The Delicate Art of Causing Grief
Other than actually playing and enjoying the game for what it’s worth, my favorite thing to do with online games is to make other people miserable. Before WoW, I’ve played all sorts of different games. Sure, killing people is the easiest way to annoy them, but there’s tons of other ways to cause grief too!
In Infantry, I’d sabotage my own team by driving vehicles full of party members into deathtraps or destroying our own walls and bunkers. In MUDs, I’d find mazes or rooms with no exits and summon people there. You know, just so I wouldn’t be lonely. I also loved leaving poisoned food and explosive traps in newbie zones. When I was about to lose in games like WarCraft and StarCraft, I enjoyed sending my men to the most random parts of the map to hide and build worthless buildings. I’d make my opponent work for his win, forcing him to scan the entire map for me, which could take several minutes. Or even over an hour. Sometimes, playing “hide and seek” forced the other player to quit and hand me the win because he simply didn’t have the time to deal with my childishness.
I don’t know why I like to grief people. It’s just fun! And I try not to think about it. I’m sure there’s some deep sociopathic disorder associated with it.
Well, last Saturday, Miguel, Camron, and I were running around Mal’Ganis, doing stuff for the Fire Festival, when we arrived at the quest An Innocent Disguise. It started out as a crabtastic good time, but ended in screams, laughter, blood, and tears. Not particularly in that order.
It all started when I accidentally aggroed the mobs needed to complete the quest. They wouldn’t get off me so I nuked them. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Hell, I was spending most of my time chasing down and killing Alliance that wanted to get the quest done. Then I noticed more and more Horde appearing, waiting to finish the quest. I was ready to head out when one of them flipped out about the mobs being dead. Instead of taking off and continuing our Fire Festival journey, the three of us decided to stick around and see what happened if we kept killing the mobs.
The quest goes as follows: Use some orb to turn into a crab, listen to nagas talk about some evil plan, get out of crab form and warn the elders!
But with a bunch of dead nagas on the beach, all that’s left are a herd of angry crabs. When I [Drilnos] started killing the nagas, Camron [Sukophantes] joined in. This made Miguel [Sangre] laugh so much that he couldn’t help but play with us. In the process, we pissed off several people. How many exactly, I’m not sure. I did a “/who Ashenvale” and saw about fifty level 70’s nearby. Most of the time, Miguel and I stood back while our pets/totems did the work. Camron, on the other hand, kept stirring the pot, pointing fingers at random people and pretending that he was “one of them” and just there to finish the quest. We got so many threats, insults, and pathetic pleas for us to stop that I don’t even know where to start. Luckily, I took screenshots! Here, you can click on random ones and try to figure out the chaos for yourself. It’s in chronological order in case you want to watch the whole thing play out.
After about two hours of holding people hostage at crab beach, Alliance eventually got the best of us. As someone pointed out, “STOP ATTACKING ALLIANCE! They’re here to kill the retarded griefers!” Which meant some Horde player called in his Alliance buddies to take us out. It makes me feel kind of popular and pretty good about myself that someone actually went out of their way to plan our assassinations.
We could have kept people there longer but Camron’s internet went bananas, and Miguel and I couldn’t run back to our corpses fast enough. We still had the last laugh. The same Alliance that someone brought in to help the Horde ended up slaughtering everything in sight! When we got back, all the remaining Horde were dead. It was so beautiful, so poetic! The cherry on top of our two-hour charade! I ended up logging off because it was impossible to resurrect without dying. When I came back thirty minutes later though, the Alliance were still there killing people. It makes me wonder which one of us was the lesser evil.
Throughout the entire thing, I had the Benny Hill theme song playing in my head. Well, that and the Mikado’s “Three little maids from school” song. It was just one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in WoW. The incident left me in tears with a hurt gut from all the laughter. Here’s to hoping I’ll have a chance to do something so absurd again some day.
Anyways (as mentioned above), Midsummer Fire Festival is here!
I didn’t think I’d be so into this WoW event, but some of the prizes they’re offering are really cool!
Like Vestment of Summer, Sandals of Summer,
and the ever-pleasant Brazier of Dancing Flames.
I already collected all those items with my warlock because I’m a nerd with nothing better to do with my time. I’m slowly working on it with my druid.
Damn, I need to stop playing this game so much.
I need to find a job with a time schedule where I can play with all you cool kids.
ROFL I couldn’t stop rolling on the floor laughing! CRAB PEOPLE??
I love your writing style, by the way, I’m always entertained with how you word things
Too bad you don’t blog more often =/