The Daily Grind: When does friendly turn frustrating?

I seem to find them far far too easily and I couldn't begin to tell you why or how, but it's happened in almost every MMO I've ever played for any decent length of time. I'm trying to think of where the line is between someone who is friendly to someone who is clingy but it's so blurry I can't define it.

Helping someone you just met in Black Rock Depths in WOW. Awesome instance, but first couple times in easy to get lost/separated. And thats what happened. What I mistakenly thought would be a quick helping hand turned into a 3 hour tour. Fun times lol.

Oh and the corpse runs where incredibly LONG!

I really enjoy helping people, once you've dinged max it's just spending time you would otherwise be bored in. Generally if you just go "dude sorry, im questing now, i can't talk" they'll leave you alone.

I'm an angry, deranged loner, but sometimes I'll feel bad and help somebody out. The guys that don't know basic game info, or have trouble getting group invites. Stuff like that.

MMOs are like high school sometimes, there's always these poor schmucks that fall through the cracks and get left out by the cool kids. I've taken a few under my wing and helped them get going. Then I return to my shell, guilt trip expiated...

I think it depends on the game. For COH, you don't really need that much help to keep going. But for a game like SWG or EQ with years of added systems, you need a lot of hand holding. I just subbed to SWG after being gone since way before NGE and I'm completely lost. Having fun though. I was fortunate enough to find a guild where everyone is walking me through the game.

I usually just conveniently forget to accept their friend invites on FFXI after the first time. Therefore I never get added to THEIR friend list, so they never see me as soon as I log in.

My excuse? "Oh sorry, my friend list is full." It has a limit of 200 people... but it's not full. ;)

Welcome to the Internet.

I generally tried to be helpful and generous to newbies when I played Ragnarok Online, especially since people helped me when I started and then I managed to get pretty rich in-game.

Sadly, there was always a player or two who just tried to beg their way to riches after I showed them some kindness. One guy told me it was his birthday in a really obviously manipulative way to try to get more stuff out of me. Another time I tried to explain to this girl that it was better to figure out how to get some things on your own since it's more rewarding and makes you a better player, and she started freaking out and caps-locking at me.

Meh, the times that helping people leads to a rewarding experience outweigh the bad times though!

Happened to me almost every day i logged into star wars galaxies.

One time I helped this guy on a mission in Guild Wars. He then asked for help on the next one, and I said sure. The next day, I got a PM from one of his friends asking for help. I was busy, so I said I couldn't. Then the friend started telling me about all the mean things the original person did, and how they were having this fight. I told I was not going to get into the middle of any conflicts so I put him on the ignore list. Then the Original person did PM'd me and did the same exact thing on the other side of the argument, I had to put them on the ignore list too. Every so often, I clean my friend/ignore list cause it gets too long and the odds are I won't remember them anyway. I removed them from my ignore list after say 2 months, and once again they started asking for help and complaining about each other (and how mean I was for not talking to them). Let's just say, I keep both of them on permanent ignore now.

Warning: long story ahead

Towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King, while leveling a new character, I happened upon this paladin who was trying to finish this quest but was having some great difficulty. After helping him finish it, I noticed that he didn't have any talent points put into any talent trees. He explained that he had just started playing again after something like a 2 year break from WoW and was trying to find "the right build" for his paladin. Since I had just finished leveling one, I gave him some pointers and an example build.

He seemed friendly enough and we were at the same point in questing that we hung together for a couple hours. This culminated in us adding each other to friends lists. I logged out quite content that I had helped (what I considered) a new friend.

A couple days went by and he sped by me in leveling speed. It seemed like he never logged out. He hit 80 before the end of the week. All the while, he was constantly struggling to pull even decent DPS. So, I spent some time one day running heroics with him trying to get his dps up. (Note: this was back in the day when Ret was lolfaceroll easy and just pushing up buttons as they light up was all it took to pull decent dps). After several hours of working with him, I concluded that there was nothing more I could do and that more practice was needed.

A week or so later, while looking for a guild on my recently-dinged 80, I noticed that some friends from an old guild had started a new guild and were looking for raiders. After being invited to the guild, I noticed that my paladin friend was also on their roster. This is where things really started to get ugly.

My paladin friend started getting invited to pug raids and was winning all sorts of gear. Somehow, through a lucky streak, he got geared up very very quickly. However, his dps was still truly terrible. While wearing some of the higher pieces of gear, he still couldn't manage to out-dps tanks. He quickly earned quite the reputation on the server for playing terribly.

I suppose all the criticism started to get to him and he started taking it out on those close to him. He attacked me in guild one day, completely unprovoked, and then gquit. He started trolling trade, joined one of the more notorious troll/ninja guilds, and then continued to attack our guild. He very quickly became one of the biggest tools on the server. Funny enough, my guild was more than happy to see him go because he usually did nothing but gloat about his gear and whine in guild chat, and they were tired of carrying him in raids. (They were a very casual/friendly guild and would almost never kick people from raids.)

The whole experience jaded me and now I'm much more cautious about helping people out. If I do say anything to help other players out, it is very guarded. Most of the time, I just ignore newer players now. I liked helping people before, but now I'm just not that interested in doing so.

Rarely happens to me.

When I help people I will often point them to the resource they can use to solve their own question. For example, in WoW, if someone asked me "Where is the AH", I would answer "Speak with a guard, he will put a flag on your map and minimap". Or if someone asked me for some builds I would point them towards some site explaining the builds.

Smart players will soon start fending for themselves and stop pestering others with newbie questions; often, if they looked for my help again, it would be related to some finer point of the game, something I usually find quite entertaining to discuss.

Lazy players would avoid me, because I made them work for their answer :)

To be honest, I think hostility is the norm and people are so unaccustomed to kindness that when they experience it they try and hold onto the person extending it as long as they can.

Mine was in Dark Age of Camelot and was so annoying that I experienced my one and only mistell-from-hell by accidentally sending him:

"Ugh. I helped out this guy once and now he constantly begs for help!"

It actually ended quite well with this (very) young kid taking my criticism to heart. After a series of long conversations we parted on good terms.

In WoW, for wotlk, I helped a paladin out for a few quests and he asked me to be his friend, I said why not... Well, it eventually led to constant whispers and annoying requests that sometimes I obliged to, but after he asked me for gold I just gave up and ignored him.
I guess some people take these things too far, or maybe I'm too slow on it... But I remain skeptical with a lot of in-game friendships.

It doesn't really happen to me. I wish it would though. I like the social aspect of MMOs and i hate to think that one wrong move, such as oh i don't know not fitting into the exact predefined social pattern as expected, could be interpreted as being annoying, so i do my part and keep a high level of tolerance, unless someone is intentionally trying to be a jerk.

So far, every guild / kin / fleet I've ever joined has had this problem of overeager members. People always instantly "ask" me (most often, it feels more like a command) to go join a group / meet up / whatever else, and I either grudgingly agree or feel bad about saying no.

Maybe I'm not doing it right, but to this day I still haven't had a guild experience that made the game more enjoyable. Am I the only one?