World of Warcraft - answers needed in a world of hate

This is NOT a guide how to be an cyber-bully on World of Warcraft.

Oh, MMPORGs, what happened to you? I remember playing Everquest for the first time. I'd only been playing for about 10 minutes when this character called Llelu Greypelt (a Halfling druidess) cast some spells on my monk to enhance his fighting power and we remained friends on and offline until the day she sadly passed away in real life. During my time on EQ, I met many wonderful and friendly people and their characters, including Leibsok, Katmanduel, and Amberlioness. You'd send a shout out whilst in a capital city asking for advice or assistance and someone would give you advice or point you in the right direction. You could sell items you'd acquired in the Bazaar and the price battles were always friendly. When you wanted to level up, there was always a group to join. And on the rare occasion you encountered someone anti-social, everyone else would tell the offender to either lighten up or leave the game: we had no time for hostile people. Everything was fun. Sometimes competitive, but always fun.

Everquest II came along. some people joined it, some stayed with the original Everquest, and some felt the magic was gone and stopped playing altogether.

Then along came World of Warcraft. Created by Blizzard, everyone thought "Diablo II and Warcraft were kick ass, so how cool to play a character in, literally, the World of Warcraft!"

Sadly, the internet was more widely established, broadband was becoming cheaper and cheaper, and thus gave access to the dreaded cyber-bullies. The bane of online gaming. The true Scourge of Azeroth. These people are of different ages, races creeds, gender and sexual persuasions but they have one thing in common: they hate nice decent people. I don't mean they dislike them. I mean pure wrath-of-the-ancients HATE.

Imagine you've asked a genuine question like "I'm new here. Where's the bank?" or "Where's the best place for a level 10 shaman to solo?" Now, being normal well-raised people you'd expect to get answers like "At the main entrance to Orgrimmar, go along the path until you come to a fork in the path. Go left and the bank is to your left." or "For a shammy of your level, go to..." But no. On several servers (I've played on 9, just to make sure) the general responses are pretty much the same. "STFU, knaaaaab!" (whatever the hell a "Knaaaaab" is), "Ha! The noob doesn't know where the bank is! What an idiot!", "The bank's in your mom's ass!" (Nice...).

At this point, I need to say the examples of hostile responses are all genuine and haven't been made up by myself. They have all been witnessed during gameplay by myself and friends.

Whatever you do, do not try to reason with these psychos. They are either, well, psycho or they are kids who've picked up a few choice phrases from their parents and think it's awesome to  say "GTFO!" to someone who hadn't even said anthing to anyone and was just minding their own business.

And to make matters worse, Blizzard take no decent action against trangressors of rules which clearly state that hostility and abuse are not tolerated. Tell that to the girl who stood up to someone who verbally abused her on WoW: she reported it and it resulted in the cyber-bully being temp banned for 24 hours ONLY and he went on to hack her email address, get pics of her and post them on sex sites. This was also reported to Blizzard who followed up with...nothing. Except allowing the cyber-bully to keep playing WoW as a reward.

Here are some further examples of verbal abuse which Blizzard punished the trangressor/trangressors with nothing more than a 24 hour ban:

   - During someone's first time in an Instance (for the layman, an Instance is a mini-raid, just for a single group of players) they messed up on getting the monsters to attack: instead of just one monster following, 4 monsters followed them back to the group. The guy apologised profusely and this resulted in the other members of the group replying with "You are a complete fucking idiot.", "Your mom should have aborted you!", "If I find out where you live, I'll slit your throat!" amongst other things.

   - Whilst waiting for a zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar, someone told the only other player their to "STFU!" When the victim said "I never said a word.", the aggressor followed up with "I don't care! STFU and GTFO, knoob!" When this was ignored by the victim, the aggressor then made zone-wide shouts that the victim was "Gay and needs killing!" This was all directed by someone playing their first character which was level 27 at the  time to someone who was playing their third level 85 character.

   - Playing a Death Knight for the first time, some received a whispered (private) message saying "You're a cunt." when asked who it was, the aggressor said "Silence, cunt." thinking it was someone who knew him and was playing a joke, the victim asked "Do I know you?" and got the reply of "I doubt it. Why would I want to be friends with a cunt?"

   - On a role play server (aimed at players who are interested in the aspect of acting the part, rather than just on the action aspect of the game), someone playing a dwarf was told by serveral people that "We have deep-seated problems with Dwarves." The player thought this was just plot and intrigue and that he could roleplay his way into favour with the guild he was invited into, but to no avail. "We honestly don't like you." When he asked if playing a different race would make a difference, he was told in and out of character "No. You obviously like that race so you go on playing that character. But I suggest you do it elsewhere. I'd leave immediately if I were you."

   - A player character who died during an Instance (he was the "Tank" of the group. The tank's role is to keep the monster's attention solely on them, allowing the other members of the party, usually the physically weaker characters such as mages and warlocks to attack from range without incurring the monster's unwanted attention) because the healer of the group was too busy checking up on how much damage each player was dishing out, instead of their primary role of healing the tank. Instead of telling the healer off, the group decided it was the tank's fault. When he rightly pointed out politely that he died because the healer wasn't doing any healing, he was told "That's doesn't matter. You obviously don't know how to tank. Why don't you go fuck your mother?" When the tank said that his mother was dead, one of the group said "Good. Now go and die with her."

Yeah. These are the types of things players come out with whilst playing World of Warcraft. And if they are too young to have their own credit/debit card to pay the monthly subs, it means that an "responsible" adult is paying for them to play. So if you're a parent, that sweet little cherub of yours playing away on their PC in their room is either being subjected to some of the most horrific verbal abuse, or they are being "keyboard warriors", proving what a foul-mouthed, dragged up little scumbag they truly are from the safe zone of an internet connection. That, or the aggressor is old enough to pay their own bills in which case they are paying hard earned money to either be verbally abused (and quit. Who wants to pay to be sworn at?) or be awesome heroes by calling complete strangers online some of the sickest things you can imagine, again from the safety of a PC.

Nice, huh?

And should anyone who's been the target of these scumbags try to get answers from online forums, including the official Blizzard forums (moderated by Blizzard themselves), the abuse continues there, although the aggressors do reign-in the swearing and threats of rape and murder, and try to keep the abuse "eloquent". And you would not believe the idiocy that comes out of their mouths when replying to questions asked on WOW forums and messages about why so many players are so hostile!

   - "It's how people are. You'll get it wherever you go. Deal with it." I think if I were quietly stood at a bus stop and someone out-of-the-blue told me to "Shut the fuck up!", I'd either walk away from the escaped mental patient or reply with "Get the fuck out of this civilised area and back to your ghetto, you disgusting...junkie...scum." They ought to be careful because the worst case scenario for verbally abusing someone for no reason could be getting their face punched in. Hence why they are keyboard warriors.

   - "Ooh! Have we hurt your feelings? So sorry! Let's all recycle our rubbish, cry when pets suffer and wrap ourselves and each other in cotton wool!" So according to the aggressors, recycling rubbish and giving a shit about the environment is bad, hurting other peoples pets is good, and being civil to people you've only just met is pathetic? This type of scumbag must have had a very rough childhood, ie having his/her ribs cracked by their parents is what their parents called "affection".

   - "Not knowing EXACTLY what to do in a raid or instance before you go in is no different to not knowing how to do you're job. If you don't know, you get fired." Point 1 - In employment, you don't train yourself, you get trained and you'd know this if you had a job (and no, living at home and sponging off your parents is not a "job"). Point 2 - if you were really that driven at playing WoW then surely you'd ask if everyone in the group were ready and knew what to do. Point 3 - if someone told you they were new to the raid/instance, would it have really been that difficult to keep an eye on them and help them through? Only start bitching if it's their 20th attempt and they've caused your 20th group wipe. If this is too difficult for aggressors then I'd advised against them having children:
"For fuck's sake! Our child still can't walk! What is wrong with the freak?"
"Uh...honey, she's only 2 months old."
"God damned noob!"
And point 3 - It's a GAME, not a job. And Blizzard don't pay me for playing Wow. I pay them. And I don't pay money to be abused by social rejects. If I wanted to pay for that level of abuse, I'd pay for everyone's drinks in a bar and then shout "What the fuck are all you bastards looking at? Why aren't you all dead already?" And paying £9 per month just so you can verbally abuse people is completely mental.

   - "Your item level is so low, therfore you are shit at this game. You're not joining this raid/instance!" Dearest Dipshits, the best items are found in raids and instances. So if you are "forbidding" players from getting better gear, how else do you expect them to get better gear? And if you started your first ever character from scratch, you too must've been told that you're not allowed to join raid and instances which begs the question of how did you get your high-end gear? Answers on a postcard to "Cyber-bullying internet trolls on World of Warcraft come out with the most unbelievable bullshit!" competition.

   - "I hate casual players like you!" Scumbags like to call those of us who have jobs to go to, or school for the younger players, "casual" players. Yes, I know we'd all love to be able to afford not having to work and instead while away our every waking moment playing World of Warcraft. Sadly, some of us haven't won the lottery, come from wealthy families or have parents to sponge off. We either have jobs to attend or go to school in order to get an education in order to get a nice job, as well as having real friends to visit and having other commitments such as family and hobbies such as going to the gym, sports and music bands, too much to dedicate 100% of our time to WoW. Scumbags see people who only play WoW for an hour or two as "casual" players who are useless. "Casual" players see scumbags as wasters with nothing more to fill their empty lives with than a game allday everyday.

   - "You're a moron faggot for spelling correctly/making a smiley like ":o)" instead of ":)"/being nice, etc." Wrong. You, the cyber-bully are a moron for not knowing how to spell, and are small minded bigot. I think a lot of people would sooner team up with a gay dude with impecable manners than a "straight" whose hostility makes the creature from the film "Alien" look cute and lovely.

   - "You ought to learn everything about the game beforehand instead of asking dumb questions!" Is this freak trying to tell us that if someone visited from out of town and politely asked where the bank or train station is, that the freak would reply with screams of abuse or even violence? If so, then this person is mentally dangerous and needs immediate psychiatric evaluation. Rest assured that if anyone asked me where a landmark was I'd give them directions, but that's because I had parents and was taught civility. Could you imagine this person working in a store?
"Excuse me? Could you tell me where the drills are?"
"Dumb-ass! Go find them yourself! What an idiot!"

   - "We assure you that any player being found to be verbally abusive and threatening will be banned. and repeat offenders will be banned permanently." Bullshit. Complete and total bullshit. There is absolutely no deterrant for aggressors on WOW at all. The worst punishment EVER given out is the mediocre "24 hour ban", which a lot of aggressors use as a badge of honour. "You only had two 24 hour bans? I've had nine! And it would've been more if only the naaaaaaabs I threatened knew how  to raise a ticket! lololololzorz!!!11" As mentioned above, some of the abuse has spilled out into the real world, escalating into one person having her picture plastered over several sex websites, as well as (officially reported to the police) a few people having threats of physical violence taken far enough for attempts to be made. Each one of these aggressors has one thing in common, that they returned to World of Warcraft after being banned for a mere 24 hours. On top of that, Blizzard claim that they can't tell you the process of them speaking with the aggressor and actual dialogue between themselves and the aggressor at the "hearing", and why? Because there was no serious investigation. Blizzard won't perma-ban any player no matter what is said because that would mean on less players paying subs. More sensible from a money-making point of view to fob the victim off with "We take this very seriously." and tell the aggressor "Please TRY to keep it toned down in future.", ban the aggressor for 24 hours and have the scumbag back in the game and paying. Blizzard seems to prefer quantity over quality.

Soooo...that seems to be the way in World of Warcraft. A few friends have said that surely this must be the case for all MMPORGs.

Plug time: Battlestar Galactica online. In that game you have to spend resources for the right to use the galactic-wide open channel at a cost of 1500 units of Tylium per "tell" that you want to send. Now, easiest (and that's saying something for BSGO) way to get Tylium is by mining asteroids. Each asteroid yields an average 800 units of Tylium and whilst mining you have to keep an eye out for the enemy and not every asteroid contains ore. This gives you an idea of the effort involved in sending one game-wide message:
30 asteroids scanned for ore. Only two have tylium ore. You mine them whilst avoiding enemy attack. You gain enough ore to send one game-wide message.

In other words, after all that effort you have very few, if any, aggressors in the game. At least I've not persoanlly witnessed anything like the level of abuse you'd see in WoW. And even if you do, they normally get told to be civil or leave the game. All in all, you tend find an overall better class of person playing BSGO than you do on WoW. When you have to pay in-character currency to send a message which reaches everyone in the game, would you want to waste that currency on being a verbally-offensive, verbally-abusive cyber-bully at the cost of not having enough currency left for ammo?

Then there is the question of what the cyber-bullies hope to achieve from their actions. Do they feel good about themselves for upsetting others? Do they feel they have made their own lives better? Is there a secret club where they get a "Badge of Honour" for the level of abuse and hate they dish out? If they are under the age of being able to get a debit/card, do they have parents or at least a responsible adult at least asking why their child/ward has been banned for 24 hours and if so, do those adult not care? Have these cyber-bullies not had a decent upbringing, teaching them values such as respect and manners? Are these people safe enough to be allowed out in public unsupervised.

And there are questions for Blizzard, too. Are they deliberately keeping the  truly awful people in the game in order to keep the game "dynamic" and "interesting"? Why do they not take complaints from decent customers seriously? Do they honestly think a 24 hour ban is a powerful enough punishment for people who make threats of real-life violence and death against other players? In a court of law, a victim is allowed to hear the defence of the accused, so why is it that Blizzard claim that they are not allowed to tell victims exactly what happens between Blizzard the reported cyber-bullies? Are Blizzard wanting to wind World Of Warcraft down and eventually stop, with the easiest way of it by simply keeping the assholes playing it  who put decent people off, and eventually the assholes get bored with each other?

Sure, Blizzard would lose some revenue because the hardcore scumbags won't be able to handle having to act like they had a proper upbringing and will leave rather than stay and keep their sick, twisted comments to themselves. But Blizzard ought to think of the positives taking proper action against cyber-bullies: Blizzard get a better reputation, Blizzard are seen as a caring and responsible company, with few or no scumbags playing the game will attract more and more decent players, things will get heated in discussion but with less threats of violence and hate-speak, and the game will attract more players meaning more money for Blizzard. Win-Win! Except for the cyber-bullies, of course. But they can always make a blog whinging about how hard-done-by they are at having their right to treat people like filth taken away from them, or join like-minded people on hate-crime forums.

In conclusion:

Decent people and true gamers - try boycotting World of Warcraft for one month. Vote with your wallet, as the saying goes. Show Blizzard what happens when they permit cyber-bullies to use WoW as platform for hate. Don't leave the game because why should you have to leave? Unless that's what Blizzard want.
Cyber-bullies - What a complete waste of time you are. What would you do without Blizzard's permission to get away with the hate, the threats of physical violence and all the other rubbish which spews out of your mind? Stand on street corners shouting abuse at people who aren't the same as you, and other weird shit, probably.

Blizzard - Shame on you. You make such point of telling everyone that you don't and won't tolerate abuse of any kind in your games. Yet time and again we hear reports of your PAYING CUSTOMERS being subjected to all manner of hate and abuse, and all because the very worst punishment meted out is a paltry ban from accessing the game for 24 hours. Any one from Blizzard reading this, or anyone who wants to pass this on to Blizzard, please do so, so Blizzard can give us a decent explanation. I'm not expecting a reply because I've tried contacting Blizzard on several occasions by email and not had a single reply, even to the two nice emails about my asking permission to write a novel based on Warcraft. But if Blizzard read this and actually do feel like replying, it will be interesting and eye-opening to find out what they truly think of this post and of the situation in general:

A game which used to be fun now full of hate-speak, hostility, verbal abuse and online threats (and sometimes face-to-face) of actual physical violence.

Comparing someone's problem to another problem = crap argument

Firstly, this is not a slur or attack on my friends. If it were, I'd make it personal and tell them I didn't like them anymore. Any friends reading this ought to know this is just a rant.

Recently, there has been the worst kind of counter-argument from both the public and the UK government in regard to the state of the United Kingdom, and it goes a little something like this:

"Other countries are worse off so we should all stop moaning. Stop being unpatriotic. If you don't like it in the UK, then leave."

Point one - I truly hope that this kind of two-bit psychology isn't applied to other aspects of peoples' lives. For example, "So you've got emphysema? Other people have worse illnesses than you, so stop moaning!" Yes, other places and people may be going through worse issues than others, but that does not instantly make the "lesser" problem magically vanish. It simply makes the troll look callous. And no-one should ever have to think along the lines of "I've got a serious problem, but I'd best keep quiet in case someone has a bigger problem and tell me off for it." Would these trolls like if they got some bad news from the Doctor? "Yes, you've got HIV. But my last patient found out they have cancer, so stop moaning because they are worse off than you!" Or about a job you desperately need? "Yes, you may not have got the job meaning you're on the verge of losing your home. But there are people out there who can't even get a job because they are homeless, so stop whinging!"

Point two - Unpatriotic, eh? I'd say the opposite, in that if someone is so incensed and angered at how their country and it's people are being treated and want to see a positive change then they ARE being patriotic. And that someone who wants us all to "Shut up and put up" and they are happy to watch the people get down-trodden can't have much love for the country.

Point three - I can't believe anyone would be so gullible as to believe that a country's leader is not responsible for what is going on. If they have let things happen without their knowing about it and have taken no action to resolve the issue, then they are incompetent and unfit for their role. If they don't know what is going on and allow the issues to continue, then they are culpable and unfit for their role. The best two examples of this in the UK are a) ATOS forcing people who are unfit for work off of benefits, only for those same people to be told by the Job Centre "You can't work. You're physically/mentally unable to.", thus rendering them without any money. And b) the NHS scandal where hundreds of needless deaths occurred due to complete lack of care (E.G. people without water resorting to drinking from flower vases, old disabled people at home being forgotten about and found dead from lack of regular home visits, etc.). In scandals which are affecting large groups of people, the nation's leader has to shoulder some of the responsibility. Simply saying "I may be in charge but I didn't know. It was someone else's fault." is an admission of incompetence as well as sounding juvenile. "Don't tell me off for stealing sweets! My mate's made me do it!"

Yes, other countries and their people are going through very difficult times. But they are there, we are here and both knowing of each others problems isn't going to make things better or the issues magically vanish.

A lady on BBC's Question Time programme last week stood up and said "People in Iraq are having a much worse time than people in the UK, so the UK ought to count itself lucky." I turned off because the imbecile had lost their validity at using such infantile tactics to steer the discussion away from the simple fact that the people of the UK in general are unhappy.

What does make a difference is the population of the UK showing some solidarity for a change, raising our voices and showing our displeasure at the status quo, venting spleen to our friends and thus raising awareness of issues.

Unless, of course, you don't give a damn and secretly despise those you claim to be friends with :)