So, rather than derailing the thread regarding community control, I decided to make my own thread about an idea which came from reading a quote from Tabbycat.

ZOS employees need to disguise themselves as city guards, who can 'arrest' players for bad behavior. Not only is it community quality control, but It's in an immersive way as well.

Being arrested would depend on the severity of your crime. If it were actually serious, and worthy of a ban, then it would remain private for the individual. However, if it were an act of harassment which fell into a lighter category (no, I'm not saying there are light forms of harassment, necessarily...), then they could literally be teleported to one of several 'jail cells' for a certain period of time. How these jail cells would work is another interesting topic, so if you're still interested, I'll list a few ideas. They are not crucial to the employee guards, so feel free to skip.

1. Cell rotation based on time left in jail. You'd start in one cell, and move to a newer one closer to the entrance as your jail timer wears off. If you log out, and come back with only a few minutes left, you'll either get ported to the front cell, or simply be allowed to open the doors to that cell yourself. If you log in without the debuff, you are locked outside of the cell. Yes, I know, needlessly complicated.

2. Similar to above, but simply one big jail cell. Same idea, less random complication.

3. Profession training. If you have ANY characters in this prison, you are unable to speak in /whisper or guild...nothing but close proximity. Remember: this is a replacement for a 3 hour ban or something, for minor violations; same goes for other prison ideas. While in this area, you will be with other prisoners, and be able to craft/gather items, and basically use your professions. Only those with a very little record could go here.

Downsides to this, is that people would try to get into jail, and needless harassment would occur.

4. Bans work normally, but once the player logs back in, they are released from a jail cell. This is the vest option, I think, as it's simple, and serves as actual punishment for those who commit violations, such as harassment and such. Which character would be put into jail? That's the only issue I can see. Porting all characters to the prison is obviously too much, but the idea is also that you want the player to know that they came out of jail.

Perhaps it could work like I've heard quest givers work. When an account is flagged for a ban, it triggers an NPC guard to walk up to them when they log in on their next character, and explain that they've just been released from jail, and to tell them to be more careful from now on. Gosh, the Morrowind nostalgia is getting to me now. T_T

Anyway,

Due to mega-servers, they could simply have their equivalent of WoW's GM's walk around as city guards, and answer tickets while they 'stand guard'. I think this would be beneficial in many ways, including the happiness of your customer service GM's.

I often mention neat ideas like this, and they are pretty much never applied, so by no means do I actually think Zenimax would do this. I just want to hear your opinions...on how awesome it is, of course.

I like it, the jail cell thing especially in #1. It'll add immersion for those who are into that type of thing. The only thing is that there's a lot of cities in Tamriel; it'd be taking a lot of CS people if they wanted to have at least one person in every city.

Its a good idea but I don't think the employees will have the time or the money to do something like this.

I've never had a post spawn a thread before.

This is an interesting idea. I could just picture them as Ordinators too. Remember Her Hands from Morrowind?

"We're watching you, scum."

Meh, even that wouldn't be necessary. Where they are wouldn't be important, as the employees could decide to move if they wished. It would simply allow there to be a potential tangible authority thing than anything else.

Just like when people see a cop in real life after J-walking, and think "crap". You're unsure if you're one of the guards are someone who can intervene.

Also, depending on the range of general chat, their presence could be even more important. They wouldn't talk in general chat, I don't think, but they'd still be there. Customer service employees should be among the employees!

You misunderstand the idea. MMO's, as stated above, generally have employees already dedicated to solving player issues. The only difference here, is that these service reps would be in-game as they dealt with these issues, or 'tickets' as they are called in some games.

Money? Well, retaining customers = money, and a good way of keeping customers is a good environment. Ignore lists, and systems which allow you to report others help with this, but I'm simply suggesting an additional layer, to create a virtually tangible presence.

Exactly.

Although, I'd say that your post was simply the catalyst for me spawning the thread, but I know what you mean. You lit the fuse in my mind, albeit unintentionally. ;P