Whee, I get to flame people some more...

Tonight's Besieged on Leviathan did not go well.

And I _know_ I made some enemies tonight.

Why?? Because Leviathan's players are getting Asura Disease. That malady that causes players to decide to go into business for themselves during Besieged and get parties and do all that shit, and when people decide to try to get the group on task...

"It's just a game..."

"No one plays like that... You won't get far with that attitude..."

"Your family would be proud if you found a high cliff and jumped off..."

(To which I openly dared the last idiot to send me off the nearest one...)

Look... My position is clear. If I'm here, I'm here to win the damn Besieged. If I want to be in business for myself, I can just go continue to level my freaking Monk, which nearly has gotten FOUR levels this week through Fields of Valor-Beaucedine and my Adventuring Fellow. I can go Campaign if I want to go into business for myself and fast-track my Dragoon (now at 65 and lottable) to 75 or my Dancer to 65!

Yeah, I /blisted about a dozen people after that noise, and doubly so after I found out the guy who started it openly admitted he didn't care whether we kept the Astral Candescence or not, because he never plays in Aht Urhgan (other than Besieged -- I only rarely do), and he (like more than a few people I'm more than honked at right now) just take Besieged as one big skill up party.

Take that shit to Asura, for all I care, then!! Go into business for yourself over there!!!

I almost wish Squeenix would do the same thing to Besieged they did to Campaign -- no skill ups.

Of course, just saying what I've said here probably is going to draw flames.

What I'm about to tell you will draw ten times more, especially from the jingoistic USA crowd...

American -- gamers -- suck.

I've had that attitude from the early days of my playing FF11, long before I started playing it regularly (as I have in the last year). It's one of the reasons that I took the recommendations of a couple players to join a more Japanese-centric server (Leviathan) very seriously.

I'm going to tell you two stories of things I observed while I used to live in San Francisco to help make my point.

First: There used to be a gaming/computer center in the middle of downtown (wrong place for it, IMHO) which decided to hold a Counter-Strike tournament. Bunch of teams, including some pretty good ones in Northern Cali at the time, came. The center had a bit of a meeting room off to one side of the bathroom and the main gaming computer room.

A few days before the event, I had actually seen articles on Counter-Strike gangs -- real gangs, just organized around team Counter-Strike events. The concept was laughed off by the owner of the center.

The team local to the center and a team called "Red" got into it. Words were exchanged, and everyone was in that room. I looked in just to keep an eye as to what was going on, and one of the "Red" people just walked over, without a word, and slowly closed the door, as if to say "You do NOT want a part of this."

30 seconds later, as I walked away, screams of "FIGHT!" were heard. One of the local players got his shoulder broken. At least one Red player, if not two, attacked the owner of the center. Blood all over the place.

"Red" was, I maintain to this day, one of those gangs. I didn't know of that beforehand. The tournament was called off, and the center closed a couple months later, probably another casualty between the economy and parents concerned (and rightly so!) as to what and who was going on down there.

Second, I was an attendee at the World Cyber Games a number of years back when it was in San Francisco. I did some of the advertising seminars ("Motherboard audio sucks!" ;) ), attended some of the events (including actually meeting, and getting my ass kicked in Unreal by, Fata1ity), but I noticed something:

It's probably rather common knowledge that, in Asia (esp. Korea and probably, to a lesser extent, Japan) that pro gamers actually are a very respected, idolized, and _honorable_ lot. The WCG are basically the Olympics of pro gaming. There are medals and there is prize money, but this is about a lot more than all that. For example, the motto of the San Francisco event was "Beyond the Game".

Nary an outside spectator to be found. No one cared. Why?

Because American gamers -- the attitude that they purport as a culture (not necessarily all individuals, but the culture) is all about "ME!!", "pwnage", "1337", and what can I get for myself???

Back to Final Fantasy 11 now: Square-Enix wants to build this as a cooperative venture. Fine -- but don't expect me to get involved with people who decide when they want to be cooperative or when they don't. They can take that and go find the highest cliff themselves for all it matters to me.

Me?? If I can't find enough people who won't dick around and play for themselves, then I guess I won't get to everything the game has to offer which needs groups -- and, frankly, I probably wouldn't anyway, given the attitudes I've seen.

Dear God, I hope this disease isn't catching.