General Discussion

I want to talk about grief'ing and what it means to you. I will described my opinion of it, give some examples, and would love if you all do the same. The mmo's I have played are for more then six months are:

Anarchy Online, 4 years on and off. WoW, about 8 months with a few breaks. Eve Online, about 8 months.

I also dabbled in some AoC and WAR more recently.

My question is this: Is griefing a 1 sided act, or does it require the participation of both the griefer and the victim? Can some one be grief'd if they don't play the game along with the griefer?

I cannot say in my many year on MMO'ing that I have been griefed in any substantial way. I have never been griefed in EVE, and that is a full loot sandbox game. There have been some annoying occasions, I have been trained, camped, ks'd, and verbally abused in mmo's, but at no time did I ever take it personally or let it totally ruin my enjoyment of the game. I am ofc excluding any time I have been "griefed" by some one using exploits, because I feel that is a different matter; exploiter's are exploiting bugs where griefer's are allegedly exploiting game mechanics. So please keep the discussion on exploitation of game mechanics.

I feel that every time some one has taken the approach to "grief" me I was always presented with a way out of the situation, even if it meant logging off for 5 mins and having a smoke or what ever.

I will say that the most vitriolic plays I have had experienced where people who felt I was making a victim of them, even if it I was using a feature of the game (i.e. taking towers in AO). I have often felt that the loudest proclaiming victims of grief where in fact

So tell what does griefing mean to you, is it avoidable, and if not can you be brave enough to share some personal or general examples of griefing?

tried to attach this poll, but I cannot get it to work right, hopefully this works.

The WWIIoL definition is a little different to the standard MMO definition.

In WWIIoL each side (squadron, brigade and division) has an equipment pool.  That pool replenishes with time but, if it is not used carefully it is possible to completely deplete equipment from the pool.

In WWIIoL a griefer is a player who repeatedly (and sometimes deliberately) wastes equipment from the pool.

i.e. a player might join a RAF squadron and repeatedly take off and crash all the Spit IXs until there are none left.

It's rare to see a griefer in WWIIoL - both sides frown on this and it is bannable.

That's a pretty example of 1 sided griefing, something like that should pretty much deserve a ban.

i have been grief'd and i also have been the griefer.. as i'm sure most if not all of us have... nbd.. the only problem i have with griefing is the losers, the hardcore griefers, who sit there all day griefing the ever-living shiz out of others..

I always considered  the griefer to be a person who tries to annoy other people as much as possible, to make them aware of how bad the griefers feel themselves.

Just pure psychology:  - 'I feel like shit, so I want you to feel that way to, then I won't be as lonely.'

 Ive never griefed anyone,apart from the "boom" or "1 .... 2 ... 3" or small comments like those before their ship blew up (eve online),nothing insulting tho,even to my worst enemys.Ive rarely encountered any smack and all the smack that I did encounter came from either miners (yes,miners ... with escorts in low sec,not my fault they mine in my system) and haulers (it's not like I forced them to fly threw low sec/0.0 with no scout while hauling 200mil+ of mods ... and it's not like I was waiting at the game in a MS/carrier ... always ninja gate killed in my little cruiser ,a thorax).

 Ive never understood corpse camping or killing lowbies in WoW or other similar games,there is nothing to gain ... well there is nothing to loose,soo that may be the problem,however I still find it funny when a lvl 70 runs around and kills my lvl 25 alt and I find out the names of his alt and whenever im running around I kill them.

well from my experience griefing ( in most fantasy based games ) is when a high level player, comes to the newbie zone or the closest zone to the newbie area that he could pvp in and starts either running around naked and killing every player in his sight or target a player that is just trying to ignore everything and just finish a quest so he can move on. I have also noticed there are many griefers pretend to be a lower level player by equiping lowbie armor and engage in fight making the the low level players thingk it is a fair fight and then boom out comes the high end armor and weapon....

I understand many say well, I will just memorise his name and get  my high level toon to kill him, well, not everyone that is griefed has a high level toon, it could be his main toon that he is trying to play with the limited time he has of free time to play the game.

yeah there are times where we just sit in town and wait for the griefer to just get bored and move away but sometimes the griefer becomes even more stuborn and camps the town exit. and many mention oh well just relog for a few minuts, true I could do that ( on the expence of my free time to play a game) but then what makes you so sure that he wouldn't move on to another target and as soon as you come back he griefs you yet again!

Now despite all I have said, yes I have been grifed before but I try as much as I can not to let it get to me, and there are times where I just log off for the day ( yet again the griefer wins with ruining my game time ) but then again I'd rather do something other than trying to finish a quest and someone is just camping you to prevent you from completing that your task. I have been annoyed by griefer but I also get annoyed by farmers, though none has ever been a reason for me to quit a game, at least not yet.

I've griefed people, but only because they deserved it. I remember this one guy in UO who offended my delicate sensibilities. Made a note of his name and on one of my idoc trips around the world found his house, a public house. Of course its in Tram though so that limited my options so I hid my stealther in there and found out his play times which were just after work for about 2 hours. I'd log in everytime to see what he was up to.

One day he started re-decorating his house. Bingo. I'd follow him around and as he placed things were he wanted them I'd snatch them before he could lock them down. This confused him for a while until he walked over me and caught on, revealed me and kicked me from the house. I still scored some nice loot and made sure to rub it in and remind him why.

Whenever I saw him camping swoop I'd accidentally pull too many changelings and have to run out through the teleporter leaving him the fun of dealing with them. I was just helping him improve his pve skills, honest.

I've never seen as much griefing in a game as I did in UO. I think the problem is with limited pvp rulesets theres no recourse when someone is being an asshole so griefing them is your only option. Usually they'll page a GM but they can tell from logs who initiated the hostilities. I remember a mate telling me this guy kept calling him a word synonomous with a man of african origins. He proceeded to lure monsters on him and get him killed then laugh at him after he respawned. So he calls the GM, this guys griefing me, haha you're gonna get banned. GM takes a look at the chat log and bans the racist instead.