I am not going to rant about the intricacies of World of Warcraft here. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It's just that WoW is a perfect vehicle for my observations this Day That Patch 4.2 Dropped. I'll do my best to avoid or translate MMO-speak, largely because most of you are not conversant with MMO-speak and because the issues I am highlighting are more about human nature in cyberspace and some issues I am working than specifically ranting about WoW trivia.
This particular bit of new content, Patch 4.2, has been in the works for quite awhile. Two of this patch's great new features are several very lore-heavy new quest series. One of them is a one-pass -- non-daily -- quest series that has as its reward a considerable sum of gold and an "epic" item grade cloak. Since my characters' cloaks are nowhere near this quality, I made doing this quest series a priority as far as my WoW time was concerned.
I can understand everyone and his dog doing these quests along with me, since this is Patch Day. Good cloaks were hard to get in Patch 4.1. Folks of both factions, the awesome Alliance and those motherless curs of the Horde, gathering in confined areas where the quests -- killing swarms of elementals -- were happening. Then some folks of both factions were showing up for these quests "flagged" for Player-vs-Player (PvP) combat. The default on my server is that players must voluntarily "set their PvP flag" to engage in PvP. However, under certain circumstances -- like attacking or healing a flagged player -- the PvP flag gets set without player input.
So there I was, killing elementals when I swapped targets to a flagged Hordie and popped him with my trusty boom stick. Hunters in WoW have animal companions that fight alongside them, so my trusty gorilla (yes, I engage in Gorilla Warfare) did his area-damage thunder stomp . . . and suddenly I was being hit by six Hordies. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, damage piling up like a wreck in tule fog on I-5 . . . all I could do is fight back till I died. I took two of the fsckers with me, though -- hunters are nasty in PvP.
I waited five minutes while dead. If a PvP flag is set automatically, it goes away after five minutes of no PvP action . . . and the Horde guys cannot see me if they are alive and I am dead. I resurrected and made the adjustments -- an animal companion without an area of effect attack, my raptor "JeebusPony". I also took a few other measures too technical to detail here to limit the chance of attacking flagged Hordies.
My point is that the people on my server are mostly dedicated to questing and raiding -- in other words, Player-vs-Environment (PvE). If we wanted the added
Most of the trolling people had special PvP gear -- there are special armor pieces and weapons with statistics that enhance PvP performance -- that gave them an enormous edge in PvP. Most of these unintentional fights were rather one sided due to gear and the PvE mindset. I spend very little time engaging in PvP, so I'm not familiar with class tactics and I do not have gear with PvP stats.
But not all fights like these are one-sided. I got flagged again. This time it was a flagged lone death knight -- think of a non-evil slightly undead anti-paladin -- who got dinged by the accidental fire of my boom stick. He closed the range, which is a move right out of the "How to Kill Huntards for fun and profit" book. He proceeded to beat the ever-loving snot out of me with his ugly-ass two-handed sword . . . but he was alone and did not have PvP equipment. I managed to open the range and keep it that way with "stun and run" tactics right out of "How to Kill Death Knights For Fun And Profit". Down to less than 5% of my hit points, he retired from the fight for a short but obligatory dirt nap.
So flag trolling on a PvE server is kind of dickish. It's within the rules of the game and if not done to excess, not harassment. However, there was another move being pulled that some saw as dickish. There is a class of no-no behavior in the WoW community called "griefing" that is simply not tolerated by the Game Masters. Player accounts have been permanently banned for extreme instances of griefing. Standing atop key NPCs, killing key NPCs, blocking access to inns and in-game mailboxes with large mounts, which makes interaction with these in-game assets very difficult or impossible -- these are just a few examples of griefing.
Anyway, several of these PvP-flagged people were standing on the quest NPCs for the various phases of the new quest series. Not only can you not easily interact with the NPCs, trying to interact with the NPC and mis-clicking may well lead to an unintentional attack on a PvP-flagged foeman.More unintended combat, more delays resetting the PvP flag.
Something people who know me well -- or not so well -- realize upon spending time with me is that I have a mercurial temperament coupled to an incendiary temper. I've gone from zero to full asshole rage in slightly more than nothing flat. Far too often, these rages have been over life's more trivial matters, like a certain popular multiplayer video game.
A couple of years ago, I would have nerd-raged over the level of jerk behavior I saw this morning while playing WoW. I would have reported every one of them to a Game Master, their Guild Masters and possibly posted their names on WoW Jackass for good measure. I may have even raved about it on one of my blogs . . .
Oh, wait. . . . .
Anyway, the point is this: Things that used to utterly piss me off, small stuff that usually prompted me to go on a raging tear, don't do that to me anymore. I still get angry -- oh hell yes I get angry!
However, I'm in control now, not the anger.
What happened? I Got Help™ -- long long overdue Help. Some of what some of you have been telling me for years finally forever defeated the demonstrable impermeability of my skull. I gained practice with my toolbox o' Cope Building® working my issues. I now have a deeper store of Cope® than I've ever had. I ask for what I want, I practice avoidance only as a short term relief measure, a "time out" to give me the ability to face the issue. It's not all about me. I now assume going into stressful situations that I can and will handle it. I seek solutions to problems, I don't just recapitulate them. I relax now on cue, meditate away the stress and work with the understanding that people do stuff that annoys you not because they are evil dickheads. More often than not, annoying behaviors are the other guy's way of Dealing With Stuff, not malevolent asshattery aimed at me deliberately.
These changes could not come a day sooner. For one thing, I was dreading the kids' summer vacation this year. Last year's edition was sheer hell for me. I was stressed out and grouchy all the time. That is a Very Bad Combination around children . . . hell, around human beings. As Esteemed Younger Son started counting down the days to Summer Vacation, I'd gotten so far out of hand that my behavior was threatening all I had worked for over a year to build here.
So, Esteemed Younger Son's annoying behaviors are not him trying to drive Uncle Rich up a wall for shits and giggles. He's trying to get wants and needs met by methods he understands how to use. I do things to limit how much the TV volume bugs me rather than bitch about it. When I need a time out, I think of it as a tactical retreat under fire into hard cover to regroup and plan how to overcome the emotional challenge. I buy time to think when I need to. I do not need to have an instant answer for everything.
By this time this summer, I thought I'd be going absolutely batshit crazy. Instead, I'm going sane. OK, maybe saner. I'm sure to run into scenarios where no amount of Cope® will suffice, where no tool can magically fix things. However, in the event of a lapse, I'm going to redouble my efforts and remember that "error" is just another name for "learning experience."
Whotta concept, eh?
So, in the context of the above, all the griefer madness today in WoW is simply gamers being gamers. Not one of them did what they did because they had it in for me. The very worst thing they could do to me is render my avatar dead.
As my dad once said, "What is the worst thing can they do to you? Cook and eat you?"
