Social Adjustment

Playing Online Games for years, I have never been overly communicative or interested in contacts. I love good company, but I’m easily distracted from following chats, besides public chat usually turns me away from being interested in the community.
With that said, one should think that I never made any good contacts in Online Games, while the contrary is true.

The people I met in online games kept me in those games, even if the game itself already lost its attraction for me. Besides I have met most of them personally, and whenever a game catches my attention, I look for these fellows.
It’s a loose but yet familiar contact, that goes far beyond the regular clan or guild mentality, that is strictly reduced to the game. You can easily differentiate mates from “guild-NPCs”, by asking yourself, if you have anything to talk about with them - besides the game.

They are not close friends, but everyone for himself, a little highlight in the fast-paced online world. Whenever I read the public or PUG chat, I ask myself, how I managed to find those people in the sheer mass of grouching, complaining and simply weird people around us.

First of all, its probably because, reasonable people are not as noisy as idiots, and therefore the number of reasonable people is actually bigger than it appears.
Secondly, my feelings towards strange online behaviour, are not unique. Everyone complains about bad language or careless behaviour, and made his own bad experience. But the most obvious point is, that even if we are normally nice and courteous, we have met so many idiots in the net, that we suspect every stranger to be a potential idiot and treat him that way.

The funny thing, is that we actually have a more enjoyable online experience if we leave our doubts and prejudices behind us, even if we see them justified during our next contact.
If you browse through the Blogs and Forums, you will find endless stories of how bad or plain stupid people in a PUG behaved themselves. Everyone has made his own bitter experiences in this field. But if it comes to contacts, we must consider, that everyone is a stranger to everybody. The bad player, considers me as a typical PUG, although I might be better than him, and haven’t acted yet. This gets even worse, when the “earn your respect first” attitude comes into play. Because of the totally random nature of our contacts, we don’t have time for that. Besides its not a very mature behaviour, because should treat people with respect, until they lost that respect.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not very communicative in Online games, also due to the fact, that I play alongside my girlfriend while we talk. Therefore I wouldn’t expect a stranger to consider me sympathetic person. Of course, I try to be polite, but nothing that would make me stay in your
mind.

The sad thing, is that this absolutely basic and charm-free way of communication is enough, to attract other normal people.
It may sound unbelievable, but I have never made bad experiences with any group or war band that I ever founded in years.
That’s definitely not because of my nature, since I haven’t shown any of that. It’s simply because we react the way we get treated.

And we feel attracted to the way we would act. For Instance, I use complete sentences when asking around for volunteers. People who like regular speech instead of L33d answer to my request, while the L33d answers to l33d requests.

We had a very pleasant Raid yesterday evening, when we decided to give ICC 10 with some pick ups a try.
As you probably found out yourself by hard, the quality of applicants for a raid spot reduces drastically towards raid reset. Those geniuses that had been avoided by other raids throughout the week, see their chance, to join a desperate raid on Thursday evening, who hasn’t any alternatives to fill the last slot.
At least, that was, what we had expected. In the end, our “PUGs” turned out to be, motivated, prepared, willing to pass on items and in every as good as one could wish.
We advanced to the sixth boss Rotface very fast and wiped for about one hour, without one single complaint. At the end, everyone agreed, that we enjoyed the time.

At the end, that’s all about in online games: spending a decent time together.