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| A Day in the Life of a Pk'er |
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Untitled Document
I can't play World of Warcraft yet (Well, anymore if you count the stress test). This makes me sad. Instead I've been playing City of Heroes. Now, City of Heroes may not be the best game ever, it's kind of repetative, but then again, so is every MMORPG, and I'll even include WoW in with that statement. But anyways, for the Halloween festivities there is an event going on where you get to battle against pumpkin monsters, zombies, witches, vampires, etc. I know Everquest did some similiar events throughout the years, undead invasions and whatnot. Usually these things are pretty fun. In Everquest, there are usually some named type creatures that spawned fairly rarely and there was alot of competition for those mobs. So too there is a boss mob for the Halloween event in City of Heroes, a 30 foot tall Pumpkin King monster. He's really cool; kill him and you get a badge. In fact, the event was really well done. This guy spawns all over the place and everyone that wants to kill him has a chance to. For the most part it works flawlessly.
Not everything with the event worked perfect though. Let me explain. In addition to the monsters, you can go "trick or treating." Basically, you just click on a door, and once about every 45 seconds or so you get a "trick" or a "treat". The treats are inspirations (what a powerup in CoH is called) giving you extra bonus damage for 30 seconds or a quick boost of health up to 50% life, fun stuff. The "trick", on the other hand, is to spawn monsters at the door where you selected. The monsters are the level of the person who got tricked, kind of like you're getting ambushed.
Here is the problem that I encountered. I was with a group of lower level people, we were all trick or treating at the same door. With everyone grouped, the entire group gets credit for killing the creatures, hence you could get the special halloween badges theoretically 8x faster with a full group of people. So after we were there for a while, a high level player came up and started spawning higher level monsters against us. Now, since the monsters that come out the door are freshly spawned they end up "aggroing" on whatever is closest, which happened to be our lower level group. At the time I was exemplared (meaning I was temporarily lower level) so that I could group with the lower level group without stealing their xp. Well I die instantly and everyone runs off, meanwhile this higher level person is laughing his arse off. His "LOL", "ROFL", "HAHA", and "HEHE" mock me from the grave. So I come back, shake it off, shrug off the 30 minutes or so of xp debt he caused me, take off my exemplar (going back to my full level) and kill the monsters that he spawned. I, of course, am quite familiar with greifers. I ignore him, kill all the monsters he keeps trying to spawn in an attempt to kill the low levels.
The problem was that the people in my group were obviously not as experienced MMORPG players as myself, so they pleaded with him: "please stop harassing us," which of course only made him continue. I found it kind of comical in a sense. I saw a person griefing me, usually I'm the person griefing others. I could do nothing about it. I was just as high of a level as the person who was trying to grief the lower leveled people. Hence, I could kill the mobs he was spawning on top of us. But it was still annoying.
This is why, beyond all other reasons, I need PVP combat in World of Warcraft. Here was a guy my level in game (I had been playing all of 2 weeks, about 8 hours a day on average), a jerk, a moron, and all around mean guy. Sure we could have petitioned a GM about him. But that wouldn't have stopped him from what he was doing. No, this guy needed a swift kick in the rear, and I was utterly helpless to do anything about it except to keep killing his monsters over and over (which got me a bit of my xp back from my recent death, however all of the 7 people I was with stopped getting any xp for a good 20 minutes).
I think I handled myself well, I tried to get my group to stop talking to him, which eventually worked. However, it was still a rough night and I imagine it was also for most of them - never having been greifed before. One of them asked me, "Why is he doing that." I told them the only thing I could, "Because he can." Player versus player combat puts player justice in the hands of the people that need it -- the players. Ironically, the server I play on in City of Heroes is called the Justice Server.
Yes, there are those that will prey upon the low leveled people in the game. I count myself as a person willing to do it. It's a war between the 2 factions, and I want my side to win, whichever side I'm playing on. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make the other side lose. As I will be killed by people who outlevel and outgear me. It is tougher to play on a player versus player Server, because chances are you will die much more regularly. Nonetheless, the benefits outweigh the penalties in the end. If you don't believe me that pvp builds communities, look at the population the guilds on the closed beta PVP server. Most of them have been playing together for years, and are willing to play together again in future endeavors. But we're not an inclusive club. All it takes for you to join us is to start up a player, take your learning at the school of hard knocks and level up a character on a PVP server. While there are alot of "old school" guilds together on the PVE servers, there just aren't as many as you'll find in a pvp environment.
Don't be the player who pleads for his enjoyment "Please stop harassing us, just go away." Instead, be the character that saves the group, providing protection for the weak so that they may level up and help you kill your enemies one day. Some people might have just left and disbanded the group in CoH, saying "screw that, I don't want to fight against a greifer." As a PKer, it was my duty and obligation to prevent him from ruining my night and the night of the people who I had been grouped with
You may say, "Isn't that taking the game a bit seriously?" All I can respond with is this. I spent twice as much time playing Everquest as I have in my current career in the military. The military teaches us to do the honorable and righteous thing. To protect the innocent and bring harm unto the bad guys. I've already been doing that in a game before doing it as a job. I love my job, and I love playing Video games with PVP combat.
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