78 - The Food Chain

Whee, double posting for the win! I wouldn't normally, but things are quiet, and I'm bored. I posted this earlier on today on my new LiveJournal account on the WoW Community there. It's rather tongue in cheek - enjoy. 

The Food Chain

Ganking is a part of life, having become an accepted part of life for a lot of players out there.  They might have accepted it, but it doesn’t mean that they like it. I’m going to try to change your mind about that.  

Most of you will be familiar with the concept of the ‘food chain’.  The food chain is an ecological concept, and in short it describes the flow of energy from one living being to another in an unending cycle. Personally, the word ‘chain’ has always seemed like a bit of a misnomer to me – the concept seems more akin to a ladder to me, with something usually above or below you. But then again, I’m not an ecologist, so what do I know?

However, I do know something about MMOs, so I’m going to try to extend the concept into the virtual realm and try to convince you that being ganked is not only good for you, but it’s also good for the world around you.

The idea behind a food chain is quite simple – starting at the bottom with something like bacteria or phytoplankton, everything is preyed upon by the thing directly above it, until you reach the top of the food chain. Things can get complicated when you add in the idea that there can be various ‘sub-chains’ within the larger, global food chain – for example, sharks are widely accepted as being at the top of the marine food chain, but are in turn preyed upon by humans, who are (currently) at the very top of the food chain – but the idea remains the same. Unless you’re right at the top, there’s something out there looking to turn you into lunch, because being part of a chain means being linked and bound together.

Before you start crying out, demanding that you be recognised as being on top of the food chain, take a moment and think – have you ever been ganked before? Have you ever been killed in PvP before? If the answer to either one of those is yes, then you are most certainly not top of the food chain.

By the simple act of being ganked, you’re reaffirming the food chain and making sure that the circle of life goes on as it should. All of us have a destiny; some of us are destined to join Nihilum and chalk up a string of world-first boss kills, and some of us are destined to be corpse-camped for an hour in Stranglethorn Vale.

 Not only should you take comfort in the fact that being ganked is just nature’s way of putting you in your place, try to remember that it’s likely to happen to the player doing the ganking. That pimped-out Warlock named ‘Noobpwnzer1337’who’s been corpse-camping you for half an hour? Wait until he jumps on the Test Realms and gets stun-locked into oblivion by a 12-year old Rogue in a free set of Tier 6 epics. Admittedly, the rogue in question will probably only be 12 himself, but I’m sure you see my point – that everything that goes around, comes around. I think that’s something to do with the concept of Karma as well, and I apologise now if I’m confusing you, believe me when I tell you that you’re not alone.

I imagine there might be a player out there who has never been ganked, never been killed in PvP, who runs around blithe and unaware of his power and potential, wondering why everyone bitches about how hard it is to get to High Warlord, and how cool his PvP rewards look. Because the universe has a crap sense of humour, he’s probably named his character after a character from the Matrix.

So the next time ‘Noobpwnzer1337’ starts tea-bagging your rapidly cooling corpse, take a moment before you go screaming and cursing your way back to the nearest Spirit Healer – I’m sure if you listen closely enough you’ll hear the dulcet tones of Reginald Kenneth Dwight singing about the circle of life. It may not make you feel any better, but at least you’ll have a nice song to sing to yourself while you corpse run.

Aternatively, just look at it this way – you deserve to be ganked. What did you expect when you rolled PvP – you’re bloody well asking for it. You’re just filling your place in the food chain. Some of us are bottom feeders, and the rest of us are ‘Noobpwnzer1337’.