I’ve been running around in World of Warcraft’s open beta for about a week, as you’d know if you’ve been camping this site for fresh post spawns as you should. (news reader = fresh post camping for the afk — The internets kick ass!)
Anyways, what a gankfest that game is. There is a protocol here, people! If I ran into a zombie in real life, I would look around first to make sure no one was camping zombie spawns in the parking lot. It’s only polite. Then, and only then, would I kill said zombie with my car keys.
The gankfest reminded me of an observation I made when I was playing Star Wars Galaxies.
One night, my SWG guild was pharming krayt dragons for guild loot and profit. For the SWG noob, krayts dropped decent loot and craft supplies with reasonable frequency (I mean … drop rate was reasonable compared to the effort, as it should be. EverQuest, I’m glaring in your direction here.)
Problem: the krayts were an uncommon spawn which encouraged gankery, as damage was king in SWG (most damage = looting rights). Second problem: there was another guild pharming krayts that evening also.
As was inevitable, both guilds jumped the same dragon and it was a battle to rack up the most damage before the big bastard died. To be more accurate, the other guild got the dragon first and my guild piled on in a blatant gankery attempt.
As Jack Daniels is my witness, every single ex-EQ member in my guild cried foul in TeamSpeak.
The non-EQers disagreed, continued with their gankery, and chastized the others for backing off. “It’s free for all here”, they reasoned. For crissakes, the other guild was whacking on the thing for a good two minutes before we piled aboard, AND they were tanking the bastard.
The ex-EQers tried to explain MMOG-loot protocol — it’s just not fittin’ to gank at will. First to aggro owns the mob, etc. Hell, we cited all the “rules” of loot pharming, but to no avail; they were firmly of the belief that “might makes right”.
To finish that story, the other guild did get loot rights and, of course, bitched and moaned about the gank attempt. I believe my guild’s official response was “piss off”, but I’m not sure.
What was interesting to me was the universal response of the ex-EQers. We knew that was wrong; even in the online internets world, do unto others, yadda yadda. We had been trained by many levels of hard-ass grinding and fruitless loot camping. We had been on the receiving end of spawn gankery, and didn’t much like it.
Whatever MMOG I play, I’ve always found the best groupmates to be the ex-EQers: they know how to group, they don’t whine much about poor experience or loot, they know their role in the group, etc. I’m not implying cause and effect necessarily. It could be that ex-EQ players would be, by definition, older than noobs to the MMOG medium. Or, it could be that intense peer pressure, in a game where you NEED other players to accomplish anything, improved our behavior.
For much of my EQ/SWG guild coming to WoW, this will be their second MMOG. I’m curious how their perspective on gankery has changed, if at all. Our WoW governing council is largely comprised of ex-EQers (unlike our SWG council) — their greater experience with loot-centric games was largely why they were selected. I expect they’ll be cracking the whip soon and wasting a large portion of their game time resolving disputes over level 15 equipment. (haha, fools!)
I wouldn’t be surprised if our WoW council had to draft a manifesto on expected game behavior. (haha, fools!) You wouldn’t think you’d have to write down a lot of this stuff, but you really do.