What is up with these people...

[Taem]

Maybe I just have a thicker skin than some lurkers, but I've never viewed closed battle.net public games as the vast wasteland everyone posts about.  Now I'm pretty sure I've earned the chops to say that.  I've been an avid player since the beta, and always played USeast.

I have some real life friends I play with, as well as loungers Spiderdrake and Luke.  I've made quite a few friends through pubby games, including Sam [Drust, Menestyr], who is responsible for inviting me to check out the lurkerlounge community.

There are spammers, which either leave the game within 10 seconds, or can easily be squelched.  The pk'ers are pretty easily avoided.  [Note:  I played for hours every day for the first two years straight, and I've still never been unintentionally PK'd (If I don't have exp I am willing to take the challenge and see how I fare).]

Not everyone twinks their characters, though I agree most do.

The dupe/hack argument has been beaten to death, and I am in no way trying to revive any argument about it, nor support any of it.  But I do want to say that high end items are not that impossible to get (speaking from personal experience).  This summer I started from scratch with my best friend, within 2 weeks we had most exceptional uniques, and were trading for elite uniques.  With these we started doing baal runs.  From there it turned into solo baal runs.  Within a 2 months we had numerous 80+ chars, and a ladder druid (we quit at level 91), and were using very high end elite uniques.

Yes, we traded.  Did we probably trade in dupes?  It's entirely possible.  But its also entirely possible to get to that point quickly with some dedication, and that goal in mind.  I've spent plenty of time playing no twink chars, dabbled in hardcore, etc.  I've never felt limited by public games.

Public games are just that; Public.  As much as we'd like to force our morality on them, or at least some form of morality, its not right.  Different strokes for different folks.  If you want a good community for games, there is still an active basin presence online.  There are still loungers floating around who play.

I'm not putting down what you've said, if anything I mean to agree with it.  But its just the nature of the beast.  It is what it is.  I'm just wondering why we spend so much time discussing it or worrying about it.  If you don't like it, you really don't need to play it, the tools for a fun time 'non public' are around.

Cheers,

Munk
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I agree completely. At least in Ladder Hardcore (on USWest), sure there are people with bad attitudes, nice people, and people who just don't give a *bleep*, but people like the first poster is describing are uncommon. Players leave softcore to hard usually after a long time of experience, or they learn quickly after dying many times. This makes PK'ers quick and very able to kill you in the blink of an eye - no waiting for him to find you... And little kids asking to be rushed is not as common. Seeing a character below 10 in Act 5 Normal is also pretty uncommon. People in hardcore play the game differently I guess, and on the ladder, to my knowledge there are no dupes this season on hardcore (although I haven’t been playing for awhile).