Okay, so I had to join the stupid Leonidas bandwagon as well (google image for some laughs), but since I'm gonna rip noobs apart in today's blog it would only be appropriate. I mentioned playing an MMO in a previous blog, right? Okay... anyone who's played any online game for any length of time will most likely have encountered people with IQs lying on the left side of the Bell curve.
Far to the left.
Now, it doesn't take a friggen' genius to play these games, but one side effect of appealing to the lowest common denominator (i.e., the graphics whores) is that you get people who have no clue how to behave on the internet. Or maybe they do, it's just that they left their marbles at home. Or something.
[ 1 ] People who don't read the goddamn instructions and complain about not knowing how to do stuff. There's a manual somewhere for most game, or docs, or online help, or in these degenerate days, forums (I say degenerate because forums allows lazy devs to shove the responsibility of providing "help" onto other players). The game I'm talking about, Flyff, is - as I may have mentioned - an engrishly translated Korean title, with all the cliches of same (including no manual).
Thusly, being a SMART player, before I dove in I headed over to the forums, checked out a couple of sticky threads, looked at what provokes 20+ page flamefests, and glanced through the bugs reports... and I was set. Took all of 2 hours, tops. This allows me to NOT stand my character around in town yelling for help, or begging for items and money. If I was a genius I could understand lesser mortals' need to stoop to such depths, but frankly speaking I'm just a regular person - albeit one who uses her brains and common sense. The forums, by the way, are also chock full of people who post on 20+ page threads questions which have been answered zillions of times before, often in the immediately preceeding post. I don't know what the hell they're thinking. Or maybe that's just it, they DON'T think. In today's "me, me, me" society, people don't care to read other's questions but want their own questions answered NOW. Well, you can take that egotist attitude and shove it sideways up where the sun don't shine.
My conclusion is that, if I am not a genius and just a regular person, then the people who do such things must be idiots and morons. It's not illegal to be an idiot, but if you're on a PK server then god help you, because you're going to piss off so many people that you'll be eating so much dirt you're gonna be able to fill wells all by yourself.
[ 2 ] The social aspect. Now, most of you MMO players are aware that characters come in multiple types, or job classes - from those whose primary function is to heal and support others, to those whose job is to tank and dish out the damage. True to form, my characters tend to be support characters, albeit dealing with idiots daily usually turns them (me) into a permanent PMS rage case.
Imagine this: you're in a party (a group of characters exploring together), and then some idiot comes up to you (the party healer), and demands healing or buffing. How hard is it to type my name, or say please? "Hi Celine, can u heal me?" Hell, I've even mellowed to the point where I won't take offense to a curt "heal plz". But again, timing. Say your friends are in the middle of a battle, and you're busy healing them. Now imagine said idiot coming up to you and begging you for healing, repeatedly. Worse, demanding it. Worst of all, following you around. It's like a beggar walked up to you in real life and started hustling you, and following you around. "Man, gimme a dollar. C'mon, just a lousy dollar. One more dude, I saw your fancy car, you can afford it." And imagine you're out on a date, and this moronic beggar keeps pestering you, following you into the mall, etc. These kind of people are only alive because it's illegal to kill them.
[ 3 ] Partying. My beef is mostly with stupid tanks @ meat shields. I'm the party healer, so my job is to keep you alive. Your job is to kill monsters WHILE taking other party members into account.
Let's say an aggresive monster (agro) spawns nearby and starts to attack me, the healer. Okay, look at the situation. Is it weak enough that I can survive a few bites? If not, can you spare a second to get it off me? If not, am I too busy healing that I can't run? If I run, do you think you can still finish your current target safely, or do you need to run too? By the way, I will always say "run" if I have to bail. I've never abandoned a party member just like that without warning. See, I'm not some stupid player who just spams the heal spell but freaks out when disaster strikes.
Let's say the agro spawns and then attacks you, who are already dealing with another target. Does this force me, the healer, into heal lock? (i.e. I can't do anything but heal you because if I stop to move or do anything else, you're dead meat). And ffs, if you've killed your target, take out anything agro first before moving on to other targets. I recently partied with this moron who'd get into the habit of having a couple of agros chewing on his ass but he'd still go attack something else. I pointed it out politely, and then when this advice was ignored I let him die a couple of times to let it sink in. Just because a healer (me) is there, doesn't mean you can take stupid risks. What if I lagged? What if I got into heal lock, but then had to run when another agro comes after me? I'll save my own skin first, after all as a healer I can resurrect you, not the other way around. You dying = minor, easily remedied inconvenience; me dying = you and the rest of the party are screwed.
What if we had several others in the party which I need to take care of as well? It becomes even more important that you try not to become a pain in the ass. Sure, inevitably there'll be some moron who gets into trouble because he's too stupid to figure out how to stay out of it, but it doesn't have to be YOU.
Like positioning. I can only heal you when I can SEE you and click to target you. If you stand on the same spot as the monster (especially the big ones), sometimes I can't target you (because the stupid game isn't smart enough to know that I want to target YOU, even though it'll complain if I cast heal while a monster is targetted). Or, if there are 2 or more party members fighting together, GET OUT OF EACH OTHERS' WAY. I can't stress this enough. Many people just click to run up to the monster and whack at it. What doesn't get through your thick skulls is that when both of you do this, you'll often end up standing on the same spot. Again, I can't target either of you correctly with precision. I might heal your friend by accident when I mean to target you. So make goddamn sure to learn to flank monsters. In certain games flanking even brings other benefits (not in these crap fluffy MMOs though). Not standing in your friend's face means I can target you with confidence and heal you.
A related issue is area-of-effect (AoE) damage. Some monsters have this type of attack. Say a humanoid-type monster, and it spins around in a circle slashing people around it. Ok now, most, if not all, monsters can have only ONE target. They will conveniently keep attacking that target, allowing me to concentrate healing on him. Now, if you also need to go up close to fight, and the monster is NOT targetting you, but you are taking AoE damage (e.g. from the spin slash example), then move out of the goddamn way, or reposition yourself so that you can attack the monster without getting hit by AoE. After all, my healing priority will be your friend who's being targeted by the monster. AoE damage is something you can deal with by yourself, simply by getting out of the way, or healing yourself by eating some of all that junk food items you lug around.
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Those points are merely, like, common sense. I'm no leet online gamer, hell most online games are shooters and I despise them and don't play them, which means most gamers probably have more online gaming experience than me. Yet I consistently see stupid people in MMOs, getting themselves and their friends into messes which they could have easily avoided. You can't all be 12-year olds playing hooky from school. Why are there so many idiots out there?
Also, a little reading of the forum goes a long way to "edumacating" yourself. Why people feel the need to yell in-game for help, when the answers have already been posted? Think about it: if somebody ingame was sh!tting you, you'd have no idea. However, on the forums, posts get moderated, or other people post clarifications and corrections. False info won't stay up for long, unless the game is crap and nobody bothers to find out whether something is true or not.