A short while ago I posted something I had written a long while ago. It went like this: “people who think might makes right are pretty much assholes.”
Since then, I’ve had an opportunity to call myself an asshole for doing just that.
When it comes to PvP, I thought of myself as a “nice guy.” I don’t attack other players unprovoked. I thought this meant my philosophy was, “don’t be a dick.” But that explanation didn’t quite cover my actions. You see, while I am definitely not a dick “because I can,” I most certainly AM a dick to people who choose to be a dick to me first. If you kill me for no reason, I absolutely will retaliate. If you kill me while I’m doing an escort quest or fighting mobs or weakened for some reason, I will retaliate three three fold. I happen to be a class that is especially suited for world PvP retaliation, and I happen to be a HUGE dick when I think people deserve it.
I was participating in a “Fishing Contest” that takes place in the game world. Winning the contest nets you a neat fishing pole (which I already have) or a neat trinket (which I don’t need). I wasn’t there to win. I was there because I wanted one of the rare fish you could only catch during the contest. I happen to know that this contest is generally ruthless, so I tried to fish off the beaten path. It didn’t work. A particularly well-geared shaman found me and started attacking me. I attacked back. I came to realize he had pretty nearly infinite mana, and my mediocre dps and inability to interrupt his heals sufficiently meant that I wasn’t going to be able to kill him. That’s fine, I told myself, as I swam to my escape. As I swam back to that area, however, I found him standing by the fishing pool but not fishing. He was “spotting” for his friend, who came up a bit later. His friend was trying to win the contest, and he aimed to help his friend win by attacking any other person fishing they came across. Well, that didn’t sit right with me, so I decided to do something about it. I decided that this guy would not successfully help his friend win the fishing contest. How did I do that? By casting a stun spell on his friend (which interrupted his fishing) and then swimming away (preventing them from following and killing me). I did this over and over for the next 20 minutes until someone else won the contest and these two left.
They messed with the wrong druid, ya know?
I’m a self righteous dick. I decide that you won’t win the fishing contest and then make it so; not because I am skilled enough to take on two people who outgear me, but because my class just happens to have the skills that make it possible for me to pull it off.
I’ve thought about it quite a bit recently and I can’t justify it as anything other than that “asshole philosophy” I mentioned earlier. No, I don’t apply the philosophy to people who don’t “deserve it” in my opinion (well… unless they’re friends with someone who does deserve it I guess), but I sure take advantage of such a philosophy whenever I get the chance. It’s sort of the basic reason I have fun on a PvP server, I like the feeling of power that comes along with punishing someone who I think is a jerk. It’s probably very similar to the feeling of power those jerks get when killing someone who is low on life fighting 3 mobs.
Sure I consider myself better than them, but we run on the same juice. Philosophically I’d say my original “don’t be a dick” philosophy still stands, it just has the rather “Punisher-esque” caveat that if someone is a dick to me or my friends, then I will turn their philosophy against them. I’m like a gentle giant who turns into a douche when you are mean :D
