As a chronic attention whore, I’m in a right position to guide you through a style of communication that we call “trolling”.
To define the term, trolling is a kind of posting that aims to spark a response, controversy. That is its only goal: guild advertisements, for example, also seek response, but getting people to respond is just a way to recruit new raiders. Meanwhile, trolling is concerned with nothing but generating reactions. Higher the amount of reactions and their intensity, more successful the trolling.
It’s also possible to combine trolling with a genuine question/statement to bring more attention to it. You can say, “hey guys, I think our population is great, and people worry about it too much”, or you could go with, “stop worshiping Nostalirus shrine, your divine server had 6 million online and bext 100% script no bug, all other servur DED lmao, maybe realize how many players retail servers had and that 3K online is amazing, F R E S H is a shit meme”.
The latter is bound to create far more response because it’s edgy and plays on people’s emotions, but it’s not pure trolling, or just trolling, since it also has an element of an honest conversation. It tries to illustrate a point, and uses trolling as a tool to do so.
Meanwhile, if you say, “nice 2x xp + 4x xp weekend + 2x xp from rested = 16x XP nice (((blizzlike))) server fam” that doesn’t carry any meaningful information, and it’s just nonsense you throw out there for lulz. It’s pure, distilled trolling.
Peaceful Trolling
Peaceful trolling either doesn’t cause distress, and if it does, it isn’t severe and is entirely caused by the recipient’s naivety or limited mental faculties.
It’s peaceful for both the community in which the troll resides and the troll themselves: the community is entertained or, at worst, mildly outraged (sometimes both), and the troll gets to live in peace, not having to deal with any, or very few, of the consequences that come with toxic, unpeaceful trolling.
Now that we have our definitions in order, let’s look at the traps trolling presents and how to avoid them.
What to Avoid
1. Don’t attack individuals.
The easiest way to get a response is to tell someone, “fuck you”. This is a terrible approach though since you’ve now made an enemy or have at least moved in that direction. Your new enemy has friends, and maybe he’s an officer in a large raiding guild, or maybe you’ll meet them in a BG, and it’s gonna suck because they dislike you, and you’re supposed to cooperate in BGs, fuck. Oh wait, they’re actually running a premade, and no, you can’t join.
To be fair, insulting someone won’t lead into such drastic situations right away, but if you do it enough, you’re getting there eventually.
What I’m seeing more of in recent years is a kind of depressingly dedicated, poisonous trolling that spans over several weeks (or even longer) where a player, or a group of players, will constantly attack a person for some largely made up reason. They’ll do it while trying to maintain an image of a perfectly balanced individual who’s just having fun in a video game, lol, and why is their target complaining about being stalked and bashed since, ha ha, they’re just a normal person being entertained by funny things.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t remember seeing this until a few years ago, and I wonder what is says about the community.
What’s clear though is that acting like that is the equivalent of walking around with a massive, flashing neon sign saying, “I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE”.
The exception to “do not attack individuals” is when you’re doing it in self defense. Keep in mind that your attacker is using emotional language, and that you must respond in the same way to win — rational arguments are meaningless. In most cases, though, ignore function works well.
2. Don’t attack groups
Groups are collectives of individuals and, as such, can defend themselves far better. Everything about individuals applies to groups as well.
Exceptions to this are, again, self defense, and when the group you’re attacking is a part of the other faction. If you’re Horde, it’s probably safe to make fun of Alliance guilds and vice versa. That said, in WotLK, factions rarely come in any kind of meaningful conflict and even share a city (a floating city entirely covered in PINK); vanilla does a far better job in that aspect.
3. Don’t attack the server you’re playing on
This should go without saying, but it’s still something people manage to fail at routinely. Even the most chill and benevolent GM won’t tolerate their project being slammed for very long.
A Clarification
Before we continue, I want to point out the reason I’m using the term “attack” since, one might say, you don’t always have to attack something or someone with maximum, brute force to achieve a result. You can just mildly tease, you can make humorous remarks, or just bury the insult under several layers of irony.
Yes, you can do all those things, and it’s still trolling, but the fact is that global chats move fast, players’ attentions are divided, and most of them don’t have the capacity and/or patience to analyze your shitpost that you’ve been refining for hours. It’ll just get blown away in the never ending stream of diarrhea. Your goal is to produce solid turds that stick out of the bland, brownish landscape, so to speak.
This means your trolling has to be aggressive, direct, and easy enough to understand. There’s room for complexity too, as long as your message is still clear, but if you really feel like making nuanced posts, start a blog. Really, you should do it: the private WoW server scene is growing, and there are no blogs that cover it (that I’m aware of). It’s an untapped market, a F R E S H niche. We’ll add each other on our blogrolls, and it’s gonna be great.
What to Do Instead
1. Attack Ideas
Ideas, unlike people and groups, can’t bite you in the ass, and are therefore the perfect target. Sure, you’ll get blowback by players who disagree with you, but you’re not attacking them directly, and if they start acting like you are, you can always point out the fact that you’re not, that they’re just triggered over nothing.
It can be something related to WoW or something from RL. Go and claim that heavy metal is the only legitimate form of music, and that all electronic music made without physical instruments is just, “pressing two buttons, no talent”. Also, mentioning that pit bulls are dogs bred specifically for killing and should have no place in civilized society tends to generate surprising amounts of response.
As for WoW-related stuff, since I mostly play on WotLK servers, my favorite is to roleplay we’re back in 2007, playing retail Wrath, and complaining about how the game is now easy, vanilla was so much better, and how those “wrath babies” have no idea what WoW is about. Bring back the days when epics were epic.
2. Make Fun of Yourself
Posting all that ridiculous shit will, ideally, put you in a position of a somewhat deranged clown, and some people will attack you directly for it. When you’re insulted for trolling, the best way to react is to show that you don’t care: either ignore it, or agree with them. When someone calls you a retard, say, “wtf my iq is actually 91 and thats several points above the cutoff for being mentally retarded ok”. (You can also just demonstrate your moral superiority, since you haven’t ever personally attacked anyone, and respond with “rude”.)
Most of the time, all you have to do is say say nothing, and your attacker’s (usually emotionally charged) attacks will soon start to work against them.
3. Broken English
dis trend vas star back in idk 2012 on peenix forume, and it was aim to emulat ruski englsih))) sinc den it died somewat but is stil fun to maek funny write ))))) one soem levul, it is mak fun out of playur with bed England since such playurs meny time also bed at gaem & cause meni problem for oter playzur
personly I find chaleng to write bik rusia english coz there line after vich it no longer undrestandabl and is art to get clos to dat lien but NOT kross it)
Closing Thots
Quality trolling is about knowing where the line is and then dancing around it. Do it right, and you’ll never ever get banned, and over time, you’ll be able to get away with more than an average player. When hordes of lemmings will be getting cut down for posting ANAL spam (banned or muted for several hours), you’ll walk among the slaughter, unscathed, with your, “guys, where do I find The Annals of Darrowshire?”.
Timing is everything. What you write has to remain visible for at least few seconds: look out for guild ads spam, they often come in waves, and shut up if there’s already a discussion going on. In my experience, the US crowd tends to be more banter-friendly than the EU one even if that’s far from being a rule.
I’m posting this on a Sunday afternoon, so I hope I’ve gotten the timing right as well. Let me know what you think about the post in comments: what do you think about trolls, do you think that trolling is indeed a art, or do you think the global chat should be reserved strictly for LFG and WTB?
Amberpine Lodge 