Although I cant' find the article, in the past I'm pretty sure I've talked about how I feel about someone quitting a game before they lose, robbing the other player of their opportunity to beat their opponent, rather than just winning from a forfeit. While there are circumstances where I think it's perfectly acceptable, HearthStone has given me a new pet peeve - my opponent refusing to win because they know they can't lose.
Before I go in to this, I want to point out that I haven't played many games against other players in HearthStone - 15 at the most, and I've only won 6 games. Of those remaining 9 games, I've had 3 people mess with me instead of delivering the killing blow, and it drives me nuts. I'm at 5 health while they're at 25, I have no creatures and they have 4. I have 1 card in my hand and they have 5. There is nothing I can do to win the game at that point without having some unreasonably powerful card, and even then I wouldn't count on a win for another 2 or 3 turns.
Rather than just ending the game so we can both move on, they insist on dragging it out by playing every single card they can, destroying my creatures instead of me, and generally being a jerk about the whole situation. I realize not everyone who does this means to be a jerk - some of them may just want to pull off a combo or see if they can draw a card they want before they finish me off and not even realize that there's another person sitting there bored out of their mind while they giggle to themselves. But the fact is that I am sitting there, knowing there's nothing I can do because any attempt to regain control of the game will get crushed.
Of course I wouldn't have to deal with it if I weren't so stubborn. I could just concede the game, but I can't make myself do it. I like seeing games out to the end unless conceding will save me a lot of wasted time. However, when a game gets to the point where I'm one move away from losing, conceding feels like pouting.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't as annoying as dealing with most people online. HearthStone's chat consisting of 8 premade responses means I'm never quite sure if I'm dealing with an idiot. Of all the things that could happen, someone dragging out a game really does rank pretty low. But I'd never really been annoyed by this until it happened to me more than once every few months.
See you tomorrow!
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