Warning: Language
Let me first say that I play World of Warcraft. Unashamedly. So does my wife. So there.
Anyway, so yesterday our heroes Freryn and Oghma were infiltrating Laughing Skull Ruins, in a daring attempt to rid the Mag'har tribe of a problem: recently a shaman named Zorbo had risen to prominence among the Bloodmaul ogres, and was leading them into corruption and atrocity. We were there to end his menace.
Okay, so that's the background story, a little chees-ily done. The short of it was that I was helping Scott with a quest to kill Zorbo the Advisor in Nagrand - despite my portrayal of the situation above, the quest is actually quite an easy one, with the mob being a low-level ogre shaman with no special qualities, and not even elite. So you fight your way through the ruins to him (not a difficult feat), and take him out - report back to Nagrand and bingo, there's 11k xp for you. The area is so over-farmed that Blizzard has stepped up the respawn rate in the zone so that mobs respawn roughly twice as quickly as they normally would (ie in about 2.5 minutes).
Since I know the layout of the zone fairly well, we sneaked into the ruins from a break in the "fence" in the east portion, had to kill a few ogres, but basically climbed the side of the hill that Zorbo lives in - there's a small path that many don't use that wends its way up the eastern face of the hill, and leads down into his cave. We took that way - there are slightly fewer fights. We reached the ledge where Zorbo's cave mouth is, and I began to hear additional combat behind us - from the southern face of the hill (read: the main route to the cave). There was a guardian Ogre Mauler standing in front of the cave, so I sent in Freckles (my Hunter's pet cat) to engage the Mauler, and I slipped past quickly, and tagged Zorbo with an arrow, thus making the server recognize Zorbo as "our" kill (we hit it first, so all XP and loot rights go to us). I didn't realize at the time that just as I winged an arrow into the cave at Zorbo, a second group had attained the ledge, and I'd basically hove in front of them and snagged the kill they were trying to get. Not that it mattered much - it's a little self-serving, but was hardly meant in an unfriendly manner. If they were Alliance (the enemy faction) then I didn't really care, and they should have expected competitiveness anyway. Regardless, the stupid mob respawns in a little over two minutes, right?
The next thing I know, someone has "spoken" behind me. A talk bubble leading from the Character "Pryncess" read "Wow, dickhead much?"
So let me be honest, I can totally understand being frustrated - if that had happened to me, I would have been frustrated too - a little. I probably would have sighed deeply, and said something like "Oh nice" over teamspeak to Scott. And that would have been it, sit and wait for the mob to respawn, kill, go hand in quest. The fact that This person felt the need to swear at me made me feel bad at first, so I said back to them "We can hang around, help you kill him when he respawns." They answered with something to the tune of No thanks, I can handle it myself. Oh, thanks for the blatant kill-steal though.
Now, being fair to myself, it wasn't a kill steal - first off, you can't REALLY kill-steal a general-zone respawnable mob. It'll turn up again in 2 - 5 minutes, day in and day out, for the rest of the run-time of the game. I merely got the first tag, so we got the first kill. They had to wait and get the second one. Boo hoo.
Anyway, I decided not to respond, but just twiddled my thumbs and waited around with them. When he respawned, I politely waited until they'd tagged him, and then added my few arrows to help bring him down. Scott ran in and hit him a couple times too. He goes down, they (there were two of them, but this story only revolves around the one) loot the kill, and then mount up. Then, just as they're runing past us on their mounts, another word bubble appears above Pryncess reading simply "Queerbait mother fuckers" and then they're away down the hill. I attempt to send a private message to him/her, at this point telling him that he's got a seriously bad attitude, but they've already put me on their ignore list - no communication possible.
I have brooded over this incident for almost a day now, and I still can't wrap my head around the mindset that allows for this kind of behavior. As I said, had the situation been reversed (and had I been half a minute slower on my bow, it would have been) I would have grumbled to myself, I might have made a small comment to my friend, but I certainly would not have verbally assaulted the other people. What kind of upbringing, what kind of personality, what kind social influence supports this kind of thing?
I think everyone should just take a break and read a little.
Anyway, so yesterday our heroes Freryn and Oghma were infiltrating Laughing Skull Ruins, in a daring attempt to rid the Mag'har tribe of a problem: recently a shaman named Zorbo had risen to prominence among the Bloodmaul ogres, and was leading them into corruption and atrocity. We were there to end his menace.
Okay, so that's the background story, a little chees-ily done. The short of it was that I was helping Scott with a quest to kill Zorbo the Advisor in Nagrand - despite my portrayal of the situation above, the quest is actually quite an easy one, with the mob being a low-level ogre shaman with no special qualities, and not even elite. So you fight your way through the ruins to him (not a difficult feat), and take him out - report back to Nagrand and bingo, there's 11k xp for you. The area is so over-farmed that Blizzard has stepped up the respawn rate in the zone so that mobs respawn roughly twice as quickly as they normally would (ie in about 2.5 minutes).
Since I know the layout of the zone fairly well, we sneaked into the ruins from a break in the "fence" in the east portion, had to kill a few ogres, but basically climbed the side of the hill that Zorbo lives in - there's a small path that many don't use that wends its way up the eastern face of the hill, and leads down into his cave. We took that way - there are slightly fewer fights. We reached the ledge where Zorbo's cave mouth is, and I began to hear additional combat behind us - from the southern face of the hill (read: the main route to the cave). There was a guardian Ogre Mauler standing in front of the cave, so I sent in Freckles (my Hunter's pet cat) to engage the Mauler, and I slipped past quickly, and tagged Zorbo with an arrow, thus making the server recognize Zorbo as "our" kill (we hit it first, so all XP and loot rights go to us). I didn't realize at the time that just as I winged an arrow into the cave at Zorbo, a second group had attained the ledge, and I'd basically hove in front of them and snagged the kill they were trying to get. Not that it mattered much - it's a little self-serving, but was hardly meant in an unfriendly manner. If they were Alliance (the enemy faction) then I didn't really care, and they should have expected competitiveness anyway. Regardless, the stupid mob respawns in a little over two minutes, right?
The next thing I know, someone has "spoken" behind me. A talk bubble leading from the Character "Pryncess" read "Wow, dickhead much?"
So let me be honest, I can totally understand being frustrated - if that had happened to me, I would have been frustrated too - a little. I probably would have sighed deeply, and said something like "Oh nice" over teamspeak to Scott. And that would have been it, sit and wait for the mob to respawn, kill, go hand in quest. The fact that This person felt the need to swear at me made me feel bad at first, so I said back to them "We can hang around, help you kill him when he respawns." They answered with something to the tune of No thanks, I can handle it myself. Oh, thanks for the blatant kill-steal though.
Now, being fair to myself, it wasn't a kill steal - first off, you can't REALLY kill-steal a general-zone respawnable mob. It'll turn up again in 2 - 5 minutes, day in and day out, for the rest of the run-time of the game. I merely got the first tag, so we got the first kill. They had to wait and get the second one. Boo hoo.
Anyway, I decided not to respond, but just twiddled my thumbs and waited around with them. When he respawned, I politely waited until they'd tagged him, and then added my few arrows to help bring him down. Scott ran in and hit him a couple times too. He goes down, they (there were two of them, but this story only revolves around the one) loot the kill, and then mount up. Then, just as they're runing past us on their mounts, another word bubble appears above Pryncess reading simply "Queerbait mother fuckers" and then they're away down the hill. I attempt to send a private message to him/her, at this point telling him that he's got a seriously bad attitude, but they've already put me on their ignore list - no communication possible.
I have brooded over this incident for almost a day now, and I still can't wrap my head around the mindset that allows for this kind of behavior. As I said, had the situation been reversed (and had I been half a minute slower on my bow, it would have been) I would have grumbled to myself, I might have made a small comment to my friend, but I certainly would not have verbally assaulted the other people. What kind of upbringing, what kind of personality, what kind social influence supports this kind of thing?
I think everyone should just take a break and read a little.