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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."
teleported you to the cartoon robot death squad, did he? ;P
Sent from your iPad.
So, a researcher enters a foreign land. He obeys the strict letter of the law, but ignores the customs and rules of polite behavior. Even more, he specifically sets out to break those customs and rules of polite society. The natives push back, telling him that he is being rude. He continues to break the customs and rules of polite society, offending large numbers of people on a regular basis. The natives seek every legal avenue and socially acceptable method to drive him away. He continues to offend. Some natives start pushing what is social acceptable, and skirting the edges of legality.
Wow, color me surprised. Those nasty natives! How dare they try to keep you down!
Perhaps as followup research he can start referring to people of other ethnicity using racial slurs.
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This summary seemed very biased, cherry picking out sections that made it seem like the Professor played outside of the intended purposes of the game by saying he avoided 'custom sets'. After reading the article it seems to me he played it exactly how anyone who had purchased that game would expect to play it. He chose a side, in his case hero, and set out to do battle against other people who had chosen the side of villian. I am not familiar with the game, but it would seem to me that would be the obvious way in which to play the game and how it was meant. From the article the professor says both heroes and villians sat around chatting and only going against computer opponents, which would seem to sort of defeat the purpose of a game that lets you choose a side and everyone has this choice. I know if I had picked up this game I would be pretty pissed if I started playing it just to realize I was only there to be buddy buddy with everyone no matter their affiliation and only go after those designated as computer threats.
After being "chilled" by players threatening to kill him, he then goes and publishes his personal information. Brilliant.
That said, I I think Sirlin would have something to say to the scrubs complaining about his tactics.
Myers, who bought "City of Heroes" when it hit store shelves in 2004, quickly learned that players ignored the area's stated purpose. Heroes chatted peacefully with villains in the combat zone. Instead of fighting each other, members of the two factions sparred with computer-controlled enemies..
What kind of silly carebear game is this? Try Eve, where the time it takes to rid yourself of such nonsense is measured in the time it takes to warm up a railgun.
Not a typewriter
This is not a new concept, it has been covered in one episode of South Park where some guy kills everybody in WOW and the kids get together to defeat him.
I mean, if it has been covered in South Park, I would guess this occurred in other games before. Still interesting to see the similarities with the South Park episode although....
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
If you read the article, it mentioned that he just took a different stlye of battle, instead of the socially accepted standard of sending robots at their robots, he just killed them directly. He did not insult them, just took action different from the normal battle.
I find the moderation on this comment particularly ironic!
Some of the tactics used by this researcher remind me of the full court press in basketball. The rules of basketball allow a full court press, yet to do so never crosses the mind of most players. Playing one side of the court at a time is convention. The full court press is extremely effective, yet if you use it, the other team will no doubt call your win "cheap".
Still, when you are the underdog, and must win at all costs, the press is your only option. I sympathize with those who use it (and recognize that it isn't easy to pull off either).
If people complain that a tactic is cheap, it's really not the fault of the player, but the fault of the game. Past slashdot postings are full of examples where players exploited loopholes in city of heroes (remember the article about player-created missions?). With this in mind, I think it's obvious that City of Heroes was poorly designed to begin with. Game designers should never assume players will be on their best behavior.
Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!
just because a game developer didnt prevent something doesnt mean that its within the rules. the game developer doesnt play that game. even if s/he/they do, they constitute a near zero percentage of the game's players.
any mmo you play are played by thousands of people. thousands of people create its environment, make it run, keep the machine running (raiding, pvp, crafting, trade, events, everything). they are the world there, and they set the social climate. noone, including the developers, can do shit about this. if developers force any player base into something they do not like, they QUIT. and go to another game. it happened many times, for many games, including some top, up-and-coming, much hyped titles.
therefore, for all those badass/darth maul wannabee morons out there - you wont be able to freely be a badass asshole even in a mmo game - regardless how hard you argue that 'its within the rules', any assholery you commit is going to get added to your reputation, and eventually you'll find yourself changing your realm AND your character's nickname. people doesnt give a shit about what's within the hard rules of the game or not - they have their own opinions and judgments - noone can change that, neither a badass wannabee asshole, or self-righteous developer.
so cut the bullshit about 'its within the rules', and get used to living in a society.
Read radical news here
What seems weird is that he was upset that people were punishing behavior "out of the norm" on one hand, and on the other hand was touting that he was merely following the rules. Huh?
The folks in the game creatively and organically decided to set up their own customs opposed to the rules - Twixt seems more like a street preacher who hates everyone because they don't follow the rules like he does.
Is he a cultural anthropologist (probably not, given that anthropologists are trained to work within the social framework of existing cultures as much as possible)? If not, I'd LOVE to see a cultural anthropologist do a write up on what happened here.
The professor seems surprisingly disappointed by the scorn heaped on his not-mainstream behaviour. He tries to liken it to cliques in high school, but the reality is he didn't just not follow rules, but he actively tried to destroy an existing social fabric and actively molested participants. He tries to paint his behaviour as 'following the rules, but independent' without the most important piece of information 'also, I actively antagonised people.' This is akin to painting himself a geek when really he's a bully (to follow on his high school example)
... 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".
If those user-driven rules are so important for the gameplay, they should just pass them along to the developers so they can add them to the actual rules. That's what we in the real world call "Laws". If they don't like the way things are they should go play somewhere else. Stupid whining babies...
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
I don't understand your complaint. There is no question that Twixt broke no rules.. only social convention. Must we all conform to social convention?
...how much government funding he got during the 4 odd years he was "researching" this. Not a bad job to get paid to play a video game for four years and be an utter prick while doing it, while maintaining the rationalization, "it's all for science." Maybe someone should be researching why sociology professors are so willing to live off the public dole like this...
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
So he gets to play MMOs all day and be a cock in them, AND he gets paid for it?
Shit, all this time I've been doing it for free....
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
A player was being irritating, which is within the rules.
The rest of the players turned him into an outcast, which is also within the rules.
I don't see the problem here.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Wow, someone on the Internet said he would kill you! This is a death threat to take seriously, all right.
Having read the full article, it appears as though the "researcher" did nothing more than hang out in the combat zones in CoH/CoV and teleport the oposing faction in to a line of guards who would instakill anyone who got too close. (making the line "but he was too skilled to be driven off" extra hillarious).
He would then troll the general chat with stuff like (direct quote here):
I couldn't make this shit up if I were trying.
His grand conclusion?
What's this guy's next "research" project? Going down to the bus station and punching old ladies in the nose?
This guy wasn't doing research, he just wanted a tax write off and a grant to do nothing but sit around and be a dick on the internet.
And yet, what, they still got their asses handed to them? Methinks they need to spend less time chatting and more time playing the fucking game.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
But who joins City of Heroes to "live in a society"? I've never played, but I thought about it. It wasn't so I could live in a society, but so I could have super powers, choose a side, and then run around kicking the asses of people on the opposing side with said super powers.
When I was a kid, I didn't play Doom so I could learn about demon culture. If I want to live in a society, video games are not the appropriate place for that.
In the sports world, there are many instances of coaches and players using strategies that, although effective, are bad for the game for one reason or another. Sports leagues that deal with this effectively, like the NBA, are doing OK. Leagues that do not, such as the NHL (sorry Canada), are circling the drain. Once upon a time in basketball, teams started holding the ball for minutes at a time as soon as they got a lead. So, the NBA instituted a shot clock forcing the team to shoot the ball within 24 seconds. As players got taller, coaches started camping 7-footers under the basket. So, a 3-second lane was added to forbid any player from standing under the basket for more than 3 seconds at a time. Years later, the 3-point line was introduced to increase the value of long-range shooting and encourage players not to all crowd around the basket. The NHL started going down the tubes when teams like the New Jersey Devils used the horrendously boring "neutral zone trap" and "clutch-and-grab" defense to win Stanley Cups over more skilled and exciting teams. The NHL waited too long to do something about it, and as a result the Stanley Cup finals are now shown on a basic cable bicycle racing channel. If legal play can ruin the game, the rules need to be changed. Pure and simple. You can't trust the players to "be nice."
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
I weep for higher education. Here we have a man with a Ph.D. and a teaching position, and he doesn't know the first thing about culture. Is he lying when he says he was stunned?
The professor was disturbed that game rules encouraging competition and varied tactics hardly mattered to gaming community members who wanted to preserve a deeply-rooted culture.
Again, how can an educated man be so ignorant? Ah well, I suppose he's like the Ph.D.s at my mom's job - the ones who regularly send her email hoaxes, viruses, and Howard Dean campaign contribution requests.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
the actual paper (word format, ugh).
the guy's blog
Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic without a big stretch, but a free ride when you've already paid could easily be situational irony.
It sounds like this "professor" really never learned the details about what he's playing.
In this particular game, player vs. player combat is for the most part consensual. The speed of travel in the game is so fast that the only way to kill someone is for them to be willing to slow down and have a fight to the death. The developers go to greath lengths to minimize the ways in which one player can interfere with other players.
Being killed by a player has no penalty in a PvP zone, you're just sent back to the entrance of the zone. However, the computer controlled "cartoon" enemies in the zone will inflict an experience loss(known as "debt") on the players that die by their hand, and this loss takes a considerable amount of time to mitigate. There are players in this zone who are there to defeat the enemies because they give increased experience, they aren't there to fight or interact with enemy players in any way and are left alone instead.
There's no benefit to winning by dropping the enemy into the computer controlled enemies, since the computer takes the credit for killing him. So essentially, he is disrupting the gameplay of the other players, inflicting a loss of time, and for no personal gain aside from schadenfreude. A classic troll.
He's not bucking social norms, he's being a sociopath as far the game world allows. The results are not suprising, interesting, or even insightful. If he wanted to buck social norms, he should play a healer character who focuses only on his weak offensive abilities. That's the game-equivalent of being a social outcast. He's going for the game-equivalent of Charles Manson.
Go ahead and burn a flag. It's within the rules, but people will hate you for it. Wow. I should write a paper.
And just as with real-world laws, there's a limit to how much you can specify clearly enough, or how many restrictions you actually want to set.
In fact, I think we'd both agree that it would be a Bad Idea to have all laws be set to match social customs. There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt, and I would not want to live in a place that had such a law -- yet you probably still wouldn't want me to do that, and society in general would probably disapprove.
"Don't be a dick" can't be coded into law, but it's still good advice.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This behavior as described by the researcher does not get XP for the player. It does not get drops for the player, either. It simply wastes the opponent's time.
Note also that there are two different behaviors described. One, a pattern of teleporting foes into the 'safe zone guards' was later defined as griefing by the developers, and punishable by pretty much the same punishment as threatening people. The other is a matter of waiting till someone is badly hurt, fighting someone else, and picking them off by teleporting them directly into a boss. This is completely legal, it simply imposes an XP penalty on the person killed. It is also, of course, viewed as 'cheap.'
I suspect strongly that our friend did the 'teleport into guard' trick until the day it was declared griefing, then switched to a new tactic, just to cause the maximum social annoyance.
I have seen this behavior in real life, as well. It is the person who drives in the left lane at ten under the limit, on a road where the convention is twenty over. Much like the behavior described in the game, it is technically legal, unless, of course, the cops decide the driver is intentionally blocking the road.
In this case, I suspect he is both intentionally blocking the road _and_ driving with a hat on, barely able to see over the windshield, if he truly does not understand why his behavior was deemed frustrating.
To put it another way, most of us grew out of this behavior when we were six. It's passive-aggressive, and spiritually the same as "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you."
His survival _after_ this behavior might be an indication of skill... but I doubt he survived for long, simply taking advantage of the lack of death penalty, and various stealth powers to return to play after being killed.
As far as playing by the 'rules', I should note that it has become harder and harder to perform his tactics, due to behavior like this. Why? Because, while the game world may allow it, it was only allowed because the developers didn't actually believe someone would behave like this, to no personal gain and great social cost. As such, they have added equipment, power sets, potions, and direct power changes to make it harder to perform.
one of the reasons why there will never be a true Democracy. The elite in every society tells the commoner and new initiate what to think, and for the most part they fall in line.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
and writes book describing why it's ok to be a Griefer.
More surprising to me was that in CoH/V PvP is not played as described. I play WoW, on both PvP and carebear servers, and boy do I get ganked whenever I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no such "polite agreement" between Ally and Horde in WoW. How did one get established in CoH/V?
And while it does indeed suck to get griefed and ganked by the opposing forces, esp when I am no threat to them, if it starts bothering me much I just go do something else for awhile. The Alliance can't be roaming Tarren Mill all of the time? Can they? But it seems like I did have to log in in the Early AM Server Time in order to complete some of those quests.
--
$tar -xvf
Laws? Kicking over a kid's sand castle isn't illegal, but people will hate you for it. I'm not sure what your point is here.
The individual. How the fuck can you play baseball with only one person?
so cut the bullshit about 'its within the rules', and get used to living in a society.
It's not a "society", it's a game.
In real society, people do things you won't like all the time, and they are still "within the rules". Get used to it. YOu don't get to threaten their life.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt
That's what "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress" is for.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.
How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?" Especially when he was attacking people who didn't want to PVP by abusing a mechanism intended to protect people who didn't want to PVP?
The only reason he was "unbeatable" was because he built a character optimized to exploit a cheap trick that didn't rely on his own strength. I mean, he talks himself up as being skilled, but the truth is a little less flattering. Plus, he wasn't as nice and innocently curious of a guy as he pretends to be. An AC below notes that he would taunt people, post bragging kill logs, etc.
He was a griefer who basically bemoans how "haters gotta be hatin'." What a chump.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
See, that's why I love Eve Online. We (an alliance of over 1000 players on a server with hundreds of thousands) *make* the rules, at least in our own section of space. Jumping a transport through our space as a neutral pilot (we don't know you and have no standings set) will get you killed where we hang out. Want your loot back? Sure, we'll offer it - but we'll put a steep markup on it compared to what we'd ask from the alliance. If you don't like it, stick to NRDS (Not Red, Don't Shoot, i.e. only kill hostile ships) space. On the other hand, if you want to join us, go ahead and ask - we're usually recriuting to some extent or another. We'll even take in new players and help them bet set up, which a lot of alliances have no interest in doing. Why operate this way? It's how we like to play. Don't like it? Stay out of our way (we occupy about a dozen systems, with presence in perhaps a dozen more, out of many hundreds) or get your own alliance together (or join one) and fight us. Seriosuly, bring it - the game is no fun when you have to fly 40 systems away to get an PvP.
I can totally sympathise with this guy. He was just in the wrong game - apparently City of Heroes/Villians is simply overrun with carebears.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
depends - does the guy who wants to play baseball starting pitching the ball at the sunbathers?
FGD 135
This
and this
are arguing opposite sides. The developers are the ones who set the speed limits/laws, and not surprisingly, entering a Player vs. Player arena is explicitly saying "I want to PvP."
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Of interest in the "players set the rules" topic is LambdaMOO, where players actually sent in petitions which became ballots which were voted on and implemented. Frequently, a ballot to permanently shut down the game was submitted; luckily, they never passed. Other ballots would include changes in quota policy, new user policy, etc.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
That's meaningless, the programmed rules of the game are analagous to the laws of physics. Just because you can punch someone on the nose doesn't mean that you should, or that they should just shrug their shoulders and go "well, physics allows it, so I'm ok with it"
FGD 135
Were I faculty at Loyola, I would find the IRB members who approved this and give them a very hard time, as this is not the kind of research I would want to be associated with. If he has done this without IRB support, I would ask that he be removed from the faculty.
I would point to his academic themed blog (linked to in the article), where he seems to go out of his way to belittle and further antagonize the non-academics who are complaining (he had a separate blog "in character" for his research, this is his "serious academic" blog). His response to an inquiry about the ethics of what he has done is to link to a discussion of similar researchers who seem to reach a conclusion that the ethics in MMO social research are complicated and suggests that transparency and respect of the other players is the best policy (in other words, he links to a blog that suggests he has acted unethically). That he is acting "in character" in his academic blog after the conclusion of the research and is not adhering to the "normal" research conduct of his field is, to me, totally unacceptable.
A player was being irritating, which is within the rules.
The rest of the players turned him into an outcast, which is also within the rules.
I don't see the problem here.
You (and the authors of half the comments I've read so far...) must not have read the article. They went beyond attacking or taunting him in the game. Trying to expose someone's identity and falsely accusing them of being a sex offender is WAY outside the rules.
Also, "being irritating" in this case involved playing the game the way it was meant to be played. He wasn't doing things that were merely "technically" allowed. He wanted to roleplay as a hero, so he attacked villains.
The summary headline is inaccurate and inflammatory; its author needs to go back to Fark.
I'm actually a CoH player who PvPed both with and against Twixt (I am not any of the players named, and my verbal interactions with Twixt were quite limited). I'd like to clear up a few things that seem to be missing. Note that I am, in no way, discounting the seriousness of death threats, but maybe a little more understanding of what really took place will allow people to relate better to the frustration.
1) Twixt's actions in PvP translated to an investment of time. By teleporting (the action described) villains into a row of firing squad computer-generated enemies, he would give the other character debt. This debt would impede the character's ability to gain experience by cutting it in half for a certain period of time. Thus, anyone who suffered from what Twixt did would pay for it by having their progress cut in half the next time they got the opportunity to play. A full portion of debt could take upwards of 3 hours of nonstop play to be worked off.
Imagine you go play miniature golf. Directly in front of you is a group of 10 children who have no idea what they're doing. You are unable to skip past them, and as is allowed, they refuse to let you pass. Due to this inconvenience, you only get to play 9 holes (or 4, if you're only on a 9-hole course). Would you be frustrated? I sure would be. They didn't break the rules, but they hurt the fun of my outing by specifically robbing me of the time that I had dedicated to accomplishing my goal. It's not much different than traffic, bowling balls getting stuck in the lanes, people talking during a movie, or any other issue that would rob an individual of their free time. The individuals causing your frustration may not be breaking the rules, but they are affecting your enjoyment.
2) Twixt's account of what took place in the PvP zones he visited just plain isn't accurate.
People did chat because many of the players had played together prior to the release of City of Villains (CoH was released in May of 2004 while CoV in October of 2006). Most of us already knew each other. However, that didn't result in a lack of fighting. Many times, Twixt would simply teleport people from battles already in place to his computer-generated death squads. He's presenting the situation as if he was the only one using the zones correctly when, in actuality, he was just the only one manipulating loopholes to allow him to generally be mean to other players. That's the biggest reason why he was despised.
3) Twixt commonly made fun of players he killed.
He did not simply say random hero-supporting things, he oftentimes bragged openly after using his computer-generated helpers to kill someone. Like any other competitive situation, bragging and talking trash will earn people talking back and becoming more upset. He worked to goad individuals into becoming angrier at what he did.
He mentions the forums as a place where people speculated about parts of his life, but he seems to have left out where he posted kill-logs from his time spent in PvP zones. He posted quite frequently on those boards, and he went out of his way to fuel the hate that developed for him. Professional athletes who do such a thing are widely derided by the media and fans. Twixt worked hard to generate hate, he was not simply an innocent victim.
4) Twixt died. A lot.
Twixt perfected his method of generating debt for other players by dying a whole lot along the way. Statements like, "But no one could stay alive long enough to defeat Twixt..." completely misrepresent what happened.
5) Twixt's research plays a role by examining another realm of society, but his results are predictable.
It's not surprising that people get upset when you're mean to them without reason. On an unmarked curb, it's legal for me to park 5 fee
Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The COH developers have addressed previous griefing techniques, such as teleporting other players into locations they could not exit, heroes camping the inside of the villain hospital, etc. However, griefers are inventive, and sometimes find new tactics faster than the developers can program ways to prevent them.
Actually, the driver's handbook my state publishes specifically says you should only use the left lane to pass. So when some asshole in a Winnebago camps the passing lane at (speed limit minus 10), he really is breaking the law, or at least driving improperly. Like jaywalking and littering, it's something cops don't really care about, so everyone does it, and most people don't even know it's wrong. And then everyone's surprised when they hear the Germans actually enforce rules like that. Sigh...
I think it would be ironic if everyone were made of iron...
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Also, just because it's possible to PvP with anyone there doesn't mean that people have consented to PvP with you.
Try telling that to some player pirates in EVE.
Actually I think he just proved Professor Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and thereby proving conclusively that no matter how much education or degrees you have attached to you name, you can still be a giant douche on the Internet.
So congratulations Mr Researcher, on proving what everyone else has known since AOHell let the great unwashed loose on the net. I'm sure his next paper will be on how 4Chan is full of trolls that do everything for something called the "LULZ".
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
no, that would be ferric.
How do you measure the punishment for something you can't measure the crime in?
Actually, if you ask the the CS staff, if you play the game and read the beginner's info - yeah, they have. Entering a PvP Zone means you consent to be engaged by anyone anywhere at any when inside the zone. If you want to only PvP against specific people, that's what "City of" has arenas for.
Actually, almost every state/province has laws that prohibit going slow enough to inhibit normal flow of traffic. It's probably up to the traffic cop's discretion what that speed is, but it's illegal nonetheless.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
He claims to have done an experiment, yet from what I can see, he's tried a grand total of ONE behaviour.
Maybe all players treat everyone like they're an asshole, maybe it wasn't the killing itself, but the obnoxious bragging about it that got people riled.
Maybe it was the color of his pants, or the time of year, or maybe he did something outside of the game itself to bring it on.
And no statement from the developers of the game that what he was doing was how they "intended" the game to be played.
How can he possibly draw valid conclusions from this?
http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html
Sirlin's essay is correct insofar as it goes, but it ignores 75% of the categories of play. Scrubs are only scrubs if they are applying their socially constructed rules in the Fiero space. Socially constructed rules are normal and expected in the other three play types.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Huh? Because the game mechanics didnt give him XP that delegitimises his acts? Hardly. He played a hero, removing villains was his goal, not racking up points in a database somewhere!
According to TFA, there are arenas for duels, and a full pvp area as well. Despite this, the custom has evolved that both sides use the full PVP area for farming and duelling, and no true pvp takes place (set duels are not the same thing.) No? Because if that's not accurate then one must wonder why Twixt became so hated, if everyone else was doing the same thing he was...
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"Must we all conform to social convention?"
only if you want to be one of the cool kids who everybody gets along with. independant thinkers should be ridiculed for their non-conformity if the social convention where you are is to fart during a meal as a sign of approval of the meal you'd better stress that rectum into belching out some noxious gasses...
in all seriousness though... fuck socialism. A democratic society is one where you have freedom... this guy went into an online game and did what the game was designed for... heroes fighting villains, he broke no rules, he just pissed off a bunch of idiots that thought "heroes vs villians, that sounds like an interesting place to hang out and chat about shit"...
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Reminds me of a scene from the television series "Shaka Zulu" where a young Shaka eagerly looks forward to proving himself in battle but instead observes a "battle" where the opponents simply dress up, dance, and hurl insults at each other to determine the winner. This method of warfare and Shaka's subsequent shakeup seems to be backed up by WikiPedia:
Not that this has any bearing on the subject at hand but interesting none the less. Or does it?
Yeah, others have pointed out the factual errors, but think about this for a minute man.
This is THE PVP area in a HEROS VS VILLAINS game. He's playing a hero. He goes in to kill villains. And HE is in the wrong?
A better analogy would be that he was doing 55 on a 55 road and really irritated the mob that was trying to use the asphault as a spread for their picnic. Solution - DONT PLAN PICNICS ON THE HIGHWAY SURFACE THAT'S NOT WHAT IT IS FOR!
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That and that "tyranny of the majority" thing.
Well, as someone who's been on MUDs long before MMOs, and briefly even tried his hand at creating content on one, I can at least say this: I had thought I've heard every excuse before. There was always a segment (the ones Bartle called "killers") who'd whine at length that if you don't let them repeatedly gank newbies:
A. you're infringing upon their freedom of speech. (Never mind that that ammendment is about congress, not about their behaviour on someone else's private property.)
B. ... and their dad is a lawyer and will sue you for it. (Never did somehow.)
C. ... and that's the road to fascism and slavery. (Yeah, right.)
D. You're making roleplaying impossible. (Apparently being an out-of-character griefer is the only possible role to play.)
E. You're depriving those newbies of _fun_. They may not know it, but they secretly _want_ to be ganked repeatedly and otherwise harrassed. If you let them opt out of that instead of being thrown to the wolves from the first minute, they'll all get bored and leave! (I think Everquest 1 disproved that one quite nicely.)
F. Somehow a failure of a human being, along with everyone else who even thinks of being, you know, social in a massively multiplayer game.
And, umm, that's about it off the top of my head.
The research one is actually kind of new. Of course, this "researcher" didn't invent it, but still, it's kinda refreshing to see the douchebags have broadened their repertoire a little. They were starting to sound like a broken record.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Rain on your wedding day is not ironic, it is just unfortunate.
:-p)
Unless you're getting married to a weather forecaster and he/she set the date! Then it is fairly ironic.
(Ed Byrne
fuck it, i have to post again, your post is just ridiculous.
first off, a griever is someone who causes grieve by interrupting gameplay in an unintended way, griever != whiner, please at least get your mmorpg slang right.
i have played eq, and cross teaming has absolutely nothing to do with this, you're not able to team up with anyone of the opposite faction in cox (only in cooperation zones, but we're talking pvp areas here), you can't heal them etc. i am repeating myself, people in those zones are playing as intended, they are pvping, they are fighting each other with some ooc text in between. twixt is essentially doing what fansy did in eq1, are you getting it now?
the anti-twixt folks were the griefers, you should RTFA
I did read the article. Some people used out of game methods to get back at him since his character was too powerful in game. Since your stuck in "RP is All" mode isn't it common practice that the villians would resort to defaming a 'hero' if they can't beat them? In any case, he reaped what he sowed, nothing more, nothing less. Role playing as a blood thirsty 'hero' doesn't absolve him of being an ass.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
The entrance to every zone in COH/COV is an area protected by police robots. The robots have rays that instantly kill anything in the game. The purpose of this is to prevent anyone from greifing people who are in the process of entering the area and don't have control of their characters yet.
If it weren't for these robots, then greifers could drag powerful mobs into the entrance area, or in the PvP area just stand in the enemy entrance area with a buddy or two, and prevent anyone from being able to enter without getting killed before having a chance to fight back at all.
There's also a "teleport foe" skill you can take, which is very handy for pulling, or for when an enemy gets stuck in a wall.
What this guy appeared to be doing was going into the PvP area and using teleport foe to teleport players on the other side into his own insta-death protected entrance area.
It is a very clever way to use the dev's griefer protection tools to grief people. What is most certianly is not is "playing the game by the designer's rules".
If you've ever had a conversation with a game griefer where they dumped their rationalizations for their prickish behavior on you, this article will look very familiar to you.
I find it odd that the definition of 'Troll' is 'used a PvP play area in the way it was explicitly designed to be used'
Slandering the man in outside forums the OP is perfectly okay with.
Which used to be a symptom of being a Troll.
Interesting.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media