Thanks for dropping by!

This particular post is mostly something that I’ve felt for a long time and simply not had the appropriate words to express how I’ve viewed “social contracts” and behaviors. Slightly deviating from your suggestions and plugging in some of my own thoughts about PUGs (uggh): I think the social contract exists in PUGs, but its binding is limited or empowered by whether or not the participants “buy in.” I look at WoW as a virtual capacitor with regard to how players interact with others (especially in PUGs). Every player is a power supply of involvement and WoW can either be an outstanding regulatory instrument in how the input is distributed, or a complete wall to “normalized” social behavior. I speculate that those who perform poorly compared to those who do not have had limited actual human interaction. It is difficult then for these people to ever truly develop a sense of proper social behavior (or its variants), if the foundation for behaving around others is built from a failed “capacitor” relationship.

The implication wasn’t intentional but now that you point it out, you’re absolutely right! I stated my impression of the Contract with BGs and the lack of Contract with PuGs as a semi-fact, while in reality it was kind of my own opinion. To me BGs are for raging due to the nature of PvP. Instances are not. But that’s just my view, and it’s entirely possible that the majority of players see the game differently. I don’t mind idiocy and assholeness in PvP because to me, PvP is a safe outlet for crap. I usually don’t mind idiocy (but assholeness does get on my nerves) in PuGs because I know there’s nothing I can do about it and my options are either to be miserable or to ignore it.

The interesting thing here is that the implied contract of the pug is morphing into something more along the lines of the BG ‘contract’ in that our expectations have become so eroded that we just roll our eyes whenever we experience rampant asshattery in a pug. I’ve given up.

There is always the TOS as an enforced upon demand Social Contract, but any other Social Contract that might emerge is random. You *can* end up in a group of like minded people who’ll have some rules as common ground, but you might also end up in a strongly devided group, or a group of like minded people who are against you.

Ahem, anyway, I like this post and for the most part I agree with it. However, I think the social contract is still there, even in places like BGs because beyond whatever group standards we self-police in WoW, there’s also sort of a basic bottom line of decency. It’s pretty low in BG chat, but it does exist and sometimes it surprised me where it pops up.

For example, I have been doing a lot of BGs this week, and in one there was a warlock whose name was a careful misspelling of a horrific racial slur. And he had a mouth like the inside of a sewer pipe. And about two minutes into the WSG people started replying to him with “why should I listen to you, racist scum?” and “did that racist a-hole just talk? I have him on ignore” and “don’t worry, he won’t be named that for long, I reported him.” I was surprised in the pleasantest way.