As I sit here listening to some Bob Dylan I’m struck by the audacity of one Mr. Malaby and the too simple view of one Mr. Koster.
Today’s subject is ganking. As my audience isn’t that big, I’m going to assume my readers aren’t the rare chaps you don’t know what that is. On that subject, we first have Thomas Malaby. That man has some cojones, as the saying goes. He first limits his efforts on the topic of ganking to WoW only, which ignores the history and the reality of ganking. He then says…well, let hear it in his words:
What I would like to suggest is that this kind of PvP is meaningless. Or, perhaps more precisely, that the meaning it has is so narrow, rationalized, and improverished that it is outside of, or rejects, the game in which it is situated. Games, as ends in and of themselves, are things that can generate new meanings and experiences. For the ganker, however, ganking is a means to other ends (“Personal best crit!”), not a potentially generative new experience.
For someone to so casually dismiss what other players get out of something to go so far as to call it meaningless, no matter the context you base it and do so continuously throughout the article while saying you’re considering the other side’s argument is so ballsy I can’t really grasp it. Well, that’s a lie. I have quite the ego myself, but at least I pretend to think about others positions.
To Mr. Malaby I can’t really say much beyond, one man’s garbage is another’s treasure. To dismiss what so many do in a game as meaningless over and over really shows a complete lack of understanding. Do me a favor, time warp back to the beginning of UO, play for a couple of years, talk to the PKers (after they kill and res you to kill you again) and maybe consider another’s point of view for a sec.
Raph, on the other hand, I think takes them a bit too simply. I get the impression he thinks of them as misguided children that might be shaped into useful players with the right guidelines. That isn’t entirely untrue (maybe), but his idea for a MMORPG really gets to the crux of the issue:
Once upon a time, I toyed around with the idea of an MMO where you became what you behaved as. If you were a PvPer who always fought only the opposing side, you might become a paladin, a Roland-like hero. If you were a PKer who preyed on the weak, you’d find your avatar becoming that of an ugly troll. If you hoarded wealth in your house, you might find yourself waking up a dragon one day, scored based on how much stuff you accumulated — and required to periodically kidnap princesses and NOT kill them. Each archetypal role would have a ladder of achievement based on fulfilling that role well: the troll would advance precisely by killing in trollish ways (demanding tribute from those who cross bridges, perhaps), and the miner by mining.
In this same concept, I said that true gankers were rewarded by fading into nobodiness, unable to attack or eventually even interact. Blank-faced, and eventually incapable of interacting at all. Insignificant, unranked, not even recognizable. The thought was, if you ever actually did render ganking as meaningless as its victims call it, the gankers would fade away, snarks and boojums all.
First, the idea is so full of holes for exploitation, I don’t even know where to start. That being said, it’s just an idea that isn’t fully fleshed out, so we’ll let it be. But pay attention to the second paragraph, that’s the key. Raph sees ganking, as most do, as a problem to be conquered in gaming. The gankers themselves as the problem, the act of ganking a bad thing that should be curtailed as much as possible.
With those two points of view in mind, lets take a deeper look into gankers and who they are.
Who they are is simple enough. They are people. Be they kids or adults or women or men, they are people playing PCs in an MMORPG. Don’t forget that. Don’t think of them as outcasts or only people living in their mother’s basements. Now, to be fair, they aren’t players of MMORPGs as most of us are. They are people that derive pleasure, in one form or another, from making others suffer. Yeah, I said it. The game for them isn’t about bigger critical hits (you can get that on NPCs), it isn’t about killing in one hit (see NPCs), it’s about inflicting displeasure/pain/etc on another living person.
They enjoy inflicting discomfort upon others in a safe environment. What repercussions are there in a MMORPG that don’t end when you turn the game off? None. So they are free do as they please. And the game for them has become, for one reason or another, about making others in the game suffer. This can be seen in UO, where ganking really started as a mainstream thing, all the way up through WoW, where it still flourishes today. I played a lot of UO before I gave up on it. I played the miner Raph talks about, sometimes in truth and sometimes in disguise to lure the unsuspecting ganker into my clutches. But what did I do when I was cut down in the prime of my life in UO? I asked them res me so I could talk. Some would, some wouldn’t. Some let me tag along and see the world through their eyes. Some ressed me and killed me again. I learned though, I learned they may just be assholes. :D Really, the part they like, is cutting down of others. Destroying their possessions they didn’t keep and cutting up their corpse…just because it looked worse that way. They got off on it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. They weren’t all assholes looking to cause pain and misery. And they all had their justifications. Some said it was “just a game.” other that, “it had happened to them when they were weaker, so now they do it.” and more just killed me when I asked them. Most just killed me and went on their merry way. I suspect more than a little that it was an outlet for lots of people. A way to get back a world that be punishing them in real life. At least in their eyes.
Ganking, and it’s all encompassing big brother griefing, is a part of the game. And to figure out how to respond to it and how to treat those that see it as a valid form of gameplay, you really need to understand it. I would ask that future MMORPG designers not disallow ganking, but that they take a long hard look at what it means to their game. Will their game be as UO was, a bastion of PKers doing as they please because the developers didn’t know how to handle the beast they had created? Will it be a DAOC, where player killing is limited to only those of the other side and hence drastically limited by it’s very nature. Or a WoW PvP server where the game requires you to venture into lands where you might be killed at any moment, but that you can’t skip? Or will it be a game that tries to make a haven for gankers and develop a world around it like Shadowbane?
I’m not calling any of them bad or good, just expressing different types. And asking that you pay attention from the ground up to what you’re actually creating when you create a MMO. A set of rules of people from all over the world to interact with one another. A social interaction device. Yeah, it’s a game, but a MMO is very much more. I think that’s where the basic problem comes in a lot of times. Developers don’t really realize what they are creating in the higher sense of the term.
And most of all, except that no matter what you do, no matter how you do it, you’ll be creating a place where griefers not only exist, but take pleasure in breaking the experience for others. Quite externalizing gankers/griefers as different or as broken. How does the phrase go? You can’t begin to heal until you accept the truth of the matter. The truth of the matter is that gankers are assholes in lots of cases, but they are players and people too. Sucks don’t it.
What Would Matt Do: Love thy brother. Also, tl;dr.
#1 by Perry on November 16th, 2007 - 11:33 am
I do Gank sometimes, It is fun to be the bad guy sometimes. I only do it if someone in the game is rude to me or to others. On the other hand I go way out of my way to help low lvl players of the same faction. I like to take a new player under my wing and mentor them in the game and help them along. Some might say that that kind of compassion is a waste of time and at lvl 70 I should be only playing high end game content. I hate how people are so down on doing something that they do not enjoy. Real life has gankers! People that get power in there hands and take it out on others. It makes the game more realistic. If someone hates gankers they can go and hunt gankers like a vigilante! That sounds fun.
#2 by Alex on November 20th, 2007 - 8:54 pm
To gank or not gank, a game mechanic which many people hate or enjoy. Now it may seem cruel but all in all, its just a game and people need to realize that. Now I do know that some people make it a hobby to gank, many accept that and know that there will always be people who enjoy to gank. But its not like its a dirty practice, it gives the game more things to do, I mean yes questing and doing all that fun stuff with other friends can be neat, but PvP brings something more, it brings a feeling of competitive ideal. Besides if you get ganked by PCs at low level, simply get stronger to either defend others or yourself, or go on a revenge path, kick them PK’s right in the pants and make’em think twice, where they’re PKs, there will be PKKs
#3 by Stan on November 21st, 2007 - 10:25 pm
Considering that the game is a microcosm of the real world, I suppose it’s no surprise that people feel it’s OK to inflict pain and suffering on others. I don’t buy the “it’s just a game” crap because these are not just strategies, they are personalities expressed in a gaming environment. That is real. Ganking because someone did it to me is not only lame, it shows a weakness of character. It is saying that the person who ganked me dictates my behavior. How refreshing it would be for these guys to realize that they are responsible for their own actions regardless of what someone else may have done to them. Those people are playing excuses. At the very least, gankers should be honest enough to say I do this because I’m an asshole. Eventually, they will get what they seek, a reputation that will have people hunting for them to give them the attention they need. I don’t like being ganked because it takes me away from the game for no good reason. There are battlegrounds and arenas that you can use to kill as many opposing faction players as you please. Killing opposition tens of levels below you outside of those areas is just a sign of weakness. I don’t gank because I know how unpleasant it is and see no reason to do impose that experience on anyone. Little wonder there is so much bullshit in the world when we can’t even treat each other decently in a make believe game.
#4 by simulacra on April 15th, 2008 - 1:47 am
i agree with your sentiment. it’s part of the game. it’s a dynamic you have to learn how to deal with, not a sentiment that should be considered unfair or unbalanced. but in the end, when we view this place as microcosm, and certainly since online identity pervades not only MMORPG’s, but blogs and the like, shouldn’t we, as civilized people, some of us with educations that merit that we are responsible to say something when we see something is happening, say that something here is happening that is not unlike what we often see in the real world. that is, to objectify a person, to take power over them without seeing them as a person in the first place, is not warranted the excuse of it just being “fiction”.
I’d say question yourself when you do this. The idea that that’s just the way it is is what leads to reprisal and doing the same things when you’re at the other end of the spectrum. Really it’s just an excuse for a behavior that you know does nothing for a community other then complicate how it should work. That is basically the two parts of this equation. People who indulge themselves, and the people that let them do so because they don’t want to take any responsibility for rejecting that manner of behavior.
the comment above is on point. show me someone and how they treat people when there are no substantive consequences, and I will show you someone who is in a state of nature. ironic that the reason for rules and systems of governanace is to restrict that state of nature (so much so that Burke, Hobbes, and Rousseau were willing to give up so many individual freedoms if only they could live in peace). and I hate to invoke Hobbes to say it, but this has obvioiusly been a human problem throughout the ages in civilization, and it hardly makes any sense to explain it away when it has so many antecedents.
and let me say one more thing, as opinionated as it might be. where do you think a consumer economy will turn when a consumer economy made of actual goods, tangible goods, becomes antithetical to human survival? look at second life, look at wow. cliche as it is, the matrix is not that fictional. this is ultimately where ownership and identity will go when the economy seeks a way to provide goods and services sustainably.
what will happen when acts that are clearly unfair are partaken of by the people who want to indulge, and those smart enough and experienced enough to condemn them have no way to do so with any lasting effect, or they begin to consider it part of being initiated into a society. ultimately people will be drawn to organize collectively and emergently because of this difficulty. but as a microcosm, this works similarly in the real world. look at the debate on global warming. experts say it’s a problem, naysayers don’t think it’s a problem, and the people in power say, w/e it’s just a part of the game we play. in the end we’ll end up dealing with the consequences of the things we could have prevented or worked to address. but if human history is any measure, nothing will change.
in a make believe game, your ethics matters more then anywhere else, because there is nothing forcing you to be ethical or equitable besides your own sense of humanity. ganking is what you do when no one’s watching. if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, the tree still fell. save that, you are taking part in the sentiment of war, the facility of humans to destroy what they have made for no other reason then to see the threads unwind. and one has to question the very purpose of ethics and the nature of it if it does not work when there are no consequences other then the seemingly disconnected results down the line. people will have to be shown a direct relationship to their good will and their good standing and their good ethics, but ethics don’t work that way. they work in populations and trends, not in individual benefits (and when they work for the general population’s good, they’re that much harder to see). connect the individual benefits in a meaningful way and suddenly those ethics become substantial.
if you kill someone more then 20 levels below you, i think you should get a debuff sort of like the debuff you get when you rez at a graveyard. call it “coward” or w/e. it will gimp you for an amount of time that prohibits the behavior. if the person engages you first you won’t get the debuff. if you’re in a group with people 20 levels below you, and on equal standing with the other person you’re attacking, the debuff only applies to the lvl 70 character and only if he participates in healing his party while attacking, or personally attacking the target.
Nietzsche was right. God is dead. That doesn’t mean that if God is dead we can’t suffice to organize and preserve interest in the whole that is also good for the individual, but it seems so much more obvious that our politics are individually based and based on individual satisfaction. Right now, the only punishment you can hope for is what the developers will initiate, and only then when it is a good idea that will not cause people to leave the game, and thus limit profits. In order to preserve the ethic, the relationship to action and consequence has to be evened up.
I have been a Wow player for three years running. Have been at the highest level with the best gear. I have never decided, willy nilly, to purposefully go off and stifle people who couldn’t fight back at me. But I know people who do and people who did. It is, de facto, part of the game. That is not an excuse for it any more then the de facto nature of the manifest destiny and its effects on American history, make the results and the methods used to reach those results any less morally egregious. and the worst thing to do is to take the de facto nature of the way we live, and to believe that it’s nature in the present makes up for any hackles we might have against the methodology that subsumes it. this is a recipe for more of the same, even though we should know better. so often it is not revisionist history that stifles exploration and new ways of thinking of ourselves in relation to others, but revisionist futurity, that states that because of the past, new ways of doing things are ultimately useless. this is why history is a cycle. the things that happened before happen again, and more to say, that the things that happened before people knowingly let happen again.
-peace out
#5 by Susan on May 1st, 2008 - 3:58 am
As an adult and a mother (who plays WOW) I can’t see any respectable adult indulging in ganking. My definition of ganking is the traditional one of gang killing or attacking those at a significant disadvantage (ie already engaged with a mob or three, low health/mana as a result of just having fought off said mobs, significantly lower in lvl than the attacker, etc); essentially bully behavior, which reasonable human beings condemn. I rolled on a pvp server because I wasn’t aware of this practice; I don’t transfer because I have friends on my server and it does cost (real life) money.
However, I do know people who do like to “one-shot” lower level characters sitting around in neutral towns just because they can and can afford the repair bill; I do object to this but don’t view it as badly as ganking people obviously working toward some goal. Still I agree with Simulacra that there should be consequences.
I think when a person engages mobs they should enter a sort of duel mode, where no player can attack them until 30sec after their combat ends. This would allow players who are just trying to quest or grind to do so in relative peace. If a player attacks another they should be put into standard duel mode, where no other players can interfere. This would level the playing field and would actually encourage fair world pvp. There should be very serious consequences for attacking another player who is significantly lower in level. If a player attacks another who is gray they should automatically die, they should have to wait 10min to be able to rez, and their armor should be reduced to 0 durability requiring a rather high repair bill. This would help to discourage a bully mentality and reward the ganker with the same time issue that the ganked character is facing.
While WOW is rated teen, there are other adults and parents who play the game. We have responsibilities; bills to pay, houses to keep, children to feed and educate. We also have limited time for gaming. Ganking is something that wastes time and makes our playtime more stressful and unsatisfying. People make comments such as “reroll on a carebear server” or “quit whining about it”, of course those people would probably be children who don’t have adult responsibilities; they have Mommy and/or Daddy to financially support them. We adult players aren’t whining, we simply don’t want to have our valuable time wasted by people who can’t be bothered to play the game in a just and responsible manner. My household uses WOW is an family activity; it isn’t just a kid’s game. I know some may think I’m taking it too seriously but I’m not, but when one schedules time to play, it really sucks to have to dedicate most of that toward rezzing.
PvP is great for blowing of steam after a long stressful day. I love going into battleground or arena when I’ve had people giving me grief all day; dueling is another great way to pvp and can be done cross faction as well. So this excuse of people ganking because they’ve had a stressful day is nonsense. I view people who gank because they’ve had a rough day as those who come home and kick the family pet or smack the child just because they are in the way.
I know it’s World of WARCRAFT, but even soldiers in real life have codes of conduct that they must abide by.