So, it is now Midsummer, and players are running all over Azeroth honoring the bonfires of their faction, desecrating those of the opposing faction, and attempting to steal the fires from the opposing faction's cities. There are other things to do, such as throwing and juggling torches, dancing around the ribbon-poles, killing special bosses such as Ahune, the Frost Lord and his lieutenants, and quests to gain fire blossoms that can be used to purchase special event food, items, and pets. After running around on my lower level mage for the early part of the afternoon to get her leveled to 40, I jumped onto Llaihr and immediately set about doing the quests and visiting the various fires stationed throughout the world (I still have to visit those in Northrend, which I will do this evening), making the mad dash through the various horde cities to steal their flames, and running through the Slave Pens to take down Ahune (once on Heroic, and five times on normal mode). It was a long and tedious journey which took me until roughly 2am, but I completed all the required achievements and got the title Flame Warden along with the nifty gear that goes along with it. I then proceeded to help my friend Riannah get the Horde city flames for her achievement. All in all, it was a rather productive day.Also, the Midsummer Fire Festival brings with it the thrill and risk of PvP gameplay. One of the achievements requires the player to go to the various fires of the opposing faction and desecrate, or put them out. Doing this automatically flags a player for PVP for five minutes, and during that five minutes, that player is basically fair game to any player of the opposing faction. Now usually, I will let the lower levels go and not kill them as they are really no threat to me, but if they do stupid and assinine things that say "hey, hit me. I'm a target", I will kill them just to teach them a lesson. Case in point, I had just finished desecrating the Horde fire in Swamp of Sorrows, and got ganked by a couple of (three) higher levels, with a level 37 hunter "helping" them out. I, of course, was outnumbered, and got killed, so went about finding my corpse and resurrecting myself. I fed myself and got back to full health and continued down the road to Darkshire and the Alliance fire there. Halfway down the road (I was still flagged at this point), I encountered the level 37 hunter again, and this player was cocky enough to run around me doing what I term "the chicken dance", flapping arms and clucking like a chicken- something that I took as an obvious taunt. As I stated above, I considered this to be assinine, and obviously STUPID behavior on his part, and turned around and one-shotted him there on the spot. Lesson taught, I moved on. Not a minute later, someone from my own guild, a kid, logs on and starts yelling at me, calling me a jerk in guild chat (and other choice words in whispers) because I killed his hunter. This started a long debate about the merits of killing Horde when they're flagged, and such. ("fun" discussion that was). There were those who thought I was cruel for killing a toon half my experience level, and others who supported me saying that he deserved what he got. The player in question demanded my apology, to which I said in private whisper "I'm sorry that you feel I was wrong in killing you, but I don't feel the need to apologize for the action" and left it at that.
Now the questions I posed were as follows:
1) How was I to know (without prior knowledge) that said toon belonged to a fellow guild member?
There is no way to tell, so hence, player gets the same treatment as any other "unknown" Horde. (Yes, I tend to give known Horde toons of friends and fellow guild members some leeway when I encounter them, unless it's in a battleground where all rules of diplomacy do not apply.
2) With question #1 in mind, why did the player in question do something that would ultimately lead to him getting killed, other than to be stupid?
I guess he's the only one that can answer that question
3) Did I owe him an apology?
Again, I don't believe I did, as I killed him once for doing something stupid and moved on. There are players out there who would camp the players corpse and kill him everytime he resurrected. I am not that cruel or vindictive.
