As in human nature, people are tribal. NI is no different, and groups rarely, if ever, intermingled. The groups also did not particularly like each other for some reason that I never fully understood. Members of my "side" (for lack of a better word) saw members the other "side" as not contributing enough, and, in turn, they saw us as "elitist." One of my early negative experiences was being in TeamSpeak and getting spammed by Omphorus trying to pressure me into trading him Dan's Hurricane Bow for some crafted items. He had assumed I was a new player who got a lucky loot and he wanted to scam me out of it. Whatever the reason people had, some of "us" did not even want to be in the same server as any of "them." I never minded, but I remember Dan leaving at the sight of FreakyZ in the server list. Dan would coordinate a Ragnarok run by spamming us on Steam with the server name, and announce how many spots were on the server in TeamSpeak. I refined this process by getting people in TeamSpeak, then sitting at the server select screen, waiting for everyone to be ready, and then all joining the server simultaneously with a countdown. We called it "server bombing," and it was quite effective at preventing "them" from joining.
Hilarity ensued. "They" would repeatedly provoke "us," such as:
- MonchoMan sending me "you suck dick yo" in TeamSpeak chat
- SlimShady spam poking us in hopes that any of us would crash
- An anonymous person (I assume this was SlimShady) sending me a message on TeamSpeak chat with racial slurs of my ethnicity and trying to get me not to say certain words
- Suns picked up my bow after I died and thanked me for dying and dropping it to troll me. He was using two Short Heavy Barricades as a platform, so I stood in front of him. He kicked me, and the friendly fire got him stuck between the barricades. He typed "fuck you" in global chat, then left the server.
- An anonymous user joined the Tricksters TeamSpeak channel thinking I was from a southern state in the US due to some epithets I use. Upon learning I live in Boston, he brought up the Boston Marathon bombing to try to troll me. I freely told him that the victims were just random strangers who happened to be in my city, and mentioned 9/11 and its death toll to him. He fell silent and left shortly after that comment.
For reasons such as above, I will always deny instigating anything, but fully admit to escalating matters. While this might not be the "best" reaction, is that really wrong? I would say no, and lack of "turning the other cheek" aside, I would do it again given the chance.
Suns created a Steam group named "Anti-Elitism." I thought the existence of an anti-elitism group that was invite-only was both ironic and amusing, so I created the "Anti-Anti-Elitism" group in response. Another hilarious
incident was the one that got Dan banned from the official TeamSpeak for a month. I don't think this worked in the Administration team's favor. Within five minutes, I rented a TeamSpeak server and we used that instead. The offficial NI TeamSpeak server would be a ghost town as the active players used mine instead, even after Dan's ban expired. There was no reason to return, the successful active players found no reason to go back to a more restrictive, and public, server.
Hypernoma also saw the videos in that aforementioned post, joined TeamSpeak, and scolded us: "I ought to ban each and every one of you! This is cyber bullying!!!" Dan was the only one to speak up in our defense about how we were being provoked and may not have responded appropriately, but hoped that context would be taken into account. He also pointed out that not all of us took part in destroying the barricades. Plus, Dan and I came from a competitive PvP environment. If two groups had a friendly rivalry, we knew it was all playful teasing to elevate each others' play. And if two groups had a not-so-friendly rivalry, we insulted each other far worse than anything that has ever happened on NI. "Giving each other shit" just falls under "bullying" by today's standards; and by these standards, I was probably bullied most days growing up. Oh well.
While we were perceived as the bad guys, nearly all of those above players got banned. Given that piece of information, were we really the bad guys?
- Omphorus: exploiting a map bug, since unbanned
- FreakyZ: selling his items for outside currency
- MogMog and Drumlix: selling their items for outside currency, getting unbanned, then getting banned again for racism in public servers, unbanned again to sell their items
- Suns: trolling and ban evading
- Chris: exploiting a map bug, since unbanned, re-banned for too many kicks and warnings, unbanned