Way back in the Everquest days, I had a particular dislike of an NPC named Cros Treewind.  Cros was a high level druid, and he really really liked bears and wolves, and he roamed one of the Everquest newbie zones full of bears and wolves and would instantly kill any low level character he saw fighting a bear or a wolf.

Oh, and bears and wolves were both aggressive to most characters, so you didn’t even have to start the fight.

I was killed by Cros several times before I even knew what he looked like, by the way, because the only thing I typically saw was a single “Cros Treewind begins to cast a spell” followed by “You have been slain by Cros Treewind”.

Oh, and if you got high enough level to come back and take your revenge?  Well, technically he was a good guy so suddenly the local guards would try to kill you on sight and local merchants wouldn’t sell to you and basically he was a colossal dick that you just had to avoid.

So I never took out my frustration on Cros.

He got removed from the game eventually, and very few MMOs have anything even half as player-unfriendly.  Sure, there are Korean grinders and all-PvP-all-the-time MMOs and the like, but I don’t think any other MMO has ever had a friendly NPC who would kill you just for being attacked by a bear.

…except.

FFXIV has these things called “Hunt Mobs”, who are rare spawns that are high level and aggressive and hang out in zones far below their level and who… well, who generally are very large and easy to see from a distance and easy to avoid.  So they’re not really that bad.

But then there’s Marberry.

Marberry is a level 50 Hunt Mob who likes to hang out in little hidden corners of what is otherwise a level 25ish zone and basically jump out at any lowbie who comes too close to whatever little hidden corner he is in today.  When I was originally playing FFXIV a few years back, he killed me a LOT.

I have several jobs at max level now.  And the PVP queues are a little slow, so I have time between matches.

So I have been just sort of casually hopping back to Marberry’s home zone while I sit in queue, and checking each and every one of his spawn points – trust me, I know them all by now – and murdering the hell out of him on a regular basis.

Eventually I will probably get tired of this, but this poor punching bag of a mob is serving to get out YEARS of delayed revenge against not only himself but also a druid from a 20-year-old MMO that he has absolutely no connection to.

It’s good fun.