I have received more hate mail in 2 months of Modern Warfare 3 than I did in the entirety of Black Ops.  It’s not because I’m better at Modern Warfare 3 or that XMG rolls over the publics with ease, although we do, it’s because Modern Warfare 3 introduced gold clan tags and custom clan titles.

Every time we get into a room and people notice the gold clan tags it elicits 2 reactions: one is that of purely flaccid rage.  “Oh look at XMG they suck **** while they ***** each other’s ***** and then ***** in a box of Oreos.”  Or two they can’t hide their insane jealousy that we are in a “clan” and they are not.  “People in clans are **** at this game and they suck **** while they ***** each other’s ***** and then ***** in a box of Oreos.”  I’m not sure why they both end that way but they do.

In Black Ops we [XMG] really didn’t run the same tag it was usually some form of food like “Clam” or “Ribs” or “Beer”.  People knew we were playing together but there wasn’t the stigma of being in a clan.  Now that we have these status symbols of the illusive golden clan tag that hardly anyone in MW3 has, it has put a target on us whenever we enter a room.  Everything we do in the game in now magnified 100%, if you killed 5 people from the same spot you are now hardcore camping in a corner and that is the only way you got any kills.  If you moved around and killed people from their flank you are now a 1337 H4xzor who has a modded Xbox.  God forbid any XMGer is on the opposite team sporting their gold clan tag, that is an instant team kill [a moot point now that ricochet has been introduced].  It is almost impossible to be a group of average to above average players using strategy to beat 6 other players.

It’s like the other people feel so threatened by the gold tags that they have to say the most hateful thing they can think of right off the bat before the game even starts so they feel like they at least got that in before they lost or quit the game early, it’s usually the latter.  What’s even better is that 99% of the time no one on the XMG team can even hear them because we are in party chat.  Now, I can hear them because I play with a Turtle Beach headset and have my voice settings set to play through the headset and the speakers, so I can hear the other team as back ground noise but with the headset I can clearly hear them if they speak loud enough and trust me, these angry little men/boys are plenty loud.

The best thing we can do is to beat them playing our style of game and then when they send hateful, bigoted, racists, and homophobic messages is to send them a nice message back, I like to send something like: “That’s great little guy, thanks for the info.  If you keep playing you’ll get there someday Champ!”  A message like that eats away at their soul like pouring salt on a slug.  Their brain will slowly melt out of their head and drip onto the Mountain Dew: Code Red stained floor below.  Of course by this point I have reported them for multiple things like in game voice, text message and most likely something brilliant in the XBL profile.

With all that said we do, on occasion, get compliments on the funny clan title or get the “man, those guys are good” statements from the other side.  We will just keep on doing what we do and play as a team sporting our gold “XMG” clan tag and whatever brilliantly comedic 14 character phrase I can come up with while we crush the spirits of angry little kids everywhere…