Bullying and verbal abuse – part II

It happened again. And even if I should not be surprised I am a bit frustrated by the logical irrationality of it. Let me try to visualize how I am experiencing this;

World of Warcraft has a built in tool called Looking For Raid that allows you to be more or less randomly put into a group together with 24 other players divided into 3 roles; 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS (damage dealers). You sign up for this to face challenges in the game that are impossible to take on alone or with just a few of your friends, and it lets you progress your character to a point where you can face these encounters in something called a Flexible Raid which lets you face the same encounters with 9 or more friends rather than randomly selected players.

Initially I find that working together with a team of random gamers sound fun and interesting, both on a game and social level. And for most raid experiences I have this is the case, with of course some raid runs being more fun than others. But then once in a while you get these raids where you have a couple of players that can totally take the fun out of the game, and working on my Master thesis I feel obligated to sit it out to make sure I get the whole experience. I sometimes wonder why I put myself through this, but what it comes down to is that its a part of the game that has a critical negative impact on the cooperative efforts of the players and there are no real game mechanics in play to counter them.

So let us take a random example; one or more players are for one reason or the other performing below the standards of an ‘elitist’ players expectations. To the point where this ‘elitist’ verbally goes out and refers to these players as ‘stupid’ or ‘retards’, tells people to ‘shut up’ or throws around random negative comments. This might be considered an outburst of frustration, and when it gets thrown out as a one-time comment it not really an issue. Its when it becomes a continuous rant in the raid chat channel I have trouble understanding the logic of it all. If you have freely chosen to join a randomly generated raid like this, and you feel that the raid you have been placed in is composed of ‘retards’ it becomes problematic for me that this person chooses to stay. ‘Retard’ in this context are obviously not smart people in this persons mind, and as such one can not expect them to perform in an intelligent manner. So these players will continue to perform as ‘retards’ and are by definition here too ‘stupid’ to leave. The ‘elitist’ on the other hand, whom we should think would be both an smart and able player, chooses to stay. With the ‘retards’ that are performing badly and ruining the game. And as they are ‘retards’ there is nothing he can say or do that is likely to make them any better – they are as stated ‘retarded’ and will continue to ‘fuck things up’ to quote one such player. No here is what I do not get; why stay? If you choose to stay with this group of ‘retards’ you can not exactly be too bright either now can you? Or maybe these people have an irrational faith in ‘Lady Luck’ that will override the ‘retards’ incompetence?

Add to this these ‘elitists’ seem to continue to join the randomly generated groups as they often refer to the presence of such ‘retards’ as common in these kinds of raids. So they join a raid that is highly likely to contain a large number of ‘retards’ that will play completely ‘incompetent’? I do not care how good this player is. That kind of logic is to me ‘retarded’ in itself. So I end up sitting in a raid with a number of ‘incompetent retards’ that are annoying ‘the crap’ out of some highly ‘competent retards’ that are just too ‘retarded’ to find an alternative to joining a raid that is highly likely to contain a large number of ‘incompetent retards’. And even worse; these ‘competent retards’ choose to stay in these raids and just pour out verbal abuse in the chat channel rather than hopping out and waiting for the next raid to pop hoping for a few less ‘retards’. Of course now that I have called them ‘retards’ as well it makes complete sense that they do not leave. But it does not make it any more fun to get stuck in a group with one or more of them. I frankly prefer the silent ‘incompetent’ players. As for my thesis – I definitely need a full range of game mechanics to help block/buffer or remove this kind of behavior, but alas the game itself does not have any such mechanics yet and I am forced to look elsewhere.