Among other time wasting activities this week has been getting reacquainted with the PDA. While upgrading AvantGo (and at the same time discovering that I had been for months killing my batteries syncing at 9600 baud instead of 57600), came across a good Salon story about the behaviour of people obsessed with EverQuest, and it’s easy to extrapolate to any virtual environment (i.e. muds). Quote:
“Once you get to a certain high level of player you’ve got people who have spent literally months of time sitting in front of their machines. And it becomes a really big deal to them, it becomes their life, they become obsessed by it. Anything that threatens them — someone who threatens their guild standing or something as trivial as someone killing a monster they have their eyes on — that’s the kind of thing that spawns this vitriol and rage. It’s tunnel vision, really frightening.”
I know what the feeling is like, though I’ve never played EverQuest; I saw it a lot in other players during my heavy mudding years in university, and began to see it in myself. It’s a big factor in why I haven’t really played a mud for the last five years or so, and switched to coding and administration instead.
It’s one thing to run into a dedicated player who is exploding with rage (albeit in the stilted manner enforced by the limited text interface) and threatening you with death or worse, virtual or otherwise, for daring to mess with them and their characters. (I must however admit that I often brought this on myself: I was always heavy on the player killing power trip then.) If you’re feeling flippant about it – and at the time, I usually was – then you can just shrug it off and dismiss it offhandedly, feeling safe in your relative anonymity, and telling them with a smug and superior smile on your face that “it’s just a game, get a life you stupid twit”.
It’s however quite another thing to discover yourself turning into one of these players when provoked, and losing your self control in a way that you’d never, ever do in real life, although the effects spill over into the nonvirtual world. And it’s at this point you realise you’ve got to quit because it’s eating you up: but you can’t just stop cold turkey. Oh no, you’ve got to do it somehow in a dramatic fashion and in doing so draw attention to your dissatisfaction, and make the bastards who provoked you pay in guilt and anguish. It’s stupid, petty, and infantile, but in the anger of the moment it all just comes to a boil. And so, while faking a real life suicide like the person in the article never occurred to me, I can see where they’re coming from.
(In my case, I did quit. And yes, I tried to do it in dramatic fashion: I did my best to get virtually incinerated by the administrators and succeeded. But that’s past history. I’m over it now and am much better adjusted nowadays. Really.)
(The real name of the guilty party has been obscured.)
This happened sometime around July 28, 1999. I happened to be logged into my mud and was the only person logged in when I noticed a new connection from a site I was unfamiliar with. After the person created a new character and entered the game, I teleported the person and chatted them up, as I’m wont to do when I’m bored. The following conversation ensued:
You say, "greetings"
Rodregis says, "i dont need my stupid prompt it spams like hell"
Rodregis says, "its me"
You say, "and you are..?"
Rodregis says, "the rodregis from port 4000 which is shutdown"
You shrug.
You say, "didn't keep track of the people on that mud very much"
You chuckle.
Rodregis says, "i wish i was immortal"
You say, "do you"
You say, "i don't suppose you build?"
Rodregis says, "i am a blind user its kinda hard for a screen reader to match
( and ) and stuff"
Rodregis says, "i want to be immortal or i want a real good weapon"
Rodregis tries to turn you into a pretzel!
Rodregis says, "damn! i thought con was consider"
You say, "it's not coded yet"
You say, "this isn't an operational mud"
You say, "i'm still writing basic functionality"
Rodregis says, "nod. i need a weapon a good one so i can level fast it says
that in the news"
Rodregis says, "that this mud is under devel"
You say, "excuse me?"
Rodregis says, "it says in the motd that this mud is under devel"
You say, "yes, it is"
Rodregis says, "i wish 4000 was up"
You say, "it's not going to be"
Rodregis says, "your mud on 4000 and groundzero which were like yours shutdown"
You nod.
You say, "i only ran 4000 to test my code"
Rodregis says, "their are no more muds lke your on the net!"
You shrug.
You say, "unfortunately, it's not the kind of mud i want to run"
Rodregis says, "i just want a good weapon so i can level fast"
You say, "no"
You say, "sorry"
You smirk.
Rodregis says, "please? theirs no way you can quit me i dont tihnk you have a
force command in this devel mud"
Rodregis says, "yes and i've got got /root/udpflood"
You say, "are you kidding me?"
You say, "who in the hell do you think you are, threatening me?"
You purge Rodregis!
Being mildly irritated at this, I idly did a finger on his IP address (which was logged by my mud), and was pleasantly pleased to discover that 1) it was a unix box; 2) he was in fact running the fingerd daemon; and 3) it was a good chance his name was T— S—, as only user t—2 was logged on, and he had added a /etc/passwd entry on his machine for that user which I was able to finger. I mentally filed this information away for future safekeeping, banned all players from direct.ca, and proceeded about my business.
5 minutes later, I got ANOTHER connection from direct.ca, SAME player (damn, my ban code wasn’t working). Here’s the subsequent conversation:
Rodregis says, "hello"
You say, "hello t---"
Rodregis says, "how do you know my real name?"
You smirk.
You say, "thanks for confirming my guess"
Rodregis says, "how'd you figure it out? and please dot nail me"
You say, "nail you? why would i do that?"
You say, "just because you threatened to attack my machine with a denial of
service attack?"
You shrug.
You say, "direct.ca - Canada's biggest ISP"
You say, "i wonder what their policy is on abusive users"
You say, "guess I'll find out"
You say, "thanks for playing"
Rodregis says, "no, i wasn't goiong to dos you, i'm on a shared account, and
my 14.4 cant do it anyway"
Rodregis says, "please dont get me in trouble i wont threaten you again"
Rodregis tells you, "please dont get me in trouble i didn't mean to dos you ."
Rodregis tells you, "i am only using a 14.4 dont get em in trouble please,
i wotn threaten you again"
Rodregis tells you, "i wont"
You say, "look, just go away, okay?"
You say, "your entertainment value has plummeted dramatically, Mr. S---"
You say, "you might as well quit, I'll ignore you from this point on"
Rodregis tells you, "please delete me"
You purge Rodregis!
The flip side of the story is that a subsequent search for the name “T— S—” on the web pulled up an article written up in a British Columbia paper highlighting his life – it seems he really is blind, very young, and grew up in fairly tragic circumstances. Nevertheless, I still stick by the title of this write up.
