I was slightly taken aback to realize that a querry I had posted about had, shall we say, taken another turn. Another player had assumed my identity on a PvE (Conflict) server, and I wanted to know if this was acceptable or not, and if so, what action(s) I might take. I thought this was a rather straightforward question.
Just for the record, Lavarana (which was MY name, on this server) came here and presented a different perspective. Fair enough. It is perfectly normal that there are two sides to any story.
But I was a wee bit surprised that this account was taken at face value by some, with no real questions asked.
If I was talking badly about this person in a language they freely admitted they did not understand, then, pray tell how did they know what I was saying? This is a fairly elementary question that any thinking person person might ask themselves.
It turns out that the other party (who remember, adopted my in game name and clan name) was having a lot of problems with other players. And yes, I understand that PvP is a legitimate part of the game.
But, I did not camp on their doorstep and I never asked anyone else to do so, either.
I was simply asking for advice on what is, at its essence, a matter of another player assuming my identity.
Personally, I donāt really mind PvP. It is the nature of the game and if you do not like it, donāt play that way. BUT (and again, I return to the real issue here) using the system to adopt another playerās identity is simply not on. And if I may offer a suggestion, this might be a moment for a fairly common sense rule clarification, or change.
To just let those who were waiting for their tea to cool: I DID make a complaint, gathered evidence, and sent it in. Because I have never used the complaint system, I did not send the correctly formatted screenshots. I rectified that.
But then a strange thing happened.
We were talking, in-game last night, my doppelganger and I. And we managed to realize we had some common ground; that we were in fact both human beings, and while we might have some basic philosophical differences, we were united by (among other shared experiences) at least one single thing: Our love/hate relationship with this game- bugs and all.
At this point, he agreed to cease impersonating me, and changed his clan name. I told him I had made a complaint against him, and he agreed that there was no problem about that, but after I logged out, I sent an email to the Zendesk and asked them to not ban him, because we had resolved our differences by communicating, and actually listening to each other.
My problem was not that he had killed me, in game. My problem was that he was impersonating me.
But it turns out that I was not seeing him as a living, breathing person, with a different set of reference points, but instead as some horrible NPC bent on ruining my gaming experience. And maybe he was seeing me the same way.
Again, I would like to emphasize that we organically resolved our differences. I did not see all this until today, but I just wanted to let those few who might have been mildly diverted by the drama of it all that yes, people CAN make peace. He may attack and kill me in PvP hours. I may even be sore about it. The reverse might also happen.
But at the end of the day, quite often, we need to remember that this IS a game.
And so, to quote Pepys, to bed.