Talk:First Siege of Caiger Mall

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how did that whole page turn into humans cheating...?

List of Reasons for Zombie Defeat

Why isn't the invasion of Ridleybank listed? McMuffin 06:20, 11 August 2006 (BST)

The Lure of the Siege

The sieges of caiger mall are famous, and attract people that have two or so uninteracting accounts in different suburbs. They will just want to play as much as possible, and not necessarily zerg. Is this still considered evil if the two accounts still act as different people, and are not used to abuse the system like drones, or massive amounts of fresh zerg accounts? I think we should be wary of people who have a single well toned account, and fresh account(s). Careless accusations could lead to innocent convictions. As said before this is a very attractive event. People who wanted a name when they started, but had to alter it slightly because someone else beat them to it will want to come.

Definition of Zerging

Question... aren't those people "multi-abusers" rather than "zergers?" Both are cheating, mind you. (I'm just thinking they don't have enough characters to be zergers... not like the 1-100 characters that have been complained about...) --Shadowstar 03:43, 24 Nov 2005 (GMT)

"zerg" has acquired that new colloquial meaning, which is unfortunate, since in some circles it means something quite different (the MotA, who practice sudden attacks in overwhelming force, could be considered "zergers" by the other definition). Regardless, hopefully the newly-implemented anti-abuse measures should ease some of this problem.--James Holloway 13:07, 24 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Research

My students and I are conducting research based on the lengths to which people will go to win games online. I've written the Urban Dead staff (Kevan mostly) and requested statistics. When I get some, do you want to know the results - by which I mean how many IP addresses overlap on both teams in the game (zombies vs survivors)?

Our recent numbers were obtained by bulletin board/forum posts, membership counts, and admitted duplication of accounts by email (maily focusing on the Caiger Mall - I have omitted any count of duplication outside of the 12 blocks).

By the figures I have now, the ratio of zombie "zergers" to living "zergers" is 39:1. One individual (name will remain anonymous) has confessed to having 24 duplicate zombie characters in the SE block of Caiger Mall, so she/he can log on at any time and spend up to 30 AP attacking the barracades. The reason for this behavior has been rationalized as "The zombies have to win - my group in particular will do anything to win this siege - because I never lose." There's even a group of zombie players ready to DOS Urban Dead if the zombies start to lose.

It is incredibly interesting to see the rationalization of people who are doing just about anything to "win" at this game, and to what lengths they will go.

Fascinating. What institution are you affiliated with...and if you cannot tell us that, what is your primary research focus: Psychological or Sociological? --MorthBabid 01:58, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Sociology. We're in the United States, and this is part of their overall grad student project. Since they have one more class with me immediately after this one, we expanded this topic. There will be no moral judgements or positions taken on this research. We are mostly observing the escalation of "zerging" as a way to "win at all costs." This Wiki entry seemed appropriate to try and encourage more discussion for the purpose of understanding what motivates players to continue this behavior. --DrFram 25 Nov 2005
I'd love to know, if Kevan doesn't ask you not to release them or something. :) I'm not involved in the fight there, but... If that 39:1 is true... eek. It's going to make for a lot of controversy. Says a bit about the anonymous mentality that the zombies have, I suppose. It also says a lot about those statistics on the stats.html page... :/ --Shadowstar 03:27, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
If such a ratio dig exist it would probably be due to low level humans being of limited use. Even getting a low level human into the mall would be tricky.Geni 18:19, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
I don't know anyone with 24 characters, especially in the same area. (If it is true) It still speaks to the ease with which certain people can cheat on the zombie side, with little or no consequence. Accusations from the humans' side of cheating on the zombies' side are generally met with scorn and derision against the humans, while accusations against humans are generally met with belief in cheating agmongst the humans-- probably because proof can be provided. It is very difficult to obtain proof against a zerging set of zombie characters. --Shadowstar 19:14, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
So what university are you from? Could you be a little more specific about your research design? -- James Holloway 08:38, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
From your profile, I want to ask, are you Dr. Framke who used to teach Anthropology here at UNO? I took one of your classes. James, I think he's teaching somewhere in California now, although I don't have that information since it's been 7 years since I last talked to him. At that point, he had published an article on Internet Communities and their impact on various youth groups in the American Journal for Psychology or something like that. Wouldn't surprise me if it's him. McClaud 11:54, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Unlikely -- on his User page, this poster describes himself as a sociologist rather than an anthropologist. I'm very interested to hear about this research design. At the moment, the goals seem very unspecific. But if this is an ongoing research project, I'd love to see the link to its web site. I'm a lowly PhD student, so my project's site is a little crude. --James Holloway 18:44, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Heh, his name is just familiar is all. I had one Dr. Framke when I was taking classes at Offutt AFB. I'm pretty sure it was Anthropology. I'm a bit suspicious myself. McClaud 11:46, 26 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Well, I've given him more than a week, and he's not said a damn thing so I'm just going to label him as a fraud or something. And I had so much faith in the INTERNETS! LOL McClaud 10:46, 2 Dec 2005 (GMT)
If I had to guess, I'd say this was theclerk/Jayhawk99/BROTHER HAWK/whoever. He was always crapping on about playing UD for academic reasons, especially after he got humped for playing a bunch of characters in the same place. -- James Holloway 12:26, 2 Dec 2005 (GMT)
It really is interesting to see what lengths people will go to, to win games on the Internet. Some people zerg, some people spy, some people impersonate sociology professors. Slicer 14:30, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)
And people who claim to remember them, don't forget.
LOL I'm going to make a bet this person sought out the name of a professor on a webpage somewhere and thought it would be interesting to see if he could fool us. I had a moment of, "Nah, it can't be," followed by, "Well, if it's him, he'll respond to my email and let me know." I've heard nothing, even though it's only been like 24 hours. McClaud 11:46, 26 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Yeah. Probably false. But I take people at their words until they're proven to be lying... So... I'll give the guy a bit more time to respond, I guess. --Shadowstar 18:28, 26 Nov 2005 (GMT)
I was under the impression that you couldn't have more than one character in the same area at the same time or there were repercussions. I know I've got more than one character, but I keep them away from each other and let them work on their own goals rather than clumping them up together.
Up until very recently, it seems there were no problems. There MAY be things now to keep you from doing it. But... if the statements above are true, and someone has 24 characters, they're spoofing their IP, or going through proxies and the like, so any measures meant to keep people from having their characters together won't work against someone doing that. They'd already have to get around the IP limit, so IP based fixes against cheating wouldn't work. --Shadowstar 16:25, 27 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Yeah, I've heard that your likelyhood of getting anything - whether it be a successful attack, or a successful search - if you've got characters in too close proximity. I've no idea how close they have to be to be effected though. --Andrew Baxter 11:03, 28 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Jonesy

Shouldn't there be a note on how the "Jonesy," who ran many NecroTech revivificationists, be guilty of cheating? Using a half-dozen characters in the same "battle" can hardly be considered "completely separate existences". --LouisB3 00:17, 7 Dec 2005 (GMT)

Syringes Section

Seeing as how I wrote most of it, I'm very interested in knowing what was "ridiculously POV" about it. I really don't know what to tell you if you actually think syringes weren't the most important factor in the human victory at Caiger. If you don't believe the syringe rate was up, I'm willing to accept a comment saying to the effect "Some don't think the syringe rate was actually changed". Memuler

Some Clean Up

I have made some (relatively minor) changes to the page. Edits took the form of the following:

  • Making some style format consistent
  • Neutralizing some tone that came across as accusational or confrontational
  • Adding a few notes for context (e.g., syringes cost 1 ap instead of 10 to use)
  • Added some historic information context (e.g., bot source code was released)
  • Cleaned up the use of slang and lazy language style in some places.

May do more later.--Jorm 21:55, 22 August 2007 (BST)

I got a lot of kills this day... -- Rogue  Sergeant Sarge1.png 17:03, 27 October 2010 (BST)