Mr Tea smites you so hard the lifestone flinches!
Death says, “Buddy! This is becoming a habit! I’m so glad to be seeing my little Kwipling so often!”
You sigh.
Feh. So I’m dying in record numbers. Usually, it’s at AB. Sometimes I do something exotic and get killed at my hunting grounds or in a different town. Once I jumped in a portal that appeared, only to discover that it was a pathetically obvious trap designed to lure the most gullible defenders from AB into a well-planned ambush. It was so obvious, in fact, that no one else followed me into the portal. They just sort of stood around and laughed and said they’d meet me at the lifestone. Hrmph. And of course, on the other side, 8 billion PKs waited to play castanets with my testicles.
But I don’t mind dying – I really don’t. Hell, I’ve been pk’d enough that I’ve had an explosive device installed in my abdomen for convenience: instead of wasting the energy of actually swinging at me, you can just run by me, pull the cord, and I explode. Saves all the hassle.
There are a lot of PKs that I think are pretty decent blokes, in fact. Isaac, for example, I got to know when he used to spend afternoons kicking my carcass down the hillsides of Uziz. Now he’s pledged under me. But he’s a hella funny guy, even if he’d still rather slit my gullet for giggles. And I’ve had some funny conversations with my ‘murderers’ on more than one occassion. Hell, there was one PK that got me in AB, and not only did he not loot me, he stood around talking and giggling with me for a few minutes. Until I turned red and one of his friends promptly killed me…but as I said, that doesn’t bother me.
Ah, but aren’t you the clever reader – already you’re asking, “Ok then, Kwip – what does bother you?”
Assholes.
See, I don’t care who you are, what ‘alignment,’ guild, religious belief, sexual preference, favorite ice cream flavor, etc, etc – it doesn’t matter. What DOES matter, and a great amount, is whether or not you’re an Asshole. Here’s the thing – if you kill someone, and have a good sense of perspective about the whole thing (like, oh, I dunno, for example THIS IS A GAME AND YOU’RE HERE TO HAVE FUN – and that doesn’t equate to making other people miserable, sorry), that’s hella cool. If you get killed, and still maintain a sense of perspective, that’s hella cool, too – even more so, actually. Don’t get me wrong; I get plenty pissed when I get to see my ass being handed to me by someone about a million levels above me in a match so ridiculously outclassed that I wonder if Don King is somewhere making money off of it. But even at my most frustrated point, when I’ve got mages casting lvl 6 debuff’s on me (like you NEED that to kill me?) and gangs of 50+ bad asses chasing me, I can still find humor in the situation and manage to toss of a few quips (forgive the pun) about TMO, they’ll be sorry, someone please get my mommy, whatever – but I do it for FUN. And the cool froods are the people that laugh about how easy they killed me, have a sense of humor about the whole thing or just generally have a good time doing their own thing. It’s the Assholes that go out of their way to be stupid that drive me nuts. Like Hot Dog; that buttnut at the AB lifestone that serves no purpose other than to repeatedly suicide and leave corpses strewn about the landscape and interfere however he can during a raid. Screw Godmode, it’s really Assholemode that’s causing most of our lag problems.
Look, I’m all about doing your own thing and having fun; I even laugh at the lvl 30+ gimps running around newb towns practicing their 3L33T skillz killing the newbs. Yes, I make fun of them, think they’re idiots, yadda yadda – but on the infinite scale of Assholedom, they’re still a far step below people like Hot Dog.
If it was up to me, there’d be a whole seperate branch of Sentinels whose lone job was to police the worlds for Assholes. Purely a judgement call (mine, actually – hey, if you’re gonna dream, dream BIG!), but when they find someone being an Asshole, they cast Asshole Other XV. This strips the player of all possessions, permenantly gags them, makes them unable to interact with anyone/thing – no tells, emotes, nada! Further, it transforms their avatar into a little cartoon sphincter – that way, the Asshole can run around, and everyone will instantly know, “Oh, there’s an asshole.” Plus, they can jump off cliffs all they want, but they leave no corpses.
And then, of course, I would have a rod of Asshole Smiting VI. Ah, to dream the impossible dream… I’ll have to bring this up at the next Dev Chat…
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