Daily Thoughts: The Great Reign of Griefers and Trolls

The lull before cataclysm brought out the Great Reign of Griefers and Trolls. This time was expected to end after the release of Cataclysm, when the expansion should have brought about more activities for these griefers and trolls to do that weren’t griefing and trolling. Many theorized that these players had previously been so occupied diving into the content, in some way or another, that they weren’t bored enough to be so driven to harass those who don’t think everyone in the game is a ‘bro’. Occasionally of course, griefers and trolls end up harassing each other. This is similar to a gang war. The major except is after the words are done flying between the two players or groups of players, no one has been shot. On the other hand, many innocent by standards in /trade or /general have lost precious IQ points in fray. Now we are weeks into the Cataclysm and the tremendous amount of rude players have not receded into the black depths of their parents basements (or where ever they come from). No, they are still out in force! For the first few days of Cataclysm it seemed even worse. General chat in hyjal was just as abusive and useless as trade chat usually becomes. Douches were out in mass sniping kills, jacking nodes, and otherwise doing whatever they can to be as selfish, unhelpful, and unpleasant as possible.

Now weeks later, trolls in trade chat haven’t quite died down to normal levels, but there’s even more nerd rage spam about someone ninja’ing something. Players are more likely than ever to find their elementium node stolen after a mob hits them while they were trying to mine. After such an event, even a /say of “really” could result in being spammed by the offending players guild with “umadbro”. Although I haven’t been personally privy to this event, I’ve heard many stories of 3 guild-mates joining a dungeon queue as tank or heals for the quick queue time, then refusing to tank or heal. At which point, given the simple majority, they kick anyone from the group unable or unwilling to tank or heal until they find someone who can. You might be shocked by this, but yes, the griefers are organizing. It’s similar to the movie Land of the Dead, where the zombies start to band together. Yes – there were plenty of them before, yes – sometimes you might be struck by several at once, but at least they weren’t any kind of cohesive group. Are we coming to a point where non-‘bros’ will need to rely on the griefer vs troll douche wars in order to actually accomplish a dungeon or successfully mine a node?

I had a recent experience with a group from a guild. One annoying enough to warrant a name drop to warn any other players unfortunate enough to be grouped with them in a LFG dungeon. These players were all from “DYTIGAF” on Thrall-US server. After searching the names meaning (go search it), their behavior becomes relatively obvious. We were running Grim Batol. 3 of them were from the same guild, there was a random healer, and myself dpsing. After a relatively smooth run, we found ourselves on the last boss. During the run I had not pulled aggro, broke CC, failed to CC the right target, and I was top DPS on almost every pull and on every boss to that point. We wiped on the last boss of GB as a result of lack of dps to the adds. We taking our ghosts back into the instance when I said (and these exact words mind you), “We probably should have a little more focus on the adds”. The healer and I were both kicked before we could load the instance. It also might do well to note at this point that I did 3x the damage to the adds of either of the other dps, so it wasn’t being hypocritical in my advice. Upon asking the tank, again quoting myself, “what was that for?”, I received countless “umadbro” from the tank, his guildies from the run, and a couple of others that weren’t even in group. What’s the point to that? I find it really sad that people feel the need to hide behind the internet to feel tough.

Sure, you can say “chill brah, it’s just a game”. But it’s also my downtime. It’s my funtime. I’m an adult, I work full-time and have to do house chores, pay bills, and a bunch of other things that aren’t really fun. Warcraft is the unwind, enjoyment, etc, time. So when douches disrupt that fun, marring an otherwise not unpleasant run, waste an hour of my relax time, it does matter.

So what can be done? I hate to write an entire post that is pretty much just a bucket of QQ about jerks on the internet, but I’m not sure if there is a solution here. Any thoughts you have should find their way down into the comments. But if you find yourself turning the darkside, maybe reconsider. Let’s all be better than the troll in trade chat and the griefers out there kicking decent players from dungeons for their own benefit (or lack of benefit even). This is a game we all pay money to enjoy, and really, you might discover that if you attempt to help others enjoy the game more, you could too.