# a guild holds an e-funeral for a member who died IRL. Then another guild crashes it. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 25, 2006, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840 "2006-03-25T07:31:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Zetetic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/74df32/32.png) [@Zetetic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zetetic)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/61 "2006-03-25T21:34:05Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > This is really disturbing. I would bust the characters involved down to lvl 0, and only because there is ample evidence that this is what was going on. It is clearly socially bereft of anything to hold onto. There was a time in war, wherein firing would stop in order for armies to go out and collect their wounded. It is illegal in a war zone to fire on medics (Identified by their large red medical emblems. PVP is not an excuse to cast away all societal norms. Certain respect must be paid to the rules of society. **Busting in on a wake and beating people up wasn’t even practiced in Northern Ireland during the most bitter times.** > > There is no justification for this whatsoever. [Milltown, 16th March 1988](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/16/newsid_2523000/2523953.stm) ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/62 "2006-03-25T21:49:17Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Why? Given, as you admit, that the players might form a community with real ties and real bonds, and given that they are no doubt scattered across the globe, making anything but an online venue impossible, why shouldn’t the game they play not be the venue for a memorial? If they wanted an uninterruptible memorial a website or message board (that they could remove any offensive posts) would be good. However they choose their game space. That’s fine however their choice had certain risks that include party crashers. On top of that the fact that their was plenty of ‘safe’ zones only compounds the oddness of their choice. > [@](#): > > Because it’s a game? Then if the Twins hold brief memorial for Kirby Puckett at their home opener, you’ll say that the baseball stadium is not a place for mourning either? I don’t understand this attitude. I’d say that a baseball game is very different you have two professional teams coming together at a particular time to play. A memorial would hardly interrupt play. This was a server where attacking the opposing side was the normal behavior. They wished to disrupt that with their private moment. If someone decided to have a prayer meeting on the PvP area should other gamers be forced to respect that? How about private parties? Simple fact is they had to know before hand they were having a private moment in a public place and had to rely on people agreeing not to play their game during that time in the manner they choose. Was it an unreasonable request? I’m about 50/50 on it. Were the people that attacked them jerks? They indeed were. Were the attackers wrong? No. > [@](#): > > And what if it were a game without a PvP toggle? What if it were a game where PvP is permissible everywhere, such as the aforementioned EVE Online? Why is it so horrible to ask people to not be assholes? Well the fact was it was a game with a PvP toggle added to the fact that Eve (from what I understand I never played it) has ‘safe’ zones and highly dangerous ones. It’s not horrible to ask people not to be assholes. It’s absurd to assume people will change the standard of behavior (ie attacking enemies on site in PvP areas) for your private moment just because you decide to have it. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/63 "2006-03-25T22:01:01Z")
I think Blizz aren’t going to do anything. No rules were broken, and we’ve already seen Blizz isn’t entirely bothered with gaining good publicity since their whole anti-gay-guild-advertising policy. What the gatecrashers did was wrong, and as they themselves said, assholish. In a perfect world, those that participated would get their characters deleted. It may be a game, yes, but they gatecrashed a gathering for a real person. On the other hand, the funeral-holding guild were pretty foolish, too. I’m not surprised they’d want to do something ingame rather than just on a message board - i’m sure if one of your close friends on this board died, you’d prefer to phone/meet others you knew, rather than just posting on here (if that was an option) - but holding it in a contested area after advertising it was pretty much asking for trouble. They should have known what they’d get; hell, if there was a “self-destruct the server” button in the game, there’d be crowds fighting to press the damn thing, because WoW players epitomise assholishness and self-image loving. Sure, there’s a contigent that are respectful, but that’s a minority. The worst thing that’s going to come out of this? Copycats. You can bet if anyone else tries to hold a funeral such as this, even if it’s outside a contested zone, guilds are going to try their hardest to fuck it up, and video it. “We’re assholes too” is a caption that’ll haunt google videos for a while. ---
**Author:** ![SkipMagic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skipmagic/32/20706_2.png) [@SkipMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkipMagic)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/64 "2006-03-25T22:03:10Z")
And after combing through the rest of the thread, I’m of the opinion this really belongs in the Pit. I’ll contact my guild and see if they’ll allow me to move it to that server. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/65 "2006-03-25T22:08:12Z")
I do agree that it would probably have been infinitely more intelligent to hold the service in the Valley of Spirits in Orgrimmar. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/66 "2006-03-25T22:27:53Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > Tell ya what, El Kabong. How about we see just how consistant you are. Why don’t you start a thread, right now, defending Fred Phelps as a champion of First Amendment rights? After all, his picketing the funerals of dead gay folks or of U.S. servicemen killed overseas is completely and totally within the law, a robust expression of his First Amendment rights, right? There is nothing against the law in what he does, so anyone who criticizes it is totally off base, no? Are you prepared to take that position publicly, or are you a hypocrite? Wow. You’re actually calling hypocrite on this? Did you not just fucking say that it’s wrong, but legal to go through East Baltimore shouting racial epithets? And you’re using it as an analogy to the raid. So the raid is like something that is wrong but legal. Then you’re saying they should be punished not by the other players but by the authorities. Do you understand the difference between an official sanction and the actions of a private individual? ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/67 "2006-03-25T22:42:50Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Then if the Twins hold brief memorial for Kirby Puckett at their home opener, you’ll say that the baseball stadium is not a place for mourning either? I don’t understand this attitude. I was thinking about this a bit and decided that you probably don’t fully get how I view this incident. So I thought up an admittedly strained analogy I see it as two boxers in a ring. Just before the third round Boxer A (creative name I know) announces that he’s going to spend the first 10 seconds of round three in peaceful reflection upon his recently deceased father who loved boxing more then anything and he’d appreciate it if Boxer B just waited in his corner. At the bell Boxer B comes out and pops Boxer A in the mouth. Who was wrong in this incident? Both were to some extent. There would have been little harm in Boxer B respecting the situation but he wasn’t bound to it. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/68 "2006-03-25T23:00:43Z")
Oh, I see this has been moved to the Pit… um… you goat felchers? > [@ddgryphon](#): > > They could have, but if this is the venue in which they knew the person, it does make sense to have it here rather than somewhere else – I’m still not sure why it HAD to be held in a PVP zone. From what I understand, the specific location was a favorite of the player who “died” (if they really did… I’m always somewhat wary of internet deaths). But, by the same token it seems to smack of entitlement to suppose that because you want to bring the real world into a game, that everybody else should stop playing the game so that you can indulge your desires. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > Not really. This is the place where they knew the person best. It had meaning and was an important part of HOW they knew the person. They also lost the in-game personna, so, it is in effect a double loss. This isn’t the forum for it, but we can discuss the relative sadness of that elsewhere. Well, I’m not even really disagreeing with the emotional impact. I’m sure it could be quite sad. But the fact remains that they went into a game where a large portion of the whole point is players fighting players, and asked that players not fight players so that they could satisfy their emotional requirements. It just doesn’t seem to be the proper venue. Heck, a little planning could have yielded a fine compromise. They could’ve emailed the admins and had PvP disabled for the duration of the funeral. Or, even better yet, they could have simply taken a screen cap of the location and made a memorial page with all the guild members adding a quote. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > This is probably a good idea – they likely should have discussed it with admins first, and in the future, it would be a good idea for anyone wanting to express grief in this way to do so. Definitely. But it still strikes me as fundamentally inapropriate. People pay money for the game, and log on to a PvP server in order to, among other things, fight other players. Someone bringing in non-game matters shouldn’t, IMO, be given the right to stop other people from enjoying the game. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > It doesn’t excuse the disrespect and saying “I was just playing the game” is simply making excuses for being an asshat – plain and simple. Well… the situation is a bit nuanced, I suppose. It was a rather jerkish thing to do, to bumrush the memorial service… but still, I can’t find it in me to find fault with them. And the more I think about it, the more I think that the people who tried to stop the normal course of a game for selfish reasons are the ones who should’ve done something differently. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > There’s a difference in going about your business and actively disrupting something. Fair enough… different analogy then: trying to hold a memorial service in a lasertag arena, during a match. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > This is really disturbing. I would bust the characters involved down to lvl 0, and only because there is ample evidence that this is what was going on. It is clearly socially bereft of anything to hold onto. Well, as I’d wager you can guess, I’d be totally opposed to that. > [@ddgryphon](#): > > PVP is not an excuse to cast away all societal norms. Certain respect must be paid to the rules of society. I’d argue that one of the rules of society is that you don’t interrupt people playing a game and tell them to be quiet so you can mourn. I mean, heck, we’re talking about a game with talking cow-like-creatures that scratch themselves, various werewolf lookin’ things jumping about, magic spells, and players fighting players. It just does not seem like the proper place to mourn. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > Probably they assumed people were cooler than that. I wouldn’t assume people would mess up a funeral for a real person no matter where it is held–because that’s just one of those things you absolutely do not do. Eh… I don’t think that one’s personal grief trumps others’ ability to play a game as it was intended to be played. There is a proper time and place for mourning. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > If I was at a paintball place and a group of people came in and said they had a friend who had died who loved the place and they all wanted to have a moment there, what person isn’t going to step aside for a moment and let them do it? They might… but I’d think that the people who expected others to stop playing and having fun were being jerks. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/69 "2006-03-26T00:31:37Z")
> [@Darkhold](#): > > That or he sees a small difference between people having a pretend funeral in a pretend game in an area that invites attacks as opposed to a hate monger that goes and tells people that their deceased loved ones will burn in Hell for eternity. It wasn’t a pretend funeral in a pretend game for a pretend person. If it was some kind of memorial for some in game persona or character or something I’d be yucking it up with the rest of y’all. You forget tho that all those characters running around in WoW are controlled by real people. This was a real person who really actually died, you know, for real? His friends, both RL and from the game were having a memorial service for him. You may think that the form their memorial took was stupid. _I_ may think that it was stupid. That doesn’t matter. When someone is having a funeral or a memorial service for a dead loved one or friend, common human decency demands that you bow your head respectfully and offer condolences. When Cristi died, were you shitting in her memorial thread? How about Poopa Chalupa? He fell off a freeway overpass, ha, ha, what a moron, right? What’s the difference? There is none, just as there is no difference between what these assholes did and what Fred Phelps does. Both are completely legal. Both are wrong. > [@saoirse](#): > > Then you’re saying they should be punished not by the other players but by the authorities. Do you understand the difference between an official sanction and the actions of a private individual? I understand the difference perfectly well. It’s _because_ it’s a private venue that I think Bliz should ban all of them and delete their characters. While I may personally wish that someone would shoot Fred Phelps right between the eyes, I’ll defend to the death his right to stand outside of funerals and be an asshole, and I do not think he should be arrested or confined by the authorities. That does not mean that if Fred wants to protest on private property that the owner shouldn’t kick him off. Blizzard is a private company, and as such, freedom of speech rules do not apply to them. They want (or should want) to foster an atmosphere for entertaining game play on their realms. These hemorrhoids hurt that goal. Because they are a private organization, they have no obligation to tolerate the online version of Phelps. They can and should ban them. As for those of you nattering on about the “ultimate punishment” nonsense, please. It’s a stupid game. If they want to be assholes they can go play D&D online or EQ or something else, just like when people get banned here they are free to post at any other message board they want. When someone shits in your online pea patch, you have every right to prevent them from coming back. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/70 "2006-03-26T01:53:41Z")
Could someone explain-what is a PVP and what is a contested area? ---
**Author:** ![Sierra\_Indigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/71 "2006-03-26T01:57:17Z")
Argh ☹ . Big post all lost due to gremblins. Damnit! Serves me right for not saving it in notepad first. Oh well. :wally I haven’t seen anyone yet saying that what these guys did was the _right_ or even a _decent_ thing to do. Hell, if I was in this guild and this was all being planned out, I’d decline politely to join in, and even look at leaving the guild and finding another. Because it is an asshole thing to do, and they really shouldn’t have done it at all. But the fact of the matter still stands - real person who is dead or not, the Horde group did this thing in an area _where they could not control the outcome_. Not everyone reads the realm forums. I know most of my guild never did. If a group of Alliance had’ve gotten wind of this, but not known it was a funeral procession, and still come down on a raid would there be the same outcry over it? I agree with the idea that Blizz need to look into this, and perhaps look at creating some sort of ‘chapel’ or other gathering space that a guild can rent out to use for these sort of things. I’ll even agree that Blizz should look over the ToS and get a bit more specific on what actually defines ‘harassment’, and get a bit more serious about warning and enforcing that rule. But I certainly don’t agree that the people involved on the attacking side should have every toon and account deleted or slammed back to 0. As I said before, there’s a video here and that shows what happened. Fine. But if the rules are changed in that way, and people are deleted for this, what’s to stop _any_ raid being played out this way… “Hey, we were mourning here you arseholes. Ban them Blizz!” People have brought up Eve Online vs WoW in this argument. With good cause. They’re both PvP oriented games. You take your “life” into your hands every time you move outside protected areas. But there’s a subtle difference. I’ve played both games, and IMHO, Eve tends to attract an older, and more mature set of players. Sure there’s jerks here and there, but for the most part, the players take the game seriously and I believe would honour this kind of thing (though I still woudn’t do it in 0.0 space). WoW, on the other hand, is populated predominantly by younger players. On any server, you’re going to get a handful of serious, mature players who abide by fair play and make sure they’re doing their best to play within the spirit, not only the rules of the game. The rest of the population, however (excluding farmers), is full of teenage kids, full of fourteen-year-old superiority, who take great joy in fucking people up, for the sake of ruining their fun. I’m not making excuses for them, but you’ve got to know your population, and that’s just how it is. Even before this became a public brouhaha, would I have held/joined a memorial service in a contested zone, after it had been announced on the realm forums/general chat? Hell, the fuck, no. Because even without knowing if anyone had planned a raid on this party, I would still be expecting it anyway. Why? Because people are jerks in this game. They’re going to fuck you up any way they can, and they’ll make a video doing it for shits and giggles. Again, it’s not right, and it’s not decent, but it’s the mindset of the people you’re playing with, and there’s nothing that will change that. On Preview: **Guinastasia** , PvP means “Player vs Player”, as in you can kill anyone of the opposing faction. In WoW you’ve got two types of zones - faction specific, where you’re safe from being killed unless you’ve got your PvP tag active, or you attack someone from the opposing faction first, and contested, where anyone can kill anyone else, regardless of what they’re doing at the time. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/72 "2006-03-26T02:17:57Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > Ditto on the building idea for this. Good call. Actually there are plenty of empty areas that have minimal if any traffic depending on how many were in attendance you could have easily done something like this in low traffic areas of major cities. Examples on alliance side, Hall of Explorers in Ironforge, The Park in Stormwind, the Temple of the Moon in Darnassus. Most of these areas would see little if any traffic. If it was less than 40 players they could have done a 40 man raid and had the memorial at the last room of the raid after the boss drops. No other people can get into the instance to mess with you even on a PVP server. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/73 "2006-03-26T02:19:06Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Could someone explain-what is a PVP and what is a contested area? PvP means player versus player, and usually means player versus player combat is avaliable. In World of Warcraft, players are in one of two factions, and can attack players in the other faction if PvP is on for _both_ of them. Servers on WoW are either PvP or PvE (player versus environment, meaning monsters). In a PvE server, players can only attack an opposing player if that player has their PvP “flag” enabled, while attacking automatically turns on one’s own PvP flag So in a PvE server, you can only be attacked if you’ve turned your flag on (or you’re in the enemie’s capital city, where your flag is automatically on). In a PvP server, your PvP flag is always on in “contested” areas. Most areas are contested, except a few “safe” zones. You can’t turn it off, so at any point in a contested server you can attack the enemy faction and they can attack you. In this case, it means that the players involved must have been on a PvP server - because there are no contested areas on PvE apart from capital cities, plus on PvE the funeral goers would have just left their flags off, leaving them unable to be attacked. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/74 "2006-03-26T02:45:13Z")
> [@Darkhold](#): > > Well the fact was it was a game with a PvP toggle added to the fact that Eve (from what I understand I never played it) has ‘safe’ zones and highly dangerous ones. > > It’s not horrible to ask people not to be assholes. It’s absurd to assume people will change the standard of behavior (ie attacking enemies on site in PvP areas) for your private moment just because you decide to have it. EVE has safe-ish areas - areas where if you aggress someone you’re not at war with, the NPC cops will spawn on top of you and blow you up. But this does not happen instantaneously, and it is quite possible to gank people travelling through high sec space. It’s called suicide-ganking, because you’re guaranteed to be blown up by CONCORD regardless of how quickly you blow up your target, but it can and does happen. The only time you’re 100% safe in EVE is if you’re docked. It’s a very different community, though. I would be astonished if any significant corporation or alliance would do something analogous, regardless of where the event were taking place - though given the differences in game structure, such an event in EVE would probably be just a chat channel. I suppose you could line up a formation of battleships and fire off a salute or something, but I’m not quite sure how a memorial service in space would go. Nevertheless, if something like this were announced, even in the midst of a major inter-alliance war, I wouldn’t expect the combatants to try to take advantage of it. There are a few minor corps that might conceivably be jerkish enough, but all of the big groups respect each other even when they’re fighting. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/75 "2006-03-26T04:43:07Z")
I for one, thought it was hilarious. Innapropriate, yes. This all took place in an online MMP environment. Seems to me that no rules were broken. I just keep picturing some gamer who is like 35th in line, going to get a Mountain Dew and some Doritos, coming back to his computer and screaming “Sweet Jesus of Nazareth!” as his charachter is beaten to a pulp. Was an online funereal neccesary, no. Should it have been made public, no. Were the Serenity Now players dicks, yes. Did the mourners get killed in a manner that follows the rules of the game, yes. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/76 "2006-03-26T04:46:32Z")
Uh, Inappropriate, character, and necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Kaboom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/34f0e0/32.png) [@Kaboom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaboom)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/77 "2006-03-26T04:48:58Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > I understand the difference perfectly well. It’s _because_ it’s a private venue that I think Bliz should ban all of them and delete their characters. While I may personally wish that someone would shoot Fred Phelps right between the eyes, I’ll defend to the death his right to stand outside of funerals and be an asshole, and I do not think he should be arrested or confined by the authorities. That does not mean that if Fred wants to protest on private property that the owner shouldn’t kick him off. Blizzard is a private company, and as such, freedom of speech rules do not apply to them. They want (or should want) to foster an atmosphere for entertaining game play on their realms. These hemorrhoids hurt that goal. Because they are a private organization, they have no obligation to tolerate the online version of Phelps. They can and should ban them. As for those of you nattering on about the “ultimate punishment” nonsense, please. It’s a stupid game. If they want to be assholes they can go play D&D online or EQ or something else, just like when people get banned here they are free to post at any other message board they want. When someone shits in your online pea patch, you have every right to prevent them from coming back. WoW has 6.5 million subscribers, im sure more than a couple die every day. Should all of them get an in game memorial? should gameplay be brought to a halt each time someone decides to mix in real life with a game? should Blizzard actually make sure whoever that person was is actually dead and not just an attention whore (it has happened MANY times in online games) before banning everyone? and most important, why the fuck should they give a shit? Anyone with any common sense at all could have predicted what happened, pvp servers dont exactly attract the cream of the crop. Theres already plenty of in game solutions for shit like this. You can kill the fuckers back, you can hold your damn memorial in one of the many beautifull places around norrath where you can’t get your ass kicked, you could not be a fucking retard and post the exact place and time on the server boards, or hell if you are the kind of pansy ass who is bothered by being killed in a video game you can simply play on a server where its not allowed. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/78 "2006-03-26T04:58:42Z")
But he was crushed, I tells ya! Crushed like a can of … ah, fuck it … :wally ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/79 "2006-03-26T05:14:50Z")
> [@Weirddave](#): > > When Cristi died, were you shitting in her memorial thread? How about Poopa Chalupa? He fell off a freeway overpass, ha, ha, what a moron, right? What’s the difference? The difference is that that would have violated the Number 1 rule on the SDMB. What those other kids did was not a rule violation in their venue. You are being a dipshit. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840/80 "2006-03-26T05:23:52Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > The difference is that that would have violated the Number 1 rule on the SDMB. What those other kids did was not a rule violation in their venue. > > You are being a dipshit. This is another attitude I don’t get. The only reason not to be a jerk is because it’s against the rules? So if SDMB didn’t have the don’t be a jerk, you’d turn into a flaming asshole, just because you could? I myself don’t see any reason for Blizzard to get involved with this, but I frankly don’t see what the rules have to do with anything when determining what to say about this incident. They were a bunch of assholes who deserve to be slapped upside the head till they gain a tiny smidgen of respect for fellow human beings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-guild-holds-an-e-funeral-for-a-member-who-died-irl-then-another-guild-crashes-it/349840.md?page=5)