The Daily Grind: What death do you usually not talk about?

by Eliot Lefebvre Oct 25th 2009 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Humor

Characters die. It's not usually a permanent thing, but MMOs are kind of built on the premise that your character is going to die at some point, since something hitting you until you hit zero hit points and then wandering off out of boredom removes the flavor of the game. More often than not, when you die, there's no real shame involved. It's just a muttered curse word at worst and then whatever you have to do to get back into the game again, ranging from running back to your corpse to trying to get your level back to apologizing to that megacorporation.

However, there are certain deaths -- getting eaten by a goobbue, for instance -- which you privately agree to just not talk about.

What death do you remember that's so embarassing, silly, or unnecessary that you normally don't mention it? Maybe you really should have known better beforehand, maybe you just find the circumstances too humiliating, or maybe it still makes you annoyed to even think about it. Whatever the case, today is the day to share your death stories -- and we've all got them. What's the story you wouldn't tell on any other day?

Tags: accidents, anecdotes, culture, death, death-penalty, humor, opinion, tdg, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

smi04 said on 8:40AM 10-25-2009

Moonkin and Murlocs. Nuff said.

Sam said on 8:51AM 10-25-2009

Autorunning into bosses.

I remember a hunter autoshooting Al'ar as he flew overhead, causing a raid wipe.

I've seen warlock and hunter pets pull bosses because they were set to Aggressive.

warlock and hunter pet pathing, pulling trains of mobs as they run the long way round a small ledge..

me in particular, forgetting i was in Resto (heals) spec, and pulling a boss, then getting insta-pwned when I tried to main tank it.

the Guild Wars "trip line" on the minimap, and underestimating what mobs were linked together when using it.

stupidly forgetting aggro ranges in MMOs, attempting to play WoW with the LoTRO aggro system..(if >9 levels below, aggro range is nil, otherwise scales slightly, but not much)

Coming back from being AFK andfinding yourself attacked by low-level mobs, or worse, murlocs (or gnomes, CURSE YOU GNOMEREGAN) :/

worst though?
forgetting totally about the clouds in Yogg-Saron, and running straight through them while as a "trial" member in a new guild....not a good day.
I'm still amazed they didn't kick me out right there.

Wisdomandlore said on 8:58AM 10-25-2009

My worst was in FFXI. While farming Quadavs for helms (one of the few repeatable quests in the game, and one of the few reliable sources of money), I turned around to watch the TV. A few seconds later I turned around to find three of them had killed me. These mobs were 30 levels below me, and they had just stolen 10% of my level (at least 4-5 hours worth of XP) from me.

CheesyTaco said on 9:09AM 10-25-2009

Hitting glide once too many in Aion :|

JoeK said on 10:26AM 10-25-2009

Yeah, especially when taking that long elevator in Sanctum... it's like "why couldn't I just wait for it to reach the bottom instead of trying to glide"

SgtBaker said on 9:20AM 10-25-2009

Nodding off at the keyboard in-warp and not jumping through that gate to Empire space. Waking up in station, and wondering why my mailbox is blinking.

....and then realizing what had happened...

Paris Wright said on 10:38AM 10-25-2009

I was so excited when I hit level 70 on my Tauren Druid. I trained my flight form at Thunder Bluff and ran off the edge and hit flight form. I hit the ground very hard. My guild never let me forget it.

Raejin99 said on 10:38AM 10-25-2009

This was YEARS back, and I wasn't the one who died, but way back when I still played Anarchy Online, me and my group were heading around, finishing up missions and generally just looking for stuff to kill. Eventually we come across a red-named version of the adorable pudgy little lizard-newt-gerbil things called Leets that were common in the newbie areas. We figured, hey, we could totally take it.

A minute later we were running in terror from the pudgy little ball of murder, heading for the edge of the map in order to zone away from it. In the end, out of a full group, only myself and one other managed to survive the slaughter.

We never spoke of this incident again.

DeathMutant said on 10:50AM 10-25-2009

In the early days of EQ1 the auto-attack key defaulted to "a." When you wanted to talk to an NPC, like your level 50 guildmaster (trainer), you hail them to initiate a conversation. The default key for hailing is "h".

I do not remember how many times I would target my guildmaster and type in "hail" to train some new skills only to die before I could hit the "i" key. Level 50 mob vs. low-level PC = one-shot kill. To be fair, I was used to Zork-like games and MUDs where you type a command then press .

Actually, I did not feel *too* stupid since seeing corpses of level 1 PCs (sometimes multiple!) laying around their guildmasters was a common sight back in those days! LOL

UltimateQ said on 10:56AM 10-25-2009

Yes, I remember this happening too. I did it several times myself. Not just to guild masters but several NPCs across the world.

Kdolo said on 11:07AM 10-25-2009

LotRO, falling off a cliff at level 19 running back to a questgiver that would have made me lvl 20 and gotten me the achievement.

I did not recreate the character and have since determined the Undying title as STUPID!

Lobotomist said on 11:41AM 10-25-2009

OUCH! @Kdolo

That must be the most embarrassing death in MMO. !!!

:)

EToaster said on 11:46AM 10-25-2009

I was leveling a Death Knight in Hellfire Peninsula on WoW, and was too used to playing my mage. I ran and jumped off a cliff and hit the button that, if i were playing my mage, would have been Slow Fall. It didn't work out very well. Before, when I was leveling my mage, I would occasionally hit blink in very bad places due to it being on the same keybinding as Renew on my priest.

Holgar said on 11:47AM 10-25-2009

Last night I was lecturing a real life friend of mine, who is a new tank about not pulling casters but running up to them because otherwise your just inviting trouble. After about 5 minuets of explaining why this was I promptly range pulled a caster with a freezing attack.

Figure out the rest.

Pingles said on 12:02PM 10-25-2009

Dark Age of Camelot was my first experience with "factions".

They have a remarkably addictive noob-zone mob named the "Annoying Lucradan" that spews taunts as it runs around the zone. They are a very satisfying kill but I found out later that each kill counts against your Leprechaun rep.

I had been safely been traveling past a large area full of friendly Leprechauns for several weeks until one day I decided to slaughter every last Annoying Lucradan I saw.

The next time I ran past those Leprechauns I was genuinely startled to see them all start to chase me as I walked by. I tried to Sprint but just launched deeper into them and my death was quick.

Ashre said on 12:58PM 10-25-2009

I was doing fa in Guild Wars. A flare spammer killed me 2 times. Ugh.

lbrandvik said on 12:59PM 10-25-2009

I played Final Fantasy XI for about 2 years and then decided to quit one night. A few months had passed and I figured I would give the game another shot. I installed and updated the game and was a little giddy to start playing again.

I had deleted my original character which seemed like a good idea at the time but in retrospect kinda sucked. I finally get into the game and I run out to the starting area outside of Windurst and the first thing I see is a Rarab and I decide that I'm going to kill the crap out of this little bunny.

I walk up to it and start swinging my weapon and going to town on the bunny. Next thing I know the damn thing kills me.

The first monster I tried to fight after months of not playing murdered me. I decided to keep that little bit of information to myself.

It was, in fact, a sad day.

Kdolo said on 1:02PM 10-25-2009

oh, and i can't recall how many corpses i've left at gadgetzan forgetting i was playing horde and right-clicking the alliance flightmaster for a ride.

Pigeon-ko said on 1:49PM 10-25-2009

I might as well admit this. EVE Online, me being 100% new: Corp told me "set destination to Vay" in Ventrilo, and I typed "Vey" and let autopilot handle it.

... yeah. A simple misspelling could lead to podding in EVE! I earned the nickname "Slippy" from then on. Like the frog from Star Fox.