I play World of Warcraft. I have since about a month after it came out. That's nearly 10 years of my life I have dedicated (in parts) to this game. Like a smoker trying to give up cigarettes I tell myself "I'm cancelling my account for good now" only to return next patch/expansion etc.
I owe World of Warcraft a lot. I met my husband in this game. When I was a lonely girl stuck at home I had a world full of horny nerds who's only requirement for a girl friend was A) a World of Warcraft account and B) breathing. The breathing part was probably optional in a lot of cases. Sometimes I wish that was a joke. Having played the roles of healer, main tank, off tank, dps, raid leader, healer leader, dps leader, guild master etc (there's probably others) at various points in the game I can speak with alot of authority on how a single female fares when chucked into a mass of horny, lonely single guys who can only get kicks from their computers.
To be fair some of them were actually good looking. Some of them well we'll move on. Most of them fell in love in all of two seconds. Like I said ... breathing is optional if they meet one of the fictitious women who are single and play WoW.
But I digress. My rant today is how this game (and probably other MMOs) are making this anti society section of society worse.
While I was pottering away in an instance on my hunter I was watching the snappy remarks scrolling up my screen. The tank of the group didn't really know what he was doing. Which gave the other members of the group (an instance group contains five people for those who don't know - a tank (someone to run around basically yelling "Kill me! Kill me!", a meat shield effectively), a healer (person who keeps everyone else alive and is generally very squishy) and three DPS (damage per second aka the people who get shit done)) licence to be utter arse holes to the tank.
The tank was one of this green crop that has been coming through the game. They didn't play each expansion to death because they have joined when the level cap is higher than said expansion. Therefore they are unfamiliar with the fights. And some fights just cannot be face rolled. Most but you know if your experienced (or out gear the instance) enough you can get away with it.
They were calling him stupid, wanting to kick him from the group and generally being wankers.
So why can they do this?
Well because of a handy little tool called dungeon finder. You sign into a queue, which is across multiple servers, and you are randomly assigned to a group. The chances are you all come from different servers (realms what ever) so the chances you have of interacting again are almost nil.
So for about 10-20 mins (depending on the group) you are with four other people who are littered somewhere in the world. You will never know anything more about them than their names and classes in World of Warcraft. Then you will abandon the group after you have completed your instance (dungeon or what ever) and probably never encounter that person again.
I have noticed that there is a distinct increase in the wanker as a result. The troll. The A hole. The prick you would never give time to in real life.
Why? Because after those 10-20 mins you'll never ever see said person again. Unless you have a photographic memory to remember all the names of all the people you have ever played against and just happen to stumble upon this person again, you are probably never going to interact again. So why be polite and civil?
These people that play this game, on the whole, are usually egotistical at best. I would say around 90% of the players I have spent any real amount of time with in raids or what not have been egotistical narcissistic pricks who get off on measuring their e-peens compared with others. If you're not good enough you get kicked out of the play group (guild). If they get bored, you get kicked out. Or picked one. Even I, as a female (which you think would give me untouchable status (and to be honest most of the time it does)) have suffered from the brutal attacks of people who just see a few pixels on the screen.
My husband, who is considered one of the best paladins on our server (not many can beat him in healing or tanking ... I'm talking only maybe a couple of people) has suffered from the narcissistic personalities in the game. He was often used and blackmailed into raiding or performing in game tasks so that others could further their agendas. When your tank or healer carries and entire raid ... why not?
Now with these queues ... civility is out the window. If your a troll in one raid, you get kicked, you wait half an hour, then go back and do it again. When there was no queue like this and you had to rely on your guild to get into a raid, well this thing didn't happen ... much. One of the first guilds I was in there was a bug that took all the armor from a raid boss and put it on free for all (anyone can roll for it). One lovely person rolled need while everyone else politely passed. He took all the armor from a difficult boss and left the guild and logged off. Needless to say his raiding career ended there as word quickly spreads in an isolated group of people and other guilds soon learned of his betrayal.
But take away this feed back loop and what do you have? You just have a system where people can get jerks ... and get away with it.
I propose this makes people who don't have a lot of social skills to begin with worse. Because humans don't seem to be happy unless they can push the boundaries of decency and morality. In a world with none of that then I can't see how humans can win.
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