In the World of Warcraft, Serenity Now - a hardcore Player-verus-Player (PvP) guild - attacked an in-game memorial service held by another guild for a guild member who passed away in real life. They made a video of the exploit, apparently for recruitment purposes. In their wake they left many questions...
This story has been around for a couple of weeks and is now leaking out into the greater gamer consciousness. I find myself as ambiguous today about that event as I was. Often one hopes for clarity with exaggerated examples - this one is certainly that, e.g. a guild of self-described "assholes" trashing a personal moment embued with gravity.
Yet, in its time, in its place, there was a drama of some scale , complexity in motive, and personal choice.
PvP combat tends to be a third-rail topic in MMOG circles. Players have strong feelings one way or the other and discussions tend to polarize quickly. This example likely is not the best vehicle for a nuanced "PvP is good" versus "PvP is bad" exchange - given its exaggerations. A rough sampling of forum discussions (refs below) certainly reinforces this.
A subtler question might be how much of the excess surrounding this event would you have to trim away before you became (un)comfortable with PvP - depending on your original view? Put it another way, where are your boundaries?
Perhaps, however, the more interesting question is the meta one. Do you prefer your virtual worlds as mixed up places capable of outrageous excesses and surprises or do you find more carefully orchestrated world experiences - scoped by styles of play, role-playing demeanor, RL geography, nationality, and yes PvP, more to your taste?
Other echoes of the world-y world versus game-y world debate, perhaps.
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Refs.
Good discussion (Joe Rybicki)
AFK Gamer's post (including archived drama thread)
