> First of all, does everyone here who is hating on Illiet/Elhe and other "Russian Asshats" actually hate them because of their actions in-game, or do they just find an excuse to hate them more in every single action that can be linked with a moralistically/psychological bad streak that is supposedly found in all Russian CF players?

Part of it is that they do get judged more harshly based on past actions. However, part of it is also that (some) of them actually do play the game in a way that tends to earn the ire of other players.

> This said, the simple question I'm asking is: If Ahtieli and Gzurweeg (I don't know if Gzurweeg is Russian or not) had flawless English and committed the same act, and a veil of ignorance (Rawl's theory where you don't know who is who, basically), would you have acted in this same OOC fashion?

Based on what I said above, no, I don't think Joe Blow would get criticized as much for X as Ivan Blowavich. On the other hand, that may be somewhat reasonable, since Joe Blow doesn't have an (alleged) history of doing borderline douchey stuff.

> I've seen people who acted douchier than Ahtieli and Gzurweeg at times aka Kegren, Kalderseg (not the best of examples, but you get the point.)

Side note: this is unintentionally funny, considering the player of Kegren railed on Ahtieli for killing CF.

> Because to be honest, I see very little reason for them to be called a Russian Ganksquad in this case simply because two of them attacked you, one indirectly.

Fair enough, but they're not called that because of this one incident. The "Russian Ganksquad" thing came about because (some) of our Russian players have a particular penchant for playing Empire. Plus, since they're all in the same (uncommon) time zone, when they log on it usually tends to be around the same time.

It's also the case that none of them are really "lone wolf" type players, and some of them are downright ganky even compared to the general CF populace. Not all of them are "ganky" to be sure, but all of them seem to at least be "gank-friendly".

> I see people going OOC and saying shit about Russians, but I never see anyone yelling, American Asshat ganks.

You could argue that's because American players <i>as a group</i> don't gank at the same rate Russian players do. Are there asshat American gank squads? <b>Definitely</b>. But there are also many more American players than Russian.

> Another way to say it is, if all players, including Russians, had perfect English, do you think that the Russians would be eventually all found out, and would people IC realize which are the Russians after a length of time of playing?

Some Russians, yes. Beront is pretty easy to spot. It would be especially easy if you looked at play times, but I'm assuming in your hypothetical that would be normalized like the language issue. The rest probably not. Some of them would probably still be criticized for douchey behavior, but nobody would immediately say, "Russian!"