World of Warcraft: Ethics?

[VamPyroX]

A friend of mine showed me this video recently and I thought it was funny. At the same time, I could see how it would piss off a lot of people if they were on the other end.

Serenity Now Bombs A Funeral (56 MB!!!)

Basically, what happened is...

There's this guy who is well-known by the WoW community. He died of cancer and the WoW community decided to host a funeral to honor him. This idea was brought up and discussed in a WoW forum elsewhere. Everyone was to meet at the lake in the middle of nowhere, line up, and take turns expressing something at the lake.

This group called "Serenity Now" decided to take advantage of it. They teamed up and ran all the way out there. When the moment was right, they all barged in on the funeral and did a mass killing on everyone who was at the funeral. No one stood a chance and everyone died.

The way the killings work is that if you kill someone, you gain points, items, and money. Killing a person of higher ranking gives you a drastic increase while killing someone of a lower ranking gives you a minimum increase. Since everyone who attended the funeral weren't teamed up, they had no chance to defend themselves.

Now, the question is... was what "Serenity Now" did ethical and should they be disciplined for it. Or... should they be left alone since it's only a game and that the funeral could have been planned better?

 

[Interpretrator]

Now, the question is... was what "Serenity Now" did ethical and should they be disciplined for it. Or... should they be left alone since it's only a game and that the funeral could have been planned better?

I've seen this debated on other forums. I thought it was in pretty poor taste -- but like you, I also thought it was kind of funny. (Granted I have a somewhat sick sense of humor and if it had been my funeral, I would have enjoyed something like that taking place...not it if had been my friend's funeral, though.)

Here's the thing though: in WoW you have a choice to go where you most likely won't be attacked, even on a PvP server. I think if they made the choice to hold the funeral in a contested area, they were pretty much leaving themselves open to exactly what happened.

Was it fair, or nice? Not really. But I absolutely don't think Serenity Now should be disciplined for it. I think according to the rules of the game they did nothing wrong. It was disrespectful and morally questionable, sure, but if that's how you choose to play, the game is set up that way.

 

[delectable]

A friend of mine showed me this video recently and I thought it was funny. At the same time, I could see how it would piss off a lot of people if they were on the other end.

Serenity Now Bombs A Funeral (56 MB!!!)

Basically, what happened is...

There's this guy who is well-known by the WoW community. He died of cancer and the WoW community decided to host a funeral to honor him. This idea was brought up and discussed in a WoW forum elsewhere. Everyone was to meet at the lake in the middle of nowhere, line up, and take turns expressing something at the lake.

This group called "Serenity Now" decided to take advantage of it. They teamed up and ran all the way out there. When the moment was right, they all barged in on the funeral and did a mass killing on everyone who was at the funeral. No one stood a chance and everyone died.

The way the killings work is that if you kill someone, you gain points, items, and money. Killing a person of higher ranking gives you a drastic increase while killing someone of a lower ranking gives you a minimum increase. Since everyone who attended the funeral weren't teamed up, they had no chance to defend themselves.

Now, the question is... was what "Serenity Now" did ethical and should they be disciplined for it. Or... should they be left alone since it's only a game and that the funeral could have been planned better?

On WoW when you kill somebody, you don't gain anything but honor points unless it was a dishonorable kill.. Anyways, you can't loot the corpses of their items or money. Just thought I'd clarify that with you.

 

[Interpretrator]

On WoW when you kill somebody, you don't gain anything but honor points unless it was a dishonorable kill.. Anyways, you can't loot the corpses of their items or money. Just thought I'd clarify that with you.

Good point. I didn't fully read the original post. If the people at the funeral were much lower level than the gankers, then the gankers didn't get anything from killing them. If they were equal level, they got honor points. The people who got killed didn't lose any in-game items except for probably a few silver for having to make repairs after dying (which happens all the freaking time).