Guild Wars 2

So, my niece is suffering from having a stalker.
The option to have that person’s account banned would get her nowhere because that person would only get a new account.
Besides, he has other means of stalking her online and would immediately know it was her having him banned – and we want to avoid any possible repercussions which could have followed, especially now that things are “relatively” quiet.
All in all – we simply want to avoid any interaction with the creep whatsoever.
To not agitate him at all. Just avoid at all costs.

It is working thus far – the person has gotten quieter over the past 3 months because my niece is avoiding all the games the 3 of us used to play together and she has ceased all communication with the creep.

Now, however, with the new expansion to GW2, we would like to return to the game, but with how the game currently handles friends and visibility it is just not an option.

Even if we blacklist him he will still be able to see if we are online or where we currently are, and because he still is able to see us through friendlist/following option going invisible all the time will also get us nowhere.

Therefore, it seems, the only way for us to ever play the game together is to create new accounts and start from scratch.
Now, for my niece who has not invested much into her account cept getting characters to lvl 80 this might be “an option”, but I have spent quite a lot of cash on my account in the Gem shop and it is simply not worth forsaking it altogether.
And making her create a new account but me playing on my old account would be pointless because the creep knows I only play GW2 with my niece so he could simply follow me and still get to her.

Therefore, I believe that the game is not offering sufficient means of protection against stalkers and cyberbullies in its current state.
As I said, we MIGHT report the person and get him banned, but he would simply return on a different account, agitated yet again, or even worse – try to retaliate – means of which he has – simply because you cannot play incognito, or the only thing blacklisting a person gets you is that they won’t be able to sent you messages.
Bummer.

Thus, I would suggest the following changes to the way the game handles friends/blacklist:
1) Online visibility and character location can be made non-disclosed, with several options to choose from – to cover friends, followers and guilds:
For example – visible to friends only, to friends and followers only, visible to clan-mates, never visible.
2) It would also be a good idea to split those into two separate sets of in-game options:
- online visibility
- location visibility
3) ability to control who can send messages and whispers to us – aka no random person can send me stuff if I restrict messaging to friends only. Obviously, system message would still get through.
4) Blacklisting a person should automatically remove the blocking person from the blacklisted person’s friend and following lists and prevent that person to re-adding the blocker.
4) Of course, the blacklisted person can always create a new account, but if we were able to control who can see our online status and location as mentioned above this would not be an issue.

I understand that having control over online and location visibility would make it harder for clans to measure clan members activity, but then again, clans could start adding “visible for clan” status on as a requirement while recruiting so I don’t think that would be in any way a game-breaking feature to have.

Unfortunately, sometimes getting “off the grid” is the only solution to this kind of problems, but with Guild Wars 2 it only means not playing at all.

I wish Anet would take my post into consideration.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with this as well, and even after having my account name changed and going to extreme measures with support to try to escape, nothing worked and I ended up having to just re-buy the game and create a second account altogether.

I agree that there should be more ways available to prevent people from seeing where you are and when you’re online, though.

I simply dont let people cyber bully me (because in the end words can only hurt you if you let them!) but i do agree /block should do more.

I’d support these kinds of control on blocked people. I had a stalker earlier this year, but for me, ignoring him for about a month was all it took for him to get bored, remove me from his friends’ list, and move on.

Clearly, this didn’t work for your niece.

Thanks for your posting guys.
I have noticed that over the past 3 year there were a few posts about stalker issues at GW2.
Frankly, I am surprised Anet has not taken notice of the visiblity/location feature much needed improvements thus far!

I have also had issues with stalkers in game following me around everywhere because as you say, even when you block them, it only appears to block messaging.
I think its perfectly reasonable that when you block an account, then that person sees you permanently offline unless you unblock them.
The other option is that when support have a reasonable report of a stalker/abuser, then there should be an option to change the account name of the account holder and possibly character names too to help the victim avoid any confrontations/repercussions.

Honest question about this “following” thing: A map is quite a big place. How are people “following you” around, when all they have is the map you are in? You could be at dozens of different locations/camps/events on that map and he has no means to find you. How long does it take until someone actually shows up, if he has to search the whole map? And if you just port to a different map when he shows up, how long will he keep up this ridiculous search that gets him nowhere at all?

I just don’t get how anyone technically would be able to find you again and again when all he can see is a map name – provided he even ends up on the same megaserver map as the person he tries to “follow”.

Shikigami.4013:

Honest question about this “following” thing: A map is quite a big place. How are people “following you” around, when all they have is the map you are in? You could be at dozens of different locations/camps/events on that map and he has no means to find you. How long does it take until someone actually shows up, if he has to search the whole map? And if you just port to a different map when he shows up, how long will he keep up this ridiculous search that gets him nowhere at all?

I just don’t get how anyone technically would be able to find you again and again when all he can see is a map name – provided he even ends up on the same megaserver map as the person he tries to “follow”.

Your point would be valid if that would be regarding a sane person, which clearly a stalker is not.
If the person has been sending messages over to my niece for the past 4 months tirelessly, even though she has not responded to a single one, then I sincerely doubt that he would give up trying to find us in-game no matter what.
And then he can abuse other chat channels trying to speak to my niece.
Or try to crawl into her life as a “new” friend joining our party on a different account.
Or ask some other friend to spy on us.
Surely, that option remains open for him even if we are invisible and untraceable, but then he would need to be extremely lucky.
Right now, he does not – he already knows when we play AND where we are.
The game does more than half the job for him.
There is a huge difference between trying to find a needle in a haystack versus trying to find a person in a block of flats, I’d say.
Currently all we can do is to not speak to anyone at all. And even if we don’t the guy knows we are on. Not talking to him, but then still present. To his twisted mind that might be a huge insult, mockery or perhaps a challenge.

Shikigami.4013:

Honest question about this “following” thing: A map is quite a big place. How are people “following you” around, when all they have is the map you are in? You could be at dozens of different locations/camps/events on that map and he has no means to find you. How long does it take until someone actually shows up, if he has to search the whole map? And if you just port to a different map when he shows up, how long will he keep up this ridiculous search that gets him nowhere at all?

I just don’t get how anyone technically would be able to find you again and again when all he can see is a map name – provided he even ends up on the same megaserver map as the person he tries to “follow”.

I think you’re perhaps not understanding the level of effort a stalker will go through to continue harassing their victims. Absolutely none of what you’ve suggested as an obstacle is, to them, an obstacle.

Tife.9605:

Shikigami.4013:

Honest question about this “following” thing: A map is quite a big place. How are people “following you” around, when all they have is the map you are in? You could be at dozens of different locations/camps/events on that map and he has no means to find you. How long does it take until someone actually shows up, if he has to search the whole map? And if you just port to a different map when he shows up, how long will he keep up this ridiculous search that gets him nowhere at all?

I just don’t get how anyone technically would be able to find you again and again when all he can see is a map name – provided he even ends up on the same megaserver map as the person he tries to “follow”.

Your point would be valid if that would be regarding a sane person, which clearly a stalker is not.
If the person has been sending messages over to my niece for the past 4 months tirelessly, even though she has not responded to a single one, then I sincerely doubt that he would give up trying to find us in-game no matter what.
And then he can abuse other chat channels trying to speak to my niece.
Or try to crawl into her life as a “new” friend joining our party on a different account.
Or ask some other friend to spy on us.
Surely, that option remains open for him even if we are invisible and untraceable, but then he would need to be extremely lucky.
Right now, he does not – he already knows when we play AND where we are.
The game does more than half the job for him.
There is a huge difference between trying to find a needle in a haystack versus trying to find a person in a block of flats, I’d say.
Currently all we can do is to not speak to anyone at all. And even if we don’t the guy knows we are on. Not talking to him, but then still present. To his twisted mind that might be a huge insult, mockery or perhaps a challenge.

Land of Cheese.2584:

Shikigami.4013:

~snip~

I think you’re perhaps not understanding the level of effort a stalker will go through to continue harassing their victims. Absolutely none of what you’ve suggested as an obstacle is, to them, an obstacle.

I don’t believe Shikigami is questioning the validity of your stalking issue, or making any arguement or point at all, but merely wondering how these crazies possibly manage this.

Although I feel for Tife’s niece, the proposed mechanisms lead to too many problems for the vast majority of people. It might be better to simply create a new account and restrict the niece’s social interaction to desired people.

Shikigami.4013:

Honest question about this “following” thing:

Quite easily if you are doing pvp or wvw.

Maybe I missed something but blocking someone puts you as invisible to them. How can they still find you?

Falanu.4289:

Although I feel for Tife’s niece, the proposed mechanisms lead to too many problems for the vast majority of people. It might be better to simply create a new account and restrict the niece’s social interaction to desired people.

They shouldn’t have to buy a new account and start from scratch though. If the mechanics are unsuitable to avoid someone, then support should be able to, for valid cases, issue an new account name and possibly character name changes so that they cannot be followed but are not penalized by losing all their progress.

Gizmo.9178:

Maybe I missed something but blocking someone puts you as invisible to them. How can they still find you?

Also that staying invisible is obviously the best option cause literally nobody can see when you have been online, it does not update your last online when you play…i’ve known people who have done it for about a year or so…
invisible people can be invited to parties tho, but still no whispers and no info on them.

Just block the person, you can’t recive the whispers or see any sort of chat from that person. Just knowing on which map you are doesn’t mean he will get in the same istance of the map.

Block System works good enough. I’d rather have ANet invest their work into something more lucrative to everyone than build this stealth system you wish for.

Quick question, is it such a big problem if such an individual follows you when you have them blocked? In that case they’d maybe just be there and run circles around you, but wouldn’t be able to talk to you or anything. While in real life that would certainly be creepy, you could disregard that character as just one among many in a game. If the stalker can’t get a reaction they might get bored of it.
Obviously I haven’t been stalked before, so that might just be my naivety speaking. Otherwise the invisibility feature mentioned before might help.

I’ve personally have been fortunate enough to never been stalked, but understand the lengths that somebody would go to just to pester, harass, or try to “connect” to somebody.

It is really important to reiterate this point: stalkers are not reasonable human beings. They are absolutely obsessed with their stalking. The other thing is, even if a stalker cannot directly contact or communicate with you, just their presence can be off-putting, often because they have directly caused harm to the victim in the past. Stalkers will go to great lengths to find a way to their victim and it’s entirely possible that they’ll get others to relay information or communicate on their behalf.

I was under the impression that if you are being stalked online, that you should avoid any website that they may be able to track you on. It’s too risky, the “availability” of your presence is too enticing for the stalker. This being said, it’s a great sadness that you would have to give up something you love because of some horrible low-life.

But here’s the deal: Why can’t A-net change both the victim’s and the uncle’s account names (and char names?) at the same time as banning the stalker’s account? This way, even if the stalker makes a new account, adding the old names to his friends roster will turn up nothing.

It would be great for more privacy features to be added, but I can understand that desgining and coding such things would take time.

After 3 years, ANet simply doesn’t care. You should seek alternatives because ANet will not do the right thing.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

I’ve personally have been fortunate enough to never been stalked, but understand the lengths that somebody would go to just to pester, harass, or try to “connect” to somebody.

It is really important to reiterate this point: stalkers are not reasonable human beings. They are absolutely obsessed with their stalking. The other thing is, even if a stalker cannot directly contact or communicate with you, just their presence can be off-putting, often because they have directly caused harm to the victim in the past. Stalkers will go to great lengths to find a way to their victim and it’s entirely possible that they’ll get others to relay information or communicate on their behalf.

I was under the impression that if you are being stalked online, that you should avoid any website that they may be able to track you on. It’s too risky, the “availability” of your presence is too enticing for the stalker. This being said, it’s a great sadness that you would have to give up something you love because of some horrible low-life.

But here’s the deal: Why can’t A-net change both the victim’s and the uncle’s account names (and char names?) at the same time as banning the stalker’s account? This way, even if the stalker makes a new account, adding the old names to his friends roster will turn up nothing.

It would be great for more privacy features to be added, but I can understand that desgining and coding such things would take time.

based on what OP and you suggest, the stalker is reading this thread already and knows they’re going to play the game again. nothing’s going to change much now eh? even if A.net adds 10k more layers of privacy features.
i think you might be over-exaggerating it and the options to block people or be invisible to others works just fine.

I really don’t understand how this is even possible, even if a stalker goes to great lengths he would need some third party software to track you down effectively, he can only see the map name?
A legit player would just wander around the map till he finds his target, and that might take forever if the target keeps moving or is in another instance/goes to instanced content where the chaser simply can’t follow.

As a pvp server junkie in other mmos, I’ve done my fair share of friendlist location tracking, and it’s really hard to find your targets location just by knowing the map which they’re in.
Heck, it was hard to gank in AOC with a ranger even as you had perma stealth and could track any mob/player on the map zone, which put a marker on their location at the time of using the tracking skill.

You should do some research on this matter, play together and record this guy chasing you around, if he suspiciously keeps finding you all the time everywhere, he must be using some häx.

If you go into fractals or dungeons, is this guy waiting at the instance gate the whole time you’re inside?
just wondering what kinda sick creep you’re dealing with.

Some of the things my stalker did included:

1. Paying others to send messages to me via mail/pms.
2. Finding me on every map and following me around, jumping up and down on my character whenever I stopped to let me know he sees me. (He couldn’t message me directly because I blocked him).
3. Telling people around me lies about me to try to get them to either question me or try to help him get through to me somehow. (He would tell them some sort of sad story that made them feel sorry for him and try to get them to try to convince me to talk to him).

This went on for WEEKS! Keep in mind that these people can be really extreme, and this was one of those times. I reported it to arenanet and asked to have my account name changed, which I did, but for some reason it only appeared changed to me and everyone else saw my old account name so he was able to continue harassing me for another week or two after that before I finally just created a new account altogether.

I tried appearing offline, but you can’t do anything involving parties or communicate with friends while appearing offline and as soon as I changed my status to online to try to talk to my friends he would find me. He seemed to be online 24/7 and completely obsessed with finding me at all times.

I know it’s hard to believe, but things like this happen and something that would help would be a change as simple as making you always appear offline to people you block and not sharing your location with people who you blocked. It might not fix the problem entirely, but it would help with the following issue and make it so they can’t always know when you’re online and where you are whenever you play.

Edit: This was someone who was also stalking me IN REAL LIFE and calling me at work over 20 times a day, and he also had some women call me at work to try to trick me into talking to him. My co-workers and I wrote down the time that he called me every single day for about a week to get a restraining order put against him and report him to the police.

It took me moving to a new home, getting a new job, changing my phone number, and creating a new account before I finally got rid of him, that’s how bad it was. The in-game problems were only a sliver of the problem, lol.

Last time I’ve checked blocking someone would still allow them to see if you are online and where you are via their Contact list.
I get that the worlds are now instanced and all, but all it takes is for the stalker to tell someone else (and its not like he does not have any other friends) a convenient lie and that other person can end up partying with us and voila – you know exact instance we’re in and they can port the creep over.
Also, even if you change your Contact status as “invisible” people are still being informed when you are logging in.
Those things make the block feature not good, as it severely lacking.

Nephziel.6053:

Just block the person, you can’t recive the whispers or see any sort of chat from that person. Just knowing on which map you are doesn’t mean he will get in the same istance of the map.
Block System works good enough. I’d rather have ANet invest their work into something more lucrative to everyone than build this stealth system you wish for.

I don’t believe that this change would require much work really. Granted, I am not a coder/programmer, but it appears like everything that would be required is practically there, as you can set yourself to an invisible status, it just could use a few tweaks.
Frankly, making the Contact invisible status carry over to all characters and preventing the “character has come online” information as long as it is selected would fix majority of stalking problems without preventing us from playing.

Mirtis.6847:

based on what OP and you suggest, the stalker is reading this thread already and knows they’re going to play the game again. nothing’s going to change much now eh? even if A.net adds 10k more layers of privacy features.
i think you might be over-exaggerating it and the options to block people or be invisible to others works just fine.

Even if he is reading this, if we could go “off the grid” and stay invisible he still would be unable to track us down via any means offered by game itself. That would be more than enough.

As some people already said it – it is one thing for a stalker to follow us using other means, and if he is trully creative he will probably find a way. But is a completely another thing if Anet offers the tools to him. Personal privacy settings at the moment make Anet appear either really naive or with no consideration to people who were unlucky enough to experience cyber stalking.

About going to Support to ask for account and character name change – no one who has already posted about cyberstalking problem got Anet to do that for their account only, so I have gotten discouraged as I would require to have that change made for 2 accounts – my and my niece’s.

Tife.9605:

Last time I’ve checked blocking someone would still allow them to see if you are online and where you are via their Contact list.
I get that the worlds are now instanced and all, but all it takes is for the stalker to tell someone else (and its not like he does not have any other friends) a convenient lie and that other person can end up partying with us and voila – you know exact instance we’re in and they can port the creep over.
Also, even if you change your Contact status as “invisible” people are still being informed when you are logging in.
Those things make the block feature not good, as it severely lacking.

Nephziel.6053:

Just block the person, you can’t recive the whispers or see any sort of chat from that person. Just knowing on which map you are doesn’t mean he will get in the same istance of the map.
Block System works good enough. I’d rather have ANet invest their work into something more lucrative to everyone than build this stealth system you wish for.

I don’t believe that this change would require much work really. Granted, I am not a coder/programmer, but it appears like everything that would be required is practically there, as you can set yourself to an invisible status, it just could use a few tweaks.
Frankly, making the Contact invisible status carry over to all characters and preventing the “character has come online” information as long as it is selected would fix majority of stalking problems without preventing us from playing.

Mirtis.6847:

based on what OP and you suggest, the stalker is reading this thread already and knows they’re going to play the game again. nothing’s going to change much now eh? even if A.net adds 10k more layers of privacy features.
i think you might be over-exaggerating it and the options to block people or be invisible to others works just fine.

Even if he is reading this, if we could go “off the grid” and stay invisible he still would be unable to track us down via any means offered by game itself. That would be more than enough.

As some people already said it – it is one thing for a stalker to follow us using other means, and if he is trully creative he will probably find a way. But is a completely another thing if Anet offers the tools to him. Personal privacy settings at the moment make Anet appear either really naive or with no consideration to people who were unlucky enough to experience cyber stalking.

About going to Support to ask for account and character name change – no one who has already posted about cyberstalking problem got Anet to do that for their account only, so I have gotten discouraged as I would require to have that change made for 2 accounts – my and my niece’s.

The only way I got them to do it was by telling them my account name had my real name in it, but even then, the account name change didn’t work. It appeared changed to me but would switch between my old and my new account name to the people on my friends list, usually appearing as my old account name still. I also paid to have the names of my level 80 characters changed, which only served to backfire on me because my account name change didn’t work.

In the end, the only way to avoid being stalked in GW2 is to create a new account entirely. I lost a bunch of characters with 100% exploration and level 500 crafting professions, ascended light armor set with light of dwayna, and a ton of account-bound sentimental things like the minis a friend had gifted me and the selfless potion, champion magus/phantom pvp titles with legendary champion title, plus all the birthday gifts I would have gotten from my 3 year-old charactes.

That happened about a year ago so I’ve managed to get a lot of the things I lost all over again, but it’s still not the same as the originals.

Kako.1930:

Tife.9605:

Last time I’ve checked blocking someone would still allow them to see if you are online and where you are via their Contact list.
I get that the worlds are now instanced and all, but all it takes is for the stalker to tell someone else (and its not like he does not have any other friends) a convenient lie and that other person can end up partying with us and voila – you know exact instance we’re in and they can port the creep over.
Also, even if you change your Contact status as “invisible” people are still being informed when you are logging in.
Those things make the block feature not good, as it severely lacking.

Nephziel.6053:

Just block the person, you can’t recive the whispers or see any sort of chat from that person. Just knowing on which map you are doesn’t mean he will get in the same istance of the map.
Block System works good enough. I’d rather have ANet invest their work into something more lucrative to everyone than build this stealth system you wish for.

I don’t believe that this change would require much work really. Granted, I am not a coder/programmer, but it appears like everything that would be required is practically there, as you can set yourself to an invisible status, it just could use a few tweaks.
Frankly, making the Contact invisible status carry over to all characters and preventing the “character has come online” information as long as it is selected would fix majority of stalking problems without preventing us from playing.

Mirtis.6847:

based on what OP and you suggest, the stalker is reading this thread already and knows they’re going to play the game again. nothing’s going to change much now eh? even if A.net adds 10k more layers of privacy features.
i think you might be over-exaggerating it and the options to block people or be invisible to others works just fine.

Even if he is reading this, if we could go “off the grid” and stay invisible he still would be unable to track us down via any means offered by game itself. That would be more than enough.

As some people already said it – it is one thing for a stalker to follow us using other means, and if he is trully creative he will probably find a way. But is a completely another thing if Anet offers the tools to him. Personal privacy settings at the moment make Anet appear either really naive or with no consideration to people who were unlucky enough to experience cyber stalking.

About going to Support to ask for account and character name change – no one who has already posted about cyberstalking problem got Anet to do that for their account only, so I have gotten discouraged as I would require to have that change made for 2 accounts – my and my niece’s.

The only way I got them to do it was by telling them my account name had my real name in it, but even then, the account name change didn’t work. It appeared changed to me but would switch between my old and my new account name to the people on my friends list, usually appearing as my old account name still. I also paid to have the names of my level 80 characters changed, which only served to backfire on me because my account name change didn’t work.

In the end, the only way to avoid being stalked in GW2 is to create a new account entirely. I lost a bunch of characters with 100% exploration and level 500 crafting professions, ascended light armor set with light of dwayna, and a ton of account-bound sentimental things like the minis a friend had gifted me and the selfless potion, champion magus/phantom pvp titles with legendary champion title, plus all the birthday gifts I would have gotten from my 3 year-old charactes.

That happened about a year ago so I’ve managed to get a lot of the things I lost all over again, but it’s still not the same as the originals.

That is a real shame.
All the more reasons to get Anet to do something about privacy and deploying some anti-stalking measures.

Its a shame Anet cant ban some accounts via MAC address rather than IP.

As for the changing of account name, it probably would show changed for everyone else, bad thing is if the freak that is stalking you has you on there list it would just show them the updated list, Anet would have to manually go into that persons account, remove you from there list, then change your account name,

The only other way to do it would be, if Anet do approve an account name change, then your old account name its wiped off of everyone who had you on there list, and your list also gets cleared, so it acts like its a brand new account being made.

If they’re real stalkers you may want to contact law enforcement but if they’re only online stalkers then customer support should help.

Customer support will ban anyone who has a terminated account if they please. Present your case to CS. If he keep showing up with a different account, CS will basically put him on autoban each time you submit a request.

Otherwise maybe you can switch territories so you can’t physically see his character.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Customer support will ban anyone who has a terminated account if they please. Present your case to CS. If he keep showing up with a different account, CS will basically put him on autoban each time you submit a request.

Otherwise maybe you can switch territories so you can’t physically see his character.

Unfortunately, with megaservers in place, even changing servers doesn’t do anything in terms of avoiding someone from the same region (NA, EU, etc.) as you. One would have to change from NA to EU in order to be in a completely different population, which isn’t possible. :/

I would support this.

I don’t think you, or your niece, should have to make new accounts just to avoid him.

Kako.1930:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Customer support will ban anyone who has a terminated account if they please. Present your case to CS. If he keep showing up with a different account, CS will basically put him on autoban each time you submit a request.

Otherwise maybe you can switch territories so you can’t physically see his character.

Unfortunately, with megaservers in place, even changing servers doesn’t do anything in terms of avoiding someone from the same region (NA, EU, etc.) as you. One would have to change from NA to EU in order to be in a completely different population, which isn’t possible. :/

That’s what Kako meant by changing territories. It is very possible to transfer to a different region (either NA or EU); you do so at the character select screen in the same window you’d use to change servers. In the upper right side of the server select window is a drop down where you choose All, America, or Europe, and you can choose an EU or US server to transfer to. You’d obviously have to pay the gems to transfer, though.

Invisible needs to be truly invisible. Somehow people always know when I’m online when I’m “Invisible”. And some of these people get offended when I come back “Online” and they ask why I was “hiding”. I just want to be alone sometimes!

I should also be able to remove people from my Followers list and prevent them from following me. Who are these bajillion people I’ve never heard of?! Why are they following me when we never communicate for months on end? (and they are still actively playing)

Shikigami.4013:

Honest question about this “following” thing: A map is quite a big place. How are people “following you” around, when all they have is the map you are in? You could be at dozens of different locations/camps/events on that map and he has no means to find you. How long does it take until someone actually shows up, if he has to search the whole map?

The whole point is, this is what they do. They WANT to spend their time looking for the object of their obsession, and so they do. Stalkers are not normal people. They vary in how long and how far they’ll go, but they’re all extremely disturbed individuals.

And unless you’ve had a dedicated stalker, you can have no idea how often they actually find you in the game on a map. It’s not that hard and happens more often than people with no experience with this would think.

For some reason this whole topic makes me laugh out loud.

I don’t really understand the point of stalking since they already don’t like you and both stalkee and stalker would go through negative feedback loops of “Omigosh what’s the stalker going to do next?” and “Hope she’ll finally like me this time!” with rejection just digging deeper and the pain of unrequited love.

Maybe stalkers are really masochists? Then you have lots of social conditioning on both ends that exacerbate the loop. Girls are conditioned to fear strange men while men are afraid of rejection, as if your employed average height and weight (5’8" 140-145 pounds for men) with straight teeth self is still somehow not good enough. But being possessive over something you don’t have just creates problems on both ends.

mcwurth.2081:

For some reason this whole topic makes me laugh out loud.

If you are laughing at this topic then you are either insensitive or have partaken in actions that these poor folks are describing… either way I suggest you look up the definition of empathy.

did she try to just ask him to gtfo? maybe he think they are still friends or something
I have a friend who blocked at least 30 followers he never seen before

I just tested the block feature and you can’t invite someone who has you blocked. It also says you are offline.

I don’t think you blocked them.

Either that or there is some part of the story that is missing.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Kako.1930:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Customer support will ban anyone who has a terminated account if they please. Present your case to CS. If he keep showing up with a different account, CS will basically put him on autoban each time you submit a request.

Otherwise maybe you can switch territories so you can’t physically see his character.

Unfortunately, with megaservers in place, even changing servers doesn’t do anything in terms of avoiding someone from the same region (NA, EU, etc.) as you. One would have to change from NA to EU in order to be in a completely different population, which isn’t possible. :/

That’s what Kako meant by changing territories. It is very possible to transfer to a different region (either NA or EU); you do so at the character select screen in the same window you’d use to change servers. In the upper right side of the server select window is a drop down where you choose All, America, or Europe, and you can choose an EU or US server to transfer to. You’d obviously have to pay the gems to transfer, though.

I paid the gems to change the names of all of my level 80 characters, which was 800 gems a pop, then paid for the entire game all over again just to create a new account lol. I wouldn’t have hesitated to pay the fee to transfer to EU if I knew it was possible back then, and thought there was a chance I could get rid of that guy. Do you happen to know if transferring from NA to EU keeps your friends from EU in your contacts list or resets it to being EU-only? It would be a nice perk if you could just be taken off everyone’s friend’s list from NA and start fresh in EU.

With my luck back then, he would have probably found out I was playing in EU and transferred just to continue harassing me, though. Some people will seriously stop at nothing, I swear. :/

Kako.1930:

Do you happen to know if transferring from NA to EU keeps your friends from EU in your contacts list or resets it to being EU-only? It would be a nice perk if you could just be taken off everyone’s friend’s list from NA and start fresh in EU.

With my luck back then, he would have probably found out I was playing in EU and transferred just to continue harassing me, though. Some people will seriously stop at nothing, I swear. :/

I’ve never transferred between US and EU, so I’m afraid I don’t know if your friends list is kept or not.

And, sadly, you’re right; people like this will keep at it (sometimes forever).

Pretty sure they had a similar issue in the original Guild Wars when they first added the location to the friends list. It ended up being changed so that only mutuals could see each others location and there was none of this “Follower” stuff. Why is that even a section? Why don’t they just make an accept/decline friend request system instead of them just being tossed into a list YOU aren’t notified of, and can’t remove them from, but still treats them like friends? Bah.

I like Anet, but one of the huge thing that annoys the crap out of me is that they threw just about every single feature like this from the first game out the window for no discernible, logical reason.

Yeah, I think we should have the option of deleting people from our followers list if we choose.

Gizmo.9178:

Maybe I missed something but blocking someone puts you as invisible to them. How can they still find you?

What you missed is that blocking someone absolutely does not set you invisible to them.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, I think we should have the option of deleting people from our followers list if we choose.

Agree if some person want to follow it should ask any way. If later person is annoy for follow should be able to remove. I had stalker one time on forum and game. It annoy me many hours in game and on forum. Finally I think they get a ban or quit game. Still should be able to remove follower.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, I think we should have the option of deleting people from our followers list if we choose.

Agree if some person want to follow it should ask any way if okay to follow. If later person is annoy for follow should be able to remove. I had stalker one time on forum and game. It annoy me many hours in game and on forum. Finally I think they get a ban or quit game. Still should be able to remove follower.

I wouldn’t have hesitated to pay the fee to transfer to EU if I knew it was possible back then, and thought there was a chance I could get rid of that guy. Do you happen to know if transferring from NA to EU keeps your friends from EU in your contacts list or resets it to being EU-only? .

Transferring between EU/US doesn’t affect your friends/block lists.

With my luck back then, he would have probably found out I was playing in EU and transferred just to continue harassing me, though. Some people will seriously stop at nothing, I swear. :/

Stalkers (as opposed to bullies) obviously don’t mind spending a few bucks to maintain their level of harassment.

For the OP:
First, I am very sorry you and your niece have to deal with this sort of thing. And yes, there are some things about how the game deals with /block and /invisible that could be improved.

However, I don’t think you can count on any particular company being able to solve the issue entirely: it’s a social (and potential legal) problem, not a technical one; it won’t be addressed entirely by proper coding. Even if it could be, in theory, you’d have to wait. And in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to.

So I urge you to make sure that you+niece are documenting examples of the stalking, that you are reporting accurately and concisely to ANet and, if it extends outside the game, to the relevant law enforcement agencies. If you have evidence that the stalker returns after being banned (in this game or elsewhere), make sure that ANet sees it — they are pretty good at tracking down folks that try to hide unsavory conduct behind different accounts.

tl;dr again, I’m sorry you have to go through this. I do strongly recommend that you report this conduct and don’t depend on tech to resolve it.

I found this site yesterday- I’d urge you to give it a quick read (especially the “types of stalker” bit) if you are not familiar with stalking and the reasons why they do it. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-trauma/201306/in-the-mind-stalker

Here’s a quick summary for those who don’t want to read through a wall of text:

Reasons why (according to the victim) a stalker stalks:
-36.6% retaliation, anger or spite
-32.9% control
-23.4% mental illness or emotional instability

“Types of stalkers” as defined by stalking expert, Paul Mullen.
-Rejected: Often are trying to seek revenge for the end of a relationship with the victim.
-Intimacy Seeker: Often stalks a complete stranger under the delusion that their love is reciprocated.
-Incompetent: Believes that remaining close will lead to a relationship with their victim, to satisfy their need for contact and intimacy.
-Resentful: Feels that they are the initial victim (through direct/indirect humiliation or unfair treatment), and is seeking revenge.
-Predator: Has no desire for a relationship, just a sense of power and control. They fantasise about assaulting their victims.

Also, just to address some things said in thread, you can’t really compare bullying to stalking. A bully is usually somebody provoking for a response and often get tired if they are ignored. Stalkers don’t seem to care if there is a response or not, they are obsessed beyond rationality (usually because of mental illness and personality disorder).

mcwurth.2081:

Celtic Lady.3729:

mcwurth.2081:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

mcwurth.2081:

For some reason this whole topic makes me laugh out loud.

If you are laughing at this topic then you are either insensitive or have partaken in actions that these poor folks are describing… either way I suggest you look up the definition of empathy.

you are exactly the type that make me laugh. prejudice and idiotic statements about people you NEVER (and never will) have met and know nothing about.

He’s right. Your comment was rude, insensitive, and totally unnecessary.

grow some skin, getting a comment without anything but a statement about something makes people feel attacked on a internet forum? that makes me laugh too. very much so. Instead of giving judgement about the post, one could wonder about the why how and what. But noooooo the kitten people of gw2 do not do that, instead they feel like snowflakes in an avalanche.

Yeah…I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.

The only thing I “wonder” is how someone can get their kicks and giggles out of laughing at someone else’s distress, even online.

But then, there are things in this world that I do NOT want to understand. This is basically one of them.

Celtic Lady.3729:

mcwurth.2081:

Celtic Lady.3729:

mcwurth.2081:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

mcwurth.2081:

For some reason this whole topic makes me laugh out loud.

If you are laughing at this topic then you are either insensitive or have partaken in actions that these poor folks are describing… either way I suggest you look up the definition of empathy.

you are exactly the type that make me laugh. prejudice and idiotic statements about people you NEVER (and never will) have met and know nothing about.

He’s right. Your comment was rude, insensitive, and totally unnecessary.

grow some skin, getting a comment without anything but a statement about something makes people feel attacked on a internet forum? that makes me laugh too. very much so. Instead of giving judgement about the post, one could wonder about the why how and what. But noooooo the kitten people of gw2 do not do that, instead they feel like snowflakes in an avalanche.

Yeah…I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.

The only thing I “wonder” is how someone can get their kicks and giggles out of laughing at someone else’s distress, even online.

But then, there are things in this world that I do NOT want to understand. This is basically one of them.

Where did i ever write i get my “kicks” out of this topic? please enlighten me.