/spit

The stone age. Happy days. I'm referring to the real deal here, not that fancy pants hippie stone age you know from the Flintstones, where cute little dinosaurs replace common household appliances. I'm talking about the man bringing home the bacon, then shagging the missus, her sister, her mother and her dog, then beating every possible competitor to death - with his penis. Only the strongest get to hump the tribe, you have to demonstrate supremacy at all times, because should anyone ever doubt your might and end up challenging you, you're probably gonna be toast faster than you can say " ". From day one, nature has designed us to be assholes.

Nowadays, the bacon is made of tofu, the man is shagging the missus' sister in secret, the dog films it for porntube and they all hope the mother won't find out. And we only beat the crap out of each other on the internet, though comparing dicks is still more or less the same thing, virtual or not. And I'm not talking about Chat-Roulette.

Pretty much everyone is an asshole, myself included. And for the most part, that's quite alright, even on World of Warcraft. I'm on a pvp realm. I like to hang around in Tol Barad and kill random Horde players. Especially Death Knights. When you see a DK, you have to kill them. It's the law. They deserve it in so many ways, I could fill another ten blogs writing just about how much DKs need to die. So I made him die. A dozen times. Then he rolled a level 1 Alliance toon, just so he could send me an extensive list of things he wanted me to do to my own mother.

And since I'm on a pvp realm, enemy players will occasionally attack my faction's capital city. Like that level 85 rogue, who killed random lowbies in Stormwind the other day. Until I killed him. And got an angry whisper in return, about me being a fucking noob. Surprisingly enough, that whisper came from another Alliance player, who just watched the rogue killing random people, but couldn't be bothered to help. I'm not entirely sure what his problem was, but if you want to be an asshole, the one thing you don't need is a reason.

None of this is a big deal until you start handing assholes tools to become even bigger assholes. Take emotes like /rofl or /spit in a BG, for instance. Isn't it nice to have a dozen people wait for you to respawn right at the graveyard, just so they can mass-/spit on you as they hack you to bits over and over again? Insult and injury and all that.
Sure, all it does is create a rude message in your chat log, there's no animation to it or anything and it's a far cry from the /drunkpiss emote, which had been removed from Age of Conan for massive abuse.

But why the hell did they put that stuff in there in the first place? What's the big idea here? "Oooh I know! Let's allow people to spit on each other! For role-playing purposes and immersion! This is gonna be so cool!"
It's not just okay to be an asshole - they're enabling assholes. They give them the tools to become assholes. Of course, a harmless little emote isn't much of a tool. The one tool to rule them all is the dungeon finder.

Since I'm playing on a pvp realm, I'm clad in nice, powerful level 384 arena gear. Because all the shiny, fancy raid gear in the world won't save my ass from the Horde. But every once in a while, I like to join random dungeons for fun and gold. But I no longer can, because it has become a fun tradition for random groups to boot players, who are using pvp gear.

I'm not an idiot and I wouldn't try to get into a current tier raid in pvp gear. The remade troll dungeons, however, are an entirely different story. Let's have a look at the facts - people who go there to gear up, will be rolling for items level 351, so logic suggests, that their own item level will be below 351. So when I go there for shits and giggles wearing my level 384 arena stuff, then that gear is simply hell of a lot better than any pve gear 30+ levels below. Yes, even if you take into consideration that resilience does nothing in pve and I'll be missing out on a few points of hit, haste, expertise and mastery, all of which is grossly outweighed by the massive stat bonuses of the higher level gear and a little reforging.

I know that. And they know that, as well, when they call me a "pvp noob" or talk about how pvp gear is useless in some random 5man dungeon. But this isn't really about gear. It's about making a point. About jealousy. About kicking the bastard with all the shiny epics they're never gonna have, because they don't want to raid or fight in the arena. It's about being an asshole. And this is what happens, when you hand assholes tools that empower them.

People will always be assholes - you, me, everybody. Yes, you! You know exactly what I'm talking about, so don't gimme that innocent look! I'm not buying it! And for the most part, being an asshole is okay, socially acceptable and we're used to being surrounded by other assholes. But maybe, just maybe, adding emotes, which serve absolutely no purpose other than giving people the possibility to openly insult one another, is not the best way to work with assholes. And maybe splitting people into two factions - pve and pvp, that is, not Alliance and Horde - and having two entirely different sets of gear, is not really all that helpful. People are pissed off when they see folks with high resilience in pve, people are equally pissed off when they see people with no resilience in pvp. There's an easy fix - FUCK resilience! Just remove it already! Instead, just go with the different set bonuses which are slightly more relevant for either pve or pvp, depending on whether you got that stuff in the arena or on a raid, but don't give people a reason to be assholes about it.

Games are getting simplified more and more, because the developers rightfully assume that the majority of people are drooling, illiterate morons. Now take the next logical step - assume that everybody is an asshole and design your games accordingly.

-Cat