Richard Bartle, in his description of player types in virtual worlds, claimed that "killers," analogous to griefers, provide a challenge for achievement-motivated players but depress the population of socializers in a virtual world. He also argued that although his...

...research has been used on a number of occasions to 'prove' that game-oriented virtual worlds 'need' killers, this is not the case. The model is descriptive, not normative: it shows what will happen if the proportions of player types changes, but doesn't advocate one over another. If you want achievers but don't want killers, you can have them; you need to be aware that without intervention the achievers won't stay long, though. Similarly, if you design a game targeted at killers, it will require a major effort to stop the poor ones from quitting in frustration and the better ones quitting when there's no one left to bully. (Bartle 2004, p. 141)

There is obviously a difference, however, between "killers" who are free by the rules of the game to actually kill newbies and seriously impede their progress in the game, and people who behave in a variety of anti-social/uncooperative ways that may make gameplay frustrating, but are not as intense as character murder. The former group can become such a problem, as Bartle notes, that no one will want to play. The latter group, however, unless completely dominant, serves a valuable purpose in the social world of MMOGs: its members actually bring other players together. Nothing unites two people, after all, like the opportunity to gripe about a third.

Player communities such as forums are full of complaints about immature, obnoxious players encountered in-game, perhaps most frequently in "pick-up groups" (PUGs) wherein previously unacquainted players team up to complete missions or quests:

He was afk most of the time, and when he did run into a fight, he would hack one guy and then stand around. Also, I was sk'd to him and I have Arctic Air, so I was standing in the fray with it on. Several times, he'd just run out of the fight leaving me tiny and frail, and go look around the rest of the floor; usually he'd find a group of guys, say "Here." and then go tuck himself into a corner and wait.

Finally, his "on the phone, sec" was the last straw and I kicked his dumb ass and ran the rest of the mish unsk'd.

Do yourself a favor and avoid him like the PLAGUE!

--naeko, Horrible player, City of Heroes LiveJournal community

Similarly, one EverQuest II player, T, posted an account of a PUG bad apple on her guild forum. A stranger, S, who joined a group with T and several friends, refused to give up a dropped spell that was only useful for the wizard class, to which T belonged and S did not. He ignored repeated requests for the spell and when called on it publicly he asserted (falsely) that T had not assisted in the battle and thus should not receive the spell. Finally T quit the group:

01 P: [to T] did he give u the spell?
02 T: [to P] nope
03 T: [to P] and won't return tells
04 T: [to P] ???
05 P: [to T] ur kidding?
06 T: [to P] nope, he just ignored my requests and called me dopey
07 P: [to T] i left thegroup
08 T: [to P] good for you
09 T: [to P] IG will leave too

Although S was originally the group leader, after T's departure, P and IG both left out of solidarity and regrouped with T, leaving S alone and once again looking for a group. This immediate loss of his group, however, was not the only consequence S suffered.

Unlike the CoH LiveJournal community post, which seems to simply solicit commiseration over a bad PUG experience, T's account to her EQ2 guild served as an unofficial incident report. The incident was not one with which the game company would be likely to concern itself, but T's guildmates had a more personal interest and the resources to pursue it, especially because it turned out that S was a member of another guild.

The first response to the post was "Did this fool have a guild tag? if so do you remember what it was[?]" In just under three hours, another guild member had posted the offender's guild affiliation. Other members weighed in, sympathizing and suggesting ways to pursue recompense, and two days after the original post was made, T had received a better version of the spell the offender had ganked and a formal apology from an officer of the offender's guild.

Here, a run-in with a jerk on a PUG allowed a pre-existing group (T's guild) to reinforce their relational ties to each other through commiseration, information gathering, and the pursuit of recompense, which was successful because the offender's guild did not want the stigma of allowing such behavior to pass. Of course, a player who routinely causes such problems for his guild may find himself unguilded, and one might assume that free agent jerks are a problem with no solution, since they have no social group of their own to shame or be pressured by.

Such incidents and group commiseration over them, however, also more generally allow players to reaffirm their identities as "good players, not idiots/jerks/babies like that player"; in this mode, even free agent jerks may actually serve to bring people together who previously lacked any social ties. The following case involves a PUG with five members, two of whom are a married couple playing together, but otherwise initially unknown to each other, hunting low-level mobs in the CoH sewers. One player holds forth at great length about his prowess at PvP, while HH and HO discuss an online streaming radio station to which HH has just introduced HO:

01 FR: put me up agianst a brute i could win
02 (16.1)
03 HO: requests huh? too bad you can't make them in game
04 (3.1)
05 HH: corner here
06 (1.5)
07 HH: you can
08 (2.6)
09 HH: DJ Shecky
10 (1.9)
11 FR: put me up agianst a dom i would win
12 (2.1)
13 HH: You can probably send him a tell
14 (1.3)
15 HO: ...you rock
16 (0.2)
17 L: ouch walk before running
18 (4.2)
19 FR: ((attacks mob))
20 (6.9)
21 HH: *grin*
22 (19.1)
23 FR: corr i dont knopw good attacks
24 (6.0)
25 FR: and can heal
26 (26.3)
27 FR: wut i'm trying to say is that i can own alot of peeps in pvp
28 (7.3)
29 HH: oh, I didn't get that.
30 (1.2)
31 HH: :p

There is no uptake from other team members to any of FR's assertions about his ability to beat members of various City of Villains classes at PvP at lines 02, 11, and 23-25. At 27 he gives an explicit formulation of his earlier talk; HH responds sarcastically at 29, softening the response with a humorous emoticon at 29, but also not elaborating on her response any further. Throughout FR's talk, HO and HH discuss the radio station that HH had earlier explained how to access, also in group chat; FR does not attempt to participate in this line of talk. Following this excerpt, FR produces some further talk on his PvP prowess before running ahead of the group, dying, and teleporting out of the zone.

FR's teleportation to the hospital is notable because it occurs immediately after his character can be seen to have died on the team roster. The team has been sharing resurrections since setting out on a hunting expedition; thus, the expected action in this situation is to wait and see if anyone has a resurrection to share before teleporting to the distant hospital. HH and AM both inquire about FR's plans to return; it is only after they question him that FR reports that he is going to a different zone. HH, as team leader, then kicks FR from the team roster there is both public and private chat concerning his abrupt departure:

01 HH: ((kicks FR from team roster))
02 (4.3)
03 HH: well, that was random.
04 ...
05 HO: agreed.
06 (9.1)
07 L: indubidly
08 (3.0)
09 HH: [to HO] maybe we weren't enthusiastic enough about PvP talk? :p
10 ...
11 HO: [to HH] lol. We didn't massage his ego enough i think about he can
12 "take peeps out" in PvP. Shoulda been like "Oh FR, What IS PvP you huge
13 mass of manhood!?"

HH, as team leader, formally kicks FR from the team at 01, although as the boldface indicates, this is a private action visible only to HH, the kicker, and FR, the kickee; other team members can only see that FR has left the team. Following this action, at line 15, HH remarks to the team at large on the inappropriateness of FR's behavor; HO agrees with her assessment at 17 and L upgrades its intensity at 19.

HH and HO have been conversing in team chat for some time already, as seen previously. At 09, HH expands her talk about FR in a private tell to HO, openly mocking FR's extended monologue about his PvP prowess--this is particularly relevant since FR had begun this line of talk with assertions about how his controller (similar to a mage) could beat HO's defender (a healer class character) in PvP combat--a topic on which he expanded at great length despite lack of uptake from HO and others on the team. interest. HO responds enthusiastically to HH at 11-13, expanding the mocking account for FR's abrupt departure.

Shortly after this interaction, HO sends HH an invitation to be global friends, meaning that they will be able to see each other logged into the system with all characters:

01 @HO has invited you to be global friends. Do you accept?
02 (0.3)
03 HH: ((accepts global friend invitation))
04 (20.2)
05 HH: [to HO] thanks. :-) I'll definitely be on again later tonight, too.
06 (30.8: some irrelevant talk ommitted)
07 HO: [to HH] awesome! I like to keep in contact with the cool people on
08 here since..you know,they're hard to find, lol

Since then, these two players have grouped together with a few different characters on the server, and also formed a supergroup/guild with the other members of the original PUG. As the exchange above displays, jerks in MMOGs not only bring people together by providing a convenient object of mutual disdain to talk about--they also provide a point of contrast that makes everyone else look better. Despite the near-ubiquitous player laments about the jerks one encounters on even high-level PUGs, it is encounters with just such jerks that make good, basically competent players seem even more attractive and appealing by comparison. The jerks are actually a kind of social glue encouraging us to stick together--an effect that is perhaps nowhere so dramatically demonstrated as in the sheer existence of a WoW guild titled "Hikaru is a Dork."*

---

*Name has been slightly altered while preserving original connotations.