That is the value of threads like this one and the 2 or 3 similiar threads active right now. The BBS and the posters therein educate the portion of the community that reads it. Those readers in turn disseminate that information to countrymen, squadmates and friends in game. It is by this process that we develop a standard of conduct within the community that tends to fascilitate the best gameplay possible within the framework of the game. That's how it was done for 15 years in AW and that's how it's done here. If anti-social/anti-fun griefing behavior is responded to with disdain and ostrasization, as we have done to LCA, then eventually the perpetrators will seek out a pattern of behavior that garners them more favorable accolades from their peers.
There were alot of teenagers playing AW. AW became flat-rate in 1990 or thereabouts so, FDutchman's anecdote from the past was almost certainly from the flat-rate era when there were a healthy number of youngsters playing. I was 19 myself when I started playing AW circa 1990. Obviously, we, as a community, do not expect those very new to the game to be automatically able to distinguish 'right from wrong' but we do expect a certain level of accountability in terms of adopting acceptable behavior based on their ever-increasing knowledge of the game and in-game feedback on the ramifications of their actions, both postive and negative.
So, it is our duty as aged and experienced members of the community to re-enforce and ingrain these standards of conduct within the game. It is necessary and vital we do so to preserve this game and this genre from the anti-social behavior that plagues any and all massively-multiplayer games to one degree or another. If griefing behavior is tolerated and permitted with no reprisals from the community, gameplay will suffer, customer patronage will in turn suffer and eventually this game and this genre will devolve into something that will have lost its appeal to the vast majority of paying customers and will almost certainly fail. We owe the community and this fine product our best efforts to prevent this griefing trend from snowballing into inevitable disaster...
Zazen