A griefer is a slang term used to describe a player in an online video game who plays the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment. Image File history File links Iceweasel_icon. ... Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ...

History

The term griefer was used around the turn of the twentieth century by American baseball away teams to derisively refer to the home team. For example, immediately following the 189-game Pacific Coast League season, the Pacific Coast League (PCL) and the Southern State League organized a five-game series between the 1907 PCL champion Los Angeles Angels (or Looloos as they were also called) and the San Diego Pickwicks, who were then champions of the Southern State League.^[1] In the Thursday, November 7, 1907 edition of the Los Angeles Times, the local newspaper for the Los Angeles Angels touted the upcoming series under the headline, A view of the playing field at Busch Memorial Stadium, St. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Pacific Coast League (PCL) is a minor league baseball league operating in the West and Midwest of the United States. ... The Southern League is a minor league baseball league which operates in the Southern United States. ... Major league affiliations National League (1890–present) West Division (1969–present) Current uniform Retired Numbers 1, 2, 4, 19, 20, 24, 32, 39, 42, 53 Name Los Angeles Dodgers (1958–present) Brooklyn Dodgers (1932-1957) Brooklyn Robins (1914-1931) Brooklyn Dodgers (1911-1912) Brooklyn Superbas (1899-1910), (1913) Brooklyn Grooms... Major league affiliations National League (1969–present) West Division (1969–present) Current uniform Retired Numbers 6, 19, 31, 35, 42 Name San Diego Padres (1969–present) Other nicknames Pads, Friars Ballpark PETCO Park (2004–present) Qualcomm Stadium (1969-2003) a. ... This just IN !!!:paris hiltons new dog. ...

SAN DIEGO BASEBALL--LOS ANGELES COAST CHAMPIONS WILL PLAY TODAY IN FIRST GAME OF FIVE WITH GRIEFERS.^[1]

The term was applied to online, multiplayer computer games by at least the year 2000 as illustrated by postings to the rec.games.computer.ultima.online USENET group.^[2] Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ...

Overview

Griefers differ from typical players in that they do not play the game in order to achieve objectives defined by the game world. Instead, they seek to harass other players, causing grief.^[3] In particular, they may use tools such as stalking, hurling insults, and exploiting unintended game mechanics.^[3] Viewed along the same line as noobs,^[4] griefers also are thought of as an underclass of lesser-known undesirables.^[5] Griefing as a gaming play style is not simply any action that may be considered morally incorrect. Though each staff for each online game defines griefing in a manner that best fits their game, certain criteria must be met for an action to be considered griefing. An act of griefing involves the following three types of actions to be considered grief play:^[6] “Newcomer” redirects here. ...

• The unfair use or abuse of a game mechanic that was not intended by the game's developers.
• The inability of the victim to exact some means of retribution beyond utilizing similar unintended game mechanics.
• The intended purpose of an act of griefing must be to negatively impact the game play of another person.

An act of griefing usually meets all these types of criteria as well as any game specific criteria set by the developers of the game.^[7]

In some people's opinion, a player must meet several if not all points listed for a player to be considered griefing. Other people feel that curbing any of their enjoyment of the game to be a form of griefing whether it meets any of the listed criteria or not. These players will often consider the following actions to constitute griefing: kill stealing, player killing, spamming, team killing (or team wounding), door or path blocking, ninja looting, spawn camping, and corpse camping. These actions often meet one of the criteria but may fail to meet others. Kill-stealing, in video games and computer games, is the act of defeating an enemy, such as a monster, when it is at its weakest before another player, who has been weakening the enemy, gets the chance to kill it. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... It has been suggested that Spam (Team Fortress) be merged into this article or section. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into MMORPG terms and acronyms. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Corpse camping is a practice found in many MMORPGs, where an enemy player character (PC) kills another PC in player versus player (PvP) combat and then loiters in the area of the dead PCs corpse. ...

Griefing shares much in common with laming, another term in online gaming, though the former tends to have stronger connotations. Although laming is less well-defined, fulfillment of the first criterion is often enough to classify an act as laming, thus, many of the above listed actions, while not accurately considered griefing, may legitimately fall under the category of laming. Though the two terms are very similar, griefing is typically more specific, particularly in regard to the second and especially the third criteria. Lamer is a jargon or slang name originally applied in cracker and phreaker culture to someone who didnt really understand what he was doing. ...

It is important to note that griefing methods differ from game to game depending on that game's mechanics. Changes and upgrades can sometimes prevent or lessen some acts of griefing, though the large player community of such games can sometimes find a way around it.

Usage

Griefer is the noun form used to refer to the player causing grief using the previously mentioned methods.^[8]

To grief is the infinitive form. It appears to be ambitransitive; however, no linguistic research has been done on usage variations to date. An ambitransitive verb is a verb that can be used both as intransitive or as transitive without requiring a morphological change. ...

Griefing is the noun form used to refer to a griefer's activity. It is the gerund form of to grief. In linguistics, a gerund is a non-finite verb form that exists in many languages. ...

Examples

Training is a popular method of griefing in MMORPGs that do not allow any player vs player combat. The act of attacking another player is prohibited and therefore manipulating game mechanics in an unintended way can make this act constitute griefing. It involves a PC guiding mobs into attacking his/her character, and then moving the character to an area populated by many other PCs. The griefer then utilizes a technique, such as an in-game command or leaving the zone, to lose aggro, or mob interest. The mobs then attack the other PCs, often killing them. This is a form of monster player killing. This example is only true in games that do not permit Player Versus Player combat. As it fails to meet all three criteria in a Player Versus Player environment. In some cases, it may meet all three criteria but fail to meet them in others depending on the ruleset that this action takes place in. This is an alphabetical list of terms and abbreviations used in the context of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. ... An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Aggro ag·gro Colloquial spelling: Agro English Noun Definition 1. ...

In the game called Lineage II, published by NCSoft there were quite a few griefers. PVP was a very big aspect of the game and since the experience was very hard to get, the loss of dying was big. Not only was PVP a big aspect, but there were also a large amount of bugs in the game. This made it easier to provoke PVP and grief people. In the game your name turns purple whenever you hit someone. If you'd set up a shop while being flagged and someone checks your shop items he would turn purple as well. This way you could kill him without him even knowing. Players became known on servers through griefing.

Social aspects of griefing

While clear examples of griefing exist, much of the difference between griefing and non-griefing activities depends on individual player's understanding of the social norms of the in-game world. Activities one player considers griefing may be understood by another to be part of normal gameplay. While certain behaviors are generally recognized by the majority of players in a game as griefing, the ultimate classification of any single act as griefing rests on the intent of the perpetrator. Griefing may not occur if the perpetrator's intent is not to negatively impact the victims game play or if the victim is capable of exacting retribution at the present or in the future. The perpetrator must have an unfair advantage that was not intended by the developers of the game to exist. It has been suggested that Convention (norm) be merged into this article or section. ...

A number of gaming groups are believed to exist for the sole purpose of griefing.^[9] Again, the classification of these groups as griefing groups is subject to individual analysis and the required criterion for actions that can be considered griefing. In some cases the perpetrator may claim to be a griefer but be acting in a completely developer intended manner. The perpetrator's intent may be to grief but if the victim has a clear means of reprisal that was intended by the developers of the game, the offensive acts are not griefing but merely a means of playing the game. In computer and video gaming, a clan or guild is a group of players who regularly play together in a particular (or various different) multiplayer games. ...

Combating griefers

Many subscription-based games have taken steps to combat griefers, as they reduce the amount of enjoyment non-griefers take in the game and drive away business.^[3] However, the opportunity to grief is present in the functional requirements of multiplayer games in general (spamming is an unavoidable given non-restrictive player to player communication). Also, some griefing activities are easier to curtail than others. While spamming can be prevented with an ignore function, preventing the use of exploits in the FPS genre requires altering game balance issues. This is not impossible, but would remove the strategy aspect of some team-based first-person shooters. Also, since all griefing involves manipulating exploits, only by eliminating all of them can programmers remove those opportunities from Player Versus Player oriented games and Non-Player Versus Player oriented games. Given the scope and complexity of most multiplayer games, preventing griefing in Non-Player Versus Player games can be next to impossible. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Maze War, one of the two candidates for the first FPS. This article is about the video game genre. ... In the realm of online games, an exploit is usually a software bug, hack or bot that contributes to the users prosperity in a manner not intended by the developers. ...

In light of this, most games allow either for server admins to reprimand offenders (up to and including banning certain IP address from logging onto a local server) or, as in the case of MMORPGs with persistent worlds, have a reporting process by which the activities of certain players can be brought to the attention of GMs. The GMs or Customer Service Representatives then decide on any disciplinary action (if appropriate). By some accounts, as many as 25% of customer support calls to companies operating online games deal specifically with griefing.^[10] But in some MMO's griefing is reportable only as an abuse or exploitation of unintended game mechanics, which is frustrating to the victim of such acts as the griefer may not be dealt with as the report will go directly to the developers to fix the abused code. An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The abbreviation MMO can stand for any of several things: Main Mechanical Outfitting Maintenance Management Officer Maintenance Manual Organization Level (TMINS) Man-made object Marine Mammal Observer Marketing Mix Optimization Massively multiplayer online (gaming) Materials and Manufacturing Ontario Maximum Operating Mach Number Means, Motive and Opportunity Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter Minimum...

Notably, Guild Wars practically eliminates the major forms of grief in online games by having seperate instances for areas between towns and outposts, meaning no-one except the player and their party can be found in that area. This means that a lot of the more annoying aspects of griefing, i.e kill-stealing and player-killing, are eliminated entirely, and a griefer can only stalk another player by forcing themselves onto the party. Guild Wars is an episodic series of multiplayer online role-playing games created by ArenaNet, a Seattle game development studio and a subsidiary of the South Korean game publisher NCsoft. ...

References

The Toronto Star is Canadas highest-circulation newspaper, though its print edition is distributed almost entirely within Ontario. ... The Oakland Tribune is a daily newspaper published in Oakland, California by the ANG Newspapers, a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. ... The Augusta Chronicle is the major daily newspaper of Augusta, Georgia and is one of the oldest newspapers in the United States. ... The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...

External links

• "Ready, set, game: Learn how to keep video gaming safe and fun."
• "Gamers don't want any more grief", The Guardian.
• Documented incident of griefing during a virtual interview, see also Anshe Chung
• Research Paper on griefing. To view this PDF paper, the host website requires a free registration.
• "Feature: The Griefer Within", GamePro.