eheh
heheheh
HA!
HAAAAAA HAHAHAHA! HA! HA! HA! HAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHHHH! HAHA HAHAHAHA! choke gasp wheeeeeeeeze..
HAAAAAAAAhahahahahaha!

When PUGs in WoW (nonraid) asked me if I had vent, I used to lie and say, no.

American server, make what you will of it!

Swede traps > all other traps.

Some frustrations though:

- spam. Verbal spam. Just non-stop rubbish about “i do dj-ing” or something while we’re trying to solve a complex game challenge (or while one person is bragging about his life and the rest of us are trying to solve the challenge while he slacks). A lot of people don’t seem to be able to play and talk at the same time.

- politeness/pc-ness. I guess I’m very conservative but I don’t want people saying the N word when they see a Drow Elf, asking women if they’re on the rag whenever a female complains about something and so on.

- bad audio set-ups. People who talk in a whisper so quiet I can’t hear them even with all sound off. People who crackle and distort. People who can’t cope with voice activation and thus echo other speakers.

- irony. Having a dry English sense of humour is really hard on the internet, both for written humour and aural. Say something sarcastic like “don’t seem to be all that many of them” and you get a five minute lecture explaining to you as if you were an idiot that the 200 mobs attacking you is actually quite a lot.

Puts me in the undesireable situation where I’m trying to reduce my irony output which makes me less witty in person while still blundering socially online.

On the whole though I would say voice adds tremendously to the fun and I generally have a really good laugh with people I meet.

I certainly enjoy playing with Americans more than Europeans because we have a common language. Saying something witty to a Bulgarian guy who only knows 50 words of English tends to bomb.

All English groups are especially fun though because of common culture and humour.

One of the great dangers of the self-broadcasting capability of the internet is that eventually, you’ll say something as stupid as that valve guy and the people in that comments thread (the one quoted in the post, not the one here in splinksville. you guys are of course anti-stupid).

That female gamer’s comment chimes with my experience too. Even with people I (sort of) know, it can be difficult. The 1,000th rendition of “Oh your accent is so CUTE!” (or hot or weird or quaint) doesn’t make me smile, it makes me grit my teeth and yank my mic out. I don’t go around telling every American I meet that THEY have a funny accent, do I?

Hrm. This irks me more than I realised. Thanks for posting this, Spinks. Food for thought.