Wired chronicles pan-MMO griefing by Goons
by Chris Chester 
Jan 24th 2008 at 9:00AM
Filed under: EVE Online, Culture, Second Life
As a general principle, it's not our focus here at Massively to highlight the exploits the griefers. We don't want to encourage bad behavior for one thing, but also most of the time the griefing that goes on is just so... pedestrian. That's why we're willing to make an exception for this cultural piece in Wired which turns the spotlight on the curious gaming sub-culture of Something Awful. Known collectively as Goons, members of Something Awful have developed smaller sub-communities of players in nearly every modern MMO, and while they have managed to get along peacefully in certain cases, in some games they gain a reputation for being, well... goons.The Wired article focuses specifically on their shenanigans in EVE Online and Second Life. Anybody whose played EVE Online in the past two years has no doubt become familiar with their style of play, as the aptly named Goonswarm Alliance makes up the most populous faction in the game, and they use their numbers to great effect in waging war. To give you an idea of their shtick, last year they launched a massive assault on and destroyed a massive Titan-class ship worth the real-world equivalent of $10,000 for no other reason than because it would demoralized their enemies, with the hope that they'd quit the game all together. Similarly, the exploits of another group of Goons in Second Life was so prolific, so persistent, and so offensive, that one SL mogul is quoted as calling them "terrorists."
The article is a bit incomplete for my taste, as it doesn't include other Goon foibles like their prolific Star Wars: Galaxies presence nor does it really expound on the real consequences of the Goons' actions in Second Life, but the descriptions and characterizations the author does manage to bring together for EVE and SL are so bizzare, they're worth reading for a laugh, if nothing else.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sean percival said on 4:08PM 1-24-2008
I like how a certain persons name was left out here!
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Green Armadillo said on 4:12PM 1-24-2008
Now I'm curious, the article claims they killed one of their own faction leader NPC's in WoW. How did they accomplish this? I was able to find coverage of the time they kited the Theramore flight master, but this one didn't get explained.
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Shakilah said on 6:02PM 1-24-2008
Hmm, in the past there was a way to get a debuff for failing a quest in Scarlet Monastry, that set your own faction temporarily neutral and enabled you to attack your own npc's. I haven't heard of the story myself, but I assume they used this and killed Thrall that way.
Interesting article at least. Not very in-depth about Eve-O, the story about killing a titan, where Goons only played a part together with their allies, is not all that interesting.
I often think the whole "internet is serious business" approach is rather ironic, especially when you look at the Goons in Eve-O that invest an awful lot of time in it. I guess I'm not too fond of them, but I can't deny that they've did a lot of hilarious things.
And I seriously think 'their' stuff might get someone killed in real-life one day. I wouldn't even feel that safe as creator of SA, that probably got awfully rich with it as well.
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Joe P said on 12:11AM 1-25-2008
This article is so woefully under informed it's sad. I'm no fan of the goons, I won't lie, but they were going up again BoB who I like even less because they have literally been cheating in the game. The only reason the goons got so powerful is because of the outrage the players had against BoB, not necessarily because they like the goons.
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Prokofy Neva said on 8:29AM 1-25-2008
Actually, I'm hardly any "mogul" as I own a mere 15 sims worth of SL land that I rent out on the mainland, which is very tough for business, as distinct from the very much more lucrative private islands. And because my rentals are open to anyone without invitation and security devices are not allowed, so as to make for open communities, I'm targeted by griefers, unlike the gated communities. So I'm hardly the evil land baron you'd like to describe me as.
And in fact, as you can see from the full text of the interview with Julian Dibbell on my blog, I never called these griefers "terrorists" in some facile and stupid way -- in fact I never used the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" at all. What in fact I talked about was "terror-forming" which is a play on words of "terraforming," or landscaping of the earth in Second Life, whereby griefers will take a land mistakenly left on edit, or infiltrate a group and get control of the landscaping tools, and heap up huge mountains or land sinks to annoy another person. It's a slang term, if you will, and Julian didn't seem to grasp it.
But I've said often that griefers are *like* terrorists in the *dynamics* of how they act and I surely stand by that: yes, griefers are *like* terrorists in their tactics and motives and ideologies.
Are you able to reason by analogy? Not every literalist tekkie is able to do this. The dynamics of terrorism in RL involve spreading fear, inflicting massive damage to property, disrupting public events, but most of all, whacking innocent people who are not directly related to your beef. So griefers in the virtual realm who are *by analogy* *like* terrorists, who hate that I've written about them, which I've done occasionally, whack my tenants, who have never heard of them or even read my blog. Sick.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/01/tiny-reporters.html
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