Anyone remember Playing to Win? Of course you do; you've probably read it more than once, maybe read a couple of the follow-up articles. One of Sirlin's big points in that article is that by imposing arbitrary rules on a game, you create for yourself a different game which bears little resemblance to the "real game" played by the "real players". Only when you adapt to this can you consider yourself a "winner" in the game.
In any game with other human players, the "real game" includes responding to any actions that the other human players can take within the boundaries of the game. Some of these actions are, from your perspective, undesirable. A player who intentionally acts in a way that you feel is undesirable is called a griefer. This isn't just true for video games: remember Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, only to have the griefer Lucy pull it out of the way of his foot and cause him to sprawl to the ground.
In an online game, there are wide varieties of actions that opposing players can take that are undesirable to you. If you are a bad player, then just playing a skilled opponent is undesirable, since you can't really win. If you're fishing in WoW, then having someone run around near you is an undesirable action. If you're just standing around town, then having someone kite a raid boss into the town square is an undesirable action. If you're playing a match with certain objectives, someone doing something as simple as "not trying to fulfill the objectives" is undesirable, especially if that person is taking up a slot on your team. So there are a wide variety of ways to grief people.
The reason I bring up Playing to Win is that when you play WoW, you're playing the whole game, whether you like it or not. The whole game of WoW includes getting into unfair world PvP fights. It includes people standing on your bobber while you're fishing. It includes the occasional person who manages to spark a flamewar in one of the chat channels. From the griefer's perspective, the game really is about social engineering as much as it is collecting shiny new bits on a server somewhere, and when you snap and go on an expletive-laced tirade against them, that's winning the game as much as killing the raid boss is winning the game for you.
Why do they do it? Quite simply, because they know you hate it. All you want to do is kill the dragon, or become a highly rated PvPer. That's no more the "real game" of WoW than NR20 games are the "real game" of Starcraft, or "no items, Final Destination" is the "real game" of Super Smash Bros., or any of the other arbitrary rules that Sirlin's article talks about. The griefer's game is about manipulating people, and the easiest people to manipulate are the ones that are too focused on their own corner of the game to see you coming.
Now, as online games have these things called "patches", Blizzard maintains some ability to monitor their game and modify it if they agree that the griefers' actions are undesirable. But used too liberally, unintended consequences result. The standard WoW example of this is the sad state of capital city raids, which were effectively killed off by the addition of dishonorable kills, and which never recovered even after DKs were removed ~18 months later. Yes, DKs solved the problem of low-level players showing up at the Crossroads and finding all the questgivers dead and 20 Alliance players dancing on their corpses, but they also removed an element from the game entirely which might have been fun in its own right.
Oh, and a token shameless plug [http://wowgoons.com/].
In any game with other human players, the "real game" includes responding to any actions that the other human players can take within the boundaries of the game. Some of these actions are, from your perspective, undesirable. A player who intentionally acts in a way that you feel is undesirable is called a griefer. This isn't just true for video games: remember Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, only to have the griefer Lucy pull it out of the way of his foot and cause him to sprawl to the ground.
In an online game, there are wide varieties of actions that opposing players can take that are undesirable to you. If you are a bad player, then just playing a skilled opponent is undesirable, since you can't really win. If you're fishing in WoW, then having someone run around near you is an undesirable action. If you're just standing around town, then having someone kite a raid boss into the town square is an undesirable action. If you're playing a match with certain objectives, someone doing something as simple as "not trying to fulfill the objectives" is undesirable, especially if that person is taking up a slot on your team. So there are a wide variety of ways to grief people.
The reason I bring up Playing to Win is that when you play WoW, you're playing the whole game, whether you like it or not. The whole game of WoW includes getting into unfair world PvP fights. It includes people standing on your bobber while you're fishing. It includes the occasional person who manages to spark a flamewar in one of the chat channels. From the griefer's perspective, the game really is about social engineering as much as it is collecting shiny new bits on a server somewhere, and when you snap and go on an expletive-laced tirade against them, that's winning the game as much as killing the raid boss is winning the game for you.
Why do they do it? Quite simply, because they know you hate it. All you want to do is kill the dragon, or become a highly rated PvPer. That's no more the "real game" of WoW than NR20 games are the "real game" of Starcraft, or "no items, Final Destination" is the "real game" of Super Smash Bros., or any of the other arbitrary rules that Sirlin's article talks about. The griefer's game is about manipulating people, and the easiest people to manipulate are the ones that are too focused on their own corner of the game to see you coming.
Now, as online games have these things called "patches", Blizzard maintains some ability to monitor their game and modify it if they agree that the griefers' actions are undesirable. But used too liberally, unintended consequences result. The standard WoW example of this is the sad state of capital city raids, which were effectively killed off by the addition of dishonorable kills, and which never recovered even after DKs were removed ~18 months later. Yes, DKs solved the problem of low-level players showing up at the Crossroads and finding all the questgivers dead and 20 Alliance players dancing on their corpses, but they also removed an element from the game entirely which might have been fun in its own right.
Oh, and a token shameless plug [http://wowgoons.com/].
