One player that I am not going to miss...

Twixt.

*shakes fist*

Heh, completely forgot about that guy.

You have to wonder what drives an old man to start acting like a particulary socially challenged teenager on a video game, and keep it up for months.

I mean, I heard the story, university professor doing "research" and so on, and of course people do dumb things for fame and money even in small quantities, but it still remains baffling at some level, you know?

Maturity is a widespread myth told to attempt to force people's behaviors to conform.

The idea human behavior is dicted by society more than biology is the real myth, if you ask me. You don't become wiser because someone tells you to - you wisen up because your body stops telling you to go frolic all the time and starts telling you it is painful to do this or to do that, and does so all the time.

Tokyo. I can do without constant homophobic insults.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Red States Man?

Myself.

I'm quite immature and insensitive on the Liberty Channel.

Those who think they are perfect, loved by all and can do no wrong (even when they do) and solve all matters with freezing and lolololidrownjoo tactics and/or werewolf biker dragon gods with serious control issues when it comes to people making decisions for themselves without said dragonwolfgod's approval.

There's always one (or two... or many) in every game. Such is life in an MMORPG :|

For newer players, "Twixt" was David Myers, a professor at Loyola who decided to conduct a "study" about what would happen if he started griefing people in PvP zones. The result, shockingly, was that people got mad. He then parlayed this idiocy into an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where his reporter friend made him out to be some kind of uber-player with mad skillz who did what he did in the name of science instead of what he really was--someone who was exploiting being able to teleport people into drones using a well-known exploit. It basically was a hack piece that made games look like crazed thugs and completely misrepresented our community. And then he followed up with another article that was a little bit better, but still didn't discredit anything that David Myers was doing.

As you can imagine, it caused an uproar. It got the attention of Mercedes Lackey, who wrote some letters complaining over Myers's testing methodology (specifically, how he used subjects without their knowledge or consent). I personally wrote a letter to the Times-Picayune complaining that it was a gross misrepresentation of our community and trying to explain a little better the context in which some of the comments were made and why what Myers was doing was perceived as such a bad thing. I also pointed out that the reporter didn't do the basic due diligence of getting any other side of the story, even though many in the community would have been happy to provide information and insight into the matter. I offered my contact information and asked them to contact me, but of course, they never did.

Anyway, it caused quite the big stir back in the day. The reporter still works for the Times-Picayune, and I don't know whatever happened to David Myers. I think they both were grossly negligent and misrepresentative in their respective fields, and it wouldn't have bothered me one iota if both had been fired. Probably didn't happen though, and with the crew at Paragon Studios who have such amazing talent being fired, that seems a shame that these guys get to keep their jobs.

For people who were actual ********, the social worker who admitted he loved to taser the people he was supposed to be helping.

David Myer's blog is still available. You can read about him in his own words here:

http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/20...rthy-of-wrath/

Personally, I still don't know if he really believed in his own POV, which might be paraphrased as something like: "Game mechanics establish rules that must be followed to the point of sociopathy." Specifically, he seemed to believe that MMOs are a set of determinable, boxed, and mostly immutable rules derived from the current state of game mechanics--in other words, if the game technically allows you to grief other players, then not doing so on a PVP map is failing to play the game "correctly." Or to put it other terms, he seemed to be surprised that players who act like jerks are not well liked, because in his view game mechanics that allow players to get away with that behavior dictate how the game should be played, not social contracts enacted between players themselves.

If that sounds like bull, that's because IMO it largely is. He basically wrote a paper about the fact that MMO players dislike trolls, in a manner that was essentially just taking trolling to new and incredibly embaressing levels (the paper basically reads like a screed against his in-game enemies).