Ok, so I’ve been moderating an online game I’ve been playing for the last 8 months for a while now. This has to be the crappiest job I’ve ever had to do.
The good thing is the community is still pretty small. Thank god. I can’t imagine another 10,000 players with how things are set up.
First off: The rules. The rules are by and large pretty fair and reasonable. No swearing, don’t cheat, some things to ensure good sportsmanship, no harassing players. Ya know, basic guidelines for existing in normal human society. By and large, most of the players have no problem with them.
But the ones that do 
–“Swearing is not a constitutional right on server operated by a private company” – This applies to the yahoo (and we get one every few weeks) who breaks the rules then claims the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t enforce rules on a MMOLG.
–“Don’t listen to players x,y and z. They will lie to you.” Yes, I specifically warn new players about other members of the community. They cheat, they have been caught cheating and had their characters severly penalized. They will do it again the second they think they can get away with it. So, DON"T LISTEN TO THEM! And if you do, and get caught breaking the rules. Don’t go psychotic on the staff when we are enforcing the rules.
–If you watch your buddy get kicked for something don’t be suprised when I kick you for doing the same thing.
–When you get kicked for doing something don’t a) rush to the forums b) threaten the staff c) threaten to hack the server d) continue to violate the rules e) continue to break the rules of your kick/temp ban by accessing elements of the game (ie forums)
–As a general rule we don’t make public staff actions against players. So when a player who was banned posts a large message saying, “oh no I was banned for this <which is some other reason much less heinous than what they were punished for>” Don’t run to the forums and say how EVIL the staff is. Trust me, we log EVERYTHING. You’re not going to get away by deflecting blame or lying about what you did. You know what you did, we know what you did. If you don’t own up to it we have even less intention to keep you around.
–ALL of us are unpaid. The mods, the admins we’re doing this for FREE because (hopefully) we want to make sure the game runs smoothly and there is a community which continues to draw new players in. Using the phrase, “I have never see such unprofessional behavior in a staff member, I’m going to get you fired” on me while I’m trying to explain why you are in violation of the rules makes your ass MINE. All of us are regular players who are giving up a LARGE chunck of our playing time to fill out piles of paperwork and enforce the rules on inbred 6 year olds with fewer braincells than typing skill.
–Don’t use your dummy account to log into the game after you’ve been banned for ANY duration. Nobody on the staff gives is rats ass why you’re back. You were BANNED and banned you stay. Now since you tried to come back, you’ve been banned for a much longer time.
–There is NO excuse for breaking the rules. I don’t care if someone was TKing you. You always have the ability to leave the server or enter a safe zone where NOBODY can attack you. Look at it from my point of view. I’m in the middle of a game, trying to help my friends out when I get a message about player X swearing and harassing people on his team. I have to then leave the server, or get far enough away from hostiles that I can justifiably use my mod tools to change servers (ie I can’t use my tools to save my butt). When I get to the server all I see is player X generally being a asshole. So I act accordingly. When player X gets back from his little (long) timeout he then gives me a PILE of shit over how none of this is his fault the other guy started it.
Which, BTW, falls under the rules as Harassing/insulting staff as they perform their duties.
–Players who after being punished say, “I can’t believe you treat paying customers this way! I’m a good friend of the development team, you can’t do this to me! If you keep this up, you’ll be losing a valuable customer that I don’t think you can really afford!” Soon realize a) Nobody has friends good enough who are willing to get banned along with them b) Don’t realize that we only want players who generally obey the rules c) We don’t give refunds if you’re permabanned part way into your subscription duration.
In closing:
HEY ASSNUGGET! Obey the fucking rules and stop being stupid!
Christ I wish we could ban people for being stupid.
