With the supposed ddosing that occurred during the Gary Johnson 2024 vs QsQ game on Saturday, November 17th, I couldn’t help but think about how fairly people play games. For those of you who don't know what ddosing is, here's a definition:

The efforts of one or more people to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the internet

It’s not just cheating—it is also illegal. I don't know what happened on that Saturday or who is to blame but I do know that if someone did this deliberately, they don't understand the art of gaming. Let me explain...

I've played many games in my time and I've dealt with many different types of people as I play. I've braved the 12-year-olds playing Halo who will kill you because you picked up the sniper rifle before they did. I've played Soul Calibur against people who use the same move over and over and over again, crushing me into the corner and pulling off a perfection on me. I've even had to deal with all of the douches that insist I'm cheating at Left for Dead because I'm not getting killed.

I've had to deal with all of this, but there has been only one community that has discouraged me from playing a game that I really liked. It was my seventh time ever playing a match in HoN. I was playing as Succubus with my brother, a long-time HoN player, standing behind me. He was basically telling me exactly what to do at each moment. I announced that I was new to my team and that I had someone helping so they would know that I wasn't a seasoned vet.

During the laning phase I was denying last hits and getting some for myself on the enemy Creeps. I even managed to get my first double kill near the five-minute mark, bringing me to 2/0/1. However, for some reason one of my teammates did not want me on his team. He kept bringing up a boot vote to get me out of the game. My brother told me to ignore it but I couldn't. It was distracting and annoying and I started to play very badly.

Once my teammate put the vote up for the fifth time I decided to accept his wish and I voted to boot myself. When I put my headphones down and walked away from the keyboard I didn't want to play anymore. I was so angry that someone would boot someone else without even seeing what they could do. If he had looked at my score he would have seen that I was doing all right. Instead of encouraging a new player to become better he discouraged someone from playing the game for a long time.

The learning curve for HoN is like looking up at a cliff—it's very scary for new players to take those first steps upward. There are so many things to learn, far beyond what each hero can do or what items to build for a specific hero. The staff at S2 does a very good job in preparing noobs for the real game with tutorials, HoNCasts, and guides. However, until you get into the real game you have no idea what to do and when to do it. I'm lucky enough to have very good players around me who encourage me to play more and get better. If other players don't have that, I doubt they will stick around long enough to improve.

When talking to my friends about playing HoN I always find myself saying "The community can be very harsh, so be careful." When I read the forums I find people saying things like "It wouldn't be HoN if there weren't assholes." But there are good people in the community. QsQ waited 30 minutes to resume that game against VOTE—a game they eventually lost. In the DreamHoN Qualifiers they waited for team Kierk for about 3 hours, and they weren't even playing for 1st place.

I'm not trying to get all mushy and we-all-need-to-hug-and-hold-hands. I like smack talk as much as the next gamer. If I hand your ass to you in a game you'll hear about it. But I won’t put someone down to the point of cruelty, or be mean to them just because they're new. We can all have fun and kick some ass without ripping each other to shreds.

- LBHackEmUp
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