No matter what game any of us choose to play, there are always those very similar experiences across every title, IP, and audience we find ourselves in. There are plenty of these sorts of experiences and in no way can we actually say which proper top 10 should be on this list, but we tried our best. Without further ado, here’s our top 10 list of very, very, very common MMO experiences found anywhere and everywhere.

10. Douchebags

Douche.

I didn’t want to start the list off with something so negative, but I’m pretty sure everyone reading this article will agree up front on this entry. No matter where you are, who you are, what you do, or what you enjoy, you will always encounter assholes of the lowest form to the highest degree. These people range from the self absorbed DPS who think they’re God’s gift to the genre, obnoxious PvP/E purists, the condescending foreigner who thinks your country is crap, the guy who pulls all the trash despite not being the tank then complaining about the tank and healer for himself getting killed, and many more fit the bill here. You wouldn’t want me to talk about every single type here, but as far as we’re concerned, these douchebags are definitely the most typical experience we can ever have in most MMOs.

9. Downtime Explosion!

Pretty much what we all feel.

This isn’t exactly something I would regard to be part of the list considering that this is something any player expects when playing an MMO. However, while there are downtimes, there will always be outlandish and crazy downtimes. Now, the latter is different because these are the surprises MMOs offer us, and they especially come at the worst of times. Tired from work and want to relax with some Wildstar? Nope! Emergency maintenance! Got Twintania at 3%? Try again later, Coil of Bahamut instances are up for maintenance in 5 minutes! About to get that sweet 2k ranking in arenas in SWTOR? LOL, RANDOM BOOT FOR RANDOM MAINTENANCE! This happens more often than not and, without fail, gets everybody’s panties up in a bunch. Maybe if we prayed more to the MMO gods, there’d be less maintenance, but with every game, I’m sure we all turn a tad bit more aetheist, to say the least.

8. That One Really Friendly Guy (TORFG)

You know that one guy? You know, that guy who’s just always so nice and becomes your friend for no special reason, meeting just at some remote location like somewhere in Tier 2 Ellyrion or in some battleground like Walatiki Temple and impressed each other in some way? Guess what? He or she is probably your bestest friend in game, and you can’t seem to remember or imagine how you played the game before meeting this person. Whoever logs in last always gets pm’d by the other, and you two just have to play with one another, or not at all.

FRIEND! SMASH FRIEND!

Sadly, more often than not, TORFG quits pretty early before you two get to endgame and start the awesome fun to be had. But if TORFG doesn’t, you guys will pretty much go on owning whatever it is to own in your game and proceed to get sick of it, and one of you probably abandons the game eventually. The friendship could continue, but its really not something that is usually bound to happen. Still, you’ll remember that one friendly guy that you’ve had such a blast with, and hope that maybe, one day, you could go kill some other opposing faction in some other game. Believe in fate!

7. Support Scarcity

Everybody’s out raiding, and I’m just sitting here, waiting for a tank.

There is no denying this; tanks and heals are always hard to come by in every MMO based on the holy trinity. Considering how in widespread practice the trinity is, we can definitely say that this is quite the typical conundrum that everyone experiences. In a sea of DPS, we see tanks and healers as rather rare gems that choose to aid allies rather than defeat foes through brutish force. That, or you just have a bunch of assholes that want to be important enough to push people around due to the importance of their role and should primarily belong to the first enumeration on this list. This happens way too often and in way too many MMOs, and we all reel in disgust every time we have to wait for an hour just for a tank or healer to join.

6. The Willfully Ignorant

HHNNGGH!!!

This entry sets it apart from the first due to the strange nature we encounter with people like this. There’s always some raid or some activity where someone suddenly afks without telling anybody and missing a good chunk of whatever it is was being explained about said activity. See image above. Another of these willfully ignorant buffoons is the person who chooses not to follow any form of instruction once they’ve received it. It isn’t out of being douchey, but simply clueless and haphazardly dumbfounded by anything that works within a game. Idiocy? Stupidity? Overwhelmed with information? We don’t know, but we sure as hell meet them too often in our time, and we often wonder if they’ll ever get it.

5. Overpaying In The Auction House

I’m so buying everything.

This happens at least once in everyone’s MMO career. We find this awesomely shiny item in the auction house, and since we probably have been leveling for quite a while now, we’ve managed to gather a substantial amount of money in which you’d probably be considered pretty well off. This item, now, with how glorious it is, will leave us with little more than about ten percent of our total cash, but we choose to buy it anyway because we just need it for some reason. Then we suddenly realize that the item we just bought can be obtained in a variety of other ways, some not involving money, that could be obtained quite easily. You, my friend, have just spent six hundred thousand credits on an easily craftable lightsaber crystal. Good job! Might help to do a little more research and be less impulsive next time.

4. Loot Woes / Goodbye, BiS

Too bad this isn’t you.

This continuous experience is no stranger to anyone; loot rolls suck much rod. At one point or another, everyone’s rolled some really bad number, and on an item they sorely need too. It would have been a total upgrade, one piece of gear that would have greatly helped out the raid for the rest of the instance, but no; some guy with a seemingly better piece gets it with a 100 roll and leaves the rest of the people who actually needed it frustrated and in despair. Great and fun experiences, I say.

3. That Thing You Always Have to Do Every Week

Yeah, pretty much my daily grind.

A lot of MMOs have dailies and weeklies and such, though not all, of course, but there’s always this thing that you have to do in every game. I don’t know what that might be, but you just really need to do it before whatever reset it is your trying to beat. Raid lockouts, boss lockouts, free daily item, or whatever it is, we serious MMO gamers are always on our toes, continuously working tirelessly on that activity to get more awesome in the game. There’s always this thing we keep chasing after and it’s hardly ever going to end until a patch or expansion rolls by to render it obsolete. But even then, we still probably do it. No idea why.

2. “OH, SHI—” Moments

EXCLAMATION POINTS!

This entry is broad just for the reason that there’d be too many to list if I explained this in separate items. We all have those great moments where there’s something so awesome that we’d probably never see again in a billion lifetimes. I know I’ll never forget how Caduceus wiped out my entire party and the sole Scholar healer left kited him and did 100 damage through a Ruin II that was actually exactly the hp left on the behemoth snake.. We cheered and wailed at the very scene, creaming the front of our pants and dirtying the back, all in the spirit of awesomeness. It’s those rare moments that we all typically have at some point in our careers in an MMO. From the most epic ones like stated earlier, to its smallest doses, these are the occurrences that keep us playing and loving the genre.

1. That Guy

Thanks, mate.

Last, but not least, we have That Guy. He’s one of the douchebags, yes, but this guy simply deserves the final entry in our list. In every MMO community, there’s always this one single person, opposite of TORFG, that you just never want to see, hear, or interact with at any point in time. A notch above the regular grime, his continued existence is simply so appalling, that most people have a tendency to go through great lengths to avoid him. Whether it be through ignore lists or completely warring with words, That Guy can just be a handful and ruin everyone’s fun in thirty words or less. He could be the guild ass, the server troll, or the annoying thirteen year old talking smack about PvP, he could be just about anyone. We all have our own version of him, whether we acknowledge it or not, and he’s there to stay, whether we like it or not (or at least until he quits playing).