Forum Post of the Day: is reporting AFKers counter-productive?
In an odd expression of the "we can't beat them so we might as well let them win" attitude, someone on the forums has postulated the following logic:
Battleground AFKers want a limited amount of honor to purchase their gear.
AFKers will stop AFKing once they get that amount.
Reporting them slows down their AFK honor gain.
The slower it takes them to reach their goal, the longer we have to suffer their presence.
We should let them have their honor, so that they'll get out of the battlegrounds faster.
Obviously he is completely wrong. First of all, he's assuming that there's only a set amount of AFKers out there, and once they're all done, there won't be any more left. To the contrary, the more people succeed at getting honor rewards for free, the more people are going to see their example and try it for themselves. Additionally, the AFKer has no real reason set a limit to the amount of honor he can get this way. Only those who have bought all the items they can use and saved up the maximum amount of honor points and marks will stop, unless Blizzard gives us the tools to stop them ourselves.
Besides, letting people get away with AFKing for their gear is inherently unjust. It may not be on a par with stealing the crown jewels of the Queen of England, but it's theft nonetheless. After all, in a battleground, other people do all the work, but AFKers get the benefit. They are effectively stealing the time and energy we put into the game, and making it doubly hard for us to succeed at the same time, just like a parasite which does nothing for itself except leech away the energy your body works so hard to create. We should never let passivity overcome our natural yearning to see AFKers fail in their goals, and should fight them with whatever tools we have, no matter how inadequate.
