Ferret

File:Ferret.gif

You may occasionally hear someone tell someone else to stop being a ferret and wonder what exactly that means in this community. So, I am going to take a moment to explain it with the hope to introduce the concept as a learning opportunity. It is possible that someone will drop this link for you to read, you should consider that a direct warning and seek to modify your actions.

Now, lets be clear, I love ferrets. They are funny, crazy hopping fur snakes that make me laugh at their antics. However, for most people, owning a ferret is rather like owning a puppy that never sleeps because its on crack. They take a lot of energy to keep entertained and only rare calm down and snuggle with you to watch a show.

In this case, we are using such a term to refer to players who's OOC energy level is out of proportion to the rest of the player base. This can be based on a number of different factors, but its primary cause seems to be a lack of patience that comes with social skills and maturity. Here are a few examples of what we mean:

1. Players who never seem to read the manual or check the forums and who ask game questions way more than everyone else does.
2. Players who ask questions before staff have a realistic chance of addressing it. An example would be asking where the crafting station is for the new craft skill 3 minutes after the shard has been updated with the new skill.
3. Players who continually want to suggest new designs for the game without having their opinion even asked for. This is most often presented as a "good idea" in the public chats, or sent via PM to a staffer. Game mechanic suggestions should be well thought out and posted to the forums where they will be reviewed for possible implemention many weeks or months from now.
4. Players who post A LOT in both discord or the forums, often posting less than a few words per line in chat, or dominating a forum conversation by posting more than twice what everyone else does.
5. New players who have to ask the obvious question without looking around and wondering why none of the old-timers have asked it yet.

To be clear, we are generally a patient community and it will take more then once, twice or even ten times before we are getting frustrated. Most of us are parents, and we want to relax, not sit on the phone with our 12 year old still tugging on our shirt going, "mom, mom, mom!" We expect at least this minimum level of maturity and personal restraint.

Advice to Possible Ferrets

• Don't be lazy and waste our time just because you can't be bothered to look something up yourself or try to figure it out.
• Pay attention to the types of questions and discussions the rest of the community is having and be cognizant of the general player base's mood and tone.
• Don't post or type more then other people, practice patience and longer sentences.

If you start wondering why people are not answering your questions, its because you have used up all your free answers and players are trying to politely warn you that you need to go do some of this for yourself.

Finally

If someone responds to your question and you think Wow they seem annoyed do not respond with, "I was just asking", it only demonstrates that you are too immature to grasp the fact that YOU being annoying and sooner or later someone is going to be blunt. Likely Lara.