Indeed it is not. If folks considering it such occurs in any game outside of UO, then I am unaware of it.
Face-to-face, participation in stories is one the great strengths of UO; it's something I never felt in, for example, Star Wars Galaxies, nor have I been made aware of folks feeling in, say, World of Warcraft.
The fact that folks can, in a game that's so story/immersion-dependent, consider griefing a playstyle, let alone a legitimate one, is disheartening.
I am pleased, though, to see so comparatively few of these types of folks posting.
-Galen's player
Not that you aren't already aware that I completely support your point of view on this, but I completely agree with you, and think it deserves being repeated.
While I am nearly certain there were a couple of game-wide events in SWG, I don't recall ever being to one, and in WoW, unless you're on a PvP server, griefing is taken very seriously. To be honest though, in other, more modern MMOs, like you, I have never heard of griefing as a regular occurance at all. It's just not something that pervades most other games.
But then, like you say, the whole EM story-driven content thing is pretty much unique to UO. There may be other games out there that do something like this, but if there is, I haven't really heard about it. UO has a very unique approach to content in that we do have EMs across our shards that not only provide our shards with content, but which also provide different experiences. Except for global arcs, the content is unique to the shard, and even in global arcs, some of the characters that push those plots forward are completely different. There is no Lord Magnus Grey on any other shard, no Sarah Paumera... those and their personalities and the countless other EM characters are unique to each shard, and that's a beautiful, wondrous thing.
That there is a small minority of players who think it's necessary to stand out in a crowd by griefing events is sad. And all it manages to do is frustrate legitimate players and the EMs themselves. I can't speak for any of the EMs, but I suspect it gets old dealing with the same lot week in and week out, being told how crappy you are because you don't just hand out items every week, being told that the plot that you've worked on for the enjoyment of players is just getting in the way of "GIVE ME MY ITEM NAO!!!!" Thankfully, I hope, the EMs realize that the rest of us who show up regularly really do enjoy the plotlines that are provided, and really DO get immersed in that storyline that is in the background of our shard history, and really DO appreciate the work and time and effort that they put in.
The problem is, when it starts becoming more than a couple of players -- and at GL's Tuesday event, it HAD to have been at least five or six, maybe more, that were trying to crash out as many people as they could -- and the event comes to a grinding halt because it's just impossible to proceed any further while players are misbehaving, then it's a waste of everyone's time.
It's shameful, and anyone who would call that kind of behavior a "playstyle" really needs to consider just what "playing" means.
