[Eddie Izzard] …and everyone’s very fucking surprised all of a sudden! I think that’s a little naive. Just a TAD. [/EI]
I disagree. I don’t see much difference between walking into a space and taking it over for non-game activities, and announcing that you’re going to walk into the game and take it over for non-game activities.
Analogy is always suspect, but the way I see it, it isn’t about making a reservation at a paintball parlor, it’s announcing ahead of time that you intend to hold a memorial service duing someone else’s game.
Well, just to play devil’s advocate since the SN guild was most likely trolling, but:
a reason would be roleplaying. As mentioned upthread, it would be perfectly in character for a group of bad guys to attack a bunch of good guys who were in the middle of a memorial service. Likewise, it would probably be in character for a bunch of good guys to attack a bunch of bad guys who were mourning a fallen villain.
I laughed, I cried, I peed my pants.
Naga, please.
I thought that the Horde guild was stupid for holding a memorial in a contested zone, and I thought the Alliance guild members were being assholes. All in all, a normal day on a PvP server.
We had someone die on Frostwolf, they had a memorial thread on the WoW forums. It got ugly there too. While I wouldn’t crash a funeral, I have done some assholish things to horde members. It wouldn’t be PvP without it.
Weirddave, this sort of accusation (like accusations of trolling) is useless and counterproductive. You had already reported the post. Don’t do this again – this is a warning.
Oy vey.
I don’t think I have ever been so overwhelmed and confused by a thread. It’s enough to make a monkey bite its mother.
In this thread Weirddave has rubbed discussions of the housekeeping practices of a dead poster in the face of an administrator whilst insisting that others in the thread are opposing “common decency”. And that’s after being warned.
When was he last useful or productive in terms of fighting ignorance? How many recent attempts at udefulness have there been?
Ditto. I admit I laughed my ass off at the video. Who knows if the person they were mourning is even dead. I mean, people on the internet never fake their own deaths for attention… :dubious:
And the day I see “memorial buildings” for rent in WoW, is the day I quit. This seems like just another way to shove what should be a private affair, into everyones face. “LOOK HOW SAD WE ARE! LOOK! LOOK!”
Keep your real life crap out of the game.
I thought the video was hysterical, and I applaud the producers.
As to the issue of it being insensitive, it’s a role playing game. Getting upset over this is like demanding that Anthony Hopkins be sent to prison for the crimes he committed in The Silence of the Lambs.
And frankly, no veteran Doper should be so credulous about an alleged “death” of someone no one has ever met.
Exactly. Someone upthread mentioned “there’s a time and a place …” And if you think that a public open to all PvP game is the appropriate place for a somber, respectful funeral for someone who died IRL, you are quite, quite wrong. In fact, I would contend anyone who thinks it is an appropriate “place” for such an event is being disrespectful to those people who, having paid their fee to play the game, are trying to actually, you know, play the game.
Heh, heh. I like the way you put that.
When I told my husband about it, he cracked up laughing as well, so I felt like less of a total heartless bitch. I mean, come the fuck on. The orcs and tauren and undead and trolls standing in a solemn procession up to a lake to walk up one by one to state their last goodbyes? I thought I was going to crack a rib from the coughing fit induced by my laughter at the utter surreality of it, and their apparent obliviousness to same. It’s a fucking video game. It is *not *real life. Thank god for wankers like Serenity Now which remember that. If they really wanted to do something “real” to memorialize their friend who died, they could have all chipped in 5 gold to an account and auctioned the gold on eBay. I hear its exchange rate is as good as the yen some days. (Yes, yes… I know it’s against TOS, it’s just hyperbole.)
The fact that there are so many crazies who take this crap so seriously that they’d react like this is almost enough to make me want to get back into MMORPGs.
Haha cool, this is my first thread that has been pitted. 
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Yeah, you’re a jerk if you know someone’s grieving and you fuck up the memorial. Point uncontested. But I think the “mourners” were trivializing the death of their RL acquaintance by having a make-believe funeral in a video game in a place that was so easy to disrupt. I mean, talk about making the least possible effort for a memorial… was this really for their friend, or was it to make the game more real? When people take video games this seriously, a reality check like this is due.
It figures… only now that this thread has died down, and one of the posters has been suspended did I remember a particular webcomic that simply needs to be posted: it starts with Flintlocke’s guide to maiming meat that walks.
When thinking about an in-game ceremony, ask yourself, simply, “What would Flintlocke do?” Or “WWFD” for short. I think you’ll find that the answer is rather obvious. 
Okay, this I’ll say is unacceptable. In game funerals are kind of lame, but out of game memorial threads should be treated with more respect.
Unless the moderators decide they don’t want memorial threads and close them all down. Which is their perogative.
I’m pretty sure they do take action for trolling on the forums. Someone made a thread on our server forums a while ago just to announce the death of someone who played there, not a memorial or anything like that just a simple announcement, and some asshole responded with the standard “what loot did he drop” and he was promptly banned. Banned from the forums that is, he could still play the game.
I somehow missed this thread until now. Not that I have a lot to add, really, but… I was an on and off member for several years of a kinda hardcore pk/griefing guild that played most of the popular mmorpgs. And I have to say, if the guys I played with heard about a memorial service, their thoughts probably would have been, in order: 1) “Bet he faked his own death and it’s all bullshit” and 2) “Let’s log in and crash it”.
I don’t personally remember crashing any memorial services (though I would have done it, given the oppurtunity), but I do remember crashing a fair number of weddings and other player events. It’s the nature of the beast. Which doesn’t necessarily excuse anything, but I think this was pretty forseeable.
I’ve read a little more about this incident and found out something which even further convinces me that the assholes in this scenario were the guild who planned this travesty. Someone actually logged into the (allegedly) dead woman’s account as her character and brought her “body” to the scene so that there could be a “viewing.” Someone mentioned the trivialization of actual life and death here, but that bit of information just pushed it beyond a hilariously inept and ill-planned but still possibly well-meant idea into a wankfest of superficiality and morbid indulgence that deserves to be mocked and ridiculed forever.
I don’t follow the game, but in the video, did all the funeral attendees get “killed”? It was hard to tell, other than just mayhem.
Also, what’s the current status, are the Serenity Now folks getting hunted down?