I hate Europeans.

Culture within MMORPG’s has been studied by both players and sudo-psychologists ever since the 8.5 million strong WoW phenomenon brought an attitude and climate of players from an exclusive sub-culture of Asia (the sights and reports of both Korean adults and kids alike sitting in internet cafés and potentially dying from withdrawal of not going to the toilet, or Guild leaders stabbing other leaders to death for taking their castle ingame) to the Western world that we know and live in. Many “experts” were scared and still reeling off such stories as teens killing because of playing Grand Theft Auto and deemed hardcore MMO playing as unhealthy and even matched it to well known psychological conditions like ADHD, the discussion of the real impact of this is a topic that has been overplayed and overtalked for as long as we can remember so I feel it’s pointless to go further.

What is more important more pertinent to my own gaming and own experience is the very unknown cultural and more appropriately sense of attitude between the different demographical and in this case, geographical positions of players throughout different versions and locality of games that MMO companies create. The reason this is something I consider “fresh” is that there are very few cases of cross-contamination of playergroups such as North Americans and Europeans and how personality impacts each other.

I’d say the most important buzz-word to keep in mind here is -Attitude- and I’d think many would be surprised just how different they are from simply going across the Atlantic. There is a clear difference between these players that I have noticed from primarily playing for many years on American versions, then recently moving over to European servers of the games I played due to time constraints and no longer being able to stay up past-1am just to get hold of some decent exp/raid groups or more importantly PVP action.

Americans are generally MUCH more laid back in their way of approaching things such as defeat in a raid or loss in PVP. I clearly remember how me and my Clan/Guild could laugh about how we fucked up and how there was a much more relaxed environment while trying to achieve objectives. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t anger however, especially when talking about Lineage 2 where defeat in things like PVP and PVE brought real tangible loss to your character or Clan, but for the most part was much better dealt with in my opinion. Europeans on the other hand would become extremely enraged and dwell on things, holding it against you or other members for future encounters, I didn’t believe this was a good way to go about it, as worrying about the past does not give enough benefits in the future to justify people focusing on it, this also was the source of many emoragequits leading to breakups of groups, Guilds, or even years-long friendships.

This isn’t absolute of course; there are separate climates in separate Guilds whichever continent or country they hail from, but this is what I have observed for the most part. Years of this has made me battlehardened towards European Guild Leaders/Officers, and indeed between different continental versions of a game, this causes me to alter my real-life by tending to lean toward North American versions of new games. Although I am English born and bred myself, I –love- being around Americans 1000x more than Europeans and even other British players, this isn’t to say I haven’t met great friends in these players but for the most part I am definitely inclined to attempting to meet more American players and join American Guilds (especially useful for region-free games) as opposed to others.

Being in Vent with Europeans is like being in Vent with the Gestapo, very little joking going on, very little laid back banter, all business, all Nazi, all the time. Fun was chastised by others who were obsessed with progressing. Recordings of Onyxia Wipes and such show this. The thing is, is that if this way of thinking achieved better results I could almost tolerate it. Some would argue that Guilds like Nihilum prove this theory to be true, but one gander at a video by them will show that they are an extremely relaxed Guild; considering how far ahead they are of all competition, despite how some of their members sacrifice their rl (some reports I have read of how Guild members have to rally together to pay the leaders real life bills is even a little too much for someone as hXc as me), shows that it is much better to make your members feel comfortable as opposed to forcing them to “focus” (= panic) to limit mistakes made and failures incurred.

The bottom line is, that although there are exceptions, this is what I have experienced in my 7-8yrs of MMO gaming, I would love for it to change to be more tailor made to how I enjoy these games, but I don’t see it happening in the forward-sight.

Comments are appreciated, if you think I’m completely wrong or completely right then let me know.