"I'm not talking to you"

Sadie has a strict no swearing policy in her guild, this means nobody is allowed to say the f-word (fuck). I got really irate when a guild member who spammed an emote representing breasts in guild chat ||(o)o) this is the emote in question|| told me to watch my language. In any event there is a no swearing policy, so what did Sadie do she got on an alt and swore in guild chat saying "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck." and when an officer told her to watch her language she pointed out that it was her guild. They asked her why she did it, one person jokingly suggested that she was testing us, but she defended her actions by saying that what she did was a really funny for "those in on the joke". Paraphrasing she said "I'm not talking to you, it was an inside joke." This sort of pissed me off so I pointed out that for those not in the know she came across as an immature hypocrite (not in those exact terms) and she replied by telling me that she had not realized I was so immature. I'm still upset by this because I feel she just enjoys being above the law, I think she just likes flaunting her power. Sadie is one of those people who thinks that they are always right and so she was never going to back down so I did but it was disappointing that she did that after her talk about respect at the guild meeting.

She is not the only guild member who did that. One guild member asked for help in the channel and when a fellow member offered it that person snapped "I was not talking to you." Another guild member spoke in a racial language, in WoW ever race except humans and orcs has a racial language that no other race can understand, in officer chat and when I said "A googly googly to you too" he snapped "I am not talking to you." when I pointed out that I would need to understand his message to know that he then said that he had forgotten to change languages after he had posted and that a few lines after he had translated his message. No apology no nothing, not even a recognition that he was sort of unpleasant just an "Oh well I forgot that to change my language and I was in Darnassus." I was so pissed off when another guild meber babbled in guild language I snapped sarcastically "If only there was a language that all the players of our faction could understand, a common language that could enable communication we could call it esperanto or eliza or maybe even common! If only such a language existed."

I was angry for a long time with that guild for making me feel like I was the guild babysitter. I would always answer questions even though much of the time alt tabbing for a few moments and looking the answer to the question would have been just as effective. I felt like I was the only one who bothered to look things up, like I was the only one who bothered to be polite, the only one making any kind of effort and I was sick and tired of it.

Now I tell myself that I am not in charge and I don't have to be and my anger at the guild has sort of diminished. I still answer questions in guild chat but I have realized that I am not the only one doing it, and it's ok that I don't know the answer to a question. I spoke with some of my friends in the guild and they told me that I was not alone in feeling this way sometimes and that my frustrations were not invalid, though I doubt Sadie would aggree with me on that point. Sadie 's not my enemy though and we have had some good times together, she's my friend even though she annoys me sometimes and I don't want to make drama for her.

I still do not know if her guild is the right place for me but if I do leave the guild I will talk with her about it first and I will make sure it is not done in an unpleasant manner and I think that any guild I join after I will want to see how they are before I make the decision to stay. "Guilds are like family" as Sadie once said in that guild members are expected to support one another and be respectful, but unlike family one chooses one's guild and that means one has to be careful how one chooses. I joined Sadie's guild because I thought it was going to be a guild made up of friends and I think she wanted a raiding guild and now that her guild is becoming a raiding guild I am questionning whether or not I still want to be a member. I know that I do not want to be part of a raiding guild and I think that means at some point I will leave, in any event that time has not come so I continue to see how things play themselves out.

p.s. I do not think that Sadie ever misrepresented herself or her guild to me, I think she started it as a place for her friends and then took the guild in the direction she was interested in going. I think she tries to be everybody's friend and she honestly wants to get along with most if not all of the members of her guild. I think she liked Bunny and this is why he got away with being so unpleasant, his lack of manners amused her and so she kept him around and tolerated his stupidity even though other guild members could not stand him simply because he was never unpleasant enough to drive anybody away from the guild.

The story of Bunny

Bunny was a guildie who had the unfortunate bad habit of keeping his caps lock button pressed, this means that HE SPOKE IN CAPS ALL THE TIME no matter what he said. For those of you who don't know using all capital letters in chat is the equivalent of screaming in a face to face interaction. Not only did he keep the caps button on but he always felt the need to type out the lyrics to songs that he was listening to in guild chat. I can understand that sometimes people use caps to indicate frustration, but he was not doing that, it was like he was screaming everything he said for no reason. I found this very obnoxious and so the first few times I saw him do this I asked him to stop, and I asked politely, the conversations went something like this...

Bunny: I'M A LITTLE TEAPOT SHORT AND STOUT

me: Um, hey there Bunny would you mind taking off caps?

Bunny: WHY?

me: Well I find it sort of obnoxious and I would appreciate it if you did not do that

Bunny: HERE IS MY HANDLE AND HERE IS MY SPOUT

Basically he refused to listen to me so I went to see the guild leader and I complained to her telling her that I understood that sometimes using caps could be important but that Bunny was being really obnoxious. She told me that she would speak to him and eventually did. When she did Bunny through a fit and insited that he was not changing to make anybody happy and that if somebody had a problem with him that they should put him on ignore. I was really pissed off at this and I promptly put him on ignore. I thanked my guild leader for her help and that I chose to put him on ignore but that I was not happy about it. My guild leader reminded me that I could not like everybody and that especially in a big guild that lack of manners was to be expected sometimes. I told her my problem with Bunny was that he was rude and unreasonable but that she could count on me to not cause drama and that is what happened. I put him on ignore and then I tried not to think about him.

Then one day my guild was raiding with this new person. Bunny did not like her and he trashed her as much as he could, he said many very unpleasant things about her in guild chat but when she joined the guild he was very polite to her face. His hypocracy really got on everybody's nerves and because he would not stop being both polite and rude behind her back the guild leader kicked him out of the guild. That's when he started badmouthing the guild in trade chat, that is a very public channel. After he did that and was not angry anymore he asked Sadie to be let back into the guild again. He would quit the guild with alarming regularity for no reason and come back as quickly so I think he expected to be let back in again but this time she said no. He got really upset and started begging and so she decided to ask the officers if they thought he should let him back in. He told her that he wanted to apologize so she let him and he then sent an apology to every guild member. I had been offline while the actual drama had taken place and despite my dislike for Bunny, stemming from the fact that he's a rude idiot, I was willing to let him back in provided he had really changed. He spammed his apology to every guild member. Spam is generally considered to be a rude thing so he was apologizing for his rudeness by being rude, interesting approach. In any event I don't think he is back in the guild and I'm hoping he never comes back.

Jerac also disliked Bunny, he felt morons like Bunny were taking over the guild and turning it into a really not fun place. He also felt that Bunny was up to no good and that he and players like him were out to con the guild and take the good honest members for all they could.

Bunny wanted to be the only member of his class in raids so he would not have to compete with other players for the items that dropped, I think he was really mean about that other player because he was jealous of her, she had a hunter and he did not want to have to even contemplate sharing loot with her. One day he told the whole guild why a specific kind of weapon should be usable only by his class: so that he would get it when it dropped in raids and not have to compete with anybody. That kind of attitude is really offensive, he felt he was more entitled than anybody else to get epics and even though he was well geared he still acted like he needed them more than anybody else. To be honest I never want to raid with people like Bunny because they are so unpleasant and stupid.

The beggar and other shorts

One day I was in guild chat when a guild member begged for gold in trade chat and when he was refused he then began begging for other things. When we pointed out that he was begging he got defensive and claimed he was waiting for a friend in the guild who would be willing to help him out. As the debate continued he took offense at the fact that people were asking him to stop. In his eyes he was doing nothing wrong and that is what was most galling about his attitude. Begging in WoW is not well accepted because much like in real life most players have to make efforts to amass (virtual) ressources and begging devalues their efforts and more importanly it undermines them. Why bother doing anything if you can have it handed to you for no effort? Beggars simply profit off of the generosity of others and are veiwed as parasites, profiting off of the efforts of others.

Interesting side note when a random stranger begged for gold in guild chat the guild leader pronounced the behavior as unacceptable, when an individual she knew did the same she half jokingly asked him to stop.

Another day I was riding out of the Undercity when I stumbled across a male blood elf in fur covered bikini briefs and a small fur vest. He purred at me "Hey big boy." having checked out his equipment I said " My that's brief." to which he said "How much you pay?", not entirely sure what was happening I asked "Pay for what?" and that's when he told me "hahaha j/k" indicating that he was only joking. I was amused by the encounter but not fully convinced he was joking. Now I don't hate cybersex or think that anybody who does it is wierd or anything like that but in all honesty I would never think of doing that in WoW, the game is stunning graphically but it's not sexy, the graphics don't turn me on. I'm not sure how I feel about the prostitution that was implied in the random elf's sexual advance, that more than the fact that he was possibly offering ERP (erotic roly play) made it seem skeezy.

Interesting both begging and prostitution are seen as social problems in WoW just as in real life for some of the same reasons. Prostitution is skeezy and in WoW can result in players engaging in sexual activity in public areas which is sort of off putting, if you know what to look for it's depressingly easy to spot a cybering couple especially if they are trying to act some of it out. Begging on the other hand is about profiting off of others and laziness, unlike in the real world people don't have a reason to beg other than laziness or maybe stupidity you can get gold through playing the game and you never really need anything in WoW it's all about what you want for your character. What I mean is that gearing a palding to be a main tank in raids, for instance, is a want not a need cause one's life is not dependant on it. Low level characters can simply wear grey or white gear and don't need greens and higher levels get items as quest rewards.Both selling cybersex and begging are attempts to get in game ressources for minimal effort, although cybersex being a minimal effort can be questionnable... >.> in any event these are two short stories of things that I saw in WoW.

guild meeting

Just after my argument with Pegolas the guild leader called a guild meeting to go over guild rules and regulations. We talked and a bunch of things came out of the meeting.

1) Discriminatory language is unacceptable in the guild, a guild should be a place where people are free to be themselves and not worry about harassment. If something happens put the person on ignore instead of fighting with them and contact the guild leader or an officer in order to discuss what happened so appropriate action may be taken.

2) Helping guild members is done on a voluntary basis, if somebody agrees to help you be patient and wait for them to get around to it.

3)Begging and/or demanding help iis unacceptable we are al trying to play the game and have fun and it is not our responsibility to play the game for you, sometimes learning to help yourself is important

3) Basic principle is respect each other and respect the guild, this helps keep drama to a minimum. This means trying not to spam in guild chat or taking other people's feelings into consideration and also not randomly leaving the guild and expecting to be invited back.

How well these rules have held up is debatable but the meeting did give me a renewed sense of hope. It also made me realize that there were many members in the guild that saw things the way I did, which was good.

A occasion of friendship

I first met Jerac when I changed guilds, I left the guild after all my friends did and eventually lucked out and found the guild they were in. Jerac and his friend Nac were among the first new people I chatted with in the guild. I found that Nac was an unplesantly sarcastic person who annoyed me to no end but Jerac and I got along well. Jerac was a new player and when he would have questions about the game I would try to answer them if I could, I also helped him out occasionally by sending him some gear. While I was helping him he also spent a lot of time with Nac, who I knew was also helping him. I think that my dislike for Nac was fueled in part by jealousy but mostly it was because Nac is a very sarcastic individual and I had never seen him say anything that was not sarcastic. In any event Jerac and I got to be good friends, we did some dungeon runs together, he helped me quest occasionally, we even made alts on another server. Both of us even sort of had the same frustrations with our guild; that there was a bunch of players that was disrespectful, immature, and unpleasant to deal with. At first Nac was one of the few guildies that I disliked but as time went by my list got bigger and it got to the point that I could not even claim Nac was on that list, mostly because Nac was actually pleasant to me. He sent me a few items and when I bumped into him one day in Ironforge he simply waved politely at me. In any event one day Jerac left the server, he transferred his toon off the server and did not tell me about it. The only person he told was Nac, whom he left a deeply hurtful message to. Not seeing Jerac on my friends list I messaged Nac, something I had thought about doing for a while and Nac told me what had happened. My friend had been very angry at the guild for a while and one day in a fit of anger he left the server. Nac was very angry and hurt mostly because Jerac had been a person that he got along well with and that was rare for him. As stupid as I felt that he had left and not told me I felt sorrier for Nac who had lost one of the few close friends he had made in the game. On a hunch I went to the other server, the one we made alts on and he was there, he was friendly and he was almost acting like nothing had happened. He told me that he felt the guild had provoked him into leaving the server and I really had no idea what to say to him. I'm stilll not sure what to say. Speaking to Nac and then later Jerac I saw a completely different side of my friend, I saw him as petty and vindictive and I felt it was as if I had never really known him in the first place. I'm torn, part of me wants to move on and forget I ever knew him and another part of me wants to hang out with him but I know it can never be like it once was between us. One good thing that has come out of this is that I am friends with Nac, once I got to know him I realized that he was a good guy if somewhat sarcastic and I now know that he never really meant to upset Jerac, which was mybiggest problem with him.

Arena of Anguish

Last night Jaer invited me to do a group quest with him and I discovered he had told the team that I was one of his guild's best DPS. That filled me with pride because he had never seen me as ret and he accepted that I would be good DPS on faith. Also he boosted my confidence by showing me some DPS meters in whisper and she showed me that I was doing well and he made sure I understood that. Yesterday and the conversations I have been having with him recently have made my feel much better about his guild. I felt isolated and now it's been confirmed that nobody ever meant to make me feel like an outsider. Even though we don't talk all the time like we once did Jaer and I have regained some of the closeness that we lost when guild drama threatened to tear the guild apart. I also realized that I was unfair with Jaer, I know that we will be friends for a long time to come and that sometimes we may not hang out together much and sometimes we will hang out more and that's just how things are.

My presentation

These are the notes I based a presentation of my project on. My prof told me that while my idea and my method were interesting that I have to present more than some episodes I need a story line and I agree with him. My project is still a little bit unfinished but this should help illustrate what I wanted to get from it.

I started this project with the intention of studying player versus player (PvP) gaming in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) World of Warcraft (WoW) but the honest truth is that I don’t know more about that now than I did when I started. While I was thinking about how best to approach my subject I got distracted by my life in the virtual world. I realized that I did not understand the technical aspects of game play well enough to relate to my chosen subject and more importantly that the auto ethnographic method that I chose was not suited for the task at hand. That’s when I began to look for another subject. I debated studies of gaming practices, tanking on my paladin, spec and the effort that players put into perfecting their characters. I even contemplated talking about guilds as social units in WoW but I realize that while all of those subjects were interesting they were not what my project was about. And then it hit me: scholarship has a very poor idea of what people do in online games. This project is an attempt to provide some raw ethnographic data that could help fill in blank spaces.
My interest is not to represent what all WoW players do at all moments in the game, not is it even to represent the totality of my gaming experiences; instead my goal is to evoke the realities of the Azeroth, the virtual world that is the setting of WoW. Unlike much of the other work I have read on virtual worlds, I am not looking to define or explain, my goal is more modest than that; it is very simply to describe, to relate, to evoke another reality. While the work that I have read on virtual worlds is interesting and valuable it has been highly theoretical with ethnographic data there mostly to illustrate theoretical points. My project is an impressionist tale, stories that stand alone without needing elaborate theoretical framework. In order to facilitate comprehension I will focus more on the social aspects of gaming and less on the technical ones, that is to say my stories will be about the social networks and relationships that form in the game adding in more context specific elements as needed. My method is thus simply to tell stories as I remember them, World of Warcraft does not allow me to make chat logs so I do not have records to fall back on even if I wanted them; these stories are my memories retold so that they will make sense to somebody other than me.
This is a story that I have yet to put in my blog, it is a story that I have not really told to another person, a story about an encounter that I had with a fellow guild member. In World of Warcraft, guilds are stable organizations of players, in other words informal associations made up of and run by players. As a member of a guild you can turn to fellow members when in need of assistance or advice and are expected in turn to help others in need. While it is not expected that all guild members will become friends, they are generally expected to get along with each other and friendships between guildies is pretty standard, more so in a smaller guild than a larger guild. Because World of Warcraft is such a big game often joining a guild can be the easiest way to meet people; there is a chat channel for guild members to chat with each other in appropriately called guild chat and as a fellow member players will be more inclined to want to socialize with you, at least that’s how it’s been in my experience. In many ways Guilds are the basic social unit of WoW.
I was chatting with a guildie named Pegolas in guild chat about Death Knights, I had just had a negative encounter with a player whose character was one, and he said “Noob DKs are fags.” The term noob or newbie is a derogatory term, it refers to players who are not interested in making the effort to learn how to play the game and demand that other players assist them instead. The simple truth is that because there are more people playing Death Knights than any other class, there are more noobs playing them, so he was basically saying “noobs are fags.” Unhappy with what he said but at that point unwilling to get into an argument I pointed out that his choice of words was questionable. He justified his choice of words by claiming that they were accurate and that’s when I lost my temper and told him that as a gay man I found his choice of words offensive. He then got defensive and told me that if I was so easily offended then maybe I should rethink my choice of guild. At this point I was really insulted and seriously contemplating leaving the guild, but fortunately some of my friends in the guild spoke out in my defense. It’s then that Pegolas asserted that he was not using ‘the homo term’ and that where he came from calling a person a fag was like calling them stupid and then complained that I was making a fuss about nothing.
People use the term gay to mean stupid or unfair all the time without ever thinking about the other connotations of the word and Pegolas could not understand why I got so offended. A few other guild members agreed with him and I was encouraged to ‘move on and forget about it.’ In my time in World of Warcraft I have seen complete strangers randomly insult other for no real reason other than that they can and fag is the insult of choice. Playing the game I learned pretty quickly to tune out certain chat channels and to dismiss and ignore rude people out of hand, but when a fellow guild member used the term in guild chat I was unprepared to let it pass. When Pegolas claimed I was making a lot of fuss about something that was ‘just a word’, one of my friends, a guy named Jerac, pointed out that if he had not used the term there would not have been a problem in the first place. It is then that the guild leader stepped in; first she found out what happened and then she told the guild in no uncertain terms that using racist or homophobic remarks was unacceptable. She also asked that we not fight in guild chat but that if we had to argue that we should do so in whispers, that is private chat.
My guild leader’s intervention ended the discussion in guild chat but I whispered some of my friends to thank them for their support. I was having trouble with some of my quests so Jerac offered to come and help me. As we teamed we talked about what happened, I explained to my friend that if Pegolas had recognized what he did and apologized for it I would not have reacted the way I did. Jerac understood where I was coming from and he explained to me that he had a gay brother whom he was very protective of IRL and then we quested together. Later that day Pegolas messaged me to apologize and I accepted his apology. He told me that he was sorry that he had offended me; he made sure that I knew he had not meant to and I assured him that I did. It turns out that Jerac and Pegolas had a talk about our fight in guild chat and Jerac explained to Pegolas why I had gotten upset.
This is a story about misunderstandings and assumptions; both Pegolas and I imagined that our fellow guild members thought the same way we did. When I tried to justify my reaction to Jerac I told him that I should not have to tolerate insults or homophobic comments from fellow guild members and I’m willing to bet that Pegolas got defensive because he felt I should have understood what he meant. In both cases we imagined the guild to be made up of likeminded individuals and were shocked to find out that another person saw things differently. Pegolas is not the only person who ever used terms like fag or gay without thinking of what they are saying, but I bet if I spoke to other gay WoW players they would tell me that it’s remarkable that he apologized. My story, however, is just the account of a little argument I had with a guild member on an RP server of a game called World of Warcraft. I guess that’s my story, I have not spoken much with Pegolas since the incident though I see him in guild chat.

Why I respecced

I have changed from Prot to Ret, I am a tank no longer. Mostly I changed because of the recommendations of a friend of mine who told me that she liked Ret so much that leveling 2 rep pallies was a pleasure.

I made up with my guild leader and we talked about what happened and I have made my peace with it. It turns out he did not want to tell me his opinion because he knew how much I liked being a protection paladin and did not want to tell me how to spec.

One other element was that he eventually admitted that as DPS there would be more room for me at guild events.

I still miss my old spec,. I mean I was protection from level 10 to level 76 but I want to give ret a fair shot. I think I will have to see my spec in a dungeon to really figure that out though so i am giving myself the space to do it.

The (un)kindest cut

My guild leader Jaer and I got into a fight yesterday. I participated in a raid, that's when I realized that raiding was maybe not for me, it's hard work and if everybody is not where they are supposed to be then the whole group can wipe. It can be very stressful and I am not sure I want to deal with that kind of stress on a regular basis. I had been feeling like some of my guild members have been talking behind my back but trying to tell myself that this was not the case. The first time a random guild member told me I would enjoy a different spec I did not think much about it but then everybody talking about death knight tanks, being told three times in a day that "tanking is a big responsability" with that unspoken "I don't think that you can handle it", Jaer's hesitation to let me in the raid in the first place... I'm angry because they talked behind my back and not just in passing, they expressly went off to the side to talk about me and it hurts... Jaer told me that they did not mean to hurt me, and that they did not say anything bad about me and no matter how bruised my pride is I can't help but try to understand where everybody is coming from... I understand that Jaer was hesitant to tell me how he felt because he did not want to insult me, I understand that I could probably do ok as DPS on a raid because I can follow orders well enough and not quibble about it too much, I understand that my guild leader needs me to not be a dork about this, still... I wish he could have told me... the truth is I am not even that attached to my spec and even now as I am still a little defensive I am contemplating a respec. The thing is if it's "he respecced cause he can't cut it as a tank" I am not sure I even want to play the game anymore. Maybe I would enjoy playing ret more but right now I am still upset and respeccing while I feel like shit is a bad idea.

Bottom line: I can change my spec, it's not the end of the world if I do, I may try it out... I can't say I am not curious... to try ret