The Daily Grind: Brother, can you lend me a hand?

Actually, one of my most dearest friends in real life was a player I encountered in Anarchy Online.

He helped me out, we started talking and now 5 years later we only play any new MMO together or we don't play it at all. And then some....

Thats friendship. :)

So yes there are golden moments in MMO's. Just as much as the internet can show the stupidity of man, it has the same power to show how good of heart a person can be. I prefer not to call it altruism since true altruism is extremely rare.
Helping a stranger is not really altruism as there is very little one could loose by helping.

Evenmore so in a MMORPG since they need a steady stream of new "ignorant" players. All the reason to help a stranger since it will directly benefit your experience. As such it is not true altruism.

Though a lot of players don't seem to get that. ;)

Was in a very good and friendly guild back in SWG pre-CU. Some of the guildies would drop whatever they were doing and rush to help out if another guildy asked for help :)

On a side note: If I play a class with healing or ress I often stop to throw a heal or ress if I see another player who needs it.

Several of my RL friends decided yesterday to roll up on another WoW realm, as some folks were just returning and some were new (like me), and most of us had played on disparate servers.

So when our designated guild leader went into Ironforge just last night and asked for loan of a few silver to get a few things going, we were all surprised by the donations of gold and charter signatures (since not all of us had gotten online yet).

When I logged out to go to bed, we'd formed the guild and received several hundred gold.

Coming from an EVE background, this strikes me as all very suspicious ;) but seriously, Hydraxis seems like a great server. Maybe the WoW community outside the forums isn't as bad as I'd feared.

Only a RL friend did that for me in a couple of games. Not that ive really asked for help in situations where he wasn't available. And not that im some sort of genius but once i got the hang of WoW i sort of never had any real trouble getting into other games. They make them easy and soloable as much as possible, so no point in asking for help when you'll eventually figure it out by yourself, or when you have all the information you need on a wiki somewhere. It actually gets frustrating when you don't have it all at your fingertips, like in FF XIV. It's weird....

That used to happen nightly back in EQ.

I was new to Dark Age of Camelot and smacking wolf cubs in the starter zone when a high level player came up and dropped a Gold on me with no warning.

It had such an effect on me that when I reached max level I would start each play session by porting to a starter town and quietly hand out Gold to questing noobies.

After a few months of WAR launching ( I had played during launch but had quit) I came back to the came and made a sorceress. As I was leaving Blighted Isles to head to Chrace, a Rank 40 Chosen stops me and hands me enough items to fill my very empty bags ( some of it I wouldn't be able to use for 10-20 ranks later ) and 20g. He then promptly logs off. He did not quit. I had added him to my friends list and so him log on everyday and never asked for the stuff back.

Heaps, been helped and helped a lot in most MMO, even Spellborn in its dying months (before the server issues) the International Guild people who help as much as we could. And other.

Even back in the WoWcrack days pretty much the same thing. Even would help (spits) Alliance people who where getting hammered in PvE situations.

Ironically I tend to waver from one extreme to the other at times depending on what I'm working on.
One of my best was farming up the materials required to forge 5 sets of nature/frost resist gear in WoW for serpent shrine caverns since the other guild members just didn't have the time to farm them up themselves. took me 3 days to get them all together and crafted. never cahrged anyone a dime for my time but the next week we killed the boss we'd intended and much thanks went around for the armor :)

I've let 2-3 members of my FFXI linkshell borrow real life money to pay for emergencies. Also sold all my gold when I quit and paid off a member's credit cards who was going through a nasty divorce.

I can be as big of a troll as the next guy - and certainly deserve being called an ass like 90% of the time.. but loyalty within the community is valuable.

I've had many wonderful experiences during my time playing MMOs. When I was fairly new to MMOs, I joined a Guild prior to buying the MMO (I knew at least enough that I would want to be in a Guild). Upon getting into the game, the Guild Master came down to the starter area and coached me on how to control my character, how quests worked, set me up with some basic gear and a little cash, etc.

In LotRO, I was on my Hobbit Mini and was trying to get a Crafting Quest done that was well beyond my level - I had two strangers who ported me near my destination, guarded me through the hordes of enemies *much* higher level than I was, until I got the drop I needed, and then made sure that I got back to town safely.

I have had people walk up to me in MMOs and just give me gold, people who stopped and rezed me or assisted me in a fight, just for the heck of it. I have enjoyed the friendship of many people, even back in the early days of EVE Online. And I have passed on those good deeds - I try to assist people where I can, especially low level characters and players who obviously need a hand. It can be very satisfying to help someone out who is new to the game.

People in LotRO are great about helping,especially with the craft quests.

I've had help getting them done on nearly every character I have (and it always took only a minute or two for someone to offer the help), and I quite often log in my main to help whenever I hear anyone ask for help with them.

Glad to see an article about this topic, we need more selflessness in the MMO worlds. People need to know you can be competitive and not be jerks to each other.

My fondest memory is when I did PvP for the first time in Guild Wars. I didn't know what I was doing in terms of build & tactics. I had several people downrank me or report me. I was getting frustrated and about to leave, when another player who had been competing against me in PvP matches messaged me in lobby area and started talking about tactics...He gave me a few pointers and encouraged me to stick around in PvP.

We fought as teammates, then as enemies, every time he gave me more advice. It was never condescending or made me feel bad. Eventually he invited me to his guild hall where we practiced, he gave me tips on builds that opened my eyes about things I hadn't considered. He was never shy about sharing things, He gave me weapons, pointed me in the right directions in PvE for elite skills I wanted.

He never asked for anything in return, except I never turned him down when he wanted PvP. Then out the blue he told me he couldn't play GW as much as he wanted to because his job hours changed and his wife just had a baby.

We don't play as much, but we are in contact almost every other day. Since those days, his greatest effect on me wasn't the advice on tactics & builds...but rather how he was so unselfish.

More than ever, I am altruistic gamer. I am competitive, but I respect the spirit of the intentions of games I play.