This kind of reminds me of what David Sirlin wrote about how anything you do to get an upper hand is a good thing because only winning matters. Of course by that logic unless you're the best player in the world in the particular game you're at then obviously you just suck. It's sort of like say you go to WoW and shoot people on the roof at Gadgetzan (prior to snipers being added in) and you die if you stay there, and you die if you try to fight back because the guards killed you, but hey it's within the game's rules. Nobody says it's illegal to jump on top of a roof and hit people just because the guards cannot path there.
Now I'd say it is also part of the game's problem if they can't stop people from abusing the game. It sounds like the way he was killing the characters just involve teleport them against some super guards that instant kill them. For example in EQ in PvP you could just charm somebody and send them to attack a super guard and they'd obviously die horribly while you just run away. I think players try to come up with rules outside of the game because a lot of the time the game is messed up. In a game of HOMM3 there would be rules for no Gremlin Rush because otherwise this forces every one to play as Tower and what's the point to have 8 factions when you can only play as one faction because of the Gremlin Rush?
I guess to this professor and Sirlin they'd always pick Tower in HOMM3 and Gremlin Rush someone because that's within the rules. And they might feel good about themselves until they run into another guy that was better with Tower and say did a typical Blind Infinite Loop that will kill an arbitrary large number of units on your side without you having any chance to fight back. And I suppose if these guys happen to be the best HOMM3 player in the world then nobody will want to play against them because it's just not very fun to lose without ever getting control of your unit. I remember playing HOMM3 and I always feel bad to do stuff that will just kill the other guy without him having any chance to do anything about it, even if he had a superior force. I mean yeah you play to win, but is it really fair that you know some loophole and the other guy did not, or better yet maybe the other guy didn't have Blind researched or Expert Fire Magic unlocked due to luck while you do?
I think we all like a game that is fair, balanced, and at the very least doesn't let you get into a situation where you lose without even a chance of fighting back. There are very few games that come even close to do this because balancing is very tough, so players try to help this by enforcing certain artificial rules. Even something like a 'no rush' in Starcraft does address the issue of Starcraft favoring attacker way too much unless you're some kind of super pro so here a 'no rush' rule at least gives both side to develop an army. Now you don't have to agree with this philsophy, but then you should just tell the other guy that you will do whatever you want. It seems to me the guy listed here would be the guy say 'okay no rush' and then do a 4 pool zergling rush for a quick win and wonder why people hate him.
