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Breakfast Topic: Have you ever rage quit?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. I've been sorely tempted. You know the days I'm talking about. Nothing is going right. Your own faction is mining the nodes right out from under you. You just got ganked by a rogue for the fifth time, and now the jerk is corpse camping you. You queued up for an instance and managed to wind up with the leetest tank on the server and three of his guildies who proceed to talk smack about your DPS until the timer runs out and they are able to boot you. You wind up back where you started, and that stupid rogue ganks you one more time for good measure. Screaming every curse word in the book, you yank your headphones off and throw them across your room, sign off, and storm away from the computer, vowing to never play this stupid game again. Of course, in the end, we always come creeping back, don't we? Oh sure, there are a few who don't, but I strongly suspect they aren't reading these words right now. So what's your story? What was the last situation that made you quit WoW in a fit of pique? How long did you stay away? Why did you finally come back? Did you think for sure you were gone for good that time? How many times has this happened to you?
The Daily Grind: Do you re-roll when you come back?
Coming back to an MMO after an extended leave of absence can be a trial in and of itself. Unlike the first time, when everything is fresh and new and straight-forward, a return means that you have to unravel all of the messy threads that you left behind when you bugged out after a rage quit (I'm just generalizing, here). All at once you have to remember your passwords, get reacquainted with your characters, relearn your skill rotations, puzzle out your entire quest log, and catch up on the (presumably) many changes that have happened to the game since you left. Consequently, the temptation can be strong to simply wipe the slate clean and re-roll a completely new character. A brand-new character can help you relearn the game without overwhelming you with too many details at once, which is hugely appealing. On the other hand, it might seem like a waste not to continue an old character that you invested so much of your time and effort into building. So do you re-roll when you come back to an MMO, or do you pick up where you left off? This Daily Grind will self-destruct in five minutes or after a hundred comments, whichever comes first. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Do you rage quit?
Our favorite games provoke a range of emotions, and whether it's love, hate, fear, amusement, or simple relaxation, we usually keep coming back for more. Anger is an emotional response that is pretty common for some folks, so common in fact that the catch phrase "rage quit" is circulated several times daily on many message boards and in-game chat channels. While most emotions make us want to play more, anger often leads to a quick disconnect, and depending on your personality, either a string of expletives or a weary sigh. Whether it's due to failure in the team-based combat scenarios common to Global Agenda, losing your loot (and everything else) in FFA corpse-defiling contests like Lineage II and Darkfall, or dying at the hands of AI in one of the thousands of PvE-focused titles littering the landscape, we're constantly confronted with digital mortality and its emotional effects. The question of the day, Massively folk, is have you, do you, or did you used to rage quit? Why and in what game(s)?
FIFA 11 to tackle online quitters by rewarding players that finish games
It's the perfect Saturday. You're rocking your team's jersey as you settle onto the couch, a Shasta in one hand, bag of Fritos in the other, preparing to hit the pitch in FIFA 10. You head online, get yourself into a match and suddenly you're up one-nil. And then, just as suddenly, your opponent quits. You go bananas, hurling your controller into the TV. Then your wife comes in and says she's had enough and takes the kids to her mother's. A month later, you're divorced. It's a story we hear way too often here at Joystiq. Thankfully, EA is working on a way to punish these quitters -- outside of rectifying the fact that they've wrecked your life forever -- in the next series iteration, FIFA 11. EA Canada's Simon Humber told Eurogamer these "rage quitters" are a "complex problem." See, there's a loophole in the game that allows players to quit within five minutes of starting a FIFA 10 match online, in case there's a connection issue -- but EA is looking for ways to keep players from exploiting that feature. Humber says that EA is thinking about adding functionality to FIFA 11 that would reward players for finishing matches, rather than try to punish those that quit. As for the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa, don't expect any changes: "We haven't done anything different for this game as far as I know," Humber said.
