This isn’t limited to Conan. There’s a cultural shift in gaming that has literally been going down hill for the last ~15 years. When I PVP’d in the late 90s and early 2000s. It wasn’t uncommon for a loser in a fight to be allowed to return to the scene, gives props to the winner, and go about their business or even have a bit of a rematch. Group based PVP would just be confined to specific areas and was more or less a drop in and drop out affair.
You had your various Red = Dead type players. But they were usually the exception and only really on games/servers that had restrictive factions. Such as Good, Evil, Neutrals in Sullon Zek in Everquest, Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft, and others where opposing factions couldn’t group, trade, or guild with one another.
I remember playing on the Rallos Zek server in EQ where it was effectively free for all PVP. You could PVP anyone, same faction, same race, same religion, same guild, same raid, and even same group. You had to watch your friendly fire. Nothing causes a wipe faster than the tank taking a 1k Bolt of Tallon to the face from a magician not paying attention. But on that server, PVP usually only happened to settle who would get a raid target if two or more guilds showed up, people were bored, or some sort of guild on guild event.
Even when people got bored, they would usually announce their intent and wait for a response before engaging. If you weren’t interested in fighting they may leave you alone or fight you anyway. If you ran off they usually left it be and didn’t chase you across zone lines.
When I PVP’d in Archeage about 8-9 years ago. Things were a little testier. But still a bit manageable. We saw quite a bit more ganking then in previous years, more crap talking, and all that. But it was still what many would say on a competitive level, and not so personal. The guild I was in would PVP usually only to achieve objectives. If a guild was fighting a boss we wanted to farm, we chased them off. If another guild was transporting materials we’d raid it. I mean the game was designed around this gameplay so we engaged in it.
Rarely would individuals be targeted. It sometimes happened, but again it wasn’t exactly the norm. You sometimes saw people take things personally to the global chat or forums. And it was much more frequent than before, but no where near what it is today. Big alpha guilds usually wouldn’t target small guilds or individuals, as it wasn’t worth the time or effort. When you have 300 players online and they all need gear. Stomping noobs doesn’t help with that. But of course if someone ganked a member of a large guild, then they had to be made an example of. Maintaining a reputation is sometimes more efficient then actually acting on things all the time.
But nowadays people are dicks to be dicks more and more often. In my time playing PVP, I have done some absolutely ruthless things. But I’ve never engaged in a many simply for the sake of it. If I attack someone its either because they attacked me or my own. They had something I wanted. They were competing for something we wanted. Their base was getting too close. Or some other tangent reason (or story based RP reason in the case of a RP-PVP server). I’ve played in some antagonistic roles in that sense. But its always been for some reason or benefit to playing the game itself. Anytime that it wasn’t, was in retaliation or defense.
In this sense, official players and private players are the same. Players are players. I’ve seen these players literally will roam around looking for crap to dick with. You could have a guy or two making a little sandstone hut on the opposite end of a map and people are going to blow it up. For literally no reason at all. I mean granted, I will take the stance that such actions are PVP.
But that is usually under the assumption it is an isolated incident. Under the assumption that everyone playing is looking to PVP. But many aren’t. When you attack someone, and then when they put up resistance and clean your clock and you run to an admin. That’s when it gets dumb in a bad way.
I’ve seen this on officials and I’ve seen it on private. My unique experience on the latter is I’ve been the God damned admin who has to deal with that crap. Its stupid. Its petty. All because people don’t know how to swallow their pride. Don’t know how to take a loss.
And they forget the major point of playing a game. To have fun. Don’t get me wrong, I see this statement misused. ALOT on either side of this discussion. If I see you carrying a load and think its valuable, I might harass you for it. That’s not me trying to ruin your fun. We’re playing PVP. PVP is a method of gathering resources. Its the sense of danger we all choose to engage with when choosing to play PVP.
But these people who run to report when they find themselves losing. Are missing out on the point of fun for themselves. What the f— is fun about reporting someone with the idea of an admin doing your dirty work for you? These people are willing to sacrifice their own fun to get any win they can. That’s pretty damn sad.
But this is definitely something I’ve seen happen with more frequency since I got out of the Army in 2010. I remember playing on a pretty large minecraft server. It was PVP and RP focused. Interesting server. But they had a whole three sections of the forums dedicated to reporting players. And they would get dozens of posts in there every day. Part of the reason that I stopped playing there was because of all the rule-lawyering.
And I know people will want to blame younger generations on this. And that’s BS. I’ve seen just as many Boomers, X’ers, Mills, and Zoomers do this stuff. Its definitely a cultural issue, not a generational one. If we do see younger players doing it more often, its because of the climate the older one’s cultivated and the young guys simply are ignorant.
