Not at all. Dave asked the difference and I told him what the difference was.
Yeah, they were assholes. I wouldn’t have done it but I did watch the video and laughed my ass off. I’ve never played one of those games but I am sure that they’ll be facing some in game retribution and all will be right with the (pretend) world.
I’m curious but was it verified that the guy really did die or could it have been a fake like our own WallyM7? This has no bearing on whether or not those kids were jerks but I am just wondering. Anyway, I hope that when I die in real life people get some amusement out of it.
The problem I have with condemning the event is that I can’t work up the same amount of respect for an online funeral taking place inside a MMORPG than I do for funerals in real-life, or even in a general interest message board. I just can’t.
If there’s even the slightest possibility that the mourners can be slaughtered by elves riding wolves, then the service loses a bit of its gravitas.
The difference between this funeral and the various memorial threads we’ve had here is that the equivalent of ambushing and killing your rivals is almost never appropriate on the SDMB. On WoW PvP servers, it’s not only tolerated, but is the point of the game. If Serenity Now had the same feelings about eFunerals that I do, then I can see where their actions spring from. Would I participate? No, probably not. But I can’t really call SN to task for doing so.
The other problem I have is that I think a battle breaking out at a funeral is fucking cool, and exactly the sort of thing I want to see in role-playing games. In fact, I think I’ll steal this sceneario the next time I GM an appropriate game.
First off I’m no ‘y’all’ Nowhere in any of my posts did I state it was funny or that I thought the guild was anything but assholes.
I never forget that I’m dealing with real people on the net. I have developed plenty of relationships with people and made good friends with them. I was pretty annoyed awhile back when there was a thread that many dopers were stating you couldn’t have a ‘real’ relationship online. However if I was talking to my girlfriend (who I’ve met in RL and is coming down this Monday to see me) in a random chat room full of people I don’t know and we interrupted their chat with our personal business I’d hardly be shocked when they didn’t respect our ‘private’ moment.
Wow can you not tell the difference between a game in which the normal behavior is to attack and kill the other side and a message board founded on discussion? A thread started in the appropriate forum on a relevant message board is different then having an in-game ‘service’ in an area where people go to just to attack the other players. That’s the whole point of PvP servers. They were asking other players to not play their game for their private moment. And for the millionth time I THOUGHT THOSE GUYS WERE ASSHOLES. I would not have joined their little raid on a memorial. You seem to have a disconnect between when I say I think everyone involved in this showed poor judgment to mean I fully support the attackers.
Fred Phelps goes to private funerals just outside private property and screams at people for how they lived their lives. These people attacked people in a game where attacking people was standard and expected behavior. The two are not exactly the same no matter how many times you repeat it.
So you want Blizzard to protect a group that decided to have a private moment not backed by blizzard by kicking people out that were working within the rules? In game funerals disrupt the community I’d argue. Expecting people to ‘respect’ those funerals disrupts the game. If this had been an accident (i.e. a guild saw a bunch of enemies sitting around and ambushed them not knowing it was a funeral) should they be banned as well? How many ‘hands off’ private parties should be allowed in PvP? One for every gamer that dies? How about prayer meetings? What if for some reason a few guilds lose people in a short span of time should there be no fighting on that server for awhile? How can we tell that these people actually died and this isn’t some weird drama/scam? Should the death certificate be faxed to blizzard so they know they should protect that guild? How long before people start holding ‘funerals’ in valuable areas and as that people stay out of there?
Yes there is some absurdities in a few of those arguments but Blizzard isn’t running a funeral service they’re running a game. Punishing people that were doing something in the rules to protect people that were asking people to restrict how they’d normally play isn’t the way to do it.
Well a few things. I think it started as a way to talk about when someone kills a distracted player to steal from him or take advangate of his hard work (such as killing someone that just cleared a dungeon and was low on HPs to take the end treasure yourself)
It also means GANg Kill when you use overwhelming force to kill someone just to cause them grief.
It’s pretty much a generic term now for anything that’s cheap and screws someone over for your own amusement/profit.
I suppose things could have changed since I let my account lapse, but I disagree. I think the reason this sort of thing doesn’t happen in EVE is because the level of distrust is always very high. This is the game where the Guiding Hand Social Club totally obliterated another corporation.
Just to derail for a minute… For those who don’t follow EVE, here’s a brief rundown: the GHSC was a mercenary corp who would, for a sum of game money, perform “hits” on other corporations. In this case, their target was infiltrated socially over the course of a year. Members of GHSC created alternate characters and joined the corp and slowly worked their way into the inner circles of the power structure.
This was the most ingenius part: GHSC would arrange fake raids and battles such that their spies would look trustworthy (since they were taking huge “risks” in pitched battles to defend corporation property). The spies would end up looking like heros and throughout the year managed to develop in-game personal friendships with the corp leader.
It all ended when they orchestrated the final hit: every asset the corporation had was either stolen or destroyed, simultaneously. The corp leader was killed and her in game body was seized and returned to the undisclosed group who arranged the whole thing. When PC Gamer magazine ran an article about this, they estimated the real-world damages at something like $16,000 (I guess that’s how much that equipment would have ebay’ed for or something, I have no idea how accurate this claim is). Supposedly many of the corp members quit the game entirely, and it’s not hard to see why: their corporation of several years was gone, overnight, and logging back in the next morning meant almost starting over (minus skills I guess).
Now, I’m not going to comment on the WoW funeral crashing because I’ve never played it. But in EVE, this event was controversial. But it was totally by the rules for the game: a lot of people play EVE especially for this sort of backhanded play. So for EVE, this sort of thing isn’t simply allowed, it’s encouraged (try reading the FAQ if you don’t think this is true). Again, not the same game, but something to think about: in a game where the dynamic is player interaction, is having asshole villains who do really despicable things a problem or a feature?
So, I don’t know if this funeral thing would have happened in EVE or not. I suspect if someone did try to hold a memorial, that they might not only get ganked, they might get ganked by mercenaries who were hired to do it by some other corp. Of course there would be outcry and retribution, but that’s just part of the game. But, it’s been maybe a year since I played so maybe things have changed. When I did play, while I tried to be honorable myself, I definitely enjoyed the thrill of playing in a universe where I really had to watch myself, and things might not be fair.
In-game backhandedness, sure. Many delight in it, and generally speaking it improves the game to have plenty of “bad guys.” Disrespect for other players as persons? I don’t see much of it.
If someone posted a memorial thread in the Pit, and people engaged in the inevitable Pit-like behavior, who is to blame? The people following the rules of the Pit, or the people who posted the thread in the wrong section?
I wish that video had been better quality - I couldn’t read any of the chat dialogue going on while the massacre was happening. Although the music was funny enough. And when will we ever again get to see zombies politely standing in a queue?
I’m sure the Serenity Now guild is having to pay for that little bit of fun they decided to have. It was stupid and immature of them, and they shouldn’t have done it, of course, but they didn’t break any rules, and I don’t see any reason Blizzard should take formal notice of it. In fact, I find it surprising that the mourners were caught off-guard. Broadcasting such an event to all and sundry is practically inviting assholes to come along and…be assholes. They should have been prepared to deal with it. Either that, or taken pains to keep the event secret.
I find myself feeling thoroughly ambivalent… on one hand, there are real people behind the elf/orc/chain-mail bikini-clad amazon warrioress avatars. And if those people have all been brought together via an online medium (say, WoW), and one of them has died, then an on-line memorial service should command at least a modicum of decorum and respect, regardless of the lack of “Rules” covering such a thing. Common Human Decency and all that, you know?
On the other hand, it is a game, and one which attracts a large percentage of teenage boys, many of whom have a prediliction for being dickheads for the sheer hell of it (come on, we’ve all been teenagers once… at least one thing we did that Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time could cause embarrassment, shame, or criminal proceedings if it came to light once we were older and wiser).
So holding something as “Girly” as a Memorial Service in something like WoW (where, presumably, the few things not in short supply are Testorone, Machismo, and Lesbian Elf Pr0n) seems to be the on-line equivalent of sticking your family jewels in a lion’s mouth and then flicking his wedding tackle with a wet towel (to borrow a Rimmerism), or at least having a big neon sign that says “n00bs ahoy! Free Fire Zone, guaranteed pwnage!”.
Personally, I would have thought it prudent to hold such a memorial service in a non free-for-all server, but I’m not a WoW member, so I can’t really comment on the practicalities of that.
Or, to put it another way: You can pretty much guarantee that if a group of friends wanted to have a memorial service on a popular golf course in memory of a dead golfing buddy, there would be more than a few people who’d try and play through anyway, interrupt the service so they can play the ball from where it’s landed (“Do I get a Mulligan if it bounces off the coffin and into the water hazard?”), or make some sort of inappropriate comment as they trundled past in a Golf Cart.
In short, people can be assholes everywhere, but it’s perhaps best not to encourage them, unless you have a Camera Crew lurking somewhere nearby…
Rolling toons and getting them together on another server is a massive PITA, but it can be done. But as has been said time and time again, there are plenty of non-contested zones for people to do this shit in. As long as you’ve got your PvP tag off, if you’re in a non-con zone, there’s shit all an opposing faction can do to touch you.
having only seen the video (it’s 1024*768, so you can enlarge it btw), i’ll say that it’s more likely the entire event is co-ordinated by both sides.
[ul]
[li] it’s a pvp server. [/li][li] event was held on a contested zone (this is unusual) when the alternatives are safe zones or even neutral zones with npc guards to keep out those who disturb the peace. [/li][li] short of holding the event in the opponent’s territory, it was an open invitation for trouble. [/li][li] i have heard blizzard GMs stepping in and chasing out friendly (i.e. those not from the opposing side) trouble makers away from private functions on RP servers. [/li][li] really wierded out by someone controlling the ‘deceased’ character. [/li][li] can’t see the level differences, but apparently little resistance were put up.[/li][li] everyone can resurrect within a minute or two. [/li][li] holding a ‘real’ memorial service where a common example for a character name is ‘OMGlasergunPEWPEWPEW’[/li][/ul]
banks with zero security or precautions will get robbed.
The person posting the memorial is to blame for being negligent and forgetting, like people do every single day on here, that the Pit is not a “tea and sympathy” forum, it’s a place where little people can pretend to be big people by tearing others down within the Rules of the SDMB.
But the blame belongs most on the people who are just the usual scum that the net seems to be more and more made up of each year.
Regarding the WoW actions - I think they’re in really poor taste, but can’t get worked up over them. People should know that the net has become about 50% asshole and do what they can to “protect” themselves in whatever community they wish to reside in.
Unfortunately, IME most all of the people who complain mighteously about how “cruel” a place is or how “heartless” it is or about how many “assholes” there are on a place nonetheless keep crawling back to it like an abused spouse, rather than vote with their feet and bring about positive change.
I don’t play WoW, but my Other does. I’ve played plenty of other games online, various incarnations of MajorMUD, dikuMUD, Tradewars etc. All had PvP or PK allowed. Still, even in that setting, there is a certain level of “jerkitude” that goes over the line, even if there were no rules broken. Some people are very very good at skirting the rules without actually breaking them. Others do follow the rules but still find ways to be assholes.
So what if it’s a PK game? Why bust up a situation where players are giving their respects? Leave them be. You can always attack them another day.
The thing is, there will always be people who will never understand the simple concept of “decency.” Anyone who’s ever played an online RPG game will know that a lot of the players have the intelligence and manners of baboons. It was silly of the mourners to hold the funeral in a PvP zone. If that couldn’t be helped, they should at least have tried to hush it up. I think we all agree that the Serenity Now guild members were being jerks, but the mourners were stupid to think that RL rules of decency would apply.
If something of the sort were to happen in CoH, there might have been a GM present.
At the very least, if it happened on Virtue, there would have been a gathering of enough appropriate heroes and villains of the highest power levels that if someone were to attempt a gankfest, they would be quite sorely harmed.
