Ganking what is.

Ganking what is.

I've been asked this question many times (in proper English), but since someone actually used the above phrase as a search parameter (really!), ultimately discovering my blog, I'll indulge and try to answer it, and perhaps embellish a bit.

First of all, perhaps a bit of history.

In traditional role playing games, it was rare that players ever actually killed each other. The goal was to work together in nearly every situation to accomplish the task the dungeon/game master set forth. Killing your cleric was probably not a good idea, even if you really didn't like the cleric.

On the other hand, there evolved games that were pure player versus player competition, such as Warhammer. The entire game was designed like a giant Stratego or Chess board. There was very little content other than pure war.

Eventually, these concepts merged, albeit clumsily. One of the first graphic MMOGs was Ultima Online. It took place in a fantasy world with plenty of individual and group questing to satisfy the classic DnDers. However, it added a component that distracted and discouraged many players. It was the ability for players to kill other players. UO limited a player's ability to kill within the borders of a city (supernaturally speedy guards destroyed anyone trying to kill another player within the borders), but left the huge expanse of land outside the cities to the brigands. Since most people when UO came out were playing on various low-speed dial-up connections, the latency issue added to the mess when groups of players combined forces with the sole purpose of killing everyone not in their group.

UO and the players tagged these types, and anyone else who killed another player, as "player killers" (PK, PKs, PKers, and other variations, for short).

When a player ventured out of town, as was essential to get anything done, and gets killed by such players, that player had been "PKd." I know many players who abandoned UO entirely because of the rampant PKing.

One could argue all day whether PKing was "right" or "wrong," but at that time, most UO players would likely say that, at minimum, the PKing there was unbalanced and it detracted from the joy of gameplay. Especially when dying had dire consequences: loss of experience, loss of items, loss of questing/gathering time, etc.

Regardless of the ethical implications of player killing, it was widely held that the term "PK" brought negative connotations. Not surprisingly, some players were even proud to wear the PK tag. It was a sign that they were aggressive and were always up to a challenge (as long as they had a distinct advantage).

Thus, PKers were often of higher levels, or sufficiently protected within PK groups before heading out on killing sprees. However, when an individual player of an even or lower level tried to kill another player, the PK term wasn't as often applied. Perhaps "idiot" was more commonly used. So, it seemed that from an early point, there was a fundamental PK quality of "having a distinct advantage."

Here is how Wikipedia currently defines Player Killing:

Player killing, or PKing, is nonconsensual and usually random. An aggressor attacks an opponent without agreement to any set of rules of engagement or combat. This can include raiding spawns, camping towns, and any other action which constitutes griefing another party. It also can be applied to group versus group, or GvG, combat where one group has an advantage usually due to larger in number. In Ultima Online, before the release of the Renaissance expansion which added a Trammel facet where PvP was not allowed, a rift formed of those who enjoyed PKing and the Anti-PKs, who do not and protected Trammies.

Now we've entered the age of "ganking." According to Wikipedia, ganking is ...

used in relation to Player vs. Player games where a group of 2 or more people gang up and kill another player, especially if they have an unfair advantage over the person being killed, and is an abbreviation for Gang Kill. Popularised by the MMORPG World of Warcraft, it is now often used in any situation where the person being killed is at a significant disadvantage to the person killing, as in "That horde just ganked me!".

Like many terms, "ganking" has become universally overused, and has lost much of the fundamental definition. If, in fact, it is short for "gang kill," it literally does not apply to those times players are killed by individuals, regardless of the level difference. The concept, however, is the same. When a level 40 player kills a level 15 player, it's equivalent to a "gang" of level 15 players killing that lone level 15.

Some players have narrowed the definition by requiring that it apply only to certain situations. For instance, if the situation is apparently even (like two level 20s meeting on even ground with no assistance, and no distractions), despite the fact that one player will win, it is not a "gank." However, when a player waits till a target player has lowered health while fighting computer AI mobs, and then kills, many will call that a "gank," even if the ganker killed multiple targets.

Regardless of its "proper" usage, "ganking" is always used as a derogatory term, even if proudly used by one's self. For instance, I've heard players attest to a ganking thus: "Ah, man, I just ganked a whole party of grey horde!" Meaning that the player, being at least ten levels higher than the horde party, attacked and killed the horde party, most likely when the party was otherwise occupied fighting mobs. Although bragging, the player likely understands that what was done was generally thought of as negative, at least by the targeted players.

However, what players in WoW have been bred to understand is that regardless of what the opposing faction does, it must be wrong because they're on the other side of the wall. Whereas anything one does against the opposing faction must be justified, merely because of the existence of the opposing faction. This dynamic has quietly revolutionized MMOG gaming and offered up a new definition without a suitable term. The definition is: acceptable ganking from the perspective of one's own faction, but unacceptable from the opposing faction.

Of course, there are those who would disagree that "ganking" an opposing faction member is ever justified. There are guilds that enforce no ganking rules, and rules that prohibit killing any opposing faction member below a certain relative level. How, then, can we define the phenomenon whereby in general, a faction (not merely a "PKing" guild) feels justified performing the equivalent action as defined by "ganking" merely because it is performing it against an opposing faction, and, at the same time, feels that it violates some fundamental or ethical principle for the opposing faction to return the favor in kind?

I challenge anyone to re-define this phenomenon more accurately, if necessary, and to coin a new term for it.