"Virtual" kills, or "Why I hate PVP"

Warning: This post is extremely geeky and futher cements my place in the world as a geek grrl, not just a grrl who's happened to date some geeky guys. So, if you're uninterested in games, World of Warcraft (WOW), politics, or gnomes, you might want to skip this. (Of course, Dave Chappelle apparently likes WOW, so maybe it's gained some hipster cred. Whatever.)

At night, after a long day of teaching, dissertating and/or reading tomes like this or this, I often log on to WOW and complete a few quests involving: 1) transporting item "a" to place "b;" 2) killing boss "c" for loot "d" so NPC "e" can make potion "f;" 3) hitting peons on the head with a bat so they'll get back to work. Usually, I'll end the evening by flying back to one of the cities and selling off all of the useless crap that animals in the game carry around despite having no pockets or opposable thumbs.

I enjoy these evenings of mindless stealthing (I play a rogue) and socializing (A usually plays with me). I'm not a big socialite in or out of the game, but I have been enjoying the intelligent and engaging conversation that takes place in the guild to which we belong (TerrorNova). Guild conversations often revolve around the ethical issues of gaming research (many of its members are academics who work in/with virtual worlds), and I have found my guildmates to be generous and supportive of newbies like me to a fault.

So, what's the problem? Why am I posting at all if life in WOW is so hunky-dory?

I play on a PVP server. PVP, for the unintiated, stands for "player vs. player," and it means that characters representing the other faction (the Alliance) - who are at war with the Horde for mysterious reasons that I suspect have more to do with the marketability of Warcraft than with differences outlined in the game's sketchy mythology - can kill me and my Horde brethren.

Happier days on a non-PVP server - Skador and Arendt

Now, what's so bad about this, you ask? Well, it just so happens that Blizzard's poor implementation of the PVP system means that level 60 characters can: 1) kill a bunch of Horde characters having a funeral for a fellow friend who died in "real" life without penalty; and 2) hang out in areas where lower characters are questing and kill them repeatedly (which is called "ganking" or "griefing"), again without penalty. In WOW, there are things called "honorable" and "dishonorable" kills - the former is reserved for player characters who are at or above your skill level; the latter is for lower-level player kills. At the end of the day/week, players are ranked according to their honorable kills and win...absolutely nothing, except the right to run around and tell everyone that they've killed the most Alliance or Horde players.

I guess this system is set up so you're supposed to feel bad if you're a 60th level priest (which means, essentially, that you're invincible to all but the biggest and baddest in Azeroth), and you kill a puny level 30 hunter with one hit.

I say supposed to, because as far as I can tell, the honorable/dishonorable kills thing means nothing. As far as I can tell, PVP attracts a certain level of, shall we say, immaturity, where high level characters have no problem camping some newbie's corpse and killing her over and over again. Sometimes, they'll even gang up with each other to prove that the other faction knows who's boss, going on a killing spree that litters the countryside with dozens of skeletons.

You might be asking at this point, so what? I mean, who cares if people in this virtual world are killing each other - it's just a game, right?

To which I respond, no, it's not just a game. How many articles have to be written about the real world implications of online activities before players start realizing that there are PEOPLE attached to the characters you're killing?* Llokye (my female troll rogue) and Skador (my male dwarf hunter) may not be "real," but I've spent a lot of time in the game with them. I'm not really offended when they're killed (or kill) some boar or an NPC in the game because I know that those characters are computer controlled and that they exist in 1s and 0s only. I am, however, very annoyed and frustrated and freaked out when I log on for five minutes in a zone to complete the last part of a quest and get ganked four times in a row. The worst part of it is that I can't even communicate with my attacker, since the two factions don't speak the same language. So, I am, effectively, mute. And helpless. And dead. That's a bit too close for comfort for my tastes, given humanity's seemingly endless love affair with genocide and torture.

So, why would I be on a PVP server at all? Well, because of the guild, and because I had no idea what I was getting into. I just assumed that individuals on a PVP server would try to "kill honorably" (this is an oxymoron, I know, but go with me here).

I guess I can see the value in PVP, just not how Blizzard has implemented it. I mean, first-person shooters have a large portion of the gaming market, and I know that this is a for-profit affair. If players on PVP servers really want to fight each other, they should at least make it fair; a substantially higher level character should be penalized in some real way for killing a substantially lower level character. Right now it feels like there are a bunch of bullys roaming Azeroth, randomly killing other helpless players who are effectively gagged. And, I have no way to vocalize that I'm *not* a threat and that I'm *not* interested in fighting. The best I can do is use an emote like /dance or /hi and hope that my fellow players take pity on me.

All of this is to say that I wish there were some way to change servers so I didn't have to deal with this conflict. Seriously, I like Llokye, and I don't want to start all over again with a new character, but she's living in an imaginary world that is a bit too close to the "real" one - except there are no penalties for killing.

* Julian Dibbell's classic tale, A Rape in Cyberspace, is probably the most famous and relevant one in this case.