Angela B. Macala-Guajardo's Blog, page 3

Chapter 14: Spectre

 ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

Spectre (Todd), whom I still call Spec, is another good friend I made. He was also great friends with Reggie, along with Josh and Ginny, whom I’ll be introducing later. All of us were in Anomaly and we treated each other like family, sharing laughs and tales of how our days went, things going on in our families, and even how the weather was in our respective neck of the woods. Since everyone was from all over, mostly the U.S., it was interesting to compare climates, poking fun of people in blizzards or miserable heat waves, and envying blissful climates. Me being from New England, I often envied my fair-weather friends.

Spec, a Georgia native who’s married to a wonderful woman named Lauren, has two adorable boys who will continue the gaming nerd tradition into their generation. They play games like Pokémon and Mickey Mouse, and the boys bond while watching each other play games on Spec’s old iPhone. His wife has never been interested in video games. Sure, she’s busy helping raise two boys but Spec still tried to coax her into the awesomeness of the MMO universe. And while he’s not being a gaming nerd, father, or husband, he’s a management consultant.

His love of video games started when he was young. He really wanted a Nintendo but his mom wouldn’t get one for the longest time. They were pretty poor and couldn’t afford the games. His grandmother finally convinced her to let Spec have one so it would make his grandmother’s Christmas shopping easier. From there, Spec progressed to the GameBoy, Nintendo 64, Playstation, and then PC gaming. Command & Conquer was one of his favorites, and the Warcraft trilogy for it fantastical elements. Command & Conquer was a blast because he loved the premise of building a base, a big army, and then invading the enemy base and destroying it.

Spec got into WoW because he played the original Warcraft games and Command & Conquer, so, for him, it was a natural progression to take on WoW. He’d been eagerly anticipating its release, and he spent the first few weeks trying to figure out the game, as well as which class he wanted to play. It was his first experience with an MMO, so it was totally new for him.

From there, he got into Starcraft and Diablo as well, as did I. I remember trying Diablo II back in high school, because of my childhood best friend. It was fun, but I was better at dying than staying alive.

Spec was a huge altaholic and switched mains a bunch. [Main: toon that is considered the main that you play.] He’d get to endgame content and either didn’t have a group to make progress, or the current game balance made his class obsolete in a way (Blizz constantly tries to perfect class balance), so Spec explored his options. Plus, leveling alts was a way to pass the time while waiting for enough people to log on and form a group for endgame content. Spec’s schedule has always been strenuous, so it was a challenge to get a static group to raid with.

The steady release of new content kept him engaged for a long time; however, it was the friends he made that really made him stick around. He could jump from game to game with his core group of friends, like Rift, League of Legends, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and more. I didn’t do any game hopping with Spec in particular, but I agree that trying new games with a group of friends is super fun, especially when you’re using Skype or Vent to chat and squeal with delight—no actual squealing went on, but you get the idea.

With the exception of WoW, Spec didn’t stick with any of the aforementioned games. Rift and Guild Wars 2 lacked endgame content, and since he didn’t know anyone playing Star Wars, it was hard to make progress. He stayed with WoW the longest, but as people stopped playing, he got tired of starting over in new guilds all the time. Ultimately, it was the people who made the game worth sticking around for. When friends went poof, his desire to play the game went poof.

Some of his most memorable moments include beating raid bosses for the first time, including one called the Lich King, Arthas, and spending countless hours in the raid Karazhan. He doesn’t have any hugely memorable moments. The game as a whole was a lot of fun, and the good times and good people steadily came and went with new content. He was big on running damage and healing meters to see how often he topped the charts.

Spec and I spent most of our time chatting together about anything and everything, whatever was going on in our lives at the time. We chatted about me and Reggie, along with his two boys, who were born around the time we met.

One question I’ve been asking everyone is if MMOs have led them to any opportunities, be it, jobs, relationships, or something else. Spec said that WoW presented him with good friends more than anything else, since he was already well into his professional life and got married to a woman he’d been serious with before starting WoW. His real life circumstances were relatively unaffected, other than creating fights with his wife about how much time he spent playing video games.

The online gaming community, to Spec, means many different things to him. He’s kept that and his real life fairly separate because he doesn’t really have a reason to combine them. It’s an escape and a hobby. For others it’s a support structure or even a network of their closest friends, but he just hasn’t had that experience, as it’s hard for him to form lasting relationships without tangibly meeting people.

Chapter 13: Toxickitteh

 

  ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

 

Toxickitteh (Tasha) met me thanks to Selky. It must’ve been around Halloween because she remembers meeting me in a zone called Nagrand, a vast rolling landscape with floating islands all over the place, and steep mountains lining the fringes. I was flying around the mountains on a broomstick, landing frequently to kill big purply ogres for netherweave cloth, in the process of leveling tailoring, one of the many crafting professions available in MMOs.

Crafting is somewhat like having a job in the online gaming community, with the goal of being able to make high quality gear, weapons, and other useful items that make you stronger in battle. You don’t need to level professions, since you can piggyback off of other people’s hard work, for a hefty price, but it’s worth the effort to become a skillful tailor, blacksmith, enchanter, etc. yourself.

Killing monster after monster for specific items is called farming. I find farming ore and herbs relaxing, when I just want to log onto the game and chat with people, and not much more. Farming requires little more than patience and persistence, and minding a circular mini map in the upper righthand corner of your screen for gold dots. I lovingly call this kind of farming “gold dot fever,” and have even improvised lyrics for a parody of “Cabin Fever” from the movie “Muppet Treasure Island.”

I’ve got gold gold dot fever.

I’ve got it really bad.

I’ve got gold dot fever.

Every last node must be had!

While I was committing mass murder of cloth-bearing ogres, two Druids in flight form dropped in on me. [Flight form: big purple ravens with sting necklaces.] Why at this particular time? Because Selky had told Tasha, “There’s someone I want you to meet.” None of us remember the exact details of the meeting beyond that, but I set aside farming to PvP with them. And when you’re a mage being healed by two Resto (short for Restoration, the healing specialization) Druids, you make a lot of things go boom before you die, especially if you’re a gnome.

Gnomes have an easy time of finding hiding places. I’ve hid behind stumps, in bushes, behind allies, and even inside an ally’s robes. Seriously. Gaming physics insists two solid objects can occupy the same space, unless one of the objects has been programmed so players can’t travel through it, like buildings and terrain. So, when midget me is presented with the opportunity, I hide and snipe. Call me a coward all you want. Mages aren’t built for melee combat.

I didn’t get to know Tasha well until years later. She’s been one of my gaming friends who’s always been there and I enjoyed spending time with, but I never took the time to really get to know. I was also hyper focused on Reggie at the time, on top of work and school. All I knew at the time was that Selky called her Pet, and in return Tasha called her Mistress, and she happily chatted away with me on Vent.

* * *

One day I PvPed not only with Selky and Tasha, but also Reggie and a few of his guildies from when he was in Elysium. We were all on Elysium’s vent and it was closing in on raid time, so Reggie and crew had to stop PvPing so they’d be punctual. Selky and Tasha left Vent and I decided I should follow suit, since I wasn’t in Elysium, nor was I raiding with them. I didn’t want to interfere.

“Alright, I think I should leave Vent now.”

“Naw,” one of Reggie’s guildies said. “You can stay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Just don’t talk if the officers or raid leaders are talking, or if we’re in the middle of a boss fight.”

I could do that. Since I’d just met that guildie and they’d all enjoyed my company while PvPing, I decided to stay on Vent, even though the thought made my heart pound. I wasn’t part of the raid. I didn’t belong in Vent with them. However, curiosity got the best of me and I stay logged in.

I listened in while the raid collected itself and people gathered at the entrance in game. Some lady was running the show and started explaining a boss fight. At the end she said, “Did everyone understand everything I said?”

Feeling like having a little fun, I said, “No.”

“What part do you need me to go back over?” she said patiently.

“Everything. I’m so short, all of it went over my head.”

A moment of confused silence followed. “Who are you?”

“I’m the midget of doom! Fear me!”

“Who the fuck are you? You’re not in the raid. Get out of my vent, you little piece of—!”

I think I got booted from Vent before I could tab out of WoW to dodge out the voice chat program.

“Smooooooth,” Reggie said to me in a whisper in game.

“I think I made her mad,” I whispered back.

“She’s still ranting about you on Vent.”

“Lol.” I don’t remember the rest of the exchange, other than the guilty pleasure of catching someone off-guard like that. I also have a faint recollection of trying to apologize to her later on, so she’d un-ban me from Elysium’s Vent but her reaction and what she might’ve said are beyond my recollection.

* * *

Tasha grew up all over the U.S. since her father was in the military, but mostly in Nebraska and Michigan, and the best friends she had came from Takoma, Washington. When she and family moved to Nebraska, she became the outsider and her peers abused her both verbally and physically. And since it was a small town, everyone joined in on it. It was their unending hazing ritual for black sheep her to gain acceptance. She had to conform or receive abuse.

Her family moved to Nebraska because her grandfather had passed away, but then they moved to Michigan because her aunt had gotten into a serious car accident. The move excited Tasha at first. Not only was she being presented with the chance to make new friends, she’d also be around extended family. She thought she’d be welcomed by family but only a couple cared and the rest seemed indifferent. Since Tasha was only 11 at the time, she admits she may not have understood them well.

At age 13, she went to her cousin’s house in Hillsdale to play Diablo. The graphics were “intense” back then on Windows 98. Tasha was enthralled by it, swiftly getting addicted to killing evil creatures and progressing through levels. Oh, the endless slaughter!

Her mother finally got her a computer to meet Tasha’s schooling needs, and at age 16 she bought Diablo II, along with the expansion. That’s when she met Stewie, her first gaming pal, whom she’s still in contact with. He was a real humorous teenager who played an Amazonian named something along the lines of “Tits.” Tasha found this exceptionally funny because, like me, she encountered many boys who didn’t believe girls played video games. Stewie readily accepted Tasha for who she insisted she was, but he’d playfully tease her about it.

Tasha played less and less because her dialup connection couldn’t keep up with the updates, but they reunited in WoW thanks to her brother, who’d never touched PC games before. He was a hardcore Playstation fan. However, when he met someone who was into WoW, he tried to play it on their dinosaur of a computer, bought a new computer that could handle it, was foiled by dialup, and then finally piggybacked off of a neighbor with wireless broadband. Voila! Good riddance, lagfest. ["Fest" appearing at the end of a word translates to "a lot of." Lagfest = a lot of lag.]

She and her brother ended up on the server called Thrall and Tasha joined a guild called Torrent, which was where she met our mutual friend Selky, who became Tasha’s mentor in all things Druid. Thanks to Selky, Tasha got to know me and Reggie, but when he and I played a lot less to focus on college, and Selky disappeared for a while thanks to computer troubles, Tasha ended up spending more time with Stewie again, who was a hardcore PvPer on Destromath. Since she wasn’t very good at PvP, they ended up just spending time chatting in-game, or through Blizzard’s Real ID chat system while playing Diablo and Starcraft games, since Tasha retired from WoW to focus on college.

Essentially, online video games have become a portal to new beginnings. Since Tasha grew up getting bullied and picked on so much, online game became a safe haven where the computer screen became not only a shield from idiots, but also a portal to true friends. Online games have helped her find acceptance in a thriving community.

As of the time of writing this book Tasha now lives in Ohio, going to college to become a certified phlebotomy technician at Northwestern State Community college, while working part time at a factory. Not all her coworkers understand her joy and enthusiasm for online gaming, but it’s only the ones who’ve never played video games or tried to understand the online gaming community.

Chapter 12: Her Selkiness!

  ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

Selky (Selket) is one of the quirkiest and funniest people I’ve met in WoW. A California native named Jade, she looks at the world in a way no one else on this planet does, and her whacky speech will have you in stitches day after day. For example, if she was making chicken breasts for dinner, she’d tell me she was having chicken boobs. Stuff like that. I wish she had the courage to get into standup comedy.

Selky, whom I’d greet with “Her Selkiness!” every time she logged on, used to play Final Fantasy XI with Reggie back in the day. When WoW came out, she told him to come play that game and he obliged. And after the fiasco in Criminal Intent, I had yet another stroke of misfortune with another guild called Divine Retribution. That guild’s GM, unbeknownst to me, was causing a lot of drama. It was a female GM and she wanted to be the only female in the guild, and would do whatever it took to keep it that way.

Reggie managed to sneak me in one night, but somehow the GM found out about my gender and the next morning I logged on, guildless for the second time in one week. I’d left Criminal Intent to give the married couple some space, so I was feeling a bit down and short on friends.

Struck with an idea, Reggie introduced Selky to me, since she was such an amicable person, and we became friends. Her uncensored, spontaneous way of talking intimidated me at first but, as I learned to relax around her, it made me laugh more and more. And even though I learned her real name, she’s one of a few people whom I prefer to call by their character name, more specifically Selky, or Her Selkiness. My nickname was Stupid Bear, since I was learning how to tank on my Druid Sekiro and, I wasn’t very good at it at first. When I was on Midgetofdoom, or other characters, her nickname for me was Miraclebewbs. I don’t remember how exactly I earned this nickname, but I know I kept it for good when one day Selky was suffering from horrible lag.

“Quick! Squeeze your miracle bewbs to make the lag go away!”

“Okay!” Since no one was around my desk to see me do the deed in real life, I puffed out my chest and gave myself a double squeeze, grinning like an idiot. “Squeeze, squeeze,” I typed back in-game.

Selky’s Druid stopped moving around in a jerky, sporadic fashion. “Oh, that’s better.”

“Is your lag gone?”

In tree form, she waddles around in a circle, unhindered. “Yeah o.o.” [Druids shape shift into a tree, panther, bear, moonkin (bearish owl with antlers), cheetah, Elk, and a sea lion.]["o.o" emoticon of surprise; used when words don't do your emotion justice.]

“Holy crap! It worked!” we typed to each other at the same time.

I doubled over laughing and several minutes later asked if her lag was still gone, then laughed some more when she said it was. Thus the monicker stuck.

I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about Selky. She’s a very private person, even though she puts on this air of domineering confidence. We’d both hop on Vent but she’d type to reply. To this day I’ve never heard her speak and respectfully won’t pester her for her phone number to even text me. It’s not my place to nudge her out of her comfort zone. However, I did try to get her to speak now and then but she never mustered the motivation to go out and buy a mic or headset. It just wasn’t important enough. That and her partner Lily, whom we all call Li, might get jealous and possessive. Since I’d had enough relationship drama by then, I was perfectly content to be the only chatterbox on Vent.

She and Li grew up together, having been friends since their toddler days. Selky was a bit of a Tom boy during elementary school, but by middle school, she would attend her brother’s baseball games wearing a low-cut shirt and short shorts, and sit in a lawn chair with her legs stretched out and ankles crossed, just to torture the boys. One time the coach came over to her and told her she was corrupting his athletes.

“I know,” she said with a smile, and went back to reading.

Even though she had fun tormenting boys, she learned early on that she preferred girls. Yes, she tried boys, since that’s what society insisted she was supposed to do, but it simply wasn’t her. Selky’s parents didn’t like it but at least they didn’t go so far as to excommunicate her. They did, however, freak out when the Governator legalized gay marriage in California. Both hers and Li’s parents feared that the two would rush to the nearest civil union chapel and make their relationship even more official.

My heart reaches out to them. People having made fun of me for assuming something I was not, I wasn’t about turn around and shun her for part of what made her human. Instead, I felt even more resolve to remain her friend so she and Li would never feel alone.

Because my teenage peers assumed I was a lesbian and picked on me for it, I went through a phase where I wondered if I was supposed to be one, despite the fact that I wasted all four years of high school having a crush on this one boy who didn’t reciprocate my feelings. Before him, I had a crush on my middle school band teacher, along with Dean Cain, who portrayed Clark Kent/Superman from the Lois & Clark series on TNT, and before that I had a crush on one of the daycare caretakers named Scott. I even confessed my crush to him while playing Connect Four with a friend of mine named Leah. As for his reaction to my confession, I have no idea. I couldn’t look away from my children’s game after I’d said that.

I learned to loosen up a bit during undergrad. I had this terrible fear of hanging out with other girls because I felt like people would continue to assume I was a lesbian if I had any female friends. The girls I worked with at Friendly’s worked hard to cure me of my anxiety, slapping my ass, pulling at my bra now and then, and other harmless stuff like that.

The day one of my friends did a walk-by ass-slap, I gasped and clutched my fondled cheek. “You just slapped my ass!”

She popped a wicked smile as she headed to the salad station.

“I liked it!”

She spun around and stared wide-eyed at me. “Did you just…?”

That was my cue to pop a wicked grin.

I forget the server’s name but she was so proud of me that she told everyone else we worked with, and I think I got some croutons down my shirt. I don’t remember for sure. I could be totally making up that last bit, but I do know everyone chucked ice cubes down each other’s shirts now and then.

Working with those lovely girls at Friendly’s helped me learn to be comfortable with my sexuality and stop worrying so much. By the time I met Selky, I was ready to have female friends and not have a care in the world about their sexual orientation. Heck I even flirted with her for ha-has.

Anyway, Selky is a southern California native does awesome things like a “bawss,” like rub some bacon on it, all the important house chores, and be a fantastic lover—like crazy good lover, which increases if her partner is wearing jeans or yoga pants. [bawss: alternate spelling of boss.] *Rawr* [alternate spelling of roar.] Also, she claims her cuddles are top tier S Rank quality. She’s had jobs more off than on, like bartender, but life seems to prefer to have her fill the role of housewife and competitive gamer. She’s participated in many unofficial tournaments and returned home with modest chunks of change.

She lives with Li, her older brother, and his girlfriend. Her brother is technically a gamer but he plays just Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V, to small a library to be considered a real gamer. His girlfriend sometimes plays with him, Selky, or on her own, participating in whatever co-op games everyone else is playing (mostly shooters). Overall, she’ll play anything if it’s fun and interesting. The force is strong with her.

Li is a casual gamer, too, gravitating towards single-player RPGs, and has become addicted to Minecraft with Selky’s mom, which Selky introduced the both of them to. Those two also enjoy dungeon crawlers, specifically Dungeon Siege 3 at the moment. [Dungeon crawler: Type of RPG where you navigate maze-like places and kill wave after wave of monsters, collect lots of gear, and make lots of money.]

Selky’s been playing video games since the Super Nintendo days, mostly shooters and RPGs. She doesn’t have favorites since games change with the times, but what draws her to them is likable characters and solid gameplay. Among the notable games are Super Mario, Star Fox 64, Golden Eye 007, Turok, Crash Bandicoot, the Final Fantasy series from VII onward, Legend of Dragoon, and Half Life.

Selky got into MMOs because of her oldest brother, who initiated her into the online gaming community with Final Fantasy XI. When she got bored of that, she followed him to WoW, and from there she fell in love with the game’s play style, classes, Warcraft lore, and she trusted Blizzard to make great games, since she enjoyed Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Ironically, WoW is one of only two games she’s fallen asleep playing due to boredom, the other being Dynasty Warriors. Sometimes she doesn’t realize it’s time to take a break or go to bed, until she almost face-plants on her desk.

In WoW, she played a bit of everything, being an altaholic and PvPer when gaming alone. Given her wonderful, awe-inspiring, benevolent nature (and aversion to boredom), she would drop whatever she was doing to help friends in group quests and such. If she was in an active raiding guild, she would join them as whatever role was needed, preferably healer. She learned early on that she favors supporting roles and that she’s good at healing. She remembers raiding a ton with a friend named Purity and her husband. They and the rest of the guild complimented her good healing. Unbeknownst to them, she was just spamming buttons and wearing good gear (thanks to their raids). [Spamming: repeatedly performing an action in rapid succession.]

Selky stuck with WoW for years because of the friends she made, and secondly because of how much fun the game was. Games are good and all; however, they are nothing but interactive images on screen without friends, who make her smile and laugh. Selky’s loved for her personality and sometimes useful advice, but she’s also hated by a few jealous punks, but that’s life. She loves making her friends laugh and smile in return, defeating foes with them, overcoming challenges, and claiming “phat loots.” [phat: alternate spelling of fat; lingo for "cool."] All this was made possible because Blizzard did such a good job of keeping the game updated, integrating changes, and adding expansions.

Selky’s best friend ever from the online gaming community is Seigrra, who also goes by Heimdal. He was with her in FFXI and joined her in WoW for a bit. Selky had assumed he was female, since he played female characters, but then, in a random party, someone asked if he was a girl.

“I play a girl character, yes,” he replied.

He’s fun to be around, charismatic, intelligent, and witty. To this day she stays in touch with him via Skype, Steam, and they play League of Legends together. [Steam: online platform that connects players so they can play together all over the globe.]

Selky likes me, Angie, for the same reasons as Seigrra, along with the fact that I’m “an owner of miracle bewbs and a yoga pants clad booty.” Her words, I swear. She enjoys that I laugh at her jokes and put up with. The appreciation goes right back at her. We stay in touch through League of Legends and Skype, and hopes I’ll join the fun on Steam, too. I’m hoping she’ll join me in The Elder Scrolls Online.

Fromage is a human female human mage who loves a good glass of wine. He (yes, he; not everyone plays the same gender they are in reality, including myself) also had a crush on Selky, despite being married. He didn’t act on the crush but an event in real life made him feel obligated to confess the truth in an email. In response, she gave him her Skype and Steam names, but he’s yet to contact her since.

Tasha, Purity, and Errowan are a few more great friends who deserve mention. Tasha, whom I’ll be introducing next, was a “devoted Selketism harem girl and a good girl.” Selky played a lot with her because she was fun, flirty, and often asked her for help and company in game. Purity was a human paladin healer and wife to the guild master of the last guild Selky was in at the end of her WoW days. Purity was charming, fun, put up with her, and an excellent cook, yet has fallen through the cracks and out of touch. Errowan, whom she nicknamed Pervowan, was fun when he wasn’t being perverted, like hitting on her or her friends, although she admits the pervertedness was sometimes instigated by her.

One question I’ve been asking everyone is if they or someone they know is married or will get married to someone they met in one online game or another. Her answer is priceless.

“That concept seems silly to me. Hell, even dating someone you met in game is silly to me. I understand that over games it’s easier to talk to and it’s still people, so it’s essentially forming relationships as if they were face-to-face. A few of my friends have dated those they met in game, some relationships limited to in game, so companionship more like (but they don’t see it that way). A few have even been attached to me in that manner, but when confronted with the prospect of meeting in real life, my overprotective side kicks in and I advise against it, then advise cautionary steps to take when meeting someone over the internet. A lot of people out there, stupidity and weirdos among them.

“A couple friends even moved to live with them. Like, one friend was going through a breakup and I was helping how I could, taking her mind off it, comforting her, and talking. Then suddenly she tells me she’s hooked up with what’s-his-face and is actually moving to another state to live with him. No idea how that went, as he started to get possessive of her. He got belligerent, agitated, and, at times, jealous of me for some reason. Eventually she drifted away and moved on to other games.”

Selky’s never met any of her online friends in person. She likes to keep her online and real life separate. She’s heard many of them talk via voice chat programs but she doesn’t talk because, not only does she not own a headset, she doesn’t like to talk because she finds that and playing at the same time difficult for her, she often has music going or she wants to hear the game sound, and finally because she’s just that mysterious. Maybe she’ll change that one day, since this day and age is saturated with communication tools like Facebook and such, and maybe she’ll reveal her ultimate secrets: her voice and face.

Or not.

See? Mysterious!

I have many friends I get in contact with on and off, but Selky is one of very few whom I can go months or even over a year without talking to, and then out of the blue we’ll cross paths again and it’s like we never missed a day.

Chapter 11: Errowan

  ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

Errowan (Reggie) is someone I’ve stuck by to this day. We’re Facebook friends, I have his number in my contact list, and we still share a cell phone plan since it’s convenient. However, when we first met, thanks to a mutual friend, I thought he was an annoying dumb ass, and he thought I was a stuck-up bitch.

In his defense, he was right for the most part. I was a negative person to the point where the officers from ABDK had to sit down and talk with me over Vent. [Officer: second-in-command of a guild.] I remember only one officer talking to me, pointing out my negative attitude, how I was always complaining about one thing or another, and that it wasn’t fun to be around me. His voice was level and patient, but blunt in content. I started crying before he finished talking and apologized to all of them over and over, even to my guildies who hadn’t been in the private chat. I was appalled and embarrassed. The hard truth that not many people liked me, and that it was my own fault, cut deep.

I made a superhuman effort to turn my behavior around. Every time I started typing out a complaint, I’d stop myself and stay quiet. On top of that, the sheer number of times I had to correct myself appalled me. I really was full of complaints. I’d never noticed, until then. When they noticed the marked improvement in my attitude, they complimented me. In return, I thanked them for being patient and giving me a second chance. Considering how much I got picked on growing up, and how few friends I’d had up to that point, I was very thankful. I just want people to like me.

When Errowan and I crossed paths the first time, I was somewhere in the throes of my negative phase. When we crossed paths again, I was trying to become a better person. We also ended up in the guild Criminal Intent at the same time, which I left ABDK for when I couldn’t take passive bullying from Tessa’s husband anymore. Criminal Intent was formed by Moonraine, who left ABDK as well. She, I, Grellik, and quite a few other people were no longer happy with how the guild was being run. Since she loved the show Law & Order, and said it felt like we were being a bunch of criminals (in an exciting way) for leaving ABDK, that’s how the branch off guild got its name.

Fast forward almost a year and we reach the moment where Moon decides her marriage isn’t as open as she thought it was. From Reggie’s recollection of this day, he views it as his fault I lost two friends. The bizarre relationship triangle between Grel, me, and Moon was actually a love… square… quadrangle… thing. Since I don’t deem it prudent to deliberate on the details in a book, thus publicly defame someone, I’m just going to say that I had a bad day one day, and it was on top of a smidge of tension between my mother and I. I was still living with her so I could afford to go to college full time and work part time.

After Moon and Grellik logged off, I admitted in guild chat that I was feeling down and was in need of cheering up. Errowan, being the compassionate gentleman, sent me a whisper asking what had me down. [Whisper: a message where only the receiver sees the text; a private one-on-one conversation.]

Since this was the ear that’d offered to hear, I set aside my negative impression of him and whispered back, explaining what was stressing me out and how Moon didn’t like me anymore. We chatted for hours that day and I decided Errowan was a decent person after all.

When a guy finds out that he’s talking to a girl in-game, his knee-jerk reaction is to find out what the girl looks like. I’ve been asked many times, “Are you pretty?” I find it an odd thing to say, but maybe that’s because I’m a girl, or maybe too pragmatic a girl. Since I don’t expect to meet 99.9% of my gaming friends face-to-face, I don’t bog myself down with the details of their real-life physical descriptions. Who they are is far more important and relevant to me.

I don’t remember if Errowan asked me the pretty question but I ended up liking him enough to be curious about what he looked like in real life. We would chat for hours every day. Hours. Every day. Here was someone I’d never met in person taking the time to get to know me, and he was an interesting person to boot.

Reggie was in the Army for four years. He toured in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and almost died three times in one day while on active combat duty. He was shot at, almost fell off the mountain he and his unit were marching up, and almost had that same mountain blown up on them by an aerial strike, but thankfully the right people realized they had soldiers in the danger zone.

While in Kosovo, he served as bodyguard to a Lt. Colonel, who was second-in-command at Camp Bondsteel. He served as chauffeur while guarding, but how can that be seen as anything less than cool when it was a Hummer? And while in Afghanistan, he worked in a special forces infantry unit as Combat I, and in his spare time he volunteered in the medical center. He figured, after killing people, he should actually help others live.

Him being an infantry unit and actually shot at people, he’s been asked many a times if he’s killed anyone. I asked the same thing, ignorant of how frustrating that question is for the recipient.

Reggie patiently relieved me of my ignorance. From a non-soldier’s perspective, it’s a morbid fascination to meet someone who’s actually shot at another human being.

Reggie being trained/conditioned into a quality soldier, he fired at whomever he was ordered to without question. He didn’t bear a grudge with individual Taliban soldiers, fully aware that his “enemies” were simply fighting for what they believed in. Since the Taliban resorted to violence to push for their beliefs to become dominant, their violence had to be answered with violence, and the operating word here is “answered.” America’s troops don’t go out starting fights. One of the standard rules of engagement of U.S.-sanctioned combat is that they don’t shoot unless shot at. “Defend our country” suddenly had a whole new perspective.

I never got a straight answer out of Reggie that day. Years later, when we knew each other a lot better, I chanced asking him again, but told him he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to.

The people they shot died. As far as which person was at the hand of his bullets, he’ll never know. He doesn’t want to know.

Having spent so much time in active duty, it took about a year to get accustomed to civilian life. His first July 4th back, he almost rolled out of bed thinking he was hearing the Taliban shooting RPGs at his camp, when in fact they were just fireworks. After those endless months of waking up to a boom being a rocket, it was a major change for it to be celebratory.

I have two funny Army stories Reggie shared with me that I must share with you. The first one involves a scarab beetle that had been crawling up his leg under his blanket one night. He remembers the tickling sensation and whipping off his blanket several times, since the tickling kept getting closer to his crotch, but every time he looked, there was nothing there, until one final time he whipped his blanket back over himself and heard something clunk on the floor.

A shine of his flashlight revealed a scarab beetle writhing on its back. It must’ve been clinging to the blankets ever time he’d looked. Alarmed by how close the flesh-eating invertebrate had gotten to his male equipment, he bashed the beetle with the butt of his rifle, but it merely hissed at him. He tried crushing it with his boot and when he got the same reaction, he aimed his rifle, but decided against shooting. He really didn’t want to have to fill out a report for firing a round at a scarab beetle, much less wake his unit up with the gun’s report. In the end, he bashed the beetle until it stopped hissing and went back to bed.

In the morning, the scarab beetle was nowhere to be found.

How’s that for the heebie jeebies?

Story two involves a camel spider. If you don’t know, those things are about the size of dinner plates and wicked creepy looking to someone like me who has a mild phobia of spiders. They live in the part of Afghanistan Reggie was stationed in and they like to find shady patches to stand in during the hottest part of the day. One picked a soldier’s shadow to camp in.

When the soldier noticed Spiderzilla behind him, he casually sidestepped away. When the spider felt the sunlight hit it, it scurried back into the shadow.The soldier moved again and, to his dismay, so did Spiderzilla. The soldier tried harder to put some healthy distance between him and the spider, only to be chased down. Next thing the soldier knows, he’s giving his unit a front-row seat to a show of a macho man being chased around base by Spiderzilla, until someone shouts at him to stop running and explained what the camel spider was trying to do.

* * *

Reggie and I got to know each other very well over the next two years. We both went to college while living with our parents, him getting getting a degree in Microbiology and me a degree in Theatre with a Creative Writing minor. Our chatting in-game and on Vent moved to chatting over the phone. At one point he asked if I’d consider dating him long distance.

Hmm.

Well, I really liked who he was on the inside, but what about the outer shell? Looks aren’t everything, but if I’m not attracted to him, then sorry. No can do. I’m not gonna be in it to make the relationship work no matter what.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but I have a tendency to be interested only in guys who aren’t interested in me, and not interested in the ones who are. On top of that, a fair few who’ve caught my interest were either taken or gay.

With Reggie, I had nothing to lose but a few moments of my time to see if I was attracted to him. “How tall are you?” Me being 5’10”, it’s difficult to find men who’re at least as tall as me.

“Five-five.”

Cue me hunching my shoulders and staring in disappointment at the numbers on my screen. “Damn it.” I might’ve actually said what my iPhone unfailingly likes to auto correct to “mother ducker.”

“What?”

“I’m five inches taller than you.”

“I like tall women.”

I went on to explain how it’d be awkward to be taller than the man I’m dating. I want to feel safe in his arms, not feel like Gigantor while hugging him. I turned down his advances for probably a year. I made an attempt to hook up with a whopping one guy while in undergrad, but he fell under the taken column. There was also another gentleman who was interested in me, but stupid me wasn’t interested back. To this day, I wince every time I think about the day I turned him down.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! *Repeatedly bangs forehead on desk* [Gamers place asterisks around an action as a short form of description. It's easier to write *bangs forehead on desk* than "I'm repeatedly banging my forehead on my desk."]

Stupidity aside, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that I really liked the person Reggie was. Maybe I just needed to give him a chance. And since I’d already been turned down by one and turned down another, why make myself 0 for 3? Maybe the height differential wouldn’t matter.

I sent him a picture of me in a tank top and shorts, and in return received an email containing a shirtless picture of him flexing for his camera. He didn’t have any muscle definition and he had a gut hanging over the waistline of his jeans (no, he didn’t pull an Anthony Weiner). I was in far better shape than him. His face was nice, but his gut was a turnoff. Looked like I was going 0 for 3 after all.

Something went on in his brain that refused to let him give up on me so easily. He put himself through a military-style workout regimen and started losing those extra pounds. A few months later, I get another email of a much-improved physique. He didn’t have the hollywood six-pack abs and sculpted chest, but he could flex his pecs, which amused me to no end and got my attention. And since he was five years my senior, that was another point in his favor. I’ve always pictured myself marrying an older man. The ones my age or younger seem to be incurably stupid and immature.

Since we’d known each other for over two years by that point, I decided to do something crazy and scheduled a flight to Florida for the week of my 24th birthday. He and I spent months eagerly anticipating my arrival in Tampa. That week would be the deciding factor of whether or not I’d officially become his girlfriend. We both agreed that, at the very least, if I decided against dating him, we’d enjoy the week to the fullest.

Chapter 10: Brad

In ABDK, there was one guildie named Brad who held my interest for a long time. I don’t remember his character’s name, but I do remember his sweet, gentle voice and him saying, “Hey, beautiful” every time I logged onto Vent. Since I was still in shape in undergrad, thanks to the Karate Club and waiting tables, I wasn’t afraid of letting other gamers see what I looked like. If I’d known the person long enough, I’d direct them to my Facebook page, which would swiftly be followed by a “you’re hot” in game. Sometimes it was “your hot” and my eyelid would twitch as my interest in one individual or another would take a nosedive. I know not everyone else is a writer but when someone hasn’t mastered basic grammar we’re all taught in elementary school, it’s a huge turnoff for me.

I loved Brad’s voice and how well he treated me. He wouldn’t return the favor of showing a picture of himself. He admitting to being overweight and wanting to drop fifty pounds first. I appreciated his honesty and he and I chatted for hours every week, if not for at least a little bit every day.

All this chatting with online friends was another reason it was easy to get addicted to WoW. Since people play all over the globe, not everyone would be in the same time zone. On top of that, people had day jobs or class schedules to work around, so I logged on as much as I could to converse as long as possible.

If I remember right, Brad worked as a security guard at a prison, but don’t quote me on that. I do recall that he was from the southern half of the United States—at least that’s where he was while I knew him, since he lacked a southern accent. I believe it was either Texas or Louisiana.

Anyway, he and I shared many a deep conversation. About what, I don’t remember any more. I can only recall feeling a sense of ease and contentment in his online company. And since we were spending so much time together, Moonraine (before she told me off) would jokingly say that Brad and I would be hers and Grellikins’ pool boy and pool girl.

Pool boy was another thing I had to have explained to me.

Brad and I spent many a month chatting together in WoW, and I shared the latest draft of a fantasy book I had written when I was eighteen. Although it had some things in dire need of fixing, he loved the book and gave me lots of helpful input on how to fix some of the weaker parts. Sharing my writing was a scary thing at that stage in my life, but Brad made me feel safe, and for that I’m thankful.

Despite how well things were going between us, I managed to ruin our friendship with one tactless comment. Brad stopped playing WoW at some point but months later emailed me to see how I was doing. Persistent me asked if I could finally see a picture of him and he happily obliged. He explained over Vent that he’d shaved his head completely and that his friends and family told him the clean-shaven look worked really well for him. He said he still hadn’t lost all the weight he wanted to but he was feeling more comfortable with his appearance. That didn’t dampen my eagerness to finally see the real person sitting at some distant computer.

I opened the .jpeg and there sat a tough-looking husky man with a shiny cranium, looking so much like Jason Hawes from a show called Ghost Hunters. I stared at the picture in confusion. He looked nothing like I’d envisioned. I told him as much, then tactlessly added, “Your voice and appearance don’t match.”

“What do you mean?”

I probably missed the hint of horror in his voice at that moment as I blundered forward. “You have such a nice, gentle voice but you look like such a tough guy in that picture.” His voice needed to be at least an octave lower to match that build. The voice he had sounded like something that belonged to a Prince Charming, with a swoon-worthy smile to top it off.

“Oh.”

“But you’re right. The clean-shaven look works really well for you. What did it look like before?”

I think by that point I got the cliché “I gotta go” line. I don’t remember how the conversation wrapped itself up, but I’ve never heard from Brad again and I can’t bring myself to send him an email.

I’ve been asked many a time, “How the heck are you still single?”

Stuff like that, my dear. Stuff like that. Just like many a man claims he doesn’t know how to talk to girls, I didn’t know how to talk to guys.

Chapter 9: Boyfriend Challenged

If you can’t tell already, I grew up lagging way behind everyone else in the social curve. I can’t say I regret it, even though I struggled to fit in. I’ve always been in la la land, never properly connecting with the rest of society. I played soccer, drew all the time, was a band geek, daydreamed, played my video games, and not too much else. No drugs, no underage drinking, no crazy parties, no law breaking or the likes. I was a goodie goodie and, I guess, I still am.

The only lawbreaking I do is having a lead foot and the occasional jaywalking. My thievery days were headed off at age five, where I stole bubblegum from a grocery store. My mother said I pulled out the package after we exited, and proudly said, “Tada!” as I showed her my pink prize. She then marched me back inside and made me apologize, on top of return the gum. From then on I’ve been thoroughly convinced that, if I step one toe out of line, I’ll get caught. I can’t get away with anything. Seriously. If I roll a stop sign, a cop is gonna be there to pull me over. So how do I get away with speeding? I just go with the flow of traffic.

I had plenty of friends growing up but I could never handle any more than one or two good ones at a time. More than that overwhelms me to this day. It’s just who I am socially. I think, if I’d achieved what my perception of what “popular” is, I would’ve been unhappy. I don’t care to be the center of attention. I’m the kind of person who likes to sit back in one corner of the room and observe everything going on. If someone strikes up a conversation with me, I’ll happily oblige. Other than that, I’m apt to open a book and start reading a party and let everyone else enjoy themselves. I don’t mean it as a rude gesture. Parties with a zillion people take me out of my comfort zone and I’d rather look contented with a book in hand than sitting there, looking like a deer in headlights.

Another reason I was never up to my ears in friends is my being behind in the social curve. It singled me out, made me the pariah, and a target for bullying. It used to hurt so much to think about it, but now that I understand why I got picked on so much, it’s understandable and easy to shrug off.

Growing up, I was dismal at reading facial expressions, body language, and I didn’t understand sarcasm, so I missed a lot of social cues. To this day I still struggle with sarcasm. I’m almost always in serious mode, so this makes me quite gullible, and presents my friends with lots of opportunities to see how far they can drag out a joke before I catch on. Oh, the endless comedy at my expense!

I’ve learned facial expressions and body language, though, and thus fit in much better—never perfectly, since I have an incurable habit of daydreaming, but more than enough to have a circle of friends I’m content with.

Bearing all that social awkwardness in mind, online gaming where you typed to communicate served as a fantastic buffer against my oddities. I was free to be me, flaws and all, and this freedom became an addiction. WoW became my drug, its side effects being a severe lack of exercise and becoming anti-social with face-to-face people. If I didn’t have work or homework, I would play WoW from the moment I got up to right before I went to bed. I wanted nothing more than to hide in my private virtual escape. I was free to be me in a world called Azeroth, free to pretend I could wield powerful magic spells, defeat big bad guys, and forget about the painful side of being human. If people picked on or harassed me, I added them to the ignore list and returned to my happy bubble. On top of all that, I lived in my mother’s basement while going to college full time and working part time in one customer service job or another, usually waiting tables.

I got into waiting tables because I was told it was good, quick money, and it was. I could easily make 100-120 bucks in four hours at my local Ground Round. Yes, I’m shy, but that was too bad while waiting tables. I pretended I wasn’t and did everything I could to make my customers feel welcome and enjoy their meal out. My shyness often reared its awkward head at the start of my greeting spiel, causing me to mumble or speak too fast, and have to take a deep breath and start over after a quick apology. I don’t remember anyone being unforgiving for being nervous.

It took me a while to realize I had a terrible addiction to a video game. I’d stopped buying new games every few months, focusing solely on WoW. To this day my game buying has slowed but it’s more because I have a day job and need to make a living. But it’s all good. Gaming is a great way to unwind and I don’t want to imagine life without video games.

I weaned myself off my addiction by convincing myself that WoW would still be there a few hours later and I wouldn’t miss anything important if I did something else instead. It took months upon months to assert a healthy balance and now I can’t sit still that long any more, but that’s a good thing. I rediscovered how wonderful the real world is, and how beautiful it is to spend time face-to-face with good company. I even went so far as to book a flight that carried me over two thousand miles to a WoW friend, whom I’ll introduce a little later in this book.

My social inferiority meant I was also a dunce in the romance department. I didn’t have to be, though. I’m fairly pretty—not supermodel stunning, but I have healthy proportions, a good smile, intense dark eyes, long of leg, and a healthy dose of self confidence. I wasn’t always confident in my looks. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I heard a man call me beautiful, and by then I didn’t know what to do with the compliment. I grew up hiding in hoodies, baggy clothes, and a soccer uniform, along with not making much eye contact. It took me years to unlearn the bad habit of always assuming I’m physically unappealing. Those stupid, self-hating thoughts need a regular dose of beating down, but at least I’m far more comfortable with who I am, along with my physical appearance.

Even though video games meant I was surrounded by guys all the time, I still didn’t know how to go about dating one. I’d met so many interesting people on WoW and, with sexual frustrations being constantly buried under workaholic mode, I was reaching the end of my tolerance for staying single. Social outcast me had a whopping one boyfriend in high school, and for a whopping one month. Stupid me broke up with the kid because I had a crush on another kid, who only liked my attention, and nothing more. I was a mere stroke to his ego. I severed myself from a gentleman who had fallen hard for me. It wasn’t until years later, when I was working in a Kohl’s with said gentleman’s mother, that I found out I’d really broken his heart when I broke up with him. What makes it worse is that he’d gotten a week-long OSS for punching a kid at lunch. The whole story, which I found out through the mother, was that he’d punched the kid for making fun of him for going out with me.

Since I was tall, athletic, and didn’t squeeze my toned soccer girl curves into skimpy outfits, many of my peers believed I was a lesbian.

Dear god, I’m the queen of awkward sometimes.

Chapter 8: Ash Ben De Korbet

Ash Ben De Korbet (ABDK)—Viking for “we are all going to die”—is the second guild I belonged to for a long time. It was a pretty darn good group of people with a dirty sense of humor, and I have a lot of fond memories of that guild.

I remember a few of us chatting on Vent and Tessa was leveling her Druid and hit 69.

“Oo, I like this level. I might stay here a while.”

“Why?” I asked, which received laughter.

“Midget, do you not know what a sixty nine is?”

“A number?”

My friends then went on to explain the sexual position known as the 69, and thus I was enlightened a bit more as to what went on in bedrooms. The same group of people also taught me what a Dutch rudder is, of which one of the guys insisted didn’t make a man gay. I remember his wife laughing at him and my blank-faced shock. The things people did that I’d never known about…

The husband, whose real life name and toon name are beyond my recall, also warned me to never have sex on the beach. “You’ll get sand everywhere you don’t want it, even if you lie on a blanket.”

“How did you manage to have sex on the beach?” Me being the shy, naive person, I wouldn’t want anyone watching.

“It was the middle of the night and we snuck on.”

It sounded sort of romantic but I don’t think I could ever muster the courage and gall to have sex in a public location. I’ll stick with being prudently boring.

I believe the same guild introduced me to porn. I knew beforehand that it existed but I’d never watched any. My guildies poked fun at me for it and told me the names of a couple of free sites. It was more curiosity than peer pressure that led to my typing of these sites’ names in my Google search bar.

After typing in my birthday in the loose age check page, I stared in morbid fascination at a screen covered in boobs, bare bodies, open mouths ready to receive a protein shot, and all sorts of other things I’d never seen presented like that before.

Holy hell.

I stripped myself of my innocence with video after video. I found all of it exciting at first, but the more I watched and learned, the less I liked porn. Women taking it in the rear was a turnoff. Good god, that’s where fecal matter excretes from! Why on earth would you want a guy sticking his manhood in there? Blow jobs were another turnoff but that seemed to be the only thing so many people did. And—oh dear lord, they swallow that stuff? That’s so gross! And why do people remove every last article of clothing, except their socks?

“You’re feet get cold sometimes,” one of my guildies said offhandedly.

At that point in my life, I had to take her word for it, but it seemed so silly to create a porn video and wear nothing but socks.

Socks aside, another thing that puzzled me was how much women moaned in the videos.

“Oh, they do that all the time, and they’re usually faking it.”

“Why?”

“It’s a turn-on for men.”

I didn’t watch very much porn, liking it less and less with every video. It seemed so derogatory and disrespectful towards women. They were always taking it in the mouth or the rear, the videos focused too much on their bouncing boobs, and men merely grunted while their bodies slapped together and the women moaned with fake ecstasy. There seemed to be a distinct lack of love or romance, something of which I’d been severely lacking up to that point in my life.

On a more romantic note two guildies were getting married soon, so we decided to schedule a mock wedding in game. WoW has clothing not only for running around and killing stuff, but also vanity attire for parties and such. The future husband donned a purple robe, the future wife a dashing white dress, and a guild Priest (no, not in the religious sense; there’s a Priest class) wore some robes fitting for the occasion. Everyone else who had vanity attire dressed up as well and we gathered on a floating island in Nagrand.

As silly as it was, the moment was rather touching, since they were getting married in reality. I felt happy for them and hoped that’d be me one year soon.

Chapter 7: Don’t Be a Grammar Nazi

 

 ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

If you ever want to make friends and keep them, too, then don’t be the grammar nazi I was. [Person who corrects everyone's grammar and spelling whether or not others like it.] People play WoW to have a good time, not improve their English.

This took a long time for me to learn yet, to this day, I have to clench my teeth and tell myself to breathe every time I see you’re, your, there, their, they’re, etc., used improperly, tomorrow spelled as “tomarrow”, along with other common misspellings. I’ve seen so much bad grammar that sometimes I lose track of when to use “good” versus “well”, along with a couple other common grammatical errors. I have a Master’s in writing; it’s what I’m devoting my life to be a master of. I often forget not everyone knows what I know, and that I just need to leave their poor grammar alone.

Before I learned to shut up and put up, I was thoroughly convinced I was helping. I’m the kind of person that, if I do something wrong, I hope someone corrects me so I can learn and grow. I thought I was returning the favor by correcting my fellow guildies incessantly, despite their incessant “I don’t care” retorts.

“I’m only trying to make you smarter,” I insisted.

“I don’t care. This isn’t an English class.”

“You should care. English is your native language and you can’t even write it well. Aren’t you embarrassed?” That being a tactlessly blunt thing to say, I made a few people hate me. In retrospect it’s easy to see why. Nobody wants to indirectly be called stupid. So, when I got the not-an-English-class retort yet again, I changed my reply to, “Don’t you want to be smarter?”

Of course they didn’t. I received a wide range of colorful responses that baffled me. I didn’t get it. I love learning. I didn’t understand disinterest in learning.

Since I was such the grammar nazi, my guilds would lie in wait for an opportunity to correct me. Too bad for them, it was only with typos. I’m notorious for typos to the point where we made a running joke about me being possessed by the “Typo Demon” which I managed to call the “Tupe Deomn” once and was never let down for that.

The Typo Demon is so powerful that He won’t let you type his name correctly sometimes!

All the typo demon really is, is my fingers’ inability to keep up with my thoughts. It happens to everyone.

Anyway, typos were the one thing I never corrected because they were honest mistakes, instead of a sign of lack of knowledge. Whenever they’d pick on me for generating a typo, I’d explain that it was a typo and not a misspelling.

“What’s the difference?”

“Misspellings are intentional and typos are unintentional.”

People insisted there was no difference, and I got fed up with having this same argument where I decided to agree to disagree. It wasn’t until years later that I finally kicked the terrible grammar nazi habit and left people be. I don’t remember how I finally learned to stop being so annoying, but at some point someone patiently taught me I was being tactless and that I just had to let their bad grammar go. People don’t like being publicly corrected like that. It’s embarrassing and not good timing.

I heeded these words of wisdom and people found me a lot more pleasant to hang around. And then it became amusing that, after I kicked the habit, I started noticing other grammar nazis. Sometimes I passed on the wisdom passed on to me. Other times I let things unfold as they would. They would one day learn, too.

Chapter 6: Open… Something

Chapter 6: Open… Something.

Punt the Gnome

 ***Please note: anything in [ ] was a footnote in my word processing document.***

Chapter 5

World of Warcraft takes time to learn all the details: questing, leveling, PvP, raiding, gearing, etc. I got questing and leveling down pat fairly fast, and I became something known as an altaholic, meaning I created the maximum number of characters on one server and played all of them as much as I could. Some people hate spending countless hours leveling up, so they’re a one-toon player. And then there are people like me who are unfazed by leveling and must play the game as every last class—except rogue and warlock. To this day, I have yet to reach the max level as either.

WoW is very time-consuming, even if you dedicate yourself to one character. In the beginning I was still learning which class I most enjoyed playing, and often switched between Druid, Paladin (Pally), and Mage. I tried every class but I lacked the patience to play Rogue, which requires lots of sneaking around and assassinating your enemies from behind. If you get in front of your intended victim, chances are you’ll be spotted. I wasn’t any good as priest because they didn’t put out much damage until level 40 back in Vanilla. [I could be wrong about the poor damage output, but that's how much I sucked at the game.] Warlock didn’t compute with me for some reason. I think it might’ve been having to farm for soul shards that broke me. Warrior was alright but I hated down time to eat and get my health back. I don’t recall when exactly I tried Hunter but it was back during the days where they had to make sure stay stocked up on arrows. Nothing like running out of ammo at a critical moment. And I didn’t try Shaman until the first expansion, since it was a Horde-exclusive class back then.

Still, even with three classes I clicked with, I still sucked at them in many ways. One day, when I was leveling my Paladin, Druther, whom I’d named similarly to Uther, a figure from Warcraft lore, another player whispered, “What on earth are you wearing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at you: you’re wearing almost all white-level gear.” [Gear is color-coded in the level of quality.]

WoW is all about the gear. My concept of gearing borrowed from my Final Fantasy experience, where vendors had upgrades available as you progressed. The fact that I had to find, craft, or instance for upgrades was beyond my knowledge. Every now and then something neat would drop from a random monster I killed, or a quest giver would reward me with an upgrade. Other than that, I anticipated having to save gold for upgrades.

So there I was in a zone called Wetlands, hacking away at an oozeling mob for probably a minute, regularly healing myself until my gooey foe was vanquished. [Mob: gamer lingo for "monster."] My appalled acquaintance went on to demonstrate how fast he could kill a mob and told me to inspect his gear, which led to a succinct tutorial on how to inspect another player, and then me ogling at of his fancy getup.

“Where do I get gear like that?”

I don’t remember what the person said beyond that but I know he or she wasn’t rude. My acquaintance was like, “Oh, dear god, this person needs help!” and went on to give that help. I think s/he introduced me to the Auction House, where I decked myself out a bit, and suddenly killing mobs was so much easier. I was also told to switch to Retribution (Ret) spec, unless I planned on tanking.

“What’s tanking?” I was in Protection (Prot) spec, which excelled at survivability. Every class has three specializations and Prot had sounded the smartest at the time. Part of the reason I was taking forever to kill anything was because of my spec. Boy do things get easier when you play the game the way you should. [Players can choose one of three specializations: tank, healing, or DPS (damage per second). Tanks are the damage absorbers, healers keep everyone alive, and DPSers kill stuff.]

After learning to gear up and hitting the max level of 60, I then scratched the surface of learning to raid in order to get even better gear—more like I ran around with 39 other people on Druther, my pally, and no one teaching me how to raid.

Back in Vanilla WoW, raiding meant 40 people got together to go kill stuff in one place or another with their concerted efforts. It was all teamwork and coordination. The stuff they killed dropped covetous pieces of gear, also called loot. Raiding is one of the things you can do once you’re done leveling up.

I remember being in Zul’Gurub, a raid with lots of trolls, snakes, and a giant water monster with a guild called Overdose. They were number one on the server and a bunch of asses. However, they got shit done and did it well. A friend of mine in Overdose snuck me into the raid but, since I wasn’t a part of the guild, I wasn’t allowed to roll on any gear, even if no one in their guild needed something I could put to use. You had to earn the right to win gear by raiding with them a certain number of times before they’d award you anything. It’s reasonable in a way, but there are better ways to dish out loot. [Secondary definition of “roll”: just like rolling a die, you type in /roll and the game picks a random number from 1-100. Whenever you want something real bad, the game seems to know and gives you the worst rolls, but if it’s something you kind of want, you almost always roll 90+.]

I remember leaving the raid before it was finished. I couldn’t stomach their attitudes.

I had a friendlier raiding experience on Midgetofdoom, my mage, with another guild in a place called Blackrock Spire, a labyrinthian place under a mountain full of orcs and bigger beasties. These people took the time to explain the mechanics of fights so I wouldn’t so readily die. Death was inevitable, until you got familiarized with the flow of the fight. There were places you wanted to stand, along with places you wanted to avoid standing in. You either needed to stand near people, or in your own safe corner, and you needed to know what to attack or not attack, and when. There are many other fight mechanics but overall most fights can be simplified into this: don’t stand in shit and kill the adds as they pop. [adds: additional monsters that appear.] However, that’s easier said than done. It can take weeks to learn how to down a boss. ["Down a boss": a big bad guy that requires a team effort to kill.] Coordinating the efforts of 40 people is no simple feat.

In Blackrock Spire, one boss was a giant demon dog (picture Cerberus with two heads) that required a gnome in order to initiate the fight.

“Hey, Midget,” a raid leader said to me over Teamspeak, “since you’re a gnome and a mage, we need you to run over to the boss, aggro him, then blink back over.”

Now might be a prudent time to point out how gullible I am. Sarcasm isn’t one of my strong suits, and I’ve had a fair few friends who love the comedy that ensues from taking advantage of this.

Anyway, me being no bigger than one of the poochie’s toes, I was a bit apprehensive of running over to the dark corner of a room, where only the face of a giant monster could be seen peering out at us.

“Why me?” I typed back in raid chat. I respectfully didn’t talk in Teamspeak since I wasn’t one of the raid leaders.

“Because it’s your first time here.” Her voice was calm and pragmatic, no hint of an impending joke about to be played.

Another person said, “It’s how you’re supposed to pull the boss. He punts whoever aggros him first.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll heal you,” one of the healers said.

I didn’t like the sound of this one bit. “Can’t someone who knows the fight do it?”

“Nope,” the raid leader said. “Since this is your first time here, you get the honors of doing it.”

In retrospect, I imagine there must’ve silent fits of laughter, people doubled over their keyboards and hugging their stomachs.

“Okay.”

“Just run up to him, attack him once, and hurry right back, or else you’ll die.”

“Alright then.” Nope, didn’t like this one bit.

“Ready, Midget?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Alright. Go ahead and start the fight.”

I inched forward as 39 other people stayed plastered to wall opposite demon doggie. “Tally ho.” I grimaced at my screen as I tentatively took one step after another before breaking into a jog, and as the gap between me and my fellow raiders grew, so did my dread. This couldn’t be a good idea at all. And having so many sets of eyes solely on me didn’t help my nerves.

Like a good gnome mage, I dutifully stopped with the demon doggie just in range of my spells and cast a fireball at him. It landed square in his face and, despite a pint-sized attack coming from a pint-sized person, it sufficed to get his attention. A giant monster straight from the depths of WoW Hell burst from the darkness and charged me. I let out a midget cry and dashed back towards my allies, using my blink spell for good measure.

However, just as I reappeared twenty yards ahead of where I’d started running, my minuscule frame took the air and my head snapped back as my body soared spread-eagle towards a stone wall.

Oh, my. A wall.

My allies charged in and I saw my health bar go from full to zero before I hit the ground. I don’t remember if I hit the wall but I know I didn’t even live long enough to die from the landing.

“Sorry, Midget,” one of the healers said between laughter. “I didn’t even get a chance to cast my shield on you.”

If only I could say that was the last time midget me was ever punted like a football…