Yeah, I know that griefing or being a griefer means to "cause grief to other players", but why "grief", why not some other term (pissing them off, for example)? What's the genesis of this term, anyone knows?


I have a theory that it came from Betrayal at Krondor. There was a very powerful spell called Grief of 1000 Nights, which worked on 95% of enemies and paralysed them until the end of combat, so you could rest all the characters to their max hp (you could rest in combat there). Sounds like a griefing device to me.

Because its easier to remember than "cheap little retarded pigfaced son (or daughter) of a retarded sow, whose only purpose in their pitiful excuse of a life is to make gaming not fun but hateful for a group of other people and to be honest, should have their skulls beaten in with foam baseball bats for being so stupid".

NIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccceeeeeeeeeee....I"ll need to use that on someone one day ROFL.

I've wondered that too. I've heard it a lot recently. Mostly started here on the ever cheerful forums, but lately I've been noticing it in other places, namely on bungie.net. I always thought it was a dumb word choice. Just sounds stupid to me.
The word is abused too. If anyone wins at anything, they are apparently a griefer. I say we make that a forbidden word on the forums and censor it every time its used