I agree. Robin Hood and Bonnie and Clyde seem like very poor comparisons here. These are characters who risked their lives in the face of danger, one for the greater good and the others for their own personal gain. It’s that willingness to face mortal danger that’s the appeal here. The myth that Bonnie and Clyde were later killed fighting together (Bonnie never fired a gun in actuality), further cements the romanticism at work here.

However, mmo’s are games. They are there for relaxation, socialization and enjoyment despite how much some people try to make a job out of them. The jerk that exploited a dungeon mechanic or made a great hack is not risking his life nor rebelling for the greater good. He’s just doing it for his own benefit and the most he will risk is his account being banned, at which point he may jus start another account under a different name. Often, what will happen is a lot of other players will be affected by the exploit in minor and annoying but still negative ways all so one player could get ahead in a video game.

Therefore, people need to wake up and realize that although online gaming does have a lot of social elements it still lacks many of the risks and benefits of reality. There’s no actual death, wealth, or physical needs to weigh in. There are no starving peasants to feed and there’s no police officers shooting actual bullets at you. It’s these dangers and harsh realities that many people, having escaped into their comfortable and electronic modern lives, forget dictate the human experience and our reasons for celebrating true heroes and villains.

I like reading about grievers too. The most fun I had in EvE was killing people and taking their stuff. Piracy ftw!

Would you want a fair or even fight IRL? Nope. You'd only fight if you could win; I don't see why anyone expects a game should be any different.

@THACO
I think you’re confusing surviving a real-life brawl with actual fun competition in a game. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to fight some guy who I knew was going to crush me, but I sure as hell wouldn’t go around beating up weaklings who didn’t do anything to me. That would make me a prick.

If we’re talking about competition here, then let’s think about how people handle competition in reality. If one team is getting creamed over and over again, you put them in a different league with people of their own skill level. You don’t keep them in the A Division and watch people tear them apart. Secondly, you don’t let a 25 year old body-builder join an elementary school wrestling tournament. It’s not fun for the person whose cards are obscenely stacked against them and if it is fun for the player who’s constantly winning, then they need to seriously grow up and look for some better competition.

Overall, preying on the weak doesn’t make either of us a better player.

Thats a silly idea. It's like saying we need to be mugged so we can heroically beat off the mugger or heroically be rescued by someone.

You don't need the stories griefers tell. You'd think Endo would have enough practical experience with them to realize that some 13 year old with cheats is not bonnie or clyde, and having someone teamkill you or gank you repeatedly isn't something you will look back and chuckle upon.

People who whine about u/o pre-trammel need to be hunted down and ganked repeatedly till they realize why trammel was needed.

The problem with that, Brendan, is that often those "Heroes" turn in to the same jerks that the Griefers were, the way Samurai or Knights treated the peasantry they saw themselves as above.

If griefing is such a great thing, why even bother balancing between classes? Griefing is done by people with an unfair advantage, why not just build a grief-class into the game?

Shields up! I'm under attack D:

Think of what EVE Online would be like if highsec and lowsec piracy were made impossible. To many people, those are the griefers, cutthroats and despicable predators of EVE. Without them, people would be nice and safe in empire but we would have no anti-piracy. We'd have none of the stories of people fighting back and winning, nobody taking a stand against piracy. In short, the players that would be heroes lose the opportunity to even try.

I would consider that a massive loss. There are plenty of MMOs where you can be perfectly safe but it's the ones where you can be griefed that attract me the most. Not just because I want to gank someone in an unfair fight, but because I want the opportunity to return the favour when it's done to me.

I'm in ur reply griefin ur comment?

No seriously, I think its shown that EvE is a very niche game where people who play it come in expecting dirty tricks. That's not griefing. If you go into a game of team fortress, you expect to get shot.

Griefing is more like the wow zombie thing where you aren't expecting people to come in and make your entire gaming experience unplayable and a hassle. It all changes when you know going in the griefing experience is a part of the game-its when it shouldn't be and you want to just play some that its griefing.

Fair points, I can see where you're coming from and I admit the quote I mentioned earlier is less applicable to griefing than it is to open PvP systems in general where some of the PvPers are colossal asshats.

But isn't what you just said a little backward? Surely if it's possible to do something in a game then by definition it's part of the game and players should come to expect it. For example, in a game of Left4Dead your teammates could very well turn around and shoot you in the head for cheap laugh. Shouldn't players play the game fully accepting that this is possible? And wouldn't doing otherwise just amount to being inexcusably stubborn?

Granted, a lot of griefing is just possible through poor game design. If something is possible in a game but it shouldn't be (by the developer's admission rather than the player's), that just shows poor game design. In those cases, is the player justified in stubbornly refusing to accept the potential for griefers to interfere with his gameplay?

Geez, way to be on topic.