Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

It's always more interesting when Lisa and I disagree. This week is very interesting. Let's get right to it.
So... Here's my story. The first part is probably pretty typical, but it's what I did in response that I'm conflicted about. I feel I could use the advice of someone who understands WoW.

I saw somebody advertising in trade that he was selling the ruby shades for 500g. I'm not sure why I thought even for a second that it might be real; even on a low-pop server, that's two orders of magnitude low. But I did, so I arranged to meet with the "seller". He expressed some hesitation about the 500g price and we negotiated a higher price - none of which turned out to matter, since it quickly became clear that he did not have the shades at all. At one point he put an item with the same icon as the shades (yes, I have seen the real ones) into the trade box. So I took an approach which I have used on various manner of ill-behaved players before, and gave him a lecture. This was not just any lecture. I am not religious, but I imagine I would have made a Sunday-school teacher proud. I lead off with, paraphrasing, "I am going to waste more of your time than you wasted of mine," and touched on such topics as why attempting to rip people off is wrong, why the money one might hypothetically get by doing so would not give one satisfaction, and why it's not okay just because you're anonymous on the internet.

This in general worked pretty well. I think possibly he was more willing to put up with it because my character's name was female, but I suppose I'll never know. I know he was frustrated with me, because he said such things as "can u stop talkin to me !!!!!!!!!!!" and "STOP TALKIN TO ME NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (both verbatim quotes), and I suspect I had him in tears at one point. I finally released him after about fifteen or twenty minutes (he didn't know how to use ignore, and I had coolly mentioned that I was willing to make alts to keep bugging him if he tried that route, to discourage that line of thought), by which time his tone had changed considerably and I felt there was a fair chance he might actually understand some of my points.

So far, so good, right? When you play with the adults, you run the risk that somebody might moralize at you! After all, what I did was only words. And very polite words; I never called him anything dirty; the worst appellation I used was "troll". How can that be wrong? He deserved it. And the praise from guildies for putting a troll in his place certainly felt good.

But... Well... It came out in the course of the conversation that he was eleven years old. I believe this, as he had no reason to lie. And by the end of it he seemed to halfway think I was his friend, but I was still being rather brusque with him. I feel my tone could have been less harsh. I didn't intend to convey the message that he's inherently bad and can do no good - that will give him self-esteem problems and lead to bad stuff. I just wanted to convey that he was a good person who did a bad thing, and I think I went way overboard for that.

Could I have done some damage? I'd hate to think of this kid crying himself to sleep, or quitting the game, or something like that. I am entirely self-taught in my own school of unsolicited advice of this nature, so I've had no guidance for how much is enough.

I'm having trouble conveying exactly what the nature of my conflict here is. I guess I just want you to sign off and say it was okay, or that it wasn't - I, unlike an eleven-year-old, can handle criticism. Please let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Ironically Remorseful