MMO-focused research website The Daedalus Project has a 7-page feature on the hows and whys of those who invest a little more in their adventures than the average PvP server player (who is 14 years old, tipes lik ths lol, wears a black trenchoat and white sneakers, and slyly uses his mom's mascara to darken the peachfuzz on his upper lip).

The conclusion? That the penis-fencing that goes in in PvP realms manifests in different ways when everyone is pretending to be angry at their dwarf wife for /dancing with that stupid macho paladin for a little too long yesterday, and you're nothing without me, and don't make me tell you again!

More brilliant insight after the jump.

Everyone wants to be the greatest, or worst, thing that has ever happened to their particular land of make-believe. Everyone has to be exquisitely attractive. Everyone has to have the best reason to weepily scratch their forearms bloody with their BlizzCon badges:

Entirely too many people seem to want to turn having a tragic past into some kind of contest ('Orcs killed my mother' 'Oh yeah? Demons killed my whole family!' 'Oh yeah? I never HAD a family' 'Arthas ninja'd my thorium!') which is not only obnoxious but also kinda dumb; very few people like to deal with tragedy by using it as a bludgeon against others. [WoW, M, 24]

This sort of pissery and pretention is maddening to the players that value actual character depth and god forbid, originality in the people with whom they seek to form in-game relations. The idea of actual roleplaying in RPGs is eternally tempting, but then I remember these people, grit my teeth, and go back to dealing with the "how i mine 4 fish" style of interaction. Sigh. eliza gauger

Faces of Role-Playing [Daedalus Project]