Hello, my names Joe, and I’m a troll.

I used to troll people at school. Now I troll people at work. I troll my family at home. And you, who unwittingly made the egregious mistake of logging into my realm, I’ll troll you the hardest.

I’m pretty good at this trolling thing. At one point, I actually had a small fan club, and a guild was named after me.

How do you troll people hard enough to get a guild named after you?

Let’s say we are playing a FPS, and you’re on my team, and just won’t stop running your mouth. If you were on the other team, I would happily pwn you until your guy just starts running into a wall, which is a sure sign that someone’s keyboard just flew out a window. But no, you’re on my team. Friendly fire is disabled. Whatever can I do? I could mute you. Or, I could just stand behind you, shooting your claymores as you plant them. Then when you get a suicide, tell everyone else on the channel that your dumbass keeps bringing down our score, and get them to vote you out of the room, before you can respawn and plead your case.

It isn’t that I’m a mean person. I’m not just out looking to hurt someone’s feelings. Sometimes I’m just out doing my thing, leveling a low level horde toon or something, and you swooped in with your Level 47 Alliance Hunter and ganked me.

Well… If I already had something better to do, I wouldn’t be leveling a low level toon. Now I have something to do. That something, is to log into my MAX level Rogue, and spend the next few hours killing every Allie in the zone. Think you can hide behind a rock? Probably not, since I macro’ed /target <yourname> to my mouse wheel, and now I’m just flying around looking for you. Think I’ll get bored, and leave? Nope. I’ve got all night. I can do this for hours. You log out to get away from me? Maybe you broke your headset in a fit of rage?

Good.

I already know your character name. I know your level. And I know where you logged out. I’ll be back tomorrow night, flying through this zone, and the next one, looking for you. The macro is already written, I can do this all weekend. Think you can bring in a buddy with a max level toon, and he will take care of me? Probably not, because I am actually pretty good. If I do get downed, it’s just an opportunity for the rest of my arena team to land in the zone, to get some PVP practice in.

But anyone can wreck an enemy’s day on WoW or a similar MMO. It takes a certain malevolence to troll guys on your own team. If I’m flying overhead, and notice that you’re trying to AOE grind with your Paladin, and you keep dropping your Consecration, I will happily bring you more enemies to kill. About 40 of them. Elites if I can find them. As the Pain Train rolls over you, you might even notice an emote from that rogue/locomotive. TrollRogue waves at you.

Well, pain-training someone while out there grinding is one thing, though. It isn’t like I would intentionally wipe a raid, just because I didn’t like ONE person right? Wrong. If I am tanking, and I notice that you like to get a little overzealous with your agro, I’ll let you have it. Yeah, I could have taunted, and prevented the entire raid from getting cleaved, but screw you. I might even lower my own threat, to make sure you take it. I might even have a fake macro set up, that says TrollTank Taunted /target, just to make it look like I tried to save you.

Who do you think is getting kicked out of the raid for that? The tank that clearly did everything he could to prevent a wipe, or you, the guy that can’t even watch his agro? To put this in perspective, I’ve gotten healers kicked for “pulling agro.”

Another scenario: We are raiding.

We are currently standing right in front of the boss, renewing buffs, and generally getting ready to kick some ass. I get a message from one of my buddies, and he wants in on the raid. We don’t have a free spot. Yet.

I check the DPS meters, and notice you are low. Very low. I could get you kicked for failing at life, but that can take 20 minutes of arguing back and forth about utilities, buffs you are applying, etc. Instead, I’m going to say your name into Vent, like I’m surprised. Followed by something damn close to “DouchebagDPS? What’s he doing here? Isn’t that the guy that ninja’d the EPIC LOOTZ last weekend? Someone boot that shitbag, or I’m not pulling.”

Before you can key your mic, you’ve been banned from Vent, kicked from the raid, and you’ll probably never get into a raid with anyone in this group again. Harsh? Maybe, but it’s still funny.

Maybe you’ll see me in trade chat. I’ll have a bunch of friends hanging out around me in a big city, and I’ll post something like “Does anyone want a free pet mole?” And I’ll use a “personal mole machine.” You’ll click on it, and find yourself teleported to the middle of a volcano. Maybe I’ll just be emoting troll-rogue builds a campfire, and begins roasting marshmallows. You’ll ask how I did it, and I’ll tell you to type /camp. Go ahead. Log into WoW, go to a big city, and type /camp. I’ll wait for you.

The one trend you’ll notice with most of these examples, you’ll never be able to prove that I griefed you. Well, with the exception of the whole me-camping-you-for-a-week, thing. You might be able to prove I killed you 54 times in a weekend, but you getting kicked out of the raid? No way was that my fault! Ask anyone that was there, they will all say I had nothing to do with it. Most of the time, they have no idea who mentioned you being a ninja in the first place; “someone” on Vent said it.

At the end of the day, I don’t generally grief you because my mother didn’t hug me enough, or because she didn’t empty the piss bucket in my cell/room every day, or she didn’t charge enough when she sold me into slavery. It’s because I was just done with my dailies and bored, and/or you did something to piss me off or to make yourself a target. Don’t take it personally, just don’t fall for the same trick twice, and make sure to share the love, and troll someone else in the future.

Remember: If you hear them breaking something while they are yelling into the mic or you hear their neighbors called the police because of all of their screaming, you done good.