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Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him
D1gital_Prob3 writes with this excerpt from a story about David Myers, a Loyola professor who spent some time studying superhero MMO City of Heroes/Villains:
"... he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain 'Syphris.' Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player. Syphris fired an instant message at Myers moments later. 'If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.' ... As part of his experiment, Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules — disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular. At first, players tried to beat him in the game to make him quit. Myers was too skilled to be run off, however. They then made him an outcast, a World Wide Web pariah that the creator of Syphris — along with hundreds of other faceless gamers — detested."
I'm guessing you're an MMO troll yourself with an attitude like that. A subtle but no less interesting point you may have missed here is that in virtual worlds the rules can be set by the players themselves. The developers in this context are enablers, rather than Gods passing down "rules".
Feel free to keep making it up as you go along. You have to be one of those players that takes the game scarily seriously that I see in WoW all the time, threatening other players online as though you could do anything about anything, and going all nerd-rage and moving onto personal threats within a short space of time. Reminds me of the time I accidentally trained a bunch of mobs onto another player on the same faction, and he told me to "do that again and watch what happens". When the game completely removed the ability to affect players on the same side in any meaningful way. Maybe he was going to cast water walking on me as I took a huge dive into water or something.
You can't freely be a 'badass' in the game? Because of what? That it's going to be "added to your reputation"? You seriously think that people are going to be changing servers and character names because of a bunch of tweens or early twenty-somethings call them a faggot or a n00b enough? You do realise that there is a ceiling on the IQ level allowed to access/read MMO forums, and let me tell you, you'll get enough change out of a hundred to fund at least a handful of YouTube commentators.
But I digress.
If the game developer (self righteous? ouch, someone bitching about the latest nerf are they?) didn't prevent something, then it's within the rules. Just in case you weren't aware, that's actually how the rules in a game are defined, because it's a closed system and there are no external influences. The developer is king. If they let you do something, do it. If they don't want it done, they block it. If something is happening that makes you all teary eyed, then go dampen the shoulder of the internal game admins, and I'm sure that if the developers want it stopped, it will be stopped. Otherwise, hey, it's just a game. For some of us. In the mean time feel free to parade around like some sort of king of shit mountain, as though you have the power to really do anything, because your self delusion is pretty damn entertaining to read.
[Side note : I have an 80, 76, 71 and 70 in WoW, this isn't a "You're a loser because you play WoW" comment. It's just that there is a reason I play on a PvP server; it's so your own side can be easily blocked as well as having no way of talking to the other side. Because basically, as a rule, the vast majority of MMO gamers are socially, and likely mentally, retarded, and take the game seriously to a quite frankly pathetic level. Case in point, our man unity100 here]
There is a lot of early morning aggro here, not least because I can't drink coffee at the moment, but I'll post anyway.
So, since he was on the opposite team, he should let you kill him every now and then to keep things even? He should let you go about, peacefully attacking other people on his team? He should leave a geographic location where he holds an almost invincible edge over his enemies just so he can have the accepting nod of an enemy?
Buck up. He beat you at the game. He lured you in and beat you. You have nothing to legitimately complain about, because if you were smart, you would have done it to him or his team. If you have a heightened sense of nonsensical honor in the fairytale world of makebelieve, then you have the option to simply avoid him and let the dishonorable curr fling his verbal assaults. They don't hurt you -- or perhaps you don't enter a world area where KILLING YOU BY ANY MEANS NECCESSARY is the purpose of 50% of the population and then be surprised that someone came up with a way to kill you with minimal effort. If you want a game where this isn't possible, there are plenty available.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Umm no. It's a game of heros vs villains. He was playing heros vs villains. It makes total sense, and the OOC factors you keep bringing up like they mean something are just that - OOC. Utterly meaningless here.
And I get the feeling trying to explain this to you will be something like trying to explain the colour blue to someone who was blind from birth. :(
You are playing a database. Hence your fixation on points, and repeatedly raising the fact that the game 'didnt reward' what he was doing. In an RPG you dont take actions to curry rewards, at least not primarily. You take actions because of IC motivations. Your character knows nothing about points or score!
And bottom line, if you are playing the game you should be playing it because you enjoy it.
If you dont like the game, ffs find another game instead of ruining it for the people that are actually playing it and enjoying it. Which is clearly what the majority of COH players have done - taken over a game they didnt like and ruined it for anyone that actually want to play.
Oh well, after reading TFA I am greatful to the author for the warning - it's a game I might have otherwise wasted time on.
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