Grieving due to Grievers

Last night, I saw a post on the EVE cooperation chat screen and noticed a post about forming a team to do level two missions. Frustrated with what I was trying to accomplish previously, I decided to give this a try. He was in a nearby system, so we quickly met up. I told him about how I kept failing this particular mission and how I had lost a cruiser already. He agreed to help. We warped to the location, expecting to be hit immediately by a barrage of missiles. Surprisingly, none of the computer generated enemies appeared. There was a glitch in the game, which meant that I still couldn’t finish the darn mission! Instead, we decided to head out to low security space to work on more profitable endeavors. Meanwhile, we were contacted by a third person who read the post. He however was quite far away and would take close to half an hour to reach our location. We decided to wait for him, since there was strength in numbers.

He finally arrived so we started to head out. As soon as we went through the gate, we saw two battle cruisers just camping there. One of the guys and I were able to warp to another location…but the guy that spent half an hour to meet up with us had his warp mechanism jammed. His ship was subsequently blown up. It was so sad! Disappointed, he logged off and we followed suit.

So why do people choose to be grievers? Player-player altercations are normal in Eve especially over territory but then there are players that are just plain malicious. You can easily choose to make money via missions or mining. EVE Online, represents a virtual reality in a perspective not previously encountered. Socioeconomic trends lead certain people to become dejected and violent in their pursuits for life. Hence, you have many law-abiding citizens in EVE, as well as pirates and extortionists who would rather not wait to get their fix. Although the sampling of EVE players is non-random and includes people with similar interests (and presumably similar walks of life) the population displays the dynamics of what would be expected in a randomly-selected population. With just 50,000 people playing on one server, players have either miraculously assumed societal norms and niches out of habit, or else have been compelled by the previously-engineered system to fill the necessary occupations.

Still one question remains, as it has since the dawn of time. Why do some feel the need to blow others up? Where is the love?