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  1. #1

    PvP and recreational sadism

    This is what the average WSG match on my battlegroup looks like at the end:



    How does this happen? Well, the entire Alliance team except for me gets intercepted by about 6 Horde players while the rest picks up the flag, then all of them proceed to camp the Alliance graveyard for another 20 minutes (including their flag carrier).

    I kill the DK + Mage duo and some other guy and then watch stealthed as the Horde team gleefully jumps around on the graveyard, two-shotting the Alliance players that keep on respawning.

    As it turns out, the reason why those ~6 Alliance kept on respawning and getting themselves killed over and over was that they did not know how to avoid the rez. I'm not kidding. I've had people who managed to farm over 40 deaths while someone desperately tried to explain to them that they need to jump off the platform.

    Although that level of inanity partly explains why the Alliance seems to lose about 90-95% of random BGs, I'd like to focus on the other team, the ones farming them:

    It seems to me that most, if not almost all players, derive a large portion of their enjoyment of PvP from the illusion that they have deprived someone else of that very same emotion. If this is just a passive reaction to a perception, it would be Schadenfreude. But it's not just that. It seems like they really go out of their way to harass their opponents and try to kill them in the most aggravating way possible. Take the Mage and DK duo at the top of the Killing Blows list for instance. They were destroyed by a single Feral Druid just returning from a ~5 month WoW pause shortly before they commenced their graveyard camping. They aren't good players. So doesn't it make sense that they'd exploit a situation that allows them to delude themselves into thinking the opposite? Might that be the explanation?

    Another plausible thought is the obvious one, relative anonymity. I mean, translate the same situation into, say, a soccer match. Imagine two teams playing soccer against one another. One team is clearly stronger, so much that they can pretty much do whatever they want without risking losing the game. So they just bunch up in front of the other team's goal, taunt them and gloat for 89 minutes while passing the ball to each other, only scoring the 1-0 right before the time limit. It seems perfectly absurd, but it's the rule, not the exception in PvP. I guess it's because of mainly two things: you don't really suffer adverse consequences from behaving antisocially and you don't feel much empathy for your opponents because you don't necessarily perceive them as fellow primates.

    One last thing I've noticed from actually talking to people showing this kind of behaviour (we ended up on VoIP to organize a certain event) is that they seem to completely lack any understanding whatsoever of what I just described. If you ask them whether they'd rather like to win a challenging and fair 1v1 fight or whether they'd prefer ambushing someone currently engaged in such a match; they don't understand the question. It's like they don't even perceive the difference.

    Any thoughts?

    PS: I'm not, in any way, suggesting that all Alliance players are idiots or that all Horde players are sadists. These are just examples.

  2. #2
    I am Murloc! Viradiance's Avatar
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    Sorry to say it, but you pretty much hit the nail on the head when you said

    Quote Originally Posted by Feranor View Post
    all Alliance players are idiots
    <3 That's not to say it's without exception, and it certainly doesn't mean all Horde players are good!
    Steve Irwin died the same way he lived. With animals in his heart.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Your observation of in-game player attitude is mostly correct, except for the part that says
    "don't feel much empathy for your opponents because you don't necessarily perceive them as fellow primates."
    Well. You shouldn't decouple people's in-game behaviour from their in-life behaviour. Big part of the playerbase is composed of real-life outsiders, loners and/or by other means psichically oppressed human beings. Especially hardcore players.
    These are people that take a lot of dissapointment, humiliation or misunderstanding in their real life, as such building up a lot of negative emotions that needs to be released in some way. And they find their way here, in the game - some sort of returning the favor by means of harrasing other players.
    You can see that not only in BGs, but as well in all leveling zones in PvP realms, i personally have got ganked by 85s a lot of times, quite a few of them was for more than once - meaning they corpse-camped me, spit on me, laugh at me and so.
    I don't mean that all players that harass you have the very same story. Many others just have a lot of negative energy they need to release somewhere, built by many and different ways - problems at work, problems with their wifes, or maybe they are just badass.
    I guess that is general human behaviour - to exploit your own power to trump on others just because you have the upper hand. You can freely observe that everywhere around you - at school, at work, in the neighbourhood, everywhere where people interact the stronger oppress the weaker. I guess the only real thing that distinguishes us from the wild animals that eat each other or let them starve to death is the rules of the society.

  4. #4
    I find that I actually win about 50% of bgs as alliance. Its not as bad as everyone makes out (EU).

    And incidentally, if I get a chance to farm GYs, I will. Lots of HKs for my 100k achi. Sadism is just human really.

  5. #5
    OR it could be that you, just like me, like to annoy the opposing faction. It IS a war, and I like to fuel that idea.
    Nothing is more fun than killing someone and thinking it just might be that the guy getting killed is that impatient german kid, wich ends up smashing another keyboard.

    Its a game, and just for that I like to annoy the people who take it too seriously at times.

    Ive also used the football/soccer terminology several times in, say, EOTS - when the team is camping the flag midfield with NO bases to return it too. Then Ive thought like "what if this was soccer? Would the same players just ignore the ball, opposing players and goal, and just rather stand and dance with the corner-flag the entire match?" Its just as stupid. But Ive given up hope for theese players, cause they obviously cant be bothered.
    Then the only solution, for me, is just to do things I find ammusing, and that is to kill enemy players in a annoying way.

  6. #6
    I'm sadist on Battle Grounds. I'm always camping for someone near the graveyard... It doesn't mean if someone has 2,2K items or blue items from quests or if i have ~20-60% HP. Anyway... I'm not losing or winning every battle grounds. I'm winning like ~60-70% and I think there is no problem with Alliance, you should just try to tell them that they're doing wrong(if they don't understand it you can't make anything for them except just playing normal and try to win it with some "better" alliance players who know what to do) and focus ON YOUR game.

  7. #7
    Good job on having no deaths!

    OT: .......yeah i got nothing. -1 me for not being constructive >.<
    #1 Resto Tree Slap DPS

  8. #8
    Brewmaster insmek's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Feranor View Post
    This is what the average WSG match on my battlegroup looks like...
    IIRC, there are no more battlegroups for battlegrounds, and I can guarantee that not every WSG ends in that lopsided of a Horde victory at any level range.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Tangster View Post
    Good job on having no deaths!
    I kill the DK + Mage duo and some other guy and then watch stealthed as the Horde team gleefully jumps around on the graveyard
    Not really

  10. #10
    You're overanalyzing it. It has very little to do with a conscious attempt to "deprive the other faction of enjoyment" or something like that. Occam's razor demands a simple answer, and that answer is, in this case, that the majority of BG goers are poor players with no sense of strategy. If they see a red name, they head for it to try to kill it. In WSG it takes the form of GY camping, because that's where the red names show up. It's far more obvious in AB though, as people abandon nodes and leave them undefended because they see a battle taking place 200 yards away. This happens all the time. It's far less about maliciousness and far more about the OCD and poor tactical & strategical sense of most WoW players.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Feranor View Post
    This is what the average WSG match on my battlegroup looks like at the end:
    Xept for the fact that battlegroups no longer constrain battlegrounds

    And I love the over analysis of people GY camping. Farming HKs is nothing new, and I feel pretty comfortable saying that we arent dealing with mental disorders
    Last edited by Jubite; 2011-06-26 at 06:31 PM.

  12. #12
    The Lightbringer msdos's Avatar
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    ah, i see what the problem was.

    4 of you alliance were from the same server. for some reason the priest and druid were DPS specs, lol bads, they need to be going healing specs.

    the horde side had 2 beast ass healers as well as a DK and a mage that were probably geared.

    solution: if you PUG BGs with a party, roll with a healer that doesn't suck then just cap objective yourself. game will turn into a stalemate if they GY farm.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by msdos View Post
    ah, i see what the problem was. 4 of you alliance were from the same server.
    That doesn't mean they queued together or even knew each other. The other day I joined an AB, and the horde side was 9/15 from Illidan. Looking at the BG list before the game started, I thought it would be an incredibly easy horde win, but it turned out they didn't seem to know each other and horde actually lost. The OP might just play on a popular server.

    Also: Battlegroups don't affect random BGs anymore? I could swear I was still seeing all the same old servers in my BGs.

  14. #14
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect



    S
    olution is to only repeatedly group with people you can expect to play with again, i.e. people on your server. Makes coordination a cinch once everyone knows each other.

    The idiots end up losing and you gain friends. Which is why they need to add a button to LFD and BG queues that say "Only group me with people from my server."

    LFD & random BGs = 4chan

  15. #15
    Not sure if the group you ran into had this in mind or not, but some people organize groups to farm kills in Warsong/Twin Peaks for the 250K HK's achievement, since it's probably the best kills/hour if the other team plays along. Can partially blame Blizzard for the retarded number on that achievement.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Well, I think there's a psychological factor plays a role here.

    If you are Horde and you know by all means these guys never cared about the LORE as much as the Alliance did. And, of course The Horde races look like they got more blood lust and killing instinct than the Alliance. Awesome they are who joined the Horde forces are also BRUTAL.

    Nah, J\K ... Maybe that the Alliance got newly dinged 85s or even faced good players.

    But, all in all .. FOR THE HORDE >.<

  17. #17
    If people on your team are really getting 2-shotted, then I would actually suspect a gear problem. You aint gunna win in a team equipped with paper mache armor.

  18. #18
    So, the guy practically afking while watching others play made a post complaining?

  19. #19
    Ok, where are the zealots? Blizzard said win rates are even so where are the zealots to regurgitate Blizzards holy word?

    Dont even try to do deny that horde win twice as much.

    ---------- Post added 2011-06-27 at 06:03 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by ohshift View Post
    So, the guy practically afking while watching others play made a post complaining?
    Ya? And whats your point?

    He is AFK'ing because he tried, and he finally gave up because he is surrounded by idiots who dont have a clue, so if he busts his balls trying to win its doesn't matter because 1 ally v 10 horde is going to have the same outcome as 0 ally vs 10 horde.

    He tried already which is much more than what 99% of the people in BG's do.

  20. #20
    Could link you similiar SS of horde getting about 2 kills in their entire team. Random bg is random, sometimes you get shiters and face half a premade.

    Like this a few days ago, I was on my girlfriends mage geared in questblues/bloodthirsty - 22 KB/1 death.

    http://tinypic.com/r/20if7ud/7




    ---------- Post added 2011-06-27 at 07:55 AM ----------

    edit: Nice thread btw OP, not the usual "ALLIANCE SUCKS", I think a lot of players enjoy close games more then facerolling the enemy team, it's only natural. Then there is a miniority that enjoys griefing others, it's hard to tell the difference between these 2 types of players when the teams are so unevenly matched though so it's easy to come to the conclussion that everyone likes to grief others.
    Last edited by Stanton Biston; 2011-06-27 at 06:53 PM.

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