Every time I’m in a city for any length of time I think of the title of a book I used to read with my children when they were small: Richard Scarry’s ‘What Do People Do All Day?’ Not because I see Huckle Cat or Lowly Worm running around (wouldn’t that be frightening?), but because of all the junk flying around in the General and Trade chats. The murloc game, the anal [link] game, ripping people for asking questions, ripping people for inflating AH prices, accusing people of spamming for posting recruitment messages: It goes on constantly, and it’s the same people all the time!
What do these people do all day?
Now I understand that WoW is a social game, and I understand that people get their enjoyment out of it in different ways; still, isn’t there something better to do with your time than sit in Stormwind and tell Chuck Norris jokes?
A big part of the problem is that, even though there is a lot to do in the game, there’s also a lot of downtime: Waiting for the BG to begin, waiting for all your raid members to log on, waiting for that elusive healer for the heroic daily. It’s sad, though, that idle time and a large ‘audience’ results in such massive amounts of outright stupidity. Is it really that funny to type in ‘Raiders of the Lost Murloc’ or Anal [Wrath]? Especially when it’s been done over and over and over again? (I logged on in Dalaran the other day to a ‘Murloc game’ in progress. Someone boasted ‘lol, I left to take a nap two hours ago and it’s still going on!’ You’re proud of that???) I know, I know ‘QQ moar’ and ‘/leave trade, /leave general’. The problem with that is there are real questions out there, legitimate deals to be had, and people honestly looking for one more dps or healer out there – it’s a shame it gets pushed off the screen so fast that you miss it. So does guild and officer chat for that matter, and I frequently find myself scrolling back through the drivel to find the important stuff.
I suppose I should be thankful in a way that these people are taking their boredom out in what is ultimately a harmless manner. After all they could be out on the streets of the Real World harassing old ladies, or getting blitzed and puking on my lawn or wrapping a car around a telephone pole. So I guess I’ll just continue to deal with it by spending as little in-game time in the cities as possible, and hope that, when I do have to visit the city, that spammers will have come up with some new material.
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This happens in almost any MMO I've ever played. Ultima Online was the worst because of it being more of a sandbox end-game than tiered progression. When a player has hit whatever he or she deems as their "goal," whatever it is, then that player begins to play the social part of the game, trying to include him or herself into the community in any way possible.
ReplyDeleteI see this kind of behavior as being a cry for something to do to relieve boredom more than someone legitimately having fun.