Mechislav's Ban:
Mechislav was banned for OOCly rescuing another player from the Order. No IC commands were issued by Mechislav to alert him to his friend's situation, ranging from magical to mundane. To determine this, we put together a timeline of events from wiznet and Azarial's server logs. A Staff member was also online and watching the wiznet log live.
During the investigation process, we checked every existing spell and magical command (such as Regnancy) to ensure that they log properly to the server and wiznet; there was no logging issue, and all uses of Regnancy and spells logged appropriately each time they were used. While there were multiple crashes after Mechislav had already arrived, by using timestamps we were able to confirm that the crashes did not affect the server or wiznet logs.
We compared the server log and wiznet timelines against the log sent in by Mechislav, and found evidence of log doctoring -- a command that we had confirmed was not used via server logs appeared to be patched in.
When there is powerful evidence suggesting cheating behaviors, a server log will be added to THAT PLAYER ONLY and scanned to locate specific key phrases and names relevant to the incident. After we notified Mechislav that we were looking into the incident, he was caught via log saying the following to a fellow player:
Unfortunately, we could prove it, and this confirmation was the final nail in the coffin. While it was a first proven offense against him, it was especially egregious; the flippant attitude, doctoring of logs, and the tells shared with another player which normalized cheating and manipulating Staff, were deemed serious enough for removal from TI.tell <redcacted> Though I feel like I should have a heart to heart with staff
tell <redcacted> About their lack of trust (I am guilty anyway, but they can't prove that)
Merick's Ban:
Whereas Mechislav was a single, unusually egregious incident, Merick's ban was the result of long-term OOC bad behavior that no amount of discussion remedied, and multiple ignored warnings.
His first warning was on August 20th of 2016, and was for screaming expletives at his guildmates over the Order channel when RP was not going his way, verbally attacking the player who asked him to stop, then going on an expletive-riddled rant over osay at the player who was acting against him IC.
After being asked by Staff (Remy) to stop, he did so until the end of the same day. Another expletive-riddled explosion was directed OOCly to his guildmates over his guild channel. He was asked again by Staff to stop, at which point he took it to tells with the Staff member, angrily ranted and demanded that a disease he had caught IC be removed from him (he had been in contact with corpses and contracted corpserot). He was asked repeatedly to stop screaming at the Staff member, advised that the disease was caught legitimately and needed to be handled IC, but he continued unhindered until he logged out some minutes later.
Various short logs were submitted throughout the remainder of the year by Merick's guildmates and individuals who went against Merick IC, involving raging, expletives, and being screamed at over OOC channels.
In November of 2016, Merick was warned by Kinaed that further behavior along these lines may lead to a ban.
On December 21, 2016, he was reported by three guildmembers for expletive-riddled raging over his guild channel because he believed he was being subverted. He was asked to stop by his guildmates, then asked to stop by a Staff member. He told the Staff member no. Another, more senior Staff member stepped in and warned him he would be silenced if he didn't stop. He was warned again by Kinaed on this day.
On March 28th, 2017, he was given another warning by Kinaed.
On April 17th, 2017, two players came to Staff upset about Merick's behavior over voice channels on Discord, citing verbal expletives and raging about other players' RP/IC behaviors. We have no way of verifying this, and nothing comes of it.
On April 18th, 2017, Merick was asked by a player on the Discord general text channel to stop raging about RP, because IC/OOC separation still exists on Discord.
On May 6th, 2017, Merick was heard by Staff angrily criticizing a fellow Knight's roleplayed choice to act against Merick to an audience of several other players. A player tells him to knock it off before Staff step in.
On May 21st, 2017, Merick was caught in a sticky IC situation in which he was validly restrained by another player. He logged out rather than be caught, and began sending a Staff member (Niamh) angry private messages via Discord about the situation, again threatening to quit when his character was in danger. At this point the Staff member had been notified by the other player of what had happened, and advised Merick to either log in and finish the RP, request liquidation if he truly intended to quit, or contact Kinaed if he had a policy concern. Further, the Staff member clearly indicated to Merick that did not want to discuss it with him further and would not be ranted at.
He continued ranting at the Staff member, who stopped responding, at which point Merick began pinging them over every Discord channel. Messages that contained expletives were deleted in accordance with policy. The Staff member reiterated that they were not going to get into it with him, that they did not want to be harassed about it, and that he needed to take it up with Kinaed. Merick said "no", and continued on until two players stepped in to tell him he should likely cease.
He then logged back into the game, said "frak you" over osay to the player that caught him, and logged out again. At this time he was transferred to a policy hold room, and had nochannel set on him in wait of Kinaed.
We received a log from another player of angry PMs that they were receiving over Discord from Merick, in which he also ignored their requests to stop.
With multiple warnings already issued and no signs of improvement (the contrary), Merick was spoken to by Kinaed and advised of his ban. He was disconnected, and banned accordingly.
