MeinMMO-Demon Cortyn tells a story today that takes place on a WoW realm – about a troll with too much free time and too few ideas for his life.
Anyone who plays World of Warcraft more intensively and sometimes spends time in the capitals is familiar with the “usual suspects” on their own realm by now. Every server has its own troll, and usually, you know them from the chat:
- There is the witch who, with vehement endurance, proclaims “Whoever reads this loves Goldshire! ♥” every day or wants to announce the Miss Goldshire 2026 election.
- That one guy who provocatively asks every day in the game’s chat – which he is currently playing himself – “Why are you still playing this crap?”
- Then there’s the usual conspiracy theorist trying to spread far-right ideas among the people and seeing a conspiracy of elites or the state in everything.
But on role-playing realms, there is another group of particularly special trolls whose goal is to disrupt role-players’ RP. On my realm, there is one particularly persistent guy who has apparently focused solely on this goal for months.
The Enemy of an Entire City
Imagine the following situation:
You are strolling with your character through Stormwind, see this cute high elf mage standing at the harbor promenade, whom you just want to approach. As soon as you type the first “Honor the Light”, “Bal’adash”, or a very mature “[Character] taps the elf on the left shoulder from behind and stands to her right.”, the conversation starts rolling.
You make silly jokes, talk about trivialities – just engage in some light RP.
Until the moment when a soccer ball crashes into your face with a loud bang. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Two hundred times. Again and again, you hear not only the extremely annoying sound of it but also see every time how your character flinches as a naked person stands in front of you slapping the ball repeatedly into your face. Having an RP conversation becomes harder and harder.
You wait it out. Maybe this guy is just having “his 5 minutes” and will settle down once his mind has rebooted. But he stays. He continues.
You politely ask in a whisper what the problem is or whether you’ve done something to him. There’s no response or just a smiley.
He stays and keeps shooting until one of the following circumstances arises:
- You log out in frustration because the harassment continues and you feel uncomfortable.
- You move the RP to a private area, such as housing.
- The troll character gets forcefully logged out because enough people have reported him.
- You use a “Neural Silencer” to become immune to the attacks.
He does not target one person specifically, but goes through everyone who crosses his path in order until he drives someone away or fails in his trolling attempt. This goes on for hours.