Human Nature and WoW

Ok, I’ve been playing WoW for a couple weeks now, and I gotta say I’m loving it. It has a great sense of humor (like the mission where you have to get to a cave and back within an hour, fighting all the way…while drunk off your ass) and the way the game will ‘slur’ your speech for you when you chat when your character is drunk.

I also the like the checks and balances that are in place. For example, if a Horde raid party attacks, they can only attack you if you attack them first. In other words, when 30 level 70 players show up in Stormwind, you don’t have to worry about getting slaughtered if you’re low level. You can just kick back and watch the battle.

Secondly, if you do attack another player, your PvP flag is set to ‘on’ for about ten minutes…to stop people abusing it by attacking then turning off their PvP flag when they come under attack themselves..

I also like the dueling system where, on a non-PvP server, you can fight other players, but only if both players agree to duel.

Unfortunately, it’s the dueling system that made me want to write this post.

Yep, more multiplayer douchebaggery.

I was using the forge in Goldshire, when someone challenges me to a duel. Because I was busy, I just clicked ‘decline’. Then the dude who challenged me started calling me a ‘chicken’ (among other things), and was basically trying to goad me into fighting him.

So I target the guy to see what level he is. He’s level 60, I’d just got to level 30.

Now let me explain this concept:

No matter how good you are, even if you have the best possible weapons and armor for your level, you don’t stand a chance against someone that much higher than you. If I’d dueled this guy, he’d have had to hit me maybe 3 times to kill me. Long story short, at level 60 this guy could start a duel, leave his computer, go make coffee and not even be at half health by the time he got back.

So I’m watching this guy, who’s randomly challenging people, and I notice he’s only challenging people who have no chance of beating him. Occasionally, a new guy would accept and get killed in a couple of hits…and then the trash talking would begin.

I mean, this guy was really getting into it. He’d trash anyone who refused to fight him, and then trash anyone who did and lost.

It’s this simple: At level 60, to beat the people this guy was challenging, all he’d have to target them and click ‘attack’. No skill, no tactics, just set his character attacking and that’s it. When you can do 1500 points of damage with a single hit, and your opponent can only take 2000 points of damage…you just can’t lose.

Let me just say that, WoW does take a lot of tactics and planning, but it’s got to be said that you can level up a character by just plugging away. It might take a terrible player months longer to max out his character than a good player, but the point is that you can get to level 70 with no skill at all.

Now, I just don’t understand that mentality. I’ve won a couple of duels against people of my own level and won one or two against people a few levels above me. I can understand the satisfaction in winning.

What I don’t understand is how anyone can get any satisfaction from ‘winning’ a contest they can’t possibly lose, or the need to trash talk when your ‘victory’ is like winning a boxing match against a blind guy with no arms.

“Wooo! I clicked my basic attack and watched my character kick your character’s ass! I rule! You suck!”

What really cracked me up is that while this guy was really building up a head of steam, trash-talking a level 5 he’d just one-hit killed, one of my guild-mates walked into the forge.

My guild mate is a level 70 and I told him what was going on. Just for clarity, he’d been playing WoW since it first went live and has pretty much the best weapons and armor available. He challenged the douchebag to a duel.

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right, the guy declined, and when my friend started giving him a taste of his own medicine, he actually said:

“u loser, why don’t you challenge someone ur own level!”

That’s the mentality I don’t understand. Getting far too much satisfaction from winning a battle you can’t lose, refusing to play against anyone that even comes close to being a challenge…and crying foul when someone treats you the way you’re treating everyone else.