Sterny’s Completely Useless Guide to MMORPG Idiots.
Just like the Universal Constant or Pi, it is a given that a vast percentage of the people you will encounter in your travels through the MMORPG worlds are idiots. But, like craft beers or fine wines, there are different flavors, bouquets if you will, of idiots, which must be sampled before you send them back to the virtual cellar with a strongly-worded note of protest.
It’s also true that even the most competent of players have flashes of idiocy, and I must admit I have my own crippling weakness – my “duh” moments, if you will – and that involves maps and directions. “Enemy incoming!” I cry in Vent, eager to alert my comrades of the incoming danger. “Where are they?” they ask, and I freeze. East? North? South? Southwest? Two degrees off the port bow? I have no clue. “Uh,” I stutter, “Over…there? By the big statue that looks like a knight holding a moldy sausage?” By this time, of course, the enemy coming in from the EAST has already overrun us and my attempt to be alert and proactive has been completely and utterly wasted.
I am similarly impaired when it comes to giving directions. I am a visual navigator – I know you go about sixty steps “thataway” until you reach the aforementioned Statue of the Moldy Sausage and then you go left and walk up the hill. A person without my Directional Dysphasia would say “go west to the statue and then turn south.” This is especially irritating because I am steeped in maps and geography through my academic training; I can point out the location of the Battle of the Bulge on a map without a moment’s thought, trace the line of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain in my sleep, but if you plopped me down on the heaths of northern England with a map and compass I’d wander around uselessly trying to find civilization until a kindly shepherd would direct me to a gas (or petrol, I suppose) station.
So, there is my personal confession of idiocy. That does not mean, however, that I cannot diagnose idiocy in others, which I hereby do with great glee.
1 ) The Max Level Noob Idiot. Now all of us were newbies at some point, sitting down before our keyboards and mice with trembling hands while “Mad Dark World of WarCheese” loaded. We blundered around aggroing mobs, stealing kills, asking inane questions in world chat, and generally being clueless until we learned through harsh experience which button was “Hit Weeble With Sword” button and which one was “Flash Little Old Lady.” But have you not encountered the level 60 noob? The one who is max level but still a complete idiot? Somehow, like the apocryphal monkeys with typewriters composing Shakespeare, this person managed to hit level cap through some accident of fate – perhaps he just kept killing monsters outside of towns with some dogged stubbornness until it dawned on him that the little red xp numbers stopped hovering over his head. Now he’s asking for groups and trying to get into dungeons. He has no idea how to do anything. “Taunt,” you tell the Perpetual Noob tank, and he replies “What? What’s that?” “Heal,” you scream at the Noobish Healer, and he responds by casting his level one Fix Owie spell because “he doesn’t have the big ones on his task bar ‘cause they take up too much space.” Run, and run fast, away from these sorts, because inevitably they will win the Purple Hammer of Nutcracking in the loot roll-off and become the most incredibly geared-out clueless noob in the game.
2 ) The Guy/Girl Playing a Friend’s Character Idiot. A flavor of above, this sort of idiot is wandering around with a geared-out max level character on loan from a friend or relative. “Aha!” you think when forming your PvP/dungeon group, “I know BozoBrain the Mage! He’s good, we’ll invite him.” At first you’re puzzled. You try to chat with BozoBrain about the last dungeon run you had with him and are confused by the silence. Then you hit combat and realize BozoBrain is casting his AOE “Nuclear Toejam” spell on monsters the tank hasn’t even pulled yet. The group wipes and you frown. “Hmm,” you think, “BozoBrain is usually really in top form. I wonder what’s wrong.” Your concern turns to annoyance as BozoBrain wipes the group four more times – again, without saying a word – and then you finally kick him from the group with a harsh curse. Of course, the next day you meet up with BozoBrain and give him crap about his rotten performance and he says “Oh, I let my brother play my character yesterday. Sorry.” You fume for a minute but then have a moment of pure evil joy when he squawks to you, “Hey! That jerk sold my purple Boots of Asskicking! And all of my Potions of Deadly Halitosis!” You smile gently to yourself.
3 ) The Drill Sergeant Idiot. This person is a leader of men, a paragon of warriors, fearless, brave, determined, and completely stupid. He’s the one in area chat during a keep attack shouting out inconsequential and contradictory orders. “Get on the ram! No, kill the guards! No, half of you go to Other Location and scout for the enemy!” A stream of clear and completely useless directives stream out of this individual, who by right of possessing opposable thumbs and a tenuous grasp of the English language is therefore (in his or her own mind) uniquely qualified to command others. At first you’re pleased that someone seems to be taking charge of the herd of cats which is your usual collection of players and at least giving some sort of cohesion to the horde. You’ll get increasingly uneasy, however, as it dawns on you that Mr. Commander Sir is clueless. His orders will increasingly seem to be rather odd – why attack the guards who keep re-spawning over and over and not break down the door? Why drop the attack and go over to the other side of the map to grab some other objective? Why is he ordering the healers up the stairs to attack the Big Nasty with their Stunning Sneeze spell and holding the tanks back? At that point you’ll realize that the Other Group – the one which isn’t talking but calmly chopping down objectives one after the other – is the one to follow and that Mr. Commander Sir is a complete idiot. A special flavor of this idiot will squawk as everyone abandons their group that you should “listen to me, I’ve read Sun Tzu.” Those are especially odious and should be put on your /ignore list. Everyone knows Clausewitz is a better read anyway.
4 ) The Friendly Cheerful Accident-Prone Idiot. The most common statement you’ll hear from this sort is “Aw, I’m sorry, guys.” It’s hard to hate this sort. They’re always friendly, always cheerful, a genuinely nice person, but under it as competent as a big St. Bernard. They’re the ones who body-pull the Capo Di Tutti Capi by trying to jump onto the top of a statue next to the monster so they can “take a cool screenshot.” They’re the ones who accidentally loot the purple Sword of Castration on their mages because they pressed the “Need” instead of the “Not Need” button. You scream at the screen at every boneheaded move these sorts make but if you let loose even the vaguest murmur of criticism they burst into tears. It’s like clubbing a baby bunny; they’re so cute and fuzzy, a cheerful little forest creature with Bambi eyes looking dewily up at you, that you relent and find yourself facing down GothLady Vampiria the Angsty with Dingleberry the Cleric as your only healer and swallowing down that pit-of-the-stomach feeling that you’re doomed.
5 ) The “X” Specialized “Z” Idiot. This flavor of idiot has chosen a spec for his or her character which defies understanding. Now I’m in favor of unusual specializations, going against the common wisdom, as it were, to find your own best play-style. But there are choices which are completely without sense. This person is the warrior who has, for some reason, decided to skill up Toss Knife and insists he’s a ranged class. This person is the healer who insists that his Buff Brawny and Induce Splinters spell makes her the perfect melee class. This is the person who has a rogue but doesn’t put a point into stealth, the archer who specs melee, and the mage who decides to spread his points evenly through all spell lines to be “balanced.”
6 ) The Stupid Character Name Idiot. Now, character names are a touchy subject. We often carry the same name through many games so that we are easily identified by friend and foe. Some of those names are silly, some cool, and we are often forced to make variations: “PuffBall” might be taken, so you take “PufBal,” or “Poofbull,” or any variation thereof which approaches your ideal. But idiocy rears its ugly head in character names to an extreme degree; the first flavor of this is a character name from some popular culture/book domain. Legolas, Legolaz, Legolas2, Legolas3, LLeggolass...if it weren’t so irritating it would invoke pity, pathos akin to watching a legless puppy flop its way towards a bowl of food. Then, of course, there’s the Unnecessarily Long Not Easily Typed Stupid Name syndrome. A name like “SirPoopsieOfFluffington” does not fit this archetype – although it is completely silly and stupid – because it’s easy, at least, to type. No, in this case I vent my ire on Firzglobrimonfirzick, because inevitably this type of idiot not only has an incredibly nonsensical name but also gets belligerent if you ask them to /send you a tell so you can spell the damn abomination of letters they chose. Finally you have the Nasty/Sexual Name Idiot – including gems like IBloUrDad or MsSexiBoobiez. Now everyone’s allowed to be immature or stupid once and a while, but what really enrages me about this particular flavor of idiot is that when their names eventually get banned or changed, they phase into Righteous Indignation Idiot mode – “Y u appeal my namez? U have no sinse of humr.” Look, IDIOT, if you’re going to create a character with a dickheaded name like that, EMBRACE the ban. LIVE the ban. Hold the ban close like a long-lost lover. God alone knows that it’s the closest you’ll ever get to a reasonable facsimile of a member of the opposite sex.
7 ) The last idiot I’ll mention (but not by any means the last sort of MMORPG idiot, because their numbers are legion) is the Level 50 Board Warrior Idiot. Now I’m willing to admit I’ve leveled a little vitriol on game boards from time to time – especially on class-specific boards against “visitors” which represent other classes and spout off on topics of which they have little knowledge – but in this case I’m talking about someone who spends far more time on the forums than actually in the game itself. It’s irrelevant if this idiot has ever leveled any character up to cap, or experienced any advanced content; no, to this brave soldier of the keyboard, what’s important is winning arguments on the game forums. In his left hand he wields the Nerf Summoner, which he believes immediately conjures a developer to heed his most eminent wishes; in his left he wields the Wand of Incoherent Illiterate Indignation, with which he so completely mangles the language that one cannot quite tell what the Hell he’s talking about. With blazing speed he argues with everyone about everything, claiming his superiority over all with the contempt born of possessing the most rudimentary intelligence. Screeching his ignorance all over the boards, peppering his manifestos with threats of quitting the game and how much his “influence” on others will spur a drastic drop in subscriptions, this idiot is as tiresome as he is impotent. Furthermore, like rotting meat attracts maggots, this idiot will form a entourage of fellow idiots who echo his words like the mindless chorus of flautists who surround Azathoth (look it up.) It’s my contention that like a remora this sort of idiot never actually quits but hangs on to the bitter end, spewing vileness on his chosen game in a masochistic fugue.
But, of course, the types of idiots you’ll encounter online approach infinity. The best you can do is hunker down with people who have proven themselves to be competent and try to dodge out of the way of the idiots; and, of course, cut your friends some slack for brief idiot moments as they put up with your own whoopsies. Now, could someone please tell me where the damn Healer is in this town? And, for Corn’s Sake, if you say “North” again once more I’ll have to hurt you.
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