"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating." -- Simone Weil
srsly, in WoW, Whorde alwyas out number Alliance. DC, more villans than hero's. And we all know everyone is going to roll a Sith in old republic. I don't get it, it scares me. To me this says that if America were invaded by "anyone", they would go with whom ever they see as the bad guy. Am I missing something here?
Well there's the fun, bad guys look cool aspect, but there's also about 30 years of moral relativism taught in universities and in schools, plus tu quoque and moral equivalence arguments in the largely "liberal" media and entertainment industries, etc., etc., that have formed a sort of conditioning.
Me, I've never been able to play a bad guy in any game. I've often tried, but I just can't do it. I consider it a moral failing.
Who told you that Horde are the bad guys? Those Alliance scams?
And who says that Sith are the bad guys? Those Rebel scams?
ha, I knew someone was going to bring up this philisophical point of view, and heres my rebuttal...
Sith: Hmm, wanting people to live in piece and harmony vs. wanting everything to be dead and under the power of one "empire".
These don't neccicarily attack the philisophical reasoning, nothing really can as every side has its own point of view, however, their is the view of the mass "population" that usually win's something like this. If everyone would rather live in piece, then so be it. anyone who disurpts that is being evil.
A fun little comment by Obi-Wan in Ep.III is "Only the Sith deal in absolutes," which in itself is an absolute, blanket-wide, black and white statement. I mean, really?
The real difference between the Jedi & Sith are the color of their lightsabers. Both want to be in the position of power in the galaxy, and both are willing to go to great ends in crushing the other.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
srsly, in WoW, Whorde alwyas out number Alliance. DC, more villans than hero's. And we all know everyone is going to roll a Sith in old republic. I don't get it, it scares me. To me this says that if America were invaded by "anyone", they would go with whom ever they see as the bad guy. Am I missing something here?
Personally in WoW I picked Hore because of the story in Warcraft 3. Alliance was full of self rightious ass hats too busy trying to stick to status quo instead of the greater good. Plus the kiddies like to play hero so they tend to pick alliance more.
I didn't play DC, but I'll tell you this much, the heros are just too damn 1 dimensional in general in the DC Multiverse. Yes there's batman, but he's not a typical hero either.
I personally play gray characters, if the choice is only black and white, I pick black, cause white in stories tend to force their morals and perspective on others.
srsly, in WoW, Whorde alwyas out number Alliance. DC, more villans than hero's. And we all know everyone is going to roll a Sith in old republic. I don't get it, it scares me. To me this says that if America were invaded by "anyone", they would go with whom ever they see as the bad guy. Am I missing something here?
I don't think that it depends on who is good or bad, but rather which races seem to be more "cool looking" to the casual crowd. If you'd have a number of regular humanoid races spread over two factions, and one of those races would have glowing ice and a flaming halo and so on, then people would play that race most, no matter if it's a good or bad race.
I know I'm out of Blizzard now, and I hate to re-enter that lore, but I have a serious problem with people talking about the two factions in WoW. Whichever side they like is the underdog, and whichever side they are against is evil. Both sides have done some pretty horrible things. Just look at the Orcs and Ashenvale Forest. That is flat out wrong, and I would say evil. Not to mention the Orcs are invaders wherever they go and have no rights to any ancestral lands. Look at the Dwarves, going wherever they please, digging up whatever they want, forgot who lives there or whose lives they interrupt. I might not say this is evil, but it is greedy and arrogant and selfish. The Night Elves and Tauren are the closest thing each side has to good.
Look at humans, who generally hate all other races, and merely tolerate even some of those in the alliance. The undead flat out want to kill all life; the Draenei blindly follow ridiculous beings of light, and if not evil, that's stupid. The blood elves are an entire race of addicts who won't accept that and imprisoned one of they aforementioned beings of light to steal its power.
Just about everyone in WoW is, if not evil, at least selfish and unkind. It's a whole world where there are no good guys.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
For me badguys looks cool. exibit A sephiroth cool looking badguy. and for me bad guy characters are powerful to play at first rather than the good side character.
I really prefer games where the playable species/races/organizations are not cut and dry good vs. evil. I like the "so-called" bad guy because many times they are not. It is far more interesting when an Orc can be more than an monster and a gnome can be the imbodiment of evil.
Who told you that Horde are the bad guys? Those Alliance scams?
And who says that Sith are the bad guys? Those Rebel scams?
ha, I knew someone was going to bring up this philisophical point of view, and heres my rebuttal...
Whorde: I will admit Orc's and Tauren's don't necisarily belong, however, they are part of a whole. I could tel you the little lore I know about each race, but you can't get past the fact that they have UNDEAD on their side. I mean common, they are hell bent on destroying all life and EAT flesh.
That's not the playable Undead race at all. The Scourge were hell bent on destroying all life, and The Forsaken (playable Undead faction) were the ones that wanted no part of that and split off.
As far as eating flesh being evil... I'd say that's a cultural thing, not a good/evil thing.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Out of the mmos I've tried and reached high levels with, there was really only one with a definite "bad guy" side. That was Everquest 2. In WoW, when I started it was before they got everyone into the instanced pvp bowls, and even before the honor system, so if you can remember the first WoW cinematic it talks of an unstable truce and while it shows both sides fighting, it states that they're trying to hold onto that truce.
EQ 2 is the only game I know of in current gen mmos that has a definitive bad side, and that side used to start in a town called Freeport. EQ2 is also the only game with hard incentives to play as the bad guy: specifically certain races and classes can only be evil. In all the other mmos, the bad boys and girls get different tools than the good boys and girls, but it's not a huge difference maker from what I've seen, unless those mmos have changed.
In WoW's case, the best racial in the game goes to humans, which is a +rep bonus racial trait. When any new expansion comes along, this is easily the most valued racial, because the sooner you get that rep, the sooner you get those rep rewards. Even this has been marginalized with the new guild leveling system, providing a rep bonus to guilds that get to a fairly early level in the system.
I think what it boils down to is that cosmetics generally portray the darker side as the more creative side. Even in EQ 2, if you want an ogre or troll, you have to roll an evil character. You can always switch factions and betray your city later, but at least in the beginning you really are "evil" in that game. In WoW, goblins and tauren, two of my favorite races from WoW lore, are Horde-only, at least player controlled-wise. In Aion, the asmos have tails and a mysterious tone to them that the elyos do not have.
Individual reasons may vary, and I honestly think the real reason for the question the OP asks is due to cosmetics and the "evil" factions looking cooler and in some cases having better animations.
I most often choose the "bad" side, as I can relate to them much better. Usually they are underdogs in terms of amount players playing them, and often I find the "uglier "and more "evil" the race is, the more interesting people there's behind the character more often than not. Evil areas also usually are very rough and tribalistic looking, which is something I prefer much more, than pompous castles and civilization. Even though I play "bad" guys I'm mostly carebear, and don't even know how to RP evil really, and I think it's the case with many others too. Only problem is that dwarves are on the "good" side in many games, that's really annoying! Awesome race, but always stuck with elves, humans and whatnot. ;-)
Kind of a indirect question here, if everyone picked the bad guy, there would be no game. Nevertheless, I have found the evil side to have a more....challenging concept like, over coming the odds in order to build a new society leading to the real concept of power...Truth, justice...and the American way. Not to mention the babe toons are hotter showing more clevage and shape. Not that I am looking cause I am married, just that it is noticable.
Simple because bad guy characters looks cooler that its good counterpart and usually its more powerful. and honestly who wants to play good all the time. lol
me, because everyone wants to be on the darkside / bad side. thats why i always play jedi instead of sith.. also in the upcomming SWTOR
edit: btw... who decides what is good and what is bad? killing a gangster boss is the same like rescuing a child out of fire. killing is normally bad.. but it depends on the view
srsly, in WoW, Whorde alwyas out number Alliance. DC, more villans than hero's. And we all know everyone is going to roll a Sith in old republic. I don't get it, it scares me. To me this says that if America were invaded by "anyone", they would go with whom ever they see as the bad guy. Am I missing something here?
A brain perhaps?
An edge in the numbers of a chosen alignment in a couple of games (and one you mention isn't even released and therefore pure speculation) being used as the basis for a theory on the state of a nation's mentality is at best an extreme stretch even if 100% of said nation's population played those couple of games. If your unfounded assumptions about what people play was even true one might argue that it would lead to the exact OPPOSITE conclusion you've come to: that people are rolling "baddies" because they are good all day in real life.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
Who told you that Horde are the bad guys? Those Alliance scams?
And who says that Sith are the bad guys? Those Rebel scams?
ha, I knew someone was going to bring up this philisophical point of view, and heres my rebuttal...
Whorde: I will admit Orc's and Tauren's don't necisarily belong, however, they are part of a whole. I could tel you the little lore I know about each race, but you can't get past the fact that they have UNDEAD on their side. I mean common, they are hell bent on destroying all life and EAT flesh.
That's not the playable Undead race at all. The Scourge were hell bent on destroying all life, and The Forsaken (playable Undead faction) were the ones that wanted no part of that and split off.
As far as eating flesh being evil... I'd say that's a cultural thing, not a good/evil thing.
Yes, and this is exactly why one of the quests for the undead in WoW isn't to engineer a new plague to kill off living beings and convert them to undead.
Oh wait, there is that quest...
The undead you can play only make the distinction of maintaining/recovering free will, not of ultimate goals. They broke free from the Scourge originally when Arthas was weakening before becoming the Lich King during WC3 Frozen Throne. Equally having part in forcing Arthas out of Lordaeron as much as the demons of the Scourge harassing him, claiming the destroyed city as their own. Their end goals from what WoW had actually covered of them actually did push towards the premise of them at the least corrupting and converting life, and their inclusion in the horde factions was seen only as a 'necessary evil'.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
like i said... good and evil depends on the side you are standing... you can see that in the bible too :P (im atheist but i know that book). just because luci will destroy the mankind is not bad if you are on his side.. its just bad if you are a human :P on his side "god" is the evil one.. so...
Usually "bad guys" or evil side, has more mature community. It is quite odd, cause a man would think that brats and kids would rather be evil, but instead, there is a lot of righteous pricks and suprisingly many mature, friendly, evil overlords
Who told you that Horde are the bad guys? Those Alliance scams?
And who says that Sith are the bad guys? Those Rebel scams?
ha, I knew someone was going to bring up this philisophical point of view, and heres my rebuttal...
Whorde: I will admit Orc's and Tauren's don't necisarily belong, however, they are part of a whole. I could tel you the little lore I know about each race, but you can't get past the fact that they have UNDEAD on their side. I mean common, they are hell bent on destroying all life and EAT flesh.
That's not the playable Undead race at all. The Scourge were hell bent on destroying all life, and The Forsaken (playable Undead faction) were the ones that wanted no part of that and split off.
As far as eating flesh being evil... I'd say that's a cultural thing, not a good/evil thing.
Yes, and this is exactly why one of the quests for the undead in WoW isn't to engineer a new plague to kill off living beings and convert them to undead.
Oh wait, there is that quest...
The same is true of every race. None of them are saints and they all have their bad side to them. That doesn't change the fact that the races are all equally guilty in the grand scheme of thing and no one faction/race is designed to be 'the good guys' or 'the bad guys'.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
srsly, in WoW, Whorde alwyas out number Alliance. DC, more villans than hero's. And we all know everyone is going to roll a Sith in old republic. I don't get it, it scares me. To me this says that if America were invaded by "anyone", they would go with whom ever they see as the bad guy. Am I missing something here?
A brain perhaps?
An edge in the numbers of a chosen alignment in a couple of games (and one you mention isn't even released and therefore pure speculation) being used as the basis for a theory on the state of a nation's mentality is at best an extreme stretch even if 100% of said nation's population played those couple of games. If your unfounded assumptions about what people play was even true one might argue that it would lead to the exact OPPOSITE conclusion you've come to: that people are rolling "baddies" because they are good all day in real life.
There is also the problem with TOR that if you want to play a specific class - Bounty Hunter for instance you are forced to play for the "bad" side. So those who might be drawn to the morally ambiguous are now lumped together with the "evil". It is one of the problems I have with TOR is that classes are faction specific.
The question should be why do the kids always choose the bad guy. When I started WoW for example I did so as Alliance and I kept hearing how much better the horde is. So I finally rolled a horde and what did I find out? That theyre as shit as Alliance except there are way more kids. Same thing in other mmos quite frankly.
I think the bad guys are more popular because of Hollywood. We are bombarded with incompetent bad guys that can't take down a small group of heroes with a whole empire.
People just get tired of that and want to experience the other way around.
Also is it a pretty good way to get out anger of the system. You are really upset on your boss but you can't yell on him so you play some bad guy to release the preassure.
In P&P I usually play good or in between but I did play a really evil character in R.I.F.T.S. It was actually rather relaxing.
I frankly think it is healthier to get stuff like that from your system in a game than on a actual person or just keeping it in.
But there is a difference between bad and bad. Spending hours griefing a noob is not bad, just pathetic.
Comments
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating." -- Simone Weil
I think nothing further needs to be said.
Well there's the fun, bad guys look cool aspect, but there's also about 30 years of moral relativism taught in universities and in schools, plus tu quoque and moral equivalence arguments in the largely "liberal" media and entertainment industries, etc., etc., that have formed a sort of conditioning.
Me, I've never been able to play a bad guy in any game. I've often tried, but I just can't do it. I consider it a moral failing.
Indulging in my geekness here
The Empire is the Good Guys
Star Wars Despots vs Star Trek Populists
A fun little comment by Obi-Wan in Ep.III is "Only the Sith deal in absolutes," which in itself is an absolute, blanket-wide, black and white statement. I mean, really?
The real difference between the Jedi & Sith are the color of their lightsabers. Both want to be in the position of power in the galaxy, and both are willing to go to great ends in crushing the other.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
indeed.
reminds me of 'everyone in horde looks ugly
'
I don't think that it depends on who is good or bad, but rather which races seem to be more "cool looking" to the casual crowd. If you'd have a number of regular humanoid races spread over two factions, and one of those races would have glowing ice and a flaming halo and so on, then people would play that race most, no matter if it's a good or bad race.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
All I know is I want my Miraluka.
If I have to be the ultimate villain and force choke superman as I use his body to telekinetically beat batman to death to get my miraluka, so be it!
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I know I'm out of Blizzard now, and I hate to re-enter that lore, but I have a serious problem with people talking about the two factions in WoW. Whichever side they like is the underdog, and whichever side they are against is evil. Both sides have done some pretty horrible things. Just look at the Orcs and Ashenvale Forest. That is flat out wrong, and I would say evil. Not to mention the Orcs are invaders wherever they go and have no rights to any ancestral lands. Look at the Dwarves, going wherever they please, digging up whatever they want, forgot who lives there or whose lives they interrupt. I might not say this is evil, but it is greedy and arrogant and selfish. The Night Elves and Tauren are the closest thing each side has to good.
Look at humans, who generally hate all other races, and merely tolerate even some of those in the alliance. The undead flat out want to kill all life; the Draenei blindly follow ridiculous beings of light, and if not evil, that's stupid. The blood elves are an entire race of addicts who won't accept that and imprisoned one of they aforementioned beings of light to steal its power.
Just about everyone in WoW is, if not evil, at least selfish and unkind. It's a whole world where there are no good guys.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
For me badguys looks cool. exibit A sephiroth cool looking badguy. and for me bad guy characters are powerful to play at first rather than the good side character.
I really prefer games where the playable species/races/organizations are not cut and dry good vs. evil. I like the "so-called" bad guy because many times they are not. It is far more interesting when an Orc can be more than an monster and a gnome can be the imbodiment of evil.
It's all about fashion. The "bad guys" usually look damn good while the "good guys" usually look like dorks. That's all the incentive I need.
That's not the playable Undead race at all. The Scourge were hell bent on destroying all life, and The Forsaken (playable Undead faction) were the ones that wanted no part of that and split off.
As far as eating flesh being evil... I'd say that's a cultural thing, not a good/evil thing.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Killers Have More Fun
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Out of the mmos I've tried and reached high levels with, there was really only one with a definite "bad guy" side. That was Everquest 2. In WoW, when I started it was before they got everyone into the instanced pvp bowls, and even before the honor system, so if you can remember the first WoW cinematic it talks of an unstable truce and while it shows both sides fighting, it states that they're trying to hold onto that truce.
EQ 2 is the only game I know of in current gen mmos that has a definitive bad side, and that side used to start in a town called Freeport. EQ2 is also the only game with hard incentives to play as the bad guy: specifically certain races and classes can only be evil. In all the other mmos, the bad boys and girls get different tools than the good boys and girls, but it's not a huge difference maker from what I've seen, unless those mmos have changed.
In WoW's case, the best racial in the game goes to humans, which is a +rep bonus racial trait. When any new expansion comes along, this is easily the most valued racial, because the sooner you get that rep, the sooner you get those rep rewards. Even this has been marginalized with the new guild leveling system, providing a rep bonus to guilds that get to a fairly early level in the system.
I think what it boils down to is that cosmetics generally portray the darker side as the more creative side. Even in EQ 2, if you want an ogre or troll, you have to roll an evil character. You can always switch factions and betray your city later, but at least in the beginning you really are "evil" in that game. In WoW, goblins and tauren, two of my favorite races from WoW lore, are Horde-only, at least player controlled-wise. In Aion, the asmos have tails and a mysterious tone to them that the elyos do not have.
Individual reasons may vary, and I honestly think the real reason for the question the OP asks is due to cosmetics and the "evil" factions looking cooler and in some cases having better animations.
I most often choose the "bad" side, as I can relate to them much better. Usually they are underdogs in terms of amount players playing them, and often I find the "uglier "and more "evil" the race is, the more interesting people there's behind the character more often than not. Evil areas also usually are very rough and tribalistic looking, which is something I prefer much more, than pompous castles and civilization. Even though I play "bad" guys I'm mostly carebear, and don't even know how to RP evil really, and I think it's the case with many others too. Only problem is that dwarves are on the "good" side in many games, that's really annoying! Awesome race, but always stuck with elves, humans and whatnot. ;-)
Kind of a indirect question here, if everyone picked the bad guy, there would be no game. Nevertheless, I have found the evil side to have a more....challenging concept like, over coming the odds in order to build a new society leading to the real concept of power...Truth, justice...and the American way. Not to mention the babe toons are hotter showing more clevage and shape. Not that I am looking cause I am married, just that it is noticable.
Simple because bad guy characters looks cooler that its good counterpart and usually its more powerful. and honestly who wants to play good all the time. lol
me, because everyone wants to be on the darkside / bad side. thats why i always play jedi instead of sith.. also in the upcomming SWTOR
edit: btw... who decides what is good and what is bad? killing a gangster boss is the same like rescuing a child out of fire. killing is normally bad.. but it depends on the view
A brain perhaps?
An edge in the numbers of a chosen alignment in a couple of games (and one you mention isn't even released and therefore pure speculation) being used as the basis for a theory on the state of a nation's mentality is at best an extreme stretch even if 100% of said nation's population played those couple of games. If your unfounded assumptions about what people play was even true one might argue that it would lead to the exact OPPOSITE conclusion you've come to: that people are rolling "baddies" because they are good all day in real life.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
Yes, and this is exactly why one of the quests for the undead in WoW isn't to engineer a new plague to kill off living beings and convert them to undead.
Oh wait, there is that quest...
The undead you can play only make the distinction of maintaining/recovering free will, not of ultimate goals. They broke free from the Scourge originally when Arthas was weakening before becoming the Lich King during WC3 Frozen Throne. Equally having part in forcing Arthas out of Lordaeron as much as the demons of the Scourge harassing him, claiming the destroyed city as their own. Their end goals from what WoW had actually covered of them actually did push towards the premise of them at the least corrupting and converting life, and their inclusion in the horde factions was seen only as a 'necessary evil'.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
like i said... good and evil depends on the side you are standing... you can see that in the bible too :P (im atheist but i know that book). just because luci will destroy the mankind is not bad if you are on his side.. its just bad if you are a human :P on his side "god" is the evil one.. so...
Usually "bad guys" or evil side, has more mature community. It is quite odd, cause a man would think that brats and kids would rather be evil, but instead, there is a lot of righteous pricks and suprisingly many mature, friendly, evil overlords
The same is true of every race. None of them are saints and they all have their bad side to them. That doesn't change the fact that the races are all equally guilty in the grand scheme of thing and no one faction/race is designed to be 'the good guys' or 'the bad guys'.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
There is also the problem with TOR that if you want to play a specific class - Bounty Hunter for instance you are forced to play for the "bad" side. So those who might be drawn to the morally ambiguous are now lumped together with the "evil". It is one of the problems I have with TOR is that classes are faction specific.
The question should be why do the kids always choose the bad guy. When I started WoW for example I did so as Alliance and I kept hearing how much better the horde is. So I finally rolled a horde and what did I find out? That theyre as shit as Alliance except there are way more kids. Same thing in other mmos quite frankly.
I think the bad guys are more popular because of Hollywood. We are bombarded with incompetent bad guys that can't take down a small group of heroes with a whole empire.
People just get tired of that and want to experience the other way around.
Also is it a pretty good way to get out anger of the system. You are really upset on your boss but you can't yell on him so you play some bad guy to release the preassure.
In P&P I usually play good or in between but I did play a really evil character in R.I.F.T.S. It was actually rather relaxing.
I frankly think it is healthier to get stuff like that from your system in a game than on a actual person or just keeping it in.
But there is a difference between bad and bad. Spending hours griefing a noob is not bad, just pathetic.