Suddenly, World of Warcraft takes on a whole dimension as the antics of gung-ho PvP dweebs are cast in the light of psychosis. My home realm, The Venture Co., is suddenly not so much a REALM per se as a half-way house for the overtly deranged.

There probably has to be seperate analyses for Adults verse Kids or Teens who behave this way.

Reflecting on some of the high profile tragedies involving people who just lost-it, constant behavior like this must be a warning of what could potentially occur in the future, especially if there are other signs.

i vote that the lack of physical interaction emboldens the little twerps. when dealing with people (face to face or not) i am always respectful, and no one hassles me in person. granted that might be because i’m 6’9 and 240 pounds. if it was people acting out their family roles in group settings, i would still encounter jerks in my day to day. the only other reason for morons online must be the lack of reprecussions via physical interaction ( an ass whooping, for example ).

I think they are just jerks, and using space-age technology, said jerks should be tracked down by admin or whoever and sent a hardy kick in the sack, then they’ll learn that online actions can have real world reprocussions.

Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction writer, suggested there are a lot of people in this world who are thoroughly miserable for whatever reason and their only purpose in life is to make everyone else as miserable as they are.

According to Heinlein, these people are never going to change and they are “better off dead”. In fact, we’d all be better off if they were dead. They’d be happier and we’d be happier.

He called it his “Better Off Dead List”.

I think “griefers” fall into this category.

Sometimes griefing it needed to get frustrations out.
I’m on a lower level 30 doing some questing in STV, and upper level 30’s keep killing me, and then camping me to respawn and kill me again.
Well I’m sick of the griefing on me, so what do I do?
I log out of my current character. I log back in on my main character, and then take my level 70 all around the area and grief killing every character I can find, sometimes more than once. Then if I’m not satisfied, I move to a different area and kill some more. The original griefer’s fault for pissing me off!

I’ve run across a lot of griefers in Second Life, and they’re almost always kids, and almost always emotionally damaged in some way. Because of these two factors, all you can do is develop methods for keeping them out that also limits the enjoyment of the game for the rest of the players. Usually, though, people are willing to put up with the extra security steps to limit the access of the griefers to the game.

This is called making stuff up. Notice that none of the articles linked actually makes reference to any evidence or data, no peer-review studies, nothing. There is ZERO evidence offered that any “griefer” game player has any IRL mental issues whatsoever.

It’s just somebody with letters after their name, who probably doesn’t play games, hearing people crying second-hand and isn’t considering their motivations for whining.

NOT SCIENCE.

This is why I hate psychiatrists. They see someone’s actions over the internet and they suddenly believe they have some whole life story. I’ve been called a griefer many times. Why do I do it? I enjoy it to be honest. It’s fun to see people get all worked up over a game. Usually from my experiences, the griefers are the coolest people actually playing the game, as opposed to the other side which I like to call the WHINERS who would rather complain to developers to have THEM fix the problem.

Someone griefing you? Grief back, and if you give me some notion of e-morality then perhaps you should end yourself and relieve yourself of your misery AKA Your life.

Is this a joke? lol PvP is fun in every game. killing computer isn’t. simple as that. Stop whining about some game dude. Grieving is fun specially when people like you start whining about it on some shitty website