I am actually 100% stunned at both Xavius' severely unhealthy obsession with berating me as a person (with things that I am absolutely even more stunned to hear him saying, considering that he doesn't know me at all, and I do mean, at all.) and also with the utterly ridiculous rumors surrounding why I resigned Shayle.

Either way, I think this is certainly punctuates Myrkr's original posting.

PS. Xavius, move on. It's time to move on. If I were a quarter as nasty as you were, I could easily reply in kind with slander and insults, but trust me, your issue with me is 100% yours, and 200% unhealthy.

I don't make fun of newbies.

Two major factors contribute to this, and they closely work in tandem with one another.

1. Competition

The majority of Lusternian development and mechanics are geared towards PvP and events that encourage PvP (combat, violent revolts, ascension events). This is further perpetuated by the in-game environment. By and large, every major community is designed to believe themselves to be superior to everyone else and institutes a need to enforce this sense of superiority through accomplishment. The competitive spirit runs high in not just combat, but even publication of IC literature, power accumulation, rituals, and more. Remember the beauty seal contests and the rants those would generate from those whose designs didn't place? That sort of spirit can easily bleed through from IC to OOC. Competition is not necessarily a bad thing, but the first emotion it tends to breed is hostility.

2. Play2Win

Some people play for and grins, others aim absolutely to win. No matter what. In the highest levels of competition, particularly in the sports world, this is a necessary attitude to take up to push yourself to the highest levels of performance. If you don't play to win, you'll never win. This doesn't apply so smoothly or evenly to an online text game, however. There are a lot of other factors, many of which are out of your control, which can affect your ability to win. Lag, skill changes, set conditions and parameters which simply cannot be surpassed. When people play to win and encounter these things, often unexpectedly, the reactions can be pretty severe. And even in relatively ideal conditions, play to win can stir some very bitter and harsh sentiments in the losers (especially people who feel like they perpetually lose, whether or not that is actually the case).

And you don't even need to participate to get these feelings, you can just be a spectator! Ever hear about the riots amongst fans that can follow up a close football game in Europe? Now, ever see someone on the forums rant heatedly for the sake of someone else, or over something their org was involved in but they themselves weren't?

Finally, remember we're on the internet. Even though we know there's another person on the other end, we're still just interacting with the text they jam out for us to see (and it's not always as comprehensible as their own speech in real life). We see text, not another human being. This can also affect how and the degree to which people might react to given stimuli.

-Heard- about them?

Me and Shayle don't get along much, but I still adore her. I don't keep grudges and I don't like to. She's still lovely to be around and I doubt she uses public humilation to embarass a kid in a classroom.

I dislike the forums in general for all games, it's just a cult of e-peen measuring.

All of this is just Bad Guys pointing Fingers at Bad Guys, and Innocent People heckling Innocent People.

Let's face it, no one has done anything horrendous, crummy, sure, but nothing that anyone should or would go to jail for.

Do I like Shayle? No. Not one bit, and I do have very valid IC and OOC reasons. Do I think it's healthy that charges against her keep getting brought up? No, not really. I think that particular part of the past should stay exactly where it is -- the past. It does go to show however, how divisive things about IC can get OOC, and how they can get so intermingled that there really is no boundary, and no one person is completely right, or completely wrong. Bringing it up will only serve to deepen negative-sentiment, and I don't think anyone deserves to have negativity thrown in their faces, especially when the topic of the thread was something only loosely related to the things that went on with them specifically.

Marry me.

No it isn't.

Yes it is.

Being harrassed over a modem is no more "weak" than being harrassed IRL, getting prank phonecalls to the point of upset, or anything else. A modem does not magically make your emotions go away and it's completely irresponsible to pretend people aren't real people with feelings just because you're encountering them on the internet rather than in the street.

If you're going to claim that crying at all is weak or pathetic or whatever, though, I guess that's another issue, albeit still not one I can buy.

I didn't claim all crying is weak or pathetic, that's your jumping to conclusions or putting words in my mouth, so to speak. Right click, block buddy. It's just that simple. There was no mention of phone calls or harrassment in real life whatsoever, and is an entirely different subject altogether. How many times have people claimed to get upset at something in Lusty and been advised to take a break or otherwise not invest so much of themselves in their character? Plenty of times. And comparing something said on an instant message to something that happens on the street isn't even in the same ball park. You can't right click, block maniac on the street- the magical moden does indeed allow you to choose to a vastly greater degree who you do and do not interact with.

I didn't put any words in your mouth. If that wasn't your claim, so be it, but this whole subject seems pretty, hmm, dim-sighted if it wasn't.

You can't block people IRL, you can just walk past them or block their phone number...or whatever. Obviously there are ways for determined people to get around either. None of that negates it. If you didn't mention phone calls or harrassment in real life it's a failure to consider the things most analogous to it that might cause someone to be upset in real life.

People getting invested in their character too much is a straw man. You can be harrassed on the internet without it being your own fault for IC-OOC seperation problems - although that doesn't even cover Lusternia, because a lot of people play this game to have fun, spend a lot of time or money on it, and then have people aim to make sure it's no longer fun for them. That's a valid reason to get upset (unless any such getting upset is "pathetic" regardless of context, though that isn't necessarily your claim.)

You had just stated that all crying was weak or pathetic, so... yes you did embelish what I said. Again, it's as easy as looking at my posts and yours to see that. Honestly, I'm not even sure how you can say otherwise. To be clear, I don't support any sort of harrasing in any form. I guess what it really boils down to is if it's worth crying over a game. Getting upset, pissed off, or any of the more positive responses, in my opinion, are pretty valid reactions to a game. When doing away with someone who is having a negative impact on you is as easy as two mouse clicks to block an im or IC snubbing and issuing is not done but the offended party allows it to continue.... yeah, sorry. It is what it is.

The person posting after me is a griefer, and deserves to be eaten by rabid squirrels. Big ones.

With frickin' laser beams coming out of their heads.

'sup

Squirrels, go!

FORESTCAST SQUIRRELS (I think? It's been awhile!)

Because that's not what I was claiming you said...I don't know how you can read my posts and say that's what it was. I'll make it clear: that isn't necessarily what you were saying. It's just a possible argument that might be internally consistent and would make the rest of what you're saying make sense. Reading the below, though, it seems like you SHOULD be arguing that because it's just wrong if you aren't.


Well...all of that applies to IRL too, as I just explained above. There are ways of ignoring anything. You can "get over" a lot of stuff. That doesn't make it pathetic to be upset over it. The internet is the same way. There are valid and invalid reasons to be upset related to a game (particularly an immersive RP game with a fairly small playerbase where everyone knows each other and highly active forums and OOC clans.) Just because some of them are caused by the inability to seperate your character's personality from your own it doesn't mean they're -all- like that.

Never said you, or anyone, did. But I do think a bigger issue is the IC/OOC line seems to be thin, and even waves to both sides.... but in anycase there will always be people who mix IC with OOC.

So, Myrkr, if you were curious, you now have a thread full of reason. Sometimes it has to do with the game. Sometimes, we really just hate each other.

Eh... I still don't fully agree with your logic, sir, but your principle is sound enough that the fight's been taken out of me. Bah.