The Impact of Griefing

[SUPER_HELPFUL]

To grief a server in this day and age is no small task. Not only do you have to contend with ever watching moderators, paranoid players, and trigger happy admins who will gladly ban everyone on a server who was on during a grief, but more and more server plugins are able to detect anything from griefing with hacks, to simple vanilla griefing with such things like looting chests and replacing signs. When I see this panic, my stomach pains itself and all I can think if is "why is griefing such a bad thing?"

When old content is destroyed, new content takes its place, and no matter how amazing the creation, it does eventually get boring to see it. Griefers play the important role of 'erosion' in the minecraft world by taking down structures that a) have been there to long b) are no longer inhabited c) take up to much space or d) all of the above. Now some things will fall prey to their antics even if it meets none of the criteria above, but that is what makes them the true force of nature in minecraft that they are. As a personal example, I once played on a server where me and my faction built a huge underground base, a couple days later a donor to the server broke into the base while we were still in it and killed all of us using the powers given to him as a donor, and despite that I still play on the server. The griefer may have blown up our base and made me lose all members of may faction but after killing him and accomplishing my act of vengeance I simply moved on and created a new base. This act of random wanton destruction simply gave me a new task in the game, pushing me to move on and attempt to continue with my in-game life, accomplishing the same effect as a plot point in a story based game.

The more the minecraft community tightens its noose of restrictions around the necks of established and prospective griefers alike, the more it turns the game atmosphere into that of a collective art and architecture appreciation society, and takes away the medieval wild west survival element that it originally had. Now tell me, would you rather sit down with a group of snobby designer people and discuss the finer details of how "the giant skyscraper of gold greatly complemented the illustration of a ghost from pacman" or rush into a town beat down the door of the nearest house you see, murder the people discussing house building etiquette, loot their supplies, and burn the whole place to the ground? The choice is yours to make, but possibly not for much longer judging by the direction minecraft is taking.


tl;dr: minecraft needs griefing and if restrictions keep tightening on players it'll turn into a shit game.

[Cal]

Calm your farm people dont want to hear your rant
if you want to stop greifing use bukkit plugins

[Heartview]

Stopped reading at the "Griefing is an important part of the 'erosion' in minecraft" part.

When people build something in the game, they did not build it to watch it get destroyed. They built it for the sake of building it. If they wanted to get rid of it, they would. This fallacy that griefers are playing some kind of higher role is plainly stupid. They are there to cause nothing more than trouble, and are treated rightfully so.

[SUPER_HELPFUL]

Calm your farm people dont want to hear your rant
if you want to stop greifing use bukkit plugins

The rant is not about stopping griefing, it is about how we should NOT stop griefing.

[HW$%yh5eh5ea5heheh5]

well i come from the side that you can build, and build something else. you don't need it destroyed to build a new thing

[SUPER_HELPFUL]

well i come from the side that you can build, and build something else. you don't need it destroyed to build a new thing

Good point, I just get tired of the restrictions placed on players in multiplayer that seem to stretch to every server nowadays.

Stopped reading at the "Griefing is an important part of the 'erosion' in minecraft" part.

When people build something in the game, they did not build it to watch it get destroyed. They built it for the sake of building it. If they wanted to get rid of it, they would. This fallacy that griefers are playing some kind of higher role is plainly stupid. They are there to cause nothing more than trouble, and are treated rightfully so.

Your opinion is solid and really has no counter argument.

[Heartview]

And to be fair, I do kinda agree with you that servers are too strict. PVP servers should have room for some attacks on other players, but blatant griefing should not be allowed.

[Cal]

My bad, i was on my phone and read the last bit and missed a word

griefing makes miencraft what it is
i think its fun in its own little way

[GRgaergaergaergerag]

I like the TL;DR part at the end

[zerg32196]

if i wanted a major building that took me 3 hours to make and alot of effort i would destroy it i dont need assholes just destroying my hard work for a brick or 2 and any of you griefers reading this STOP PLAYING MINECRAFT NO1 WANTS YOU oh and have a wonderful day