Does A Troll Crap In Your Game?

Syp threw out some of his least favorite MMO terms this morning and what stuck out to me was that our MMO-lexicon is heavily centered around the negative, specifically being negative toward other players. Noob, L2P, Fail, Pwn… all meant to describe some sort of failing (correct use here) in someone else.

I was taken back for a moment. Sure, many of the people that use such negative language toward other players tend to be trolls who get off on causing trauma to other players, but many of these same people also say that they are Hardcore players and that they only want the best for a game. They gripe at developers because they, the player, know better what to put into the game. They gripe at other players, because they the Hardcore player know best how to play the game.

This perspective is amazingly short-sighted. Community often weighs into the deciding factor of whether or not a player stays with a game, and if the community blows players are not as likely to stick around. And if players stop playing a game, they stop providing revenue to the developer. And if the developer starts losing money, then the game is much more likely to close down. And if they don't close down, they'll start making changes that appeal to those players that left so as to bring them back rather than changes that current players want.

Yet the trolls continue in their unending parade of hate-spewing. It's mostly amusing to those of us who have been around for a while, but to newcomers to the genre it is very shocking.

There are games that aren't filled with vile individuals. I can't recall running into anyone nasty or Troll-like in Lord of the Rings Online. But practically every other game I've touched has had a Troll problem, be it minor or rampant. In some cases those Trolls were the reason I left the game. Unfair to the developer, for sure, but I can't be bothered with handling Trolls at every corner.

What can a player do? Well, we can turn off general chat channels, but then we may have a harder time finding groups or selling our junk. We could make liberal use of the /ignore feature, but you are often limited in the number of people you can have on ignore at any given point. We could become Troll fighters, but the only thing a Troll loves more than an innocent new player is an argumentative veteran player that will engage him/her. So I'm not really sure there is much we can do except plead with the general gaming population to just stop being jerks.

So, in that vein, stop Trolling and get back to playing please! If you're bored, go play another game. If you've "conquered it all," go play another game. If you're just sooo badass that you have to tell everyone about it, I'm gonna guess that you probably need some ExtenZe because you're obviously compensating for something else.

- Dickie