Yeah, but what if you later found out that both of them raided the top-end dungeon. Now which is more successful? Perhaps Mr. Epics is better at getting the drops, but Mr. Trash is almost certainly either a better player or has much more capable friends.

Another factor for MMOs is that everyone’s success or failure are more visible than in real life. The neighbor down the street might have a huge gambling problem and mountains of debt but you don’t know about it.

You see the guy with all the 3l33t epics, and you see the guy running around in trash greens. You know at a glance what kind of success the character has had in the game, so it is easier to make snap judgements.

MMO gamers are also prone to envy others for stuff they did not have the nerve to do. For instance, I would really like to crown my GW achievements with the “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” title. A friend who started playing 2 years after me achieved all this. Basically, we did a lot of stuff together, but I never had and probably never will have the patience to drink 10.000 beer, eat 10.000 sweets and use 10.000 party items plus also maximize the Luxon faction title after maximizing the Kurzick rank before.

Guess how I called my dear friend: “Silly, mindless, braindead grinder”. And more like that. Said the nerd to the nerd…

It is interesting that I am like that in MMOs. I am normally not that jealous. Then we also desire stuff we know we would hate to do, but we would still like to have them. It is odd indeed, maybe I am already addicted to MMOs or conditioned like a pavlovian dog to do certain things no matter the cost as soon as a yellow ! pops up.

I think there’s two reasons this sentiment is especially prevalent on MMOs. First of all playing the typical MMO and getting anywhere requires all the spare time you have and then some. Secondly, generally speaking MMOs are designed around little more then various flavours of grinding treadmill that offer shallow achievement in the form of dings, even more shallow because generally speaking these dings really take only time to accomplish.

I’ve always thought it sad and shallow, but oh, so easy.

Anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. Anyone who drives slower than you is a traffic hazard.
Anyone who has more sex than you is a nymphomaniac. Anyone who has less sex than you do is a prude.
Anyone who spends more money than you is wasteful. Anyone who spends less than you is cheap.

I think this is generally a reflection of the desire to be seen as “normal” and self-justification that what you’re doing is the right thing. In the MMO example you give, people want to believe they are doing the best they can. Obviously someone who is doing better merely spends more time than you do in the game; anyone doing better needs more commitment. The person in question obviously strikes the proper balance that everyone should follow.