As usual, a quick message unrelated to the article. I've *still* not sorted out the graphics that I used for my old posts, but I will as soon as I have time. This article is late as it is and workload is piling up! Promise, soon!

Snow. We all love snow, don't we? The untouched blanket of white after a heavy falling of frozen vapours, the sharp coldness of a brisk wind carrying with it the chill of each snowflake it passes to build up into a bitterness that cuts to the bone. Snow on pine trees, ready to snap its boughs under the weight. Frozen lakes and ponds so solid a horse could run across it with no fear.Large buildings and monuments dotted at the extreme North and South of the visible landscape. Alterac Rams. You're now officially in Hell with 39 allies and 40 enemies, none of you knowing what you're really doing.

I'm sure most are in agreement with me when I say AFK leeching is something that is annoying and detrimental to the game, much like gold farmers and sellers, and even people who buy gold - which affects the economy of the game. For me AFK leeching is by far the worst thing that I see when playing at home - as opposed to being a GM. This is due to the fact that the leeching problem isn't as easy to ignore or prevent as the others I mentioned above.

However, my dears, there was one GM who did everything in his power to stop these annoying little rascals. It was laborious work, but I was one of these GMs who back in The Burning Crusade tried to stop this sort of thing. I have to admit that this was usually done around my other tickets, and at a leisurely pace. It takes a lot of time to verify and take action against leechers. Despite my best efforts with Blizzard management it was still only assigned as a secondary or tertiary task when there was no other work available, and even something like ECCO duty (see previous post: IM IN UR RAID) took priority over leechers.

Still, a small group of us did everything we could when leeching was a major problem - by this I mean every battle had at least 15 members of the battle leeching - to prevent it. This meant cautions, promptings, bannings, and the frequent game of leech tennis.

You heard right: Leech Tennis.

What does Leech Tennis involve?
The rules were simply to knock the leecher from one to the other across the middle of Alterac Valley without letting them touch the ground. When they hit the ground, they were ported out of the instance and given a temporary ban.

How was this achieved?
Ever been knocked on the ground by an enemy NPC that did a stomp of some kind? Have you ever been hit by a Shaman's Thunderstorm and flung away from this Shaman? That knock-back spell is categorised as a single spell which GMs can teach themselves. Put the value of the knock strength up a little and we have rackets.

For a while we did this, getting people killed with natural damage from their massive fall before getting booted out to the farthest reaches of the world without their hearthstone so that most would have to do the walk of shame to get back. Of course, we always gave people leeching a chance to respond, or get their butts moving; however, generally these people were not even at their computers and had a script that made them jump every so often to avoid being removed from the battle automatically due to being AFK (Away from keyboard). These were treated to a special Super Knockback, where the value was set to max and kicked from the very North of the Alliance base and see how far they go.

Quite a long way, I'll assure you.

Still thinking of leeching even with our bot detection and vigilant GMs? I'd think again, because nobody gets off lightly when my friends and I are on the job.

Like GM Wint? Get weekly stuff from RollZero (no spam, we hate spam) in the Electric Letter - stick your email address in the box right at the top of this page.