Caanan
Black Nova Corp
Band of Brothers
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Posted - 2006.11.16 16:38:00 -
[1]
Eve is not a single player game, which means that you are facing competition with other players whether you like it or not. You made that choice upon entering the game.
It is in the human will to be competitive. That said, if someone blows up your ship they are merely showing their superiority. You can't say that you haven't ever tried to show superiority against another person in your life, or played a game against another person. If people do it in real life, then why can't they do it in eve? Podkilling someone again is a show of superiority. While the PK'er doesn't benefit from a podkill in terms of the game, again there is a feeling of superiority that comes along with this action.
So lets assume you have just had your ship destroyed by a pirate and been podded. Your natural reaction is to start spitting at the pirate with insults of how their *REAL LIFE* is miserable, and how they are terrible person. Now you have just made the assumption that their is something wrong with the pirate's real life and their way of coping with it is by taking out their anger and discontent by destroying your ship and podding you. However, how can you logically make that assumption? What goes on in someone's real life is their business, it is totally detached from eve. So you cannot possibly know what that person is going through, and make the assumption that they are miserable and taking it out on you. Just because it is common for people to take their discontent out on other things doesn't mean that it ALWAYS happens.
Next, you have to ask yourself the question of why has this sudden virtual loss affected you so much that caused you to retaliate against your opponent in the form of real life slander. In a sense, you yourself are the one who is wrong. The player who podkilled you meant no disrespect, yet you started to accuse them of being a terrible person. In fact it is you yourself who is the one trying to cope with the discontent the event has caused you. It is a game and you have let yourself become overcome with anger over a game that is virtual. This can only mean that you do not treat the game as something virtual, but as something real. So in short, it is not the pirate that is the one with problems, you are the one with the problems, because you have allowed your emotions to be overcome by something that isn't real.
I have never seen a player immediately taunt or slander one of their victims before their victim has responded with something verbally derogative. It is only after the victim's retaliation, and it is simply to make fun of how the victim has taken the game so seriously and let their emotions be overcome.
You may call some players griefers because they try to incite this sort of reaction on purpose. Again I don't see anything wrong with these people, because they are simply singling out the people who take the game seriously and are easily affected by it. They do it to make fun of those people. But I guess making fun of people because of their emotions isn't really the most mature thing to do.
That said, it's not uncommon to find people in eve who are genuine asshats and disrespect a player any chance they get without reason. You can probably expect them to conduct themselves in a similar manner in real life, but assumptions aren't always right.
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