Ever had something happen in game that has actually made you angry? Actually angry, not the "RNG has fucked me over and I'm a little upset but oh well it's a game and I'll get over it li- Oh, look another raid!"
The stuff that actually makes you angry in this game are pretty much caused by one thing; the people playing the game. Today, I witnessed internet bullying.
Bullying is pretty close to my heart, seeing as I've been at the recieving end of it before. Not in a game but in real life. High school - it's a bastard of a place, a place where you start playing rugby and get massive, so that people dont pick on you anymore.
Anyway, I was doing the Random daily on my shaman. I'd finally got my elemental set to reasonable level (hit capped, good amount of crit/haste/sp etc) so I decided to wait an extra 15 minutes and queue as a dps instead of a healer. Our group consisted of a well gear tank, had around 51k after getting Kings, a well geared paladin healer, a (again, well geared) hunter, a DK and myself.
I dont bother inspecting people when I get into randoms anymore, there's no point. Most people are in decent gear and I dont mind carrying the ones that aren't but as we got through some trash mobs, it was apparent this DK didn't have the greatest gear, so I gave him a quick /inspect and saw he was in mainly starter tanking gear (y'know, the stuff you wear when you're starting to tank heroics). He wasn't doing much dps, seeing as his "tanking" gear wasn't up to scratch and he obviously didn't have a dps set yet.
This poor DK (who was from Crushridge and obviously had extremely limited English, due to fact he hardly talked and when he did, it was hard to understand what he was on about) was the target of the hatred of the paladin and hunter.
The paladin and hunter, were guilded together and after around 2 minutes it started.
"Omfg, look at his gear. What a noob!" the paladin states in /p.
"hahahaha, ye, noob!" the hunter retorts
The tank questions them, simply with a "?"
"that dk look at his gear, noob."
"I hate people like this," the paladin says "I hate carrying noobs through instances. Wasting my time, I'm going to let him die. Doesn't deserve to live."
"yeah, look at him, he's in tanking gear. too shit to tank so he comes and wastes our time as dps. fucking noob." the hunter says, piping up with his guild mate.
At this point, I'd had enough. I'm all about protecting the little guys, the ones that cant stick up for themselves. The DK had try to ask what was wrong, simply by going "what?" and "sorry, i dont understand. my english bad" and yet, they kept going, getting progressivly worse and worse.
"He's not a noob," I said, "he's being sensible. He'd waste more time tanking the place and dying than he is now. Get off his back"
"lol, stfu. he's wasting my time. dont heal him or ress him" the paladin replied.
I decided that it wasn't worth my time to argue with him, until it got worse.
"can you understand us, [DK name]?" the hunter asked
"ofc he cant, he's fucking foreign" the paladin said
I could see the direction it was going in. Racism. My most hated thing in the world after walking behind someone who's going so slow that they interupt your walking pace and you cant pass them. That and people who have no business in shorts.
"Guys, shut up. Stop being pricks. We're almost done and you can go back to being elitist pricks" I piped up.
"No, I'm sick of carrying these crushridge pricks, they dont even know english and they're all shit players, look at him, he's getting a free ride."
"I bet you were carried at some point," I pointed out "So leave off him, he's obviously just starting out.
"I dont care, he's wasting my time. I hate people that waste my time. Shitty foreign DK."
"hahahahaha" goes the little prick of a hunter.
I was reaching for the Vote to kick button, when I realised, it was definintly a Mexican Standoff situation. I voted him out, his guild mate voted me out and I've been jibbed out of 2 frost about a minute away from the last boss.
I decided to grit my teeth and bare it, I had no idea how to report someone cross server. So as soon as the last boss was dead, I had my frost badges, I laid into them both. I wasn't having this.
"You're an embarrassment to English people," I lashed, "and an embarrassment to your server and guild. You've spent 15 minutes bullying a person who doesn't have a clue what you're on about. You've been racist and complete pricks. How can you have such a problem with someone in a game?"
The reply? - "whatever, gay." and they left.
I sat at my laptop after I'd ported out back to the saftey of my own realm and just thought about what had happened and if I had ever been such a prick to someone - thankfully I couldn't think of a time I'd been like this, yeah, I might have commented on someone's gear but I usually always (if I can) give people some tips on ways to improve.
It was the first time I'd really seen this, I'd heard of people bullying others over the internet, or via text but I'd never seen it. I'm pretty sure it was made worse because the DK didn't understand. He might have understood a little but didn't have a clue how to reply to it. That would have been much worse.
People getting so angry at someone who was actually doing the right thing? I remember when first gearing my warrior for tanking. I tagged along with a guild member who needed badges for his retribution gear and needed nothing from heroics. I did shit dps but atleast I wasn't getting smacked upside the head, in nothing more than a paper bag with a little bit of defence on it.
I was more than likely being over protective as it's a subject close to heart but still, it made me think of the people that play this game. As soon as someone is behind a screen and there's no face to face confrontation, there's no stopping them. People who could be nice in the real world, are pricks to total strangers and openly racist infront of other people. People have been blogging recently on being Anoymous and Ercles has a post from a while a go about people being pricks when behind an avatar.
I got a little laugh at the end of it, after explaining it to a friend of mine on the alliance side, he simply went "little dicks, innit." Explains it all. The insecure wankers.
I would have reported them in a heartbeat. It's no different than reporting someone from your own server! All it takes is opening a ticket under Harassment and including their names and what server they were from.
ReplyDeleteThough most of the time I just right-click their names and hit the "Report Spam" button whenever anyone says anything offensive in chat. It's perfectly okay to use it for that purpose, it's not just for reporting spammers!
Damn, wish I'd have known that. I'll definitly remember that in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe first rule of the dungeon finder is, a balanced group. If there are like 3 guys with 6k gearscore, the other 2 will be 3k gearscore players. So in case they didn't notice, this is working as intended, they are supposed to "carry" them through the instance. Lady fucking luck was kind to them and spat them most of their drops, they should be thankful and do their job. I never, ever gave shit to anyone for being low geared, and i had several people say "i dinged 1 hour/5 mins/1 day ago" and my only reply was "welcome to the badge grind, it's gonna be a bumpy ride". I had a tank once, a dk with 26k hp, the 5.5k gs resto drood said "wtf, only 26k ?", rest of us said "let's see if he knows what he's doing". We had one hell of a smooth run, the druid actually said at the end of the instance "i take it back, you're a great tank", god damn, that's the attitude we should have, let the guy prove himself, don't bash him...
ReplyDeleteSame "fuck you" award goes to people that skip bosses in dungeons even though there's one or two guys that need the badges, because they're so awesome with their icc epix and in a hurry, cause they gotta go to school or mom is sending them to bed or whatever the hell, i can't stand those guys.
I'm not gonna say that there aren't noobs out there, there are, woe on me, plenty of them, but let me paraphrase a line from Gladiator: "their faults as players are my failings as a human being" because if they are doing anything wrong and they accept advice, that's some good happening in azeroth goddamnit. Yes, there are arrogant pricks that have shit gear and an attitude, there are even more pricks that have BiS gear and do plenty of mistakes, but as a so called community of players, we reap what we sow, so we should help out, we should teach the ones that want knowledge and we should not discriminate.
What the hell happened to empathy ? Just because it's a "random" with faceless people, does that mean we can be dicks ? And it's just like you said, at some point, we were all carried one way or the other, more or less, whatever, but it happened. Hell, i think WoW became too mainstream, all the foamy-mouthed counterstrike players invaded us, and all they want is to be grouped with the creme de la creme, so they get easy rides and faceroll through content. Motherf----, stfu, turn your camera up and watch the ceiling of HoS and don't bash the newly additions to the 80s crowd. Goddamnit.
That being said, i hate paladins and belves, seems like they attract a very special kind of people. The kind you'd want to introduce with several bricks in a pillow case.
Love, love, love this post.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm in a five man, and someone starts being shit to another player and bullying? I just stop healing them.
Heroics are intended to gear up people who haven't been raiding, first and foremost.
I ran into a situation the other night where a tank and healer (same guild) tried to bully a rogue out of a blue dagger that dropped in a PuG dungeon. This is after repeatedly laughing at / mocking the rest of us for "weak dps". Conversation went something like:
ReplyDeleteRogue wins [CoolDaggerThatIsProbablyGoodForRoguing]
Tank: Alright Rogue give it up
Tank: or Heals and I drop group
Tank: Seriously, just test me
Rogue: Isn't this a rogue weapon?
Tank: I've done it before... just test me
Me: Great. A pair of elitist bullies. I don't need this. Rogue, keep the weapon if you will use it. /leave group
Don't know if the rogue kept it, the bully parties dropped or what the outcome was, but I was stunned. I will take a long dps que anyday over partying with people acting like complete assholes.
Jakk, not surprised you were angry.. I got mad at them just reading this. There is no excuse for behaviour like that, and yes I would have reported them in a heartbeat. It's also one thing to have 1 person in the group being a dick, because you can just ignore it and think *what a dick*, the thing that really appalled me was that his bad behaviour was being supported.
ReplyDeleteNow I know you can report cross server, I wont hesitate next time something like this happens.
ReplyDeleteWow Jakk, this is *AWFUL*. I mean I've seen in-game bullying before, but nothing quite this bad. And oncye when I was bitching about Crushridge on my blog somebody claimed that they'd seen ADers been borderline racist to Crushridge folk. Hadn't quite believed it but ... gah!
ReplyDeleteJaw droppingly horrific - I've seen some snarky people in PuGs but that is scary!
ReplyDeleteI vote we get the SAN crew up to 80 soon, so we can spread the goodwill (and good sense) to all in the battlegroup. Like that guy who joined last night after having grouped with guild members a couple of times. :-)
That is loathsome. If you have a chat log of it, I suggest you name & shame. And report them!
ReplyDeleteOkay, this was just wrong. I'd probably rage smashed my PC in the effort to punch those two in their faces real hard through my monitor.
ReplyDeleteIt's as well a reason why I do my daily only as a healer and/or only with guild tank. I am not affraid to carry anyone through anything as long as they are nice and polite people and playing one of the "control" roles makes me help those bullyied people out.