When I started World of Warcraft I was a complete “n00b” to the world of MMORPG’s, I had never been a part of the Ultima Online or Everquest craze. No, I was more of a Blizzard fan boy who was enthralled with the universe they had uggs created, and thus was never someone who knew a lot about MMORPG’s until I actually played one. Of course, when I started playing WoW there were lots of terms I really didn’t know too well but something I learned really quickly when it came to MMO’s was the term “griefing”.
To start off this article I would like to say I made a mistake, and I would personally like to apologize to those affected by it (mainly Messiah). You see, when I made my first WoW character, I made a character on a PvP realm. During the length of the Beta, I had restricted myself to a PvE server and was really not too familiar with the player killing side of the game; I was much more content to blast through the various monsters and quests of the game. When retail came along, I wanted to try something different so I went with a PvP server. This server is where I first learned of the term “griefing” and its impact on an MMO world.
Most people associate the term “griefing” with the repeated killing of low level characters by higher level characters, or repeated infractions against a specific character by another character using something that is completely legal under the rules of the game. To investigate the term more I would suggest typing “griefing” into Google and go “I’m feeling luck”, the result is an article on the topic itself (in regards to online gaming in general) which might give you more of an insight buy wow gold into some “general” views of the topic.
Thankfully, Blizzard has taken some steps to prevent “griefing” in its various forms. The first of these steps is of course the “zone flags” which indicate whether or not a zone is “contested”, “alliance” or “horde”. All low level zones are geared Alliance or Horde; meaning that if players of the opposite faction enter one of these zones they cannot start combat without having the opposing play go aggressive first.
This system prevents “camping” of the low-level zones (level 60 Alliance Rogues, can’t ambush those poor level 1-5 Horde in their starting zone) and makes the lives of all low level characters quite a bit easier. This system is implemented even on PvP servers, making low level “ganking” (a specific form of griefing, where a higher level character kills a lower level one) next to impossible.