Let’s start at the beginning, with the obvious:
The internet is a forum in which people can interact with each other under a thick shield of anonymity. An unfortunate result of this is that freaks, morons, and douchebags, many of whom probably wouldn’t even be able to function in normal society, use the internet to take out their pitiful frustrations on those of us who are a bit higher on the evolutionary ladder. Even worse, the scant information we glean upon meeting someone makes it almost impossible for us to make an accurate judgment about who we should be avoiding. A Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) is possibly the closest thing to real life social interactions that the internet has to offer so far. In order to advance, players must work together by teaming up for battle, doing business, auctioning crafts and valuables, organizing guilds and raids, asking questions, making requests, and many other functions, most of which are far more intimate than one would ever undertake with a group of strangers in real life. Since all of the players are still fully protected by the anonymity of the internet however, the undesirables are still given free reign to spread their obnoxious corruption. The more elaborate and realistic an MMORPG is, the more critical and intimate your relationships with other online individuals become, and it’s now possible for bad apples to cause you a great deal of inconvenience, even extending beyond the boundaries of the game world. The requirement of a subscription fee and heightened game difficulty often do well to weed out the worst of them, but there are always certain categories of people who will cause some detriment to your gaming whenever you’re unfortunate enough to run into them. Excluding the few bizarre extremes I randomly encounter (Neo-Nazi poseurs, ultra-zealous evangelicals, etc.) as well as the obligatory spammers, scammers, and Asian farmers, I have compiled the following list of the specific types of individuals who have most frequently and consistently fucked up my gaming experience:
Smokers
Typical to the mindset of an addict is that they see no problem with making an entire group wait for them or attempt to fight without their help while they go indulge in their chemical dependence. The instances of “brb smoke” have become so common that attempting to avoid it would probably exclude an inconveniently large amount of players, and so I have decided to grind my teeth and stay silent…for the time being. It's almost laughable to expect them to be empathetic enough to realize it, but once you’re in a group with 6 or 8 other people, anything you do to waste time or screw around will affect everybody. That's what a group is for - sharing victory and sharing defeat. Going afk for a smoke is no different from leaving a poker game and forcing the other players to sit on their thumbs until you get back.
Experience has indicated to me that many of the smokers I run into in online games are actually eurotrash, while most of those who are addicted to other substances seem to be closer to home. The next category is for them:
Stoners
Actually less annoying than the smokers in regards to wasted time, as a stoner's high takes longer to toke up (too long for an afk), and lasts longer as well. The stoner is a weak link by virtue of the way they perform while high. A group member who runs into walls (or worse, into a group of enemies), wastes mana casting spells out of combat just to see the pretty colors, and considers everything they're doing hilarious is most likely a toked-up loser. Fortunately, they’re somewhat easier to spot. Since a stoner's life revolves around chemical abuse, they seldom possess the means or motivation to think of anything else, and often name their characters in a relevant way. Beware of such names as SlImShAdY69 or POTT!!!LEEF!!! or any character with an afro.
Kids
I’m not going to address the issue of whether playing an online game is detrimental to a child’s development...but I have to think it can’t be any worse than watching Spongebob Squarepants or any of the other mind-sapping shit that passes for children’s programming nowadays. No, my concerns are purely selfish in that I only care how a child’s presence in game affects me. There are kids whose interest in the game stimulates a savant-like advancement in computer literacy, at least one of whom I’ve actually met, but these are extremely rare exceptions; Most 12-year-olds act like 12-year-olds. It’s usually glaringly obvious in pretty much everything they do, and I don’t pay fourteen bucks a month to babysit their stupid asses.
A relevant caveat: A somewhat random but reliable way to recognize a kid is that they seem to gain some sort of excitement by making their character jump up and down over and over and over again for no reason, as if their spacebar has contracted some sort of epilepsy. They often like to do it right in front of your face as well. If it happens to you, take the hint and head the other way.
Parents
Yes that's right, there’s now a large number of parents (I use the term only in the physical sense) who spend their evenings playing online games instead of tending to their offspring. I count these people among the most infuriating for several reasons. First of all, they have no qualms about going afk and taking as long as they have to in order to tend to their child's needs. This makes them difficult to yell at, as others consider it a legitimate reason and will not usually back you up, but that’s exactly my point: If you think you're mature enough to be squirting out kids, stop playing computer games and go be a parent. Go wipe little Timmy’s ass, read him a story, or if you live in Texas, teach him how to use a shotgun and hate queers for Jesus. These types are overwhelmingly easy to spot because they let you know their parental status at every opportunity. Whereas most normal players will just state "afk" and go do their necessary business, the parent will always give you an explicit description of what they will be doing, e.g. "brb, my 17-month-old wants some grapes" (an actual sentence stated by a groupmate). The reason they inform us so explicitly is, of course, because they want to show off the fact that they've managed to crap out another stinky doucheling. It’s always been beyond me why this is something to brag about - every other life form on the planet can do the exact same thing, most of them more efficiently, in fact. Besides, I believe it's an act of irresponsibility to deposit yet another consumer into our 7 billion-primate infestation. To me, bragging that you have a kid is like bragging that you purposely imported killer bees into your neighborhood.
MMORPGs that require more discipline and dedication, such as Everquest 2 or Rift, have fewer parents, but there are always some around. If you watch talk shows, mark my words – in ten years or less, you’ll soon see a new breed of whining, sympathy-grubbing victim crying on Oprah’s shoulder: The kid whose daddy never had time for him because he was busy running 40-man raids in Molten Core. Then the media will seize onto it and have a field day, and Jack Thompson will get an erection. And nobody wants that.
When confronted about the distress and wasted time they’re causing others, parents will almost always say a variation of the following sentence: "Well unlike you, I actually have a life outside this game."
Do you really? Well go tend to your real life – and your kid – on your own time, not on mine. If you want to have children, go do it. If you want to play video games instead of tending to your spawn, that's your business too. But if you expect me to bend over backwards to cater to your shitty playing as a result of your shitty parenting, then you need to get the fuck out of my way.
Braggarts
There will always be players who consider their character development secondary to making sure others know about it. I have no doubt that some players wouldn’t even be players at all if there weren't people to brag to about their achievements. It would be much more tolerable if these people actually lived up to their own hype, but very often they don’t. More than once I've seen a player get killed because he stopped fighting so that he could type to the group about how awesome his character is. Let’s be clear: I don’t care how many max level characters you have, how much money you farmed today, what dungeons you’ve run, how much DPS you’re doing, or anything else. Shut up and kill stuff, or I might let that ogre eat your head just to shut you up.
Despots
A phenomenon observed in various facets of society is the way some people’s personalities change when they’re granted power over others. A person might be polite and reasonable and likable enough, but once they’re given a bit of authority, they degenerate into bossy jerkoffs who can make everyone under them miserable. The same phenomenon apparently applies even when the authority is almost meaningless, such as when a guild member is promoted to officer or leader. I’ve even run into “leaders” of common, humdrum pickup groups who thought they had more valid opinions simply because they were the first ones to bother sticking half a dozen random people together. I’m a cooperative and generous player who will usually do whatever is asked by someone of higher rank in a guild, but I’m not accustomed to following an order that I personally oppose or see no reason for. Even in the real world and in the face of real authority I have mounted significant opposition when being told what to do, so a high school kid in his mom’s basement gulping Go-gurt isn’t going to intimidate me very much with his nonsense in-game title. Some leader types also seem to suffer under the age-old delusion that in order to get anything done, you have to be a prick about it. Those under them demonstrate an equal degree of ignorance by accepting this, but I certainly do not.
Though I never seek authority over others, sometimes I’ve been promoted regardless and I’ve been happy to hear that I apparently make a fine leader. Perhaps that’s the sort of person who should be promoted – the ones who aren’t lusting after such privileges.
Beggars
Beggars are players who spend their time standing around spamming requests for handouts such as money or power leveling (a process in which a high level character does all the hard work while the lowbie stands around with his thumb up his ass and leeches off the cash and exp). I’ve even had people be so brazen as to approach me and actually open a trade window, only to stand there expectantly and see what I’ll do. It’s quite like having a homeless man jump out in front of you on the sidewalk and thrust his change cup in your face. The irony is that the time these people spend standing around spamming for handouts could be spent killing monsters or doing quests or something else that would benefit them a lot more. It seems silly only to those of us who actually want to play, however. They do not, and so I don’t believe this realization would change their behavior. The one good thing about beggars is that they’re almost always very low level. No matter how much they mooch, they eventually have to put forth some effort to advance, and being unwilling to do this, as well as having sabotaged their relationships with other players by annoying many of the people they’ve come across, they’re ultimately doomed.
I never turn down a freebie or two, but I see no attraction in having everything handed to me on a silver platter. Working for advancement is where almost all of a game’s fun and satisfaction comes from, so this mindset leaves me scratching my head. Even making a sexy female character, taking her clothes off and making her dance for money would be some sort of effort (Even I have shelled out some change to such causes. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!). In any case, each player should earn their dues just like everything else…or just buy their dues from Asian farmers. That’s fine with me too. Just stop spamming me.
Chatters
Some players are less players at all. Whether they were once interested in playing at all I don't know, but they eventually end up treating the game like some sort of glorified chatroom...or perhaps Second Life with swords. Don't misunderstand - getting to know people and chatting is a wonderful aspect of these games, and one I appreciate very much. But it's certainly possible to do this while getting things done. I personally have no interest in paying a subscription fee to tell dirty jokes all day while my character stands in the middle of town like just another piece of graphical eye candy, but there are sometimes entire guilds of these people. Sometimes they’re not much of a nuisance on their own, perhaps when picked up in a group, as they generally do know how to play well enough to get by and they're more apt to shut up and get with the program while in with a bunch of strangers. That's not to say that I've had to say "less talking and more fighting please" sparingly. It’s important to be with a group of people who share your level of dedication. If you need help doing something and your request in guild or group chat is quickly ignored or buried under a slew of Chuck Norris jokes, you need to find another group of players to hang around with.
And, last but not least, here’s the final category among my list of internet gaming retards:
14 year old Canadians
Need I say more?
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