Nice try, but being unpleasant to your adversary during a game, even thought it may be standard these days, is a sign of just how low our culture has sunk ... My wry comment about the bomb was simply to illustrate how profoundly AHII is NOT war.
You are right about how AH2 is NOT war - I should have thought about my choice of words in my first post.
For the rest, See my second post. Again, it's just a matter of your priorities. Are you here to make friends? Or are you here to win at all (legitimate) costs? And again, being within the rules is what separates taunting from bomb placing and hacking. It may be equally unpleasant, but one is legal, the other two are not.
That is the rational analysis. Any statements of being "wrong" or "it's how low our culture has sunk" are just moralizing, and everybody has a different set of standards.
In fact, such backlash against "win-at-all" costs behavior is probably the result of your personal preference for the social aspect of this game. This is what you are here for (and apparently how you conduct yourself in life) so in order to protect those ideals, you feel it necessary to condemn the "playing to win" mentality.
see the problem with that though......is those that are running, are doing nothing but laughing at you as you taunt them. the only way to generally get thjem to turn, is for you to show em your tail.
How effective taunting is arguable. I tend to agree with you. If I'm the runner and I'm taunted, I'm just as you described - I'm laughing.
That of course isn't the point - it's the attitude involved, the "win at all costs" mentality.
I can't blame you when its all you see out of sports and what have you these days, but it is still wrong.
Nope, the conflict we're having here of "playing to win" and "sportsmanship" is present in virtually every game community. It was present in the chess community of the 1800s. Howard Staunton, a chess columnist for a London newspaper, would frequently abuse his editorial paper to "trash-talk" his opponents. Apparently Staunton would use every conceivable out-of-game advantage he could including making his opponent sit facing the sun. It may be more prevalent today, sure.
The funny thing is, trash-talking relies on a big population that believes in sportsmanship and gentlemanliness. Trash talking gets the friendly guys angry, makes them denounce the trash talkers, etc etc, just like in this thread. And that is precisely how it works, drawing (negative) attention to the trash talkers but also clouding the judgement of the sportsmanship crowd. They feed off the attention and the irritation they cause.
Random pop culture reference: remember in Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader taunts Luke into a rage? Even though Luke beats the snot out of Vader with his anger, the taunting had its intended effect - Luke was now angry and on the verge of converting to the dark side.
As I outlined in my second post... it's pretty simple:
Are you here to make friends or are you here to win at all (legitimate) costs? If you are here to win, are you good enough that you don't need to resort to "bad sportsmanship"?
Answer those two questions about any person, and you'll know how they'll behave in regards to this issue.
Personally, I'm here to make friends, with winning a secondary consideration. When I meet the taunters, I steer clear, squelch etc. But I never try to take the moral high ground to say that my way is the "right way" or that it's "wrong" for them to do it.
