Drama is Inevitable

Like most peo­ple, I learned the hard way about sec­ond chances at relationships–backsliding, regres­sion rela­tion­ships, what­ever you want to call it. Namely that they don’t work, despite the fact that regres­sion sex might sound like just what you need after a series of ter­ri­ble first dates. How­ever, unless one of you has been in a coma or sim­i­larly life-changing event, inevitably the crazy in your ex or the behav­ior that brought out the crazy in you (or both) man­i­fests again… and then you finally wake to find your­self stuck in a supremely depress­ing place: exactly the same kind of unhappy sit­u­a­tion you were in before, except you’re older and you have demon­stra­bly not learned your les­son. You’re con­nected again to this per­son who makes you unhappy.

Then you some­how break it off. Whether you’ve extri­cated your­self via your own force of will or via exter­nal causes, you’re free of this per­son and you now have some abil­ity to see this kind of sit­u­a­tion com­ing again. When faced with future back­slid­ing, even­tu­ally you either:

1. Real­ize that the num­ber of sec­onds you have on this planet is finite, and per­haps regres­sion sex-and-crazy this isn’t the best way to spend those sec­onds. You opt out from that person.
2. Let them back into your guild.

Big jump, but stay with me. I sus­pect that those of you who have walked both the dat­ing road and the long-time guild mem­ber road see where I’m going with this.

You’ve got this guy, Bob, in your com­mu­nity who appears to be friendly/funny/talented and has learned to clev­erly dis­guise his crazy. Bob knows how to sound aligned to the goals of your guild, because how hard is it to sound like that when said goals are likely writ­ten on your guild’s front page? Hon­estly, only the really thick peo­ple ever do any­thing stu­pid enough to war­rant imme­di­ate kick­ing. Not Bob–he can seem like a good guild mem­ber… but at some point, you know from first­hand expe­ri­ence that he’ll will do one or more of the following:

• Feel jus­ti­fied in a bro­ken give/take ratio
• Com­plain when­ever they don’t get instan­ta­neous ser­vice from guild resources, like offi­cers and crafters
• Pick fights with peo­ple inside or out­side the guild
• Beg for any­thing over /g, espe­cially gold
• Be an embar­rass­ment in pub­lic, like /trade, hurt­ing your guild’s con­tin­u­ous recruit­ment efforts
• Make sug­ges­tions that involve a lot of work, not offer to help with exe­cu­tion, and then get pissed and complain
• Sow dissension
• Only par­tic­i­pate when there’s a clear chance for per­sonal reward/suggest large guild invest­ments in their own per­sonal improvement
• Speak in txtmsg like they’re not sit­ting at a key­board (“y cant i come 2 ZA”)
• Link ran­dom people’s gear over /g with text-drool of how much they want that gear
• Tell Chuck Nor­ris jokes or other com­pletely played-out memes
• Freak out when they don’t get atten­tion fre­quently enough

…or what­ever it is that pushes your But­ton of Incom­pat­i­bil­ity. The fact that Bob is tal­ented and/or funny and/or gen­er­ous isn’t the ques­tion; it’s that he brings out the crazy in you. The expe­ri­ence of being in this Bob’s com­pany makes the game unfun for you.

How do you per­son­ally deal with Bob? For me, a notice of silence fol­lowed by enforce­ment of silence works. “Bob, I wish you well but I’m going to do my best to avoid you.” No con­ver­sa­tion after that is nec­es­sary. I’ve tried “hav­ing it out” and “an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion”, but hon­estly an extended con­ver­sa­tion about incom­pat­i­bil­ity, how­ever you deliver it, isn’t nec­es­sary. You’re not going to enlighten this per­son. The equiv­a­lent of silence in MMORPGs is some vari­a­tion of /ignore and refusal to group with this per­son. Do not break this silence for any rea­son. It works great!

If only it were that easy in MMORPGs.

The prob­lem is that you’re in a guild. The pool of peo­ple around you on the server is mostly sta­tic and is cer­tainly lim­ited. Your friends in this guild–the ones whose com­pany you seek out and that you’ve come to enjoy–are per­fectly good peo­ple with the glar­ing excep­tion that they don’t share your opin­ion on Bob. This per­son who you’ve con­cluded is a com­plete waste of your time, he doesn’t drive them nuts like he dri­ves you nuts.

As long as Bob plays the game and you play the game, you’re going to exist in the same lim­ited social cir­cle. You’re going to be around him. You’re going to see him in the bank, he’ll be group­ing with your friends. He might even still be in your guild! The only method of escape is server trans­fer, but that means leav­ing every­thing you enjoy about where you are. The vast major­ity of the time, this is an unac­cept­able solution.

So what hap­pens? Drama, that’s what!

Now take this two way rela­tion­ship that can hap­pen between any two peo­ple and bring that to a group of ten peo­ple. Or forty! The odds of this hap­pen­ing between any two peo­ple is small, but the more peo­ple you add to the mix, the more likely you are that it’s going to hap­pen. Add the vari­able of time and you can pretty much guar­an­tee that it’s going not just hap­pen to some­one in your guild, but hap­pen to you. No mat­ter how good you try to be, drama happens.

This is why there’s always one thing you can count on in mas­sively mul­ti­player games: Drama is Inevitable.

More Words!

• Guilds are not Businesses
• Offi­cers should all have Tanks and Healers
• Return of the Mixed Blessing
• Every­thing is Always Moving
• Fools, Silence, and Dam­age Reporting–supplemental