This Friday, Grumpy wanted to share his favorite excuses that asshats often use to explain away rude or dishonest gaming behavior. These are the classics, usually used by noob asshats; the more experienced asshat will, of course, invent more cleverly-crafted excuses (as you probably noticed JUST THIS WEEK on the message boards).
1. It’s only a game. The single best catchall excuse for virtually any fradulent or dishonest behavior. What you’re really telling Grumpy here is that you cannot even be trusted with the smallest of tasks, however, if you were hired to be in charge of one of the world’s largest retirement funds, you for sure wouldn’t steal from that. Because that’s not a game.
2. My *insert your favorite relative, pet or best friend in the whole world* was playing my character. It’s best to follow this one up with a promise to beat the relative or to tell your mother, thereby ensuring that this sort of thing WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN until you leave your bedroom/computer/house unattended the next day.
3. I have 2+ friends that are *insert profession/exaggerated levels/GM’s/CSR’s*. This is a popular excuse for passing around misinformation, and is such solid proof of your superior gaming knowledge, it can only be trumped by “I have 2+ REAL LIFE friends that are….etc.”. Presumably REAL LIFE friends are vastly preferable as you would beat them or tell your mother if they were to give you false information.
4. My internet connection went down…coincidentally just as I was about to complete my end of a gaming business deal. In the whole history of gaming, this has truthfully only happened maybe twice. And unless all of the galaxy’s planets are in perfect alignment, thereby throwing the Laws of Physics, Nature, Mathematics and REASON out the window, it didn’t happen this time either.
5. This used to be my friend’s character, therefore, any prior transgressions committed by this character was HIM and most definitely not ME, kthx. Grumpy’s got some news for the “new guy”…his friend is an asshat and only another asshat would call him a friend. Furthermore, Grumpy thinks the “new” asshat is a liar, too. A related excuse, sometimes used…I was away from the game for a while and my friend was playing my character while all the thievery, mischief or any related rude behaviors were performed. Equally as unbelievable, by the way.
6. Drama. Drama is used as a diversionary tactic only, of course. The asshat is going for the hat trick of Attention, Sympathy, Excuse. It’s suspicious that someone whose dog/mother/brother/entire family/entire school/entire city was just killed by a catastrophic tornado/earthquake/global thermal nuclear war has the time, or presence of mind, to log into an online game to share this information with the rest of us.
On a related topic, Grumpy has noticed several posts recently where people are tortured by asshats and yet grapple with whether they should /report, /addignore, ban, etc. For crissakes, just /addignore the asshat and continue about your business. Your life, gaming or RL, will not be any less rich by never having contact with them again. Addignore and/or banning is kind of like killing gophers — you don’t even need to have a reason.
Grumpy has so many people on /addignore and the ban list already, this alone could be what’s taxing the resources of the SWG database system, thereby endangering vendors and The Player Economy! Just last night, Grumpy added two fresh nominees to /addignore for being whack jobs and didn’t give it a second thought, other than to notice how refreshing his gaming experience suddenly became without them in it. For you noobs, the syntax is /addignore PlayerName.
Learn it, know it, live it.
The Grumpy Master Architect ©