Originally Posted by
Feranor
Occam's Razor forbids the introduction of superfluous entities and the making of unnecessary assumptions. Simple "If it's red, it's dead." doesn't account for them enjoying a completely lopsided "battle". What I'm trying to explain is why they don't just simply stand on the graveyard in order to prevent the opposing team from regrouping and potentially fighting back, but instead jump in circles and apparently have the time of their lives killing that single Night Elf that keeps on respawning over and over.
Saying that "they just kill those with red names" is describing a phenomenon (a slightly different one), not explaining it.
But there is no competition. I don't get satisfaction from, say, "winning" a game of Chess when I have all Queens instead of Pawns and the opponent doesn't. They apparently do. And not just that, they aren't satisfied by "winning", they need to rub in it as much as they possibly can.
I mean, I've played the Horde side, too. You queue solo, you wait ~20 minutes for the invitation and then the Alliance dies so fast that you can barely get a shot in. It's boring. And it just seems pitiable to me that these players would flaunt this as some kind of achievement.
And yes, the response you mentioned is probably one of the main reasons for their behaviour. They revel in the thought that their actions in the game cause frustration to others. That's why I called it recreational sadism. I only share this in so far as I'm a sadist towards sadists. But I don't behave like they do because I don't want my opponents to think of me as someone who doesn't deserve a fair fight; because if they do, they won't give me one. This, by the way, is the backbone of competitive PvP in DAoC and the sole reason for its success.
Well, to put it simply, it's your mindset combined with the circumstance at hand that determines your decisions, so if you put the average player in a situation that encourages grief play (domination, anonymity, uninterpreted scoreboards, arbitrary ratings, ...) that player will behave in the way I described, unless he has some kind of code of honor or empathy preventing them from doing so.