
- Keep in mind that not everyone have access to a good PC, have a good internet connection or that the game can be very buggy and laggy sometimes.
- Never jump in between two friends! If you see them playing together, if you know they enjoy spending time together, if one of them tells you to to not jump in between you two, then don't take one of them to a dungeon or raid and leave the other alone.
- Don't be pushy, don't complain, don't name and shame, don't stalk people, don't harass people, don't threaten people... (And I'm sure I could add a lot more here but I would preffer to not go there.)
- Don't look at this game as a "dating site", but that doesn't mean you can't just make new friends.
- Don't leave friends behind.

*END NOTES* I hope I covered the most important aspects about this topic. Feel free to add, correct me or improve this guide but don't forget to mention me in your comments at least. Stay safe and away from troubles and don't cause others unwanted problems.

Signing out,
Legendary XVRaptor