[CaptainCrunch]

No other medium allows people to let their inner jerk/psychopath/bully fly like video games, and specifically MMO games. In terms of games people that in real life might be meek and mild and nice become raving lunatics and glory hogs when they log in.

I wanted to do this list before I did the last Computer Game list, because I wanted a list that could make us all laugh.

I'll be the first to note that my exposure to MMO games is limited to SWTOR, a game that I still play 11 years after it roles out, but as I researched this topic I was in awe of the creativity and vindictiveness of game players.

Some of these are funny, some vindictive and some plain wrong, so here's your list of the biggest jerk moves in gaming history.

9) Killing god, (Richard Garriott and Ultima Online) - I remember reading about this in PC Gamer magazine about a month after it happened and my jaw dropped from the sheer awesomeness. Ultima Online was the first real experiment in creating a virtual environment where gamers could interact. I'm sure that Richard Garriott aka Lord British envisioned a world where gamers worked together to solve the quests that were lovingly created in this game. Instead it became the first real indicator that players in a video game become jerks and killers. The game was flooded with high level players who took pleasure in slaughtering new players, players that found every cheat and exploit and players that decided to destroy the in game economy.

This came to a head in the most unexpected way, where opportunity met luck. Every once in a while Lord British would enter the game to talk to the members, he would usually come to the game as an invincible character surrounded by basically murder bot terminator sentries.

This time fluke met opportunity, as the call to a speech by British caused the servers to crash, the only way around it was for the admins to shut off British's security force and Garriott himself forgot to turn on his invisibility, so basically his appearance was equivalent to the president showing up in public without his Secret Service Detail and in a T-Shirt with a bullseye on it.

Here's what really adds to the fluke, a player named Rainz had stolen a fire scroll which was only possible because the guards weren't present. His real intent was to hit Lord British with this spell because it would look awesome. He had no idea that it would be fatal. So he lit British on fire and exclaimed look at the pretty spell, and then unbelievably he had done the equivalent of killing god himself.

The game administrators reacted predictably by summoning monsters to slaughter the attendees, but with the invincibility turned off and the guards not there, the members were able to fight back, and the admins reacted in the only way they knew how, they basically fired the rioting members into the sun.

In a lot of ways, this game proved a social theory right, that people love chaos and given the opportunity they can let their inner jerk fly.



8) The Great Bank Scheme (Eve Online) - Eve online is the game that everyone wants, an MMO based in space where you can become that simple man making his way in the galaxy. But Eve was the ultimate expression of MMO gone mad as the players eventually took over the game and it lead to the rise of corporations and an economy that was really based in real money. People would pursue vendettas against other players, would go to war with each other and run cons.

Enter a player named Cally who decided to Bernie Madoff the game. Cally didn't join the game as a miner, or a honest mercenary, he didn't join a corporation. Instead Cally showed the open nature of the game by forming the Eve Investment bank, offering loans to other players to buy tools or whatever they needed to survive. Because Banks make money like Crazy the EIB became a major economic teather in a game where fake money was worth actual real money.

Then one day Cally did what everyone fantasies about, extending his middle fingers to the players, and even his own employees he stole all the money in his bank which was equivalent to $170,000 in real world money, went out and bought the most powerful warship in the game, put a bounty on his own head and basically pulled on a "Come at me Bro" T-Shirt and dared the other players to kill them.

Then to add insult to injury he posted a video making fun of everyone and became the equivalent to a Bond Villain who bragged about his exploits and couldn't be killed.



7) Funerals are a great place for murder (WOW) - We've seen instances where people gather to say goodbye to friends that have actually died in the real world, the videos on line usually show scores of players mourning while beautiful music plays. But as we all know, MMO games are also a gathering of jerks. When a horde guild decided to hold an online funeral for a departed friend named serenity, they made the mistake of holding the funeral on a PVP server and announced to the world that they were holding the funeral.

So at that point another group of players decided to show their respects by showing up and massacring the funeral party while people screamed about how mean it was an how much of a dirtbag move it was.

The killers responded by basically laughing and continuing the slaughter.



6) The corrupted Blood Plague (WOW) - Sometimes a games programmers pat themselves on the back over their creativity only to realize that like the hero in the movie who does something to save the world there are horrific consequences. This would be the case of that.

In World of Warcraft one dungeon boss had a disease that would drain the life from a player standing next to it. Gamers of course figured out how to get this plague out of the dungeon and into the general game itself. Before you could say plague, these gamers spread the plague to anyone they interacted with instantly killing low level and high players alike. Because the plague was uncontrollable it also infected NPC's so when you went to buy supplies at an inn, you were suddenly infected.

As the disease spread, the game creators enforced things like quarantines, but a dedicated group of gamers found a way to defy the efforts of the creators to end the plague, and when the game went through things like hard resets, the plague carriers infected their pets and reinfected themselves and continued their work as bio-terrorists. They were so effective at it that the US Army used the game to study the effects of biowar.



5) Carpet Bombing a Funeral (Planet Side) - We go back to the, we do the worst things possible because we can nature of video games.

In the game planet side a group decided again to hold a funeral for a friend that had recently died. They thought that they had prepared, probably after reading about other funeral massacres. They erected a kill proof shield to keep enemy factions from disrupting the funeral, but failed to take into account that friendly factions might like the smell of napalm in the morning.

While the funeral started, a friendly faction loaded up their bombers force and hit play on their tape of Flight of Valkyries and proceeded to fly through the enemy barrier and carpet bomb the funeral while cries of "You dicks" echoed through chat.

Because this was a funeral the only defensive measure they had was a group of snipers who were there to fire a 21 gun salute to the dead game player, and as we know Snipers don't really do much against a carpet bombing.



4) Pet Suicide Bombers (WOW) - Sometimes people don't learn, and when the programmers at World of Warcraft decided to roll out a similar debuff for a monster that they used in the Blood Plague incident, you knew that things were going to go bad. When boss Baron Geddon cast a living bomb spell, peoples pets were infected with a 10 second massive grenade effect.

Of course players found a way to become the living embodiment of a enormous dick, they would dismiss their pets which paused the countdown and teleport to neutral civilian eras then recall their pets and use them as massive murder suicide bots.



3) Sometime game programmers are jerks too (Final Fantasy XI) - The most common complaint about advanced MMO players is that it came be too easy. Players will come up against the most lethal evil creation that the programmers can come up with and kill it. So how did the designers of Final Fantasy react, by creating the ultimate indestructable monster, and then drink the tears of the players.

In final Fantasy XI players could have a super ability that they could use every two hours making them incredibly powerful during raids. So how did the designers react? By creating a boss named Absolute Virtue that could not only use all of them, but healed faster then he could be damaged had a monstrous amount of hit points.

Basically fighting absolute virtue was equivalent to fighting a dungeon master during a drunken game of D+D, you might as well hand in your gamer card.

Video's began to be posted by gamers complaining about the fact that absolute virtue couldn't be killed even posting videos of players trying to kill it during a 30 hour fight. The designers responded by drinking up the misery of the players and released hint videos of how to kill the monster 3 years after the fact.

Incredibly players continued to bash their head up against the wall, and it became tough to know who to cheer for, players wasting their time and whining about a clear case of a developer we hate you moment. Or the developers who'd basically dropped a combination of god and satan into the game.

Finally the developers relented and nerfed Absolute Virtue by pretty much giving it a mirved ICBM and then setting a timer that you had to kill the monster in two hours of left. Then they ate a bucket of kittens. Eventually Absolute Virtue was beaten, but by then we had to wonder about the stupidity of wasting 30 hours in a fight with a virtual monster.



2) Father puts a hit on his son (WOW) - Every father at one time will roll out one or two phrase "I'm going to kill that kid" and "GET A FREAKING JOB" One father lived out that fantasy in the virtual world of WOW. Sick of watching his son obsessively playing the game for hours at a time and not getting a job, Mr Feng sprung into action by joining the game and hiring a group of elite assassins to continually kill his sons character hoping to make him give up the game. Instead the gig was up when the son asked his continual killers why they were doing this and they admitted that his father had hired the hitmen, probably making for uncomfortable Christmas dinners where father and son eyed each other while clutching knives.



1) Biggest dick in video game history (EVE Online) - The Mittani is a hall of fame dick, there's no other way to describe him, though he eventually got his when the gaming community turned against him. But at the height of his dickery he was the head of the Goonfleet, the most powerful faction in the game. They basically ran roughshod over everyone, and in a game known for trolling players, targeting people and destroying real money, Mittani took it to a serious and unprecedented level of being a real world a$$hat.

Because the strong in the virtual world get a lot of joy out of targeting the weak, Mittani and the goonfleet targeted a simple minor named "The Wis" brutalizing him to the point that "The Wis" sent him a message begging him to stop because Eve Online was the only thing keeping him sane during the breakup on his family.

Not being content to just destroy The Wis in the virtual world, Mittani put up a presentation in person at a Eve Online gathering (streamed around the world) in Iceland mocking his text during a power point presentation then encouraging all other players to pile on and drive Wis to suicide.

Why did he do this? Because he could and while this to me was a pretty sick thing to do, you had to wonder what kind of a person would do this.

The punishment was quick and underwhelming as the games developers banned Mittani for a month and kicked him off of the adversary panel for the game



Side note, eventually the members of Eve Online turned on the Mittani who was one of the most powerful members of the game and grouped up to destroy his Goonfleet and beat him up ruthlessly.

I hope you enjoyed this topic.