I generally get along well with people. People I enjoy being around, at least. Those folks who best fit into this particular demographic are my family, my friends, and my lovely girlfriend. But really, when it comes to anyone else, I just don’t care. Maybe this makes me sound like an asshole, and maybe I am. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy helping others whenever I can through volunteer work or even just giving a hand or opening a door or some other courteous task. In actuality, I think that most people who know me think I’m a pretty nice guy and fairly easy to get along with. But there are two constants I tend to live by regarding the term “people” in the broader sense: 1.) People are stupid, and 2.) People are assholes. So I ask myself, why did I think I would enjoy playing with or against people I don’t even know via online games when I can barely stand the oddities and eccentricities of interacting face-to-face with people on a daily basis in the real world?

As you may know from reading previous articles of mine, I recently joined in the phenomenon known as World of Warcraft (WoW). I had a lot of fun with it for awhile, and then things just got BORING. But here’s the thing: this may make me sound like a total snob, but I hated playing with other people. Granted, occasionally I helped someone or asked someone to help me, but those occasions stemmed from the fact that some challenges in that game are just too hard to do by oneself. Otherwise, I would have been perfectly content to adventure around Azeroth myself and mind my own damn business.

Specific encounters with in-game jerks mainly include interaction with members of the opposing faction (in my case, the Horde). Who do these level “??” characters think they are? The bastards literally come up to you (a character at a level so much lower than them that their level reads either “??” or a picture of a skull) and taunt you, then without provocation or reason, they kill you with one hit. What can you possibly do in such an instance (no pun intended)? You can’t run away because they’re faster than you. You can’t teleport away because I don’t even think that’s a playable spell or ability in WoW . . . not one I ever got high enough to use anyway. You can’t even Hearthstone away, because it takes a friggin’ long time to do that ability, and the uber-high level jerkholes will have cut you down before you’re even two seconds into the ability. I go down swinging whenever possible. I figure if some ridiculously high-level artard stands there looking at you for any longer than a second, chances are he’s going to kill you anyway, so you might as well save face and take a swing at him (doing no damage whatsoever, I might add).

WoW aside, I have heard complaints from other friends of mine who are relatively new to the online gaming world concerning players who are at a much higher skill level pwning lower-skilled players just for the fun of it. What possible fun can someone draw from that? Specifically I am thinking of my friend Ben Roberts’ rant (which can be found within his Editor Blog on this site). He states that while playing an online FPS, he was killed a number of times (I think the count was around 12) just after respawning; some asswipes were being spawn campers with sniper rifles, laying waste to other players whenever they would reanimate. That’s bull. I don’t pay good money to play online games just so someone who has no business being in a beginner’s area can kill me just so they can get their jollies. No way.

Frankly, anyone who does that should be ashamed of themselves. And yes, that means you, Spawn Camper. Screen Watcher. High-Level nearly-Godlike character. Oh yeah, that’s right. I dropped those gamer F-bombs. You are a sad lot, and you need to either get out more and have some real fun (not that gaming isn’t fun . . . but this is taking things too far), or start a new game within which you are once again on the bottom reaching for the top.

There, I said it. I’m done now.