Just a typical narrow minded thug looking for something else to lay the responsibility on, the game doesn't Make you do anything you choose to do it End of story. And don't hate the player? you just admited you were a sociopath....seek help

so?ci?o?path? /?so?si??pæ?, ?so??i-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soh-see-uh-path, soh-shee-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun Psychiatry. a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

And Shadowbane is an example of good PvP?? the pvp community caused the game to be basically reset and all but abandoned, ie free till they come up with something useful to use the hardware for. Most pvp isnt anything at all about hadeling challange, most pvpers i have seen can't handle any challanging fight and scream cheater/hakcer when they do, all they are capable of is killing far weaker opponents who are completly unable to defend themselves, thats the treu essance of PVP from UO

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Originally posted by Crichton
To harsh? Want us to "Get a life, stop griefing on the internet" too bad, this is what games are for. Do you tell football players not to tackle each other so hard or often? Do you tell ask a race car driver to slow down or not drive as aggressively? To us this is a competitive enviroment, and in that enviroment if the game allows us to kill you at that current point, we may or may not take that opportunity. Cry, more. Please. It's a damn game, you are crying over pixels, 1's and 0's for god sakes. If you can't handle the competition, not able to level cause you might die, grow a pair and do something about it. Level in groups, join a guild or clan that will help you. Play smart.

Carebears for the lose.  

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I for one never said i didnt want PVP. Cant speak for the rest.
Sure a football player can go around and tackle other players. But he risks getting a red card dosnt he? What do you risk in a game like WoW? Absolutely nothing.

Im not whining about PVP, im whining about poor game design. Id rather play a game where you only have one life then PVP in WoW.

I'm starting to like this guy. Better than listening to crap about WoW's latest boring raid boss.

What's sad, Dan, is that developers and publishers have not learned anything from the mistakes of prior game generations. The same pvp system weaknesses we saw back in 1999 on Asheron's Call Darktide server (open pvp) persist in games being released in 2006.

We the players have learned. Why haven't the developers?

AssHat 
That is all I have to say on this Article!!

Dan Fortier is a tool and coward, not to mention a barely literate writer. if he's afraid to face equal danger but just wants to kick low levels around then I can only assume he's most likely attempting to makeup for certain "shortcomings" in RL. (Insert your own "short" joke here).

Now can we please get a columnist over the age of 12 to take over the editorials?

And before the screams of "carebear" start rolling in from the spine-inpaired gankers know that I've spent over a year in EVE killing and being killed with the rest of them.  I have no problems with taking a beating when I deserve it.  I also don't feel it makes me a bigger badder man of war to kick the crap out of a 1 week player still trying to learn how to operate their "starter ship".

But hey, if it's the only way to boost your obvious low self exteme go for it, it's just a game junior.

OMG OMG OMG Dan, you are soooo playing the wrong game... You ought to be playing EvE Online:Griefers Heaven. Or are you? My bets are you are in control of the ratings on the website then as well... :D

Seriously awesome read and nice to see the excuses of a griefer by choice all listed into one article, kinda feels like the VNBoards but then wrapped up into one article... :D

Well an article written by Dan that basically says "hey everyone I'm an a**hole and proud of it"?  I begin to wonder if Dan was the school bully when he was younger, or maybe he never grew out of it?

I enjoy pvp but I can't see how ganking someone half your level who has no chance of beating you is any challenge at all.  I get a better feeling of accomplishment by beating a worthy opponent, someone who has a real chance of beating me.  To me, ganking is like playing a FPS on god mode, could be fun for a few minutes but then gets boring real quick.

 

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Originally posted by Crichton
My god, stop crying. The replies in this thread have to be some of the most care bear replies I've ever seen in a forum. "Wah, he's an asshole." "Wah, go play other games if you wanna PK". Guess what, alot of us think the best part of an MMO is the pvp and the more open ended it is, the better. Ever wonder why games like UO, Shadowbane, etc have had stellar pvp populations in the past? People want that experience. They want to be able to be killed or kill at any given time without retarded restrictions of who, what, when, where. Yes even those games have their few "safe zones" but the majority is open ended.

There are games out there for people like you. Go play WoW, or EQ. Any game where you have a very small or no penalty for dying and a very small area for killing other human players is not an MMO worth playing. You need consequences. You need to have that risk of losing that great item in your inventory or dropping that stellar weapon you're using. You need some penalty for dying so you can't just jump back into the fight 30 second's later. You need that reward for hunting down players.

To harsh? Want us to "Get a life, stop griefing on the internet" too bad, this is what games are for. Do you tell football players not to tackle each other so hard or often? Do you tell ask a race car driver to slow down or not drive as aggressively? To us this is a competitive enviroment, and in that enviroment if the game allows us to kill you at that current point, we may or may not take that opportunity. Cry, more. Please. It's a damn game, you are crying over pixels, 1's and 0's for god sakes. If you can't handle the competition, not able to level cause you might die, grow a pair and do something about it. Level in groups, join a guild or clan that will help you. Play smart.

Carebears for the lose.  

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You tell people to grow a pair.  I find that amusing, as you cannot yourself have a "pair"  You sound like the kid who was picked on in the schoolyard, and the only outlet you can find is being a loud child online.  This is why bullys should be publicly shot.  To prevent their victims from polluting online games.  If your not a child, your giving real children a bad name.  Well behaved children are called, young men and women.  Adults and children who act so poorly are called the problem with online games.  If as many people were maladjusted as you think, there would be many more free for all games. 

As to the writer of the article, he should be applauded.  To be one of the problems with online games, and still get paid to talk about them, thats impressive. 

Yeah we know PvPers re a minority and greifers are an even bigger minority, but I don't think I've seen that point of veiw shared so well. Also making the comment about lowlifes and celebrities blaming someone else makes me think he was just screwing with us.

Thanks for the laugh

KILL EM ALL!  unbelievable... actually when I played MMOs, I really didn't grief others that much. I would just sort of kill people as I saw them. But after seeing a lot of the carebear panty-waste replies in this thread, I'm SO feeling motivated to reactivate and do nothing but camp and grief all day long.

Competition is irrelevent. Fairness is irrelevent. SKILL in an MMO?? Give me a break!! Go play css, ut, or some RTS games if you are interested in skill. MMOs are just big virtual worlds where you pretend to be some other character and run around doing stuff. And being persistent characters, the ability to win any given fight is a function of:
- how much time you've spent in the virtual world.
- how the devs have made your class skills relative to whoever you are fighting.

MMO = no-skill-involved.

And considering the state of AI in games, we need people to fill the role of the bad guys, cause killing virtual orcs is mind-numbingly easy. We need griefers. We need ninja looters. We need con-men. Why? Because that gives you self-righteous, questing, feel great about killing 20 rats, type of people someone to hate, hunt, and join together to fight against.

You seek ORDER and FAIRNESS, but sadly enough, IF you ever attain it, you will be bored out of your mind and start posting about how blah game doesn't have any end-game content etc. If game developers ever hope to create a continuously interesting virtual world, they need to increase the ways and means that player X can cause player Y's life to be a living hell. This troll-bait article is just more evidence that most devs are heading down the 'boring' path imo...

lol.

poor dan though.

and poor rest of the mmorpg community to the rest of us, making devs have to go carebear on us to have a large enough community to be worth it.

I viewed this article as a giant attempt at trolling, with the intent of provoking the sort of outrage that many are exhibiting here. (I think he just managed to pull off a literary "gank")

I'm basically a carebear who in D&D games plays Lawful Neutral.  That said, I (sometimes) enjoy PvP servers and the challenge of outwitting the gankers.  It helps keep leveling up more interesting.

I used to love playing on the FFA PvP server in DAOC..but it wasn't nearly as fun in WOW so I eventually re-rolled a few characters on the Pve servers.

I enjoy games where you can have designated guild enemies.... then I can feel justified in griefing their lowbies or whatever.  But just random killing of neutral (and defenseless) players?  Absolutely no appeal to me here... 

Some of us play MMO's with our own code of honor, some like Dan obviously don't.  That's cool with me, I don't expect everyone to bring the same set of morals to the game that I do, and it doesn't make me mad (well, not much) that there are such a$$hats out there.  They do add spice to the game.

I recall one guild in DAOC that had a simiple motto...kill every player you come across, regardless of guild, level or balance (called the Slayers).  I really hated running into those guys, and once I got to 50 I made sure they they always died...no matter what the circumstances... no mercy for any reason.... gave the game a nice edge to it....

So no, I don't hate players like Dan... they do make the game more fun in most cases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a large fan of PVP. It makes clan based activities a lot more fun, which is my big thing.

But people like that make me sick. Just because the developer made it so its possible for people to kill openly does not mean it's their fault if you act like an asshole. In comparing it to the bully on the playground, you equate yourself to a fifth-grader. It's not the developers fault just because some immature jerk-wad decides to play their game. They aren't the wisest of game designers if they don't build any sort of anti-grief mechanisms in, but then their game will probably fail.

So they either learn from the failure, or find a new industry to work in.

This is why I like games where you can only kill people within a small level difference of yourself or you face sever penalties.

    This is the first good article I've read from this site. It may be aggressive in it's execution. But it was entertaining and brought up a topic too neglected as of late. PVP has the opportunity to greatly enhance a game. However, just as Dan points out there are clear drawbacks to poorly executed design. It is unfortunate that the topic of discussion for this forum is how sick or emotionally twisted the author may appear to be, rather than what the problems are with PvP and how they can be rectified.
    Few MMOs focus on PvP from the get go and often only add it as an after thought due to a minority demand. It is no wonder then that these games end up with griefers etc. The industry has had a decade since UO to realize the advantages to PvP and UO's failures in execution. We've seen a number of games come and some go. There is no reason for players to be subject to failures of past systems. We've also seen a number of successful PvP implementations, which are promptly forgotten by the next release. Safe zones, criminal/bounty systems, soul-bound equipment etc. are all successful measures. I'm sure there are more beyond these; however, if even the most basic of PvP systems is neglected, we'll never see more effective systems come into existence. Dev teams neglect simple in-game measures which then have to be inefficiently covered by CSRs, who, we all know, are exceptional at resolving problems quickly and effectively.
    Another important point that Dan pointed out is that MMO's have very little to offer if they focus exclusively on any one thing. PvE gets old fast. Dev teams can't continually add content at a fast enough rate to keep up with players. PvP, without reprieve, also gets boring rather quickly. I don't know about other people but I can only play Guild Wars' PvP for about two hours before I fall asleep; there's no variation (not to mention that after one play-through, the missions become incredibly tedious).
    I realize this "conversation" will probably continue to focus on how much of a "sociopath" Dan is and continue to neglect the real points. It doesn't matter whether Dan is sick or not (not that I particularly think he is; of course, I'm assuming that he's making a point rather than stating a daily routine). What matters is that griefers do exist and do have a persistent, pernicious effect on games. Even if it's just one percent of the population it must still be guarded against, just as our society guards against theft and murder. Perhaps it's the fact that it's such a small minority of players that ruin the game for the rest, or the fact that the devs are just ignorant of the situation. All I know is that something needs to be done about the situation and should already have been done, and that this board will have absolutely no effect if it focuses on Dan rather than the problems with MMOs.

I've never been against PVP, loved EVE because it was an open PVP enviroment (though I was what was classed as a carebear because I didn't fight) but the fact you could PVP everywhere was good in my opinion.

What I don't like are theve griefers and 1337 speak people who obviously, as a previous post suggested, are either the poor beaten up kids in the playground or the bullies themselves.

Due to the fact that the internet is the ultimate in doing an action and having no come back on it (sorry late and knackered would word it better) the little special people of the world (sociopaths as someone else pointed out) can have their free for all.

If I was a woman (as most of these people are men, I've not heard of a female griefer) and going out with a guy like this, I would leave as one day he might turn it onto you, if he could get away with it of course.

What to do about these people are really the real question, well other than a bolt gun to their temple in real life, I think just let them be and point and laugh at them when they do it to you, they like you getting annoyed and upset and leave you when you laugh at them..

Of course in WoW 5 of us corpse camped a level 60 (when we were 40's) so maybe I need a bolt gun too :P

An interesting article, obviously written to provoke a reaction, and the 6 pages of text has shown that it has done just that. Mind you any topic that has the characters 'pvp' in it generally attracts a huge amount of replys for some odd reason.

 In my opinion one very easy way to get rid of the griefers is simply to offer no way of inspecting characters, period [abilities, armour and skill levels etc]. In that way players would not know who was weak and who was strong, yes they could make an educated guess by appearance but they would have to take the chance that the person isnt more skilled than they look making it much harder to find easy targets. [just like in real life, which besides law is one reason people don't react violently any time they feel like it is because they dont know the capability of the other person and there is a very real chance they will get a good beating themselves instead].

The road to hell is paved with griefers.

It`s a sad fact that if there are no rules then the strong will always prey on the weak, if a game has no provision in it`s design to prevent it then there will always be rampant PK bullies.

With no rules the only way to deal with them is to have high level players take them out and give them a good kicking, but then one becomes as bad as the other, vigilanties start out meaning well, but the cure can end up as bad as the disease

The wolf and sheep analagy is a good one, too many wolves = no sheep then the wolves starve and the game dies.

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Originally posted by Torchwood

You tell people to grow a pair.  I find that amusing, as you cannot yourself have a "pair"  You sound like the kid who was picked on in the schoolyard, and the only outlet you can find is being a loud child online.  This is why bullys should be publicly shot.  To prevent their victims from polluting online games.  If your not a child, your giving real children a bad name.  Well behaved children are called, young men and women.  Adults and children who act so poorly are called the problem with online games.  If as many people were maladjusted as you think, there would be many more free for all games. 

As to the writer of the article, he should be applauded.  To be one of the problems with online games, and still get paid to talk about them, thats impressive. 

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I'm quite sorry, I can't hear your reply, can you stop crying and sobbing for a moment so we can understand you? Seriously, if that is your best honest judgement, calling someone who loves hardcore pvp  in an MMO and uses it well, a "child" or "victim of a bully IRL" that's pretty lame. I'm 25 years old, I've played video games since I was 5 or 6 (back in the days of Atari 2600/NES). So wait let me guess, you'll hit me up with "omg you're that old and act like a spoiled child roflmaomomoomgzzzzzzzzzz" give me a break.

YOU, sound like the guy who rolled a toon in an MMO, got him to a medium level then got ganked when you stepped foot outside a safe zone. Did you ever realize that maybe, just maybe, if you didn't stop to call us childish adults, and other such crap, we wouldn't humiliate you so badly? We'd just kill you and move on? I mean seriously, it's a game and look how worked up you are getting over it.

Oh and btw, since you trying to make this personal, you give a bad name to all of us Doctor Who fan's, I'm quite sure Eccleston would call you a pussy himself if he had the chance.

I love PVP, games that dont have it, I wont play... That being said, Ive never seen any reason to kill players 10+ levels lower than myself .. or camping people who where easy to kill. Only idiots Ive ever camped that where 10+ levels lower than myself were dumb griefers like those who wrote this article, who griefed my alt or others when I was in the area, out would come my lv 60 and Id make that grief happy idiot wish they where on a PVE server.
Most fun Ive ever had was taking my lv 60 rogue and put her in stealth mode, then have her follow my alt around, my alt would get ganked by real high level players of the opp side all the time, but my 60 would have so much fun killing them back, wasnt long before they woudlnt attack my alt, but run when they seen it lol, not knowing if my rogue was with her or not =)
PVP makes the games exciting, gives you other areas of game play other than just grinding .. only area that I would like to see fixed would be in players not being able to camp a dead player .. To be fair, it is a pvp server, Ive seen many players think that they can just do quest in pvp zones and think they should be left alone .. I dont agree to the camping, but if your getting ganked over and over in an area, go do a diff quest in a diff place for a while.