We've always been proud that WWIIOL:Battleground Europe claims the unofficial "Toughest PvP on the Planet" spot amongst modern day MMOs. It's one of the few games around that requires a great deal of skill and patience to play and excel at. And when a player has been around the game for 3, 5 or even 10 years, that skill set gets pretty impressive. I've seen veteran players take down running infantry when they render at barely a few pixels high. And it's no surprise when a relatively new player gets winged because he's not quite as good at hiding as he thinks he is. It's not too hard to spot a guy crawling through a row of bushes when you're really looking for him. Trust me, I'm not that good a player and even I've dispatched of "cleverly" hidden players (all the while giggling to myself).

So it comes as no surprise that some days you when get owned on the battlefield and you feel that snap in your head and you scream "OMG WTF HAX!!!" while flinging your keyboard at the wall. We see the reports coming in every day. We take those reports seriously. That's why we have an extensive and well trained Game Moderator team online 24/7. That's why staff monitor the report logs live and review them every morning. That's why we have a game manager, community manager and dev team scouring the forums and reading emails every day. We don't want anything or anyone ruining your gaming experience so we take this stuff seriously. Besides the fact that the thought of cheating pisses us off big time. If you can't play with the big boys, go home.

So what to do when you feel like someone isn't playing on the up and up? First thing you do is take a deep breath. Where you really as well hidden as you think? Is it possible that someone could have been stalking you for the last 20 minutes or been peering through binos and spotted movement? Maybe your heel clipped through the side of that capture building inadvertently, or an enemy tank spotted your position as you were setting up? Once you're convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, that's when you should submit a report. That's why that system is there. People are always going to try to make a game easier, that's human nature. And sometimes they try to do it by less than honest means. That's where the GM corps steps in. When a report comes in, they kick into action. They've got training and they've got tools at their disposal that makes it pretty easy to spot an unscrupulous player. These volunteers are as dedicated to keeping the game fun and fair as CRS staff are. Once you've submitted that report and given any information you can, don't expect a reply. You won't get one, because we don't talk about cheats. What you can expect is that we'll investigate and act.

Once the GMs and CRS have done an investigation, action, if warranted, is taken. But here's the thing: it's not warranted as often as you'd think. Far less often. Sometimes we find a bug, and then set about to fix it. Sometimes we find a verifiable case of someone playing with an unfair advantage and we boot them. But what we find in the overwhelming majority of reports is...nothing. Either a really good, really lucky, really bad or really unlucky player. Nothing more sinister than that.

While the numbers of cheaters who are too stupid or lazy to learn to play better is almost negligible, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Keep reporting, we'll keep investigating and we'll keep working to make sure you keep having fun in WWIIOL:BE.

S!

UPDATE:

Week 1: Alerted by player reports of suspect behavior, the GM corps identified 7 accounts (2 players, multiple accounts) that have been permanently banned by CRS. Keep up the great work!

Week 2: 5 additional account identified for cheating have been permanently closed by CRS.