World of Warcraft battlegrounds sometimes attracts players who harvest honor points without fighting. Instead, such players simply sit on the sidelines and let their allies do all the work while they effortlessly harvest honor points.
To combat this, Blizzard has a system where players can report players AFK, or away from keyboard, in Warsong Gulch and the other battlegrounds. A player who is found guilty of going AFK on a battleground can find his or her WoW account temporarily suspended.
Fake “Reported AFK” Notifications
When a player reports another player AFK, the reported player receives a chat note informing them they’ve been reported. To remove the report, the accused player needs to participate in player vs. player combat (to prove he or she isn’t off having a coffee, shampooing the cat or doing something else instead of participating in the battle).
Since the reporting system was introduced, some players have started sending fake “reported AFK” notifications to other players. A typical fake report might look like this:
“You have been reported AFK (away from keyboard) by PlayerX due to inactivity on the Warsong Gulch battlefield. To cancel this report, please enter /AFK cancel. Thank you.”
The unsuspecting player dutifully types in “/AFK cancel” into the chat window, only to find themselves booted out of the battlefield. The player can’t get back into Warsong Gulch (or any other battlefield) for ten minutes, as the character has earned the Deserter debuff.
What happened? Well, typing /AFK into the chat window makes a character display the Away from Keyboard command, no matter what is typed after the command. Players who go AFK on a battlefield are immediately booted out of the PVP area. Remain motionless in a battleground long enough and a character will also go /AFK. (Players who abuse the battlefields use a variety of tricks to be away from keyboard without the /AFK command activating).
PlayerX (not, by the way, a real WoW character) has tricked the player into leaving the battleground.
Why Send Fake AFK Reports?
To make matters worse, PlayerX is in the same faction as the duped player. Players send fake “reported AFK” messages to teammates for a number of reasons. Some think it’s funny. Some like griefing other players to upset them.
Others are as guilty of abusing the player vs. player areas as players who sit inactive in the battlegrounds. If the team is close to winning the battlefield, a player may try to trick allies into entering the /AFK command to get rid of them. If the trick succeeds, the tricked player gets no honor points, and those players left on the field (including the one who sent the message) receive a higher share of honor points as there’s one less player.
It’s a nasty trick, and in the heat of PVP battle it’s easy to be taken in by fake AFK reports. The best defense is to remember that typing /AFK into the chat window always sets player status to away from keyboard, and that the only way to refute a legitimate AFK report is to engage in player vs. player combat.
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