Actually that’s not what he said- he said “The fundamental problem is that WoW is a game world with explicitly different norms from the real world. Expecting people to respect real-world norms in a fictional world with vastly different norms, many of which explicitly contravene real-world ones, is silly. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s contrary to the spirit of the game”
Which means that while there are norms, they’re not the same as what we deal with in real life, and nor should anyone expect players in-game to adhere to any sort of norm that’s not an in-game norm.
If the players choose to line up for a horse race, that’s fine- it’s how the players a are choosing to play. But if some guys decide to raid the horse race, that’s fine too- they choose to raid it, and if the real-life players of the lined up people get their panties in a wad because it’s ‘unfair’, then tough titty.
Actually, this is the #1 reason I prefer PvP games–the ability to enforce consequences (deliciously violent consequences!) on griefers.
We did it in EVE all the time, and relative size doesn’t matter if you have an idea of how to mitigate it. Hell, with my 12-man corp, going to war with Goon was like being handed a pinata. 90% of the time it’s full of candy, and 10% of the time it’s full of bees, but hey, candy.
I don’t see the difference. He said there are no norms.
(Don’t get hung up on the party-crashed memorial service. I already said that that (IMO) was within the rules [of a PvP server].)
In the real world, people (society, whatever) decide what the norms are. In a baseball game, the players play by an agreed-upon set of rules. The fans don’t run out into the field (normally) during play. These behaviors are a set of “rules” (but not defined in the legal sense) by the people participating in the events. If a fan goes down into the field, the rest get upset. That streaker (or irate fan) is “breaking” the rules, and it’s not “tough titty” for the rest.
In an online game, the general player base sets the rules. These vary from game to game (EVE is more tolerant of party crashers and economic scams, if what I read is true.), and probably from server to server. Admittedly, the MMO game player has less power to enforce social norms than in real life. (Shunning, a knuckle sandwich, etc.) I don’t see any difference (other than enforcement) from many other real world social interactions.
Consider player to player direct trade (transfering an object) in WoW is possible in this way: One person mouse clicks on another, and opens an interaction window. You then dragged and dropped the object to be transfered into a “container” box, then [mouse] press/toggle a button labeled “Trade”. If the exchange was intended to be made for “my item X for your item Y”, the other player would place their items in the similar container boxes on their panel. (They both see the same interface. Player B can actually “see” what Player A is placing in the trade interface panel.) Player B then [mouse] presses a button labeled “Accept”. The swap is made. (This takes longer to describe in writing than seeing a visual. )
Anyway, an unscrupilous player could withdraw the agreed upon item before pressing “accept”, and unless the other player was fast enough to notice and hit “cancel” (which cancels and closes the trade interface panel for boths sides without any items transferring), that player was screwed out of a deal. Is this “tough titties”, because the game code “allows” it? This behavior is considered “stealing” and/or “jerkish”. Why? Because the players by and large decide it is so.
Sure, but if it isn’t against the actual rules of the game, i.e. the players are penalized by the game itself (developers, game admins, etc…) it’s by definition legal, even if it’s jerkish.
That’s what this comes down to- it may be jerkish, but unless it’s actually outside the rules of the game, people should put up and give them a beat-down to learn 'em, or shut the f*ck up. Too many people get so annoyed because things may annoy them, or go against what they (not their character) thinks should be right, but they then try to impose that on the in-game characters and the other players.
In your example, if the character doesn’t pay attention, it’s their own fault- they got ripped off. Tough luck, pay more attention next time. I’d say the proper response would be to kill that guy out of hand, or get a posse together and hunt him down, not bitching about it out-of-game.
:rolleyes: Yeah. I’m bitching about it. (Hint: I provided it as an example of rude behavior only.)
When your little brother plays that game “I’m not touching you… I’m not touching you…”, it’s his sisters fault for being annoyed?
There are a lot of behaviors in society that don’t have the force of law behind them. (In other words, not ‘enforced by the game’.) They are called “rude behavior”. That’s all we are talking about, here.
To state that because the game mechanics allow annoying behavior, and placing the onus on the annoyed is weak sauce, IMO. Why do it if you (the figurative you) weren’t trying to annoy people?
I think there’s a big dividing line between “kind of dickish” and “way over the line” that exists outside of the actual game rules. There exist a handful of things that are, for lack of a better word, sacred.
I’m perfectly okay with 99% of dickish behaviors in games. I think people SHOULDN’T do them, and I’ll call them out on it if they do, or hunt them down if they’re an enemy player, but some things cross the line. Ninjaing? Fine. Holding a quest giver hostage? Hilarious. Camping? Annoying, but hey, it’s a PvP server. Trade scamming? Should have done more research/planned better. Standing on top of an important NPC? Annoying, but it doesn’t affect my day that much. I draw the line, however, at raiding a real life funeral, of a real life person, with real, heartfelt (i.e. not RP’d) grieving. If they were mourning the loss of our dead Cairne Bloodhoof, heck, raid that crap for all I care. But when you’re (intentionally) imposing on a group of friends trying to make a heartfelt send off towards somebody who can no longer bring joy to their guild… that just crosses the line.
There are certain things that may invalidate this, like if they were doing it on top of a quest giver, or cleared out an area with an important quest mob to hold the memorial, then they should be asked to move because its disrupting other people’s play. But it’s beyond dickish to crash someone’s funeral for teh evulz, just because you can and they’re in a PvP zone.
Now, I do NOT think they should be reprimanded by the GMs or officially sanctioned or anything, but I don’t think it’s as simple as “it’s okay because the rules allow it.”
No, I didn’t. And the way you know that is that my post called WoW “a game world with explicitly different norms.” Not “no norms.” Not even “only game-engine-enforced norms.” Just “explicitly different” ones from the real world.
MMOs can absolutely have emergent norms, rather than explicitly defined ones. And those norms will be enforced through whatever techniques the game allows (e.g., in your trade-welching example, perhaps by a group of jilted buyers getting together to gank the offender). But those norms emerge within the context of the game world. People shouldn’t presume that they transfer wholesale from a different context.
When I read your post, I was struggling with the defense of rude behavior put forth by others: “It’s only a game. Therefore, since it’s not real, and the game engine allows it, my behavior here is not rude. You’re the one with the problem.” I interpreted your post to be along those lines.
I’m actually not at all opposed to emergent norms in games. And they emerge in games other than MMOs and other online, persistent worlds. These are the things that get derided as “unwritten rules” by some, like whether throwing at a player is OK in baseball (yes, if the other team has thrown at your players, no, otherwise).
What I do think is important is that these norms be enforced within the confines of the game. It’s reasonable to react to griefing by going after the offenders in-game; it’s not reasonable to resort to actions outside the game. That would be like calling the cops in real life because someone ganked you in high-sec space in EVE.
Are you sure about this? I thought that any changes made to either side of the trade box automatically “unpresses” both “accept” buttons.
That is, Alice puts a cookie in the trade box and Betty puts a biscuit in it. Alice presses “accept”. Betty then quickly removes the biscuit and presses “accept”. But the trade doesn’t complete, because the change to trade box deselects Alice’s “accept” button.
Though there are, of course, legitimate trade scams. These usually involve getting someone to trade you items in order to make something for you, and then logging off instead of giving you the crafted item.
All I’ve been trying to say all along is what MilTan said above, and that people get too offended in real life by stuff in the game- so what if you got ganked in EVE? There’s no reason to get all pissy and gripe and call people names in real life because they did something in a game that you don’t like, and talk about how disrespectful they are, etc…
People forget the “RPG” part of “MMORPG” pretty often- you’re supposed to be role-playing a character; it’s not supposed to be you in the game. Too many people are not mindful of that while they play. So what if you collected a bunch of in-game crap and someone ganks it, or kills you for it? You still get up the next day and go to work, etc… and you just have to start over or backtrack a bit.
Heh, and the best part about not griping? You win when you don’t gripe.
In EVE, I lost a T2 fitted mission Vargur-class battleship (worth, at the time, 1.6 billion in aggregate–representing a solid month of work doing nothing but raising cash) to an unprovoked GoonFleet suicide gank. So first off, I took ten of 'em with me, but as they were crowing on system chat I threw out a “great gank, guys, very well executed!” that actually I kid you not threw them into a paroxysm of rage.
I never got the pissed in real life about a game thing, at least when it’s directed at someone else. I’ve been irritated with myself for putting my characters in situations where bad stuff happened to them, sometimes by a-holes out to make my day miserable, but it’s not really their fault I didn’t think ahead.
Except that there are people who go out of their way to offend the player, and at least IMO that’s far more the case than someone deliberately and consciously choosing to roleplay.
Getting PKed on a PVP server is one thing, and in that specific situation I agree that it’s silly to whine about it. You know the rules when you play on that server, so there’s no use bitching. However, people going out of their way to break the game or twist existing rules and mechanics to infringe on other players, and I don’t see how you can claim with a straight face that it’s just RP.
Going back to WoW, PCs and NPCs are not collidable. It’s therefore possible to sit a large mount on top of a quest-giving NPC and make it impossible for others to click on that NPC. Is that just role-playing a jerk? I don’t see how it can be; it’s directly abusing an unrealistic game mechanic in order to upset other players.
That’s a fair point, and that’s definitely what I could consider deliberate griefing. I still think that the answer isn’t to get too torqued out of game; you should expect people to exploit the rules and any flaws to the maximum extent possible, regardless of whether it’s realistic or not.
I draw the line at out-and-out cheating in online games, MMORPG or not- wallbots, aimbots and whatever other hacks for FPSes, and the various hacks on MMORPGs are what get me steamed, not some guy figuring out that if he stands “just so” in a particular spot, then he’s found a blind spot in the map where he’s invisible.
Rule flaws and unintended consequences are one thing, and I don’t fault players for exploiting those, but deliberately going around the game rules is another thing entirely.
There’s a point where I am comfortable punishing griefing in situations like that where it’s a clear limitation of the game engine that really can’t be fixed in any meaningful way.
Totally agree. For example, there’s a technique in EVE derisively referred to by the general (idiot) population as “fag warping” (I hate this name)–essentially, it exploits the interplay of the system-to-system jump gates, a certain type of speed booster, and the way low-end cloaking devices are handled to give literally any non-freighter ship the ability to run between systems while cloaked during almost all vulnerable times as though it had a high-end cloaking device (something only a few covert-ops-specific classes of ships are supposed to be able to do).
A LOT of people whine about it every time they see it.
My group? First off, we learned how to do it ourselves. Then we found a backwater and just send five guys back and forth through the same three systems doing it while the rest of us tried to find ways to intercept them anyway. Then the next day we went back to the supply line where our enemies were doing it and nailed eight or nine freighters before they realized that we weren’t vulnerable to it anymore.
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