Griefer? Noob-ganker?

[sylvar]

A Digg story describes Cynewulf as a griefer. The WarCry article they link to calls Cynewulf a noob-ganker, "ganking other players as they first appear."

Huh? What did this guy do, exactly? Is it something like camping at a respawn? And if so, wouldn't a sensibly designed game prevent people from getting killed as soon as they log in for the first time? (I mean, unless the game is a "let's all dance on the surface of the sun" MMORPG created as a joke.)

Comments

[kittykatkatja.livejournal.com]

I don't know what he did specifically, but I can speak to my PvP experience on WoW. Just like in life, there are things you "can" do, and things you "ought not" to do, and things that are mildly impolite, and things that are downright rude. In a lot of these cases, the games are self-policing, in that other players will deal with the person who is engaging in nasty behavior. The game interface will discourage benefit from doing these things (for example, when you first log in, you are considered an "honorless target" for something like 15 seconds, and anyone who kills you does not receive any honor points that he might otherwise have gotten; or if you are a certain number of levels below another player, that player gets no honor points for killing you), but a "griefer" is just someone who works around the functionality of the game and does the things that are able to be done just to cause people grief. Bleh.

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. I get it now. There was a putz in Runescape's Falador Castle once who decided it would be funny to close the shopkeeper's door as soon as anyone opened it. It was a non-PK area, so there was really nothing anyone could do about it other than call a moderator, who could fast-track an abuse report but couldn't do anything else about it either. So that's griefing.

And noob-ganking is a specific form of griefing, meaning killing noobs for sport rather than any extrinsic benefit?

[magnoliafly.livejournal.com]

Yeah. On the server I played WoW, horde would notoriously come into noob contested territories and kill alliance characters. If you are in an uncontested territory (which lasts until level 10) they can't attack you unless you "flag" their PvP by attacking first or entering a contested area and then running into uncontested area after attacking.

But it ends up being somewhat equal because you can always call out for help or log out, wait a few minutes and log back in hoping they would have lost interest.

I played a dwarf paladin which gave me a shield/hearth ability that I could use once an hour. I was able to throw up a shield and then hearth away out of the area while people tried to hit me. I got more satisfaction out of doing that and taking away a potential honor kill than killing noobs. ;)

[frannyan.livejournal.com]

Actualy, you can't report door closers. You get told just to ignore em. Unless this has changed recently, but I doubt it.

[stonegargoyle.livejournal.com]

Some people also like to pull high level monsters into newbee zones gust to watch them get killed.

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that game design sounds a bit too flexible to me... but then I guess most of the games I play are designed for kids.