Arguing in Games

[Murch]

I just spent over 4 hours arguing with this guy on an online game. This isn't an uncommon occurrence. Anyway, I thought this was funny and an interesting technique, the guy accuses me of making a straw man, which I hadn't, then flamed me for making the straw man, over which his uninformed buddies went wild with triumph. Is that making a straw man out of another, imaginary straw man? Has anything like this ever happened to any of you?

[Rooks]

It's part of online gaming.  People are all around idiots, especially when you don't have a filter or repercussions for their actions.  When I played WoW or FFXI, I'd run into people all the time who were just way to high strung.  One little thing would go wrong and they'd start screaming at everyone else.  It's a game.  Play it to have fun, not to stress you out.  Most of the time when I run into people like that, I calmly move on.  Decide I'd rather have fun playing the game then deal with a super high strung individual who takes things like video games way too serious to be healthy. 

[Oramac]

I actually specifically hide the chat window to avoid this.  Having grown up with parents that are extremely involved in politics, naturally I became involved as well.  But the MMO is not a good medium for discussing those things for any number of reasons.  So I usually just leave the chat window hidden.

 

As for other stuff, thankfully, when I was raiding hardcore (40+ hours/week) I was fortunate enough to be in a guild that had relatively little drama.  We did our job, bosses died, everyone was happy. 

[Rooks]

Indeed.  Any games that involved guilds / linkshells / groups of whatever name, I always made sure they were super low key before committing hardcore. 

[Murch]

Wow that sketch was right on the money : D

[Cr33g]

I used to play a lot of Splinter Cell: Blacklist online. I remember when I first started playing, I went into one game where my team mate saw my level (which was quite low compared to his) and instantly over the microphone, he started throwing very vulgar, offensive abuse at me in an effort to get me to leave. 

 

I was going to egg him on through my microphone but I decided to remain silent. I gave the match a go but the opponents were really good, plus it was difficult to concentrate and play with my partner raging so hardcore at me, so I eventually left.