Star Wars Galaxies: "Mission Stealing"

Q-3P0 has made a little post asking for everyones opinions on what the developers should do about 'mission stealing'. Here is the full post

In Star Wars Galaxies, we wanted to generally avoid "camping" found in other games. This led to dynamically placed missions. To cut down on "kill stealing", we give experience for your specific involvement in battles. Additionally, your mission objective doesn't "spawn" until you start to come in range of it (this is one of the technical reasons why your waypoint sometimes moves when you get close - the game tries to place it and finds that there is already something in that exact spot). If someone else destroys your objective, you still get the credit reward. Overall, the solutions have been working - except in high population areas like around popular cities on Tatooine.

Players get the credits from their mission, but there is increasing frustration that they travel a kilometer out and someone else destroys their objective and therefore gets all the XP that the mission player would have potentially earned. The other player has no way of knowing that they destroyed someone else's mission, so it isn't fair to call it "mission stealing" (unless they are specific harrassing a player over and over again).

I want to get your feedback on how best to handle this situation. We're looking at ways that is fair to the mission taker and also to the explorer who happens upon the lair. Should we put a visual indicator over a mission to show it is "someone else's mission"? Should we award no xp for lairs unless it is your mission? What would you recommend?

I recommend that people just use a golden rule and not mission steal - although at times it isn't always obvious its someones mission. Click here and tell Q-3P0 what you think!