Posts with tag respect

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

Teenagers as a whole have a terrible reputation in online games. In WoW, they are blamed for everything that's wrong with the community. People say they have no patience, they don't know how to play the game, they ruin chat channels with mindless chatter, and they're selfish, whiny, lazy, disrespectful, and entitled. Certainly some of the people who fit these accusations are teenagers.

However, not every teenager acts this way, and a good portion of the people who do are actually adults. On the internet, unfortunately, perceptions tend to win out over reality. This week, a teenaged officer asks how she can earn the respect of her peers.

Hello there Scott-

Our guild currently is going through some major issues at the moment when it comes to who shall be running what when it comes to what is occuring in the guild. ... About a month or two ago, our guild leader ... decided to call it quits for the time being, our guild was going downhill at that time, and people starting to abandon us. We reasonably thought that sooner or later this guild was gonna expire sometime in the future, and that nothing could stop it.

However, it came to the point where some of our officers and such managed to pull back the guild together through emails and messages spread across multiple medias. Our guild, in my mind, finally has settled back into what it was before, however without the guild leader to guide us. All of us (the officers) decided to take the role of leader. ... Things were going pretty smoothly.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

So there I was, fresh off a rant to a friend in Vent about what had just happened that night during what was appearing to be a common occurrence in our raids. I was frustrated (in my own defense, it was just one of those nights when nothing goes right, no matter how hard you try), and that's when it happened: The deep-down thoughts of ZOMG, how hard can this be, people?! spilled out into a diatribe on why I can't stand to run with the lot of them, since they "just don't get it and probably never will!" I named names. I pointed fingers. If there was a bridge to burn, I had brought along the dynamite for extra explosive-y goodness! I was good, they were bad, and I was there to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It was at that point I realized I had become the bane of every WoW player: the Elitist Jerk (OK, not the Elitist Jerks -- those guys and their forums are awesome). As soon as I had finished my speech, the notion of "it's lonely at the top" had a whole new meaning. Once I had out-classed my friends, they stopped being chatty with me in Vent. It was one lonely night after another. I missed them.

Elitism can strike at any time. The important thing is realizing how to harness, control and manipulate what you know into a vessel that can be used to help those around you become better at their own game.

My story ends well. Once I was able to use my powers for good, my old friends didn't hold a grudge. Besides, what's really important in the game for you? Is it the camaraderie of your friends or the satisfaction of being the best?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

A friend of mine and I were once playing Rock Band (don't worry, I will relate this to WoW soon), and he complained that he wasn't doing so well. Granted, he's much better than most players, but he was struggling to play a moderately difficult song on the expert difficulty (the hardest difficulty in the game). He later revealed to me that the reason he was lamenting his "lack" of skill was that he used to be much better -- so much better, in fact, that he once beat the infamous "Through the Fire and Flames" on expert in Guitar Hero III.

For those who don't know, "Through the Fire and Flames" is generally agreed to be the hardest song in any guitar-based rhythm game, demanding complex techniques that no other song in the series requires. In response to this revelation on his part, I said to him, "No matter how bad you may think you are now, beating 'Through the Fire and Flames' gives you the life-long right to retire from the game without losing any of your former glory in the process." And I believe that. No matter how much his skill may atrophy, beating "Through the Fire and Flames" on expert means he will always be worthy of respect in the Guitar Hero/Rock Band community, or at least always worthy of my respect.

This conversation made me wonder; are there any achievements in WoW that bestow similar prestige? In my own mind, anyone who got Grand Marshal/High Warlord under the old PvP system is deserving of this kind of respect. I would also like to think that What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been would carry similar meaning, but that may just be me trying to think that my Violet Proto-Drake is more impressive than it really is. As for Insane in the Membrane, though I've never met anyone who has done it, I imagine that rather than respecting him, I might just think him very worthy of the title.

Welcome to another edition of He Said/She Said where Amanda Dean and David Bowers take on some of the deepest gender issues in the World of Warcraft universe. This time we discuss the expectations of men and women in guilds and how WoW reflects the larger society.

Amanda:
I don't know how many times I've heard of women flirting their way into raids or excellent gear. Perhaps this happens in some cases, but these are the bad apples. I find myself growing kind of tired of the stereotype that girls can't play WoW. The truth is that many women play WoW, and many of us are very good at it.

Because of the stereotypes, A lady has to work considerably harder in a guild to earn respect. It's like being guilty of being a twit until proven otherwise.

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!

Two weeks ago, when I was going through my queue of questions, one stuck out as especially complex. Sean Riley inquired about the beliefs and practices of the various Azerothian religions. This topic really excited me as I kind of have a thing for analyzing religion and faith. I would never claim to be an authority on theology, but it's stlil something that is very interesting to me. Warcraft lore combined with theology? Yes please! Obviously this isn't really the place to analyze and debate religion, but taking time out to research the gaps in my knowledge on this particular topic was incredibly fun for me.

Unforunately, I didn't have the space in that week's column to fit the answer to that question in, nor did I really have the time. It was a broad question and needed to invest a hefty amount of time into it. This one question has filled today's column, and while that may be disappointing to some that are waiting their turn, I hope it's an interesting read regardless.

Dueling has a bad reputation, I think. Too many players see it either as a way to brag about their own skill (or, more likely, time investment), while many other players see it as a way for the first group of players to do that at their own expense. I love dueling, whether I win or lose, because it's a great chance for me to see if I can use everything in my arsenal to the fullest, as well as see another player working against me, hopefully at their best. A great duel is a chance for two players to duke it out and have a great time without anybody dying, while a terrible duel (and the perception of most duels, I think) can be a humiliating or confusing experience.

And so, in my efforts to bring honor back to dueling, I present the Ten Commandments of Honorable Dueling in World of Warcraft. I've split them up into three sections-- Before the Duel, During the Duel, and Post-Duel-- and each one covers a point that has been corrupted or ignored among the worst players in dueling. No longer should we suffer from duel spamming. And no longer should there be jerks who gloat and taunt after a duel has taken place.

Dueling is a very interesting form of PvP-- it's not the large scale onslaughts of the battlegrounds or the smaller matchups in the Arenas. Dueling can even be held within factions-- it's a one-on-one skirmish between two players in the game. And unlike the Horde vs. Alliance shenanigans held in world PvP or the BGs, I believe dueling should be an honorable and respectful endeavor. Click the link below to read the Ten Commandments of Honorable Dueling.

Elizabeth's post about getting the word "gay" out of the game got tons of feedback from you all (some comments more intelligent than others), and now a poster on WoW Ladies has another language sensitivity that I agree with. The word "rape" is used by some players in game for all kinds of things, and most of the time it's used without thought to what the word really means.

Personally I don't use it (not because I have a specific abhorrence of the word, although the act itself is pretty abhorrent), but every once in a while you'll hear things like "boy, our guild raped Hakkar last night," or "stupid elite Son of Arugal just came out of nowhere and raped me." The word for this kind of usage is actually "dysphemism," the opposite of euphemism, in which you specifically use a harsh word in the place of a more polite one.

And that's the problem-- just like "gay," it's not polite to use, not least of all because you may hardly know the person that reads it or their situation. In some cases, the word can be downright offensive. Fortunately, I don't know anyone (that I know of) who's experienced real-life rape or abuse, but especially in an MMO situation, there's no reason to use the harsher word, especially if, as Elizabeth said about "gay," it costs you respect (and possibly your account).

As the WoW Ladies contributor says, "realize there are a lot of women in guild, as well as a lot of married members and members with children. Realize that 1 in 6 women are raped in the US. Realize that each person in the guild is either female themselves, and/or has multiple loved ones and friends that are female. Realize that rape is a deeply traumatic experience, for the victim and their loved ones." Even if you're joking, or even if you didn't mean it that way, it's just not worth saying.

Today's Ask WoW Insider brings us a philosophical question to ponder and stroke our beards over (should you play a male avatar, or perhaps a dwarf female). Jesper, editor of Outland Post, wonders what it takes to become a real hero within the WoW community:

I am currently writing about the possibilities of becoming a hero within the WoW community, both IC and OOC. With anti-heroes like Leeroy Jenkins in mind, I am discussing on my realm forum and let players post comments about this topic. Have you guys written anything about this that I might be able to read?

Yes, you can become a hero in-game by completing certain quests or downing certain bosses, but what special achievements, attitudes, or accomplishments make one respected on one's realm or in the WoW community at large? What are your thoughts?

And don't forget -- Ask WoW Insider needs you! Send us your questions for your peers to answer, and we'll choose one to publish every week. Send your questions to ask AT wowinsider DOT com. Thanks!