weirdest thing that's happened to me in game so farFollow

After my relatively long story, I'd love to hear your own...

Ok, when I first began leveling as a Shadow Priest around level 20 I met a player, a Paladin, who seemed like a really nice guy. We wound up in the same very large guild and spent a good deal of time leveling as a duo. Paladin and Priest worked well together.

He met another girl - a Warrior - and they became in-game sweethearts. The three of us ran together through out 40s and were doing really well until around level 50.

The Paladin and I talked all the time on voice chat, and the girl didn't have it. Some resentment (and probably some jealousy) seemed to flare on her part and she became very cold to me overnight. I intuited that it was her own personal issue, took into consideration the fact that she is very young (19, or so she says), and quietly backed off from both of them.

I began running with other people, and though every now and then the Paladin and I would run an occasional instance, we never again duo'd together and things were not the same between us. Whatever. Things can get weird in games like this and my feelings aren't easily hurt.

A few days later I messaged the Paladin and discovered I was on his ignore list. I was bummed and mystified, but I really hate in-game drama and decided to just let it go. I knew that the fact he put me on ignore would come back and burn him because I was his go-to for healer in the parties he put together, but again, whatever. Days went by, then about a week. I was over it and enjoying the other relationships I'd made.

Flash to last Thursday. I got a message from a Death Knight guild member asking if I'd be willing to heal for a Saturday night (really Sunday morning) party at Scholo. I figured I could show up at midnight with no problem, and I didn't question why he'd want to make a party for 2 am eastern time (I figure some people work swing shift, whatever).

I got online at 11:30 pm and tooled around Outland finishing up some quests. I was annoyed and about to log by 12:30, but the DK showed, apologized profusely, and said he'd get the party together. He had voice, so I let him know that I'd thought he had a party already set up. I was annoyed again while he spent half an hour wheeling and dealing to get a party lineup.

So he winds up with four - count 'em, FOUR - Death Knights, and me, a shadow spec'd Priest.

I almost quit the party but them decided I'd be up for a challenge. I made it very clear that I would keep heals only on the tank and that the others would have to rely on potions and luck to get them through if they couldn't manage hate.

Here comes the weird part.

Remember the Paladin? I did. I'd talked to him for weeks, and he has a very distinctive voice and accent. He was one of the DKs, and he was trying to pass himself off as another person entirely.

I knew immediately, but I decided to play along. The evil Shadow side of me considered letting him bite it on a regular basis, but I decided to take the high road. I kept them all alive because I am a damn good healer and because after some scrambling they actually managed to keep most of the hate squarely on the tank.

The guy who started the party is also in our guild, and he knew that the Paladin and I were no longer on speaking terms...but he slipped at one point and called the Paladin/DK by his Paladin's character name.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the other DKs was the ****** in-game sweetheart. I know they both had plans to roll and level DKs together.

I felt, I don't know...used? I guess that's the best way to put it. I resented being treated as though I'm stupid. I passed on every item that dropped (not a decent piece of cloth gear and no good weapons, and I just wanted to get out of there).

Final battle went well, no deaths, everyone in good health, and as SOON as the final piece of loot was distributed the shifty ex-Paladin logged without a word.

My ignore list grew to include the DK who put the party together as well as the Paladin/DK.

This whole experience left me feeling sad and kind of slimed. It's put a real damper on my enjoyment of the game, and though I still plan to level my Priest to 80 a lot of the passion I had has fizzled. I'm a lot more cautious in my dealings with other people now. I know it's just a game, but they ARE real people, and being deceived like that always sucks.

I hope the slimeball winds up with incompetent healers for the rest of his gaming career. What a scummy guy.

Any of you have any bizarre interpersonal experiences in-game?

I just recently found out that my 14-year old girl friend in WoW is really 21.

I hate people like that. He obviously knew that he had done something wrong. Cowards like that who can't own up and stand by their own decisions disgust me. The fact that he thought he could alter his voice and fool you shows he isn't very smart on top of it.

The girls sounds very immature. Take comfort in the fact that she isn't cool whatsoever, and probably either a) very unattractive or b) not really a girl.

I totally agree with this. The guy is a tool and she is even worse. The thing is he has lost out not you. She has probably isolated him from many other people as well and he will suffer.

It's a shame to lose a play partner because someone else got in the way. It could be that your pala friend thought you'd gone off him after you started grouping less due to his gfs coldness (and possibly her going 'see, he isn't really your friend...'), but whatever the reason I think it's immature when you have a conflict with a friend and put them on ignore rather than talking to them about it (I'm talking the reaction of the paladin initially).

The later grouping with the DKs was definately weird, I'm not sure how I'd handle something like that, but personally I wouldn't take it to heart too much, it's done now, don't let it colour the rest of your experiences.

Personally I've never experienced anything like this in game (the closest is probably when I logged in after a weeks break to find out I was no longer guilded - turns out it had dispanded, which made me sad as it was my first guild, but at least I hadn't been kicked), I don't trust people very easily, so I tend not to get too close to anyone. I do have friends in the game, but they are all guildies and more friends by association - they talk a lot more to my bf than to me. I'd probably never talk for long enough with a random person to make friends with them or interact with them for an extended period (not to mention my altitis). I will group with people and I will chat with people in game, but I tend to cut both off at the earliest convenient point. I just feel really uncomfortable talking to people I don't know, but also I guess I don't really feel a need to make friends, so I don't put the effort into 'small talk'.

I guess I view encounters with people in the game as more transient - I don't expect to group/chat with them very often, so I'm not dissapointed when I don't.

Stick with it though, there are some great people in this game and you can make lasting friendships. My bf has a group of friends which he met on an MMO 7 years ago, most of whom he still plays with (in WoW now though), I know someone who met his partner online and also a group in my guild regularly go round each others houses for drinks and dinner (who previously didn't know each other in RL).

It's funny - I began the game with this attitude, but as I've leveled I've met a core group of really good people. We chat on vent, quest together, run instances, and are getting pretty tightly knit. I'm cautious as I always am in online situations, but I think of them in the way I might think of the cool people from work you might not go out for beers with but who you always love to have lunch with.

My boyfriend doesn't play at all; he says he's a console gamer because he wants to get AWAY from other people as his escapism. ^^ He completely understands the love of gaming, but he really doesn't get my enjoyment of the social aspect of the game.

I can really understand both sides of it. I guess this guy just threw me for such a loop because a game settingt is inherently deceptive; you can FEEL as though you know someone but you really don't. You're twice removed: computer, so you never see them personally; and the mechanics of the game itself, which is a fictional environment that lends itself to, well, games. It's a *role-playing game*, after all. To what extent are we all acting?

I had a friend quit MMOs because she didn't like the way the game was making her feel - she said she became totally focused on money and getting stuff and that one day all that avariciousness just caught up with her and made her feel rotten.

I'm truly interested in the way personalities shift and shimmer in an RPG environment. Is it possible to truly be yourself as a Night Elf or a Rogue when in real life you're a software engineer or a medical technician?

Life has gotten weirder since the advent of the PC, that's for sure. Good weirder mostly, but definitely...weirder.

wow small world drfolly I live in Inverness too hehe I however completely get what your saying I am open to other players about the fact I am a bloke playing a female character however being on a rp server it's difficult as you sometimes get folks who are doing the whole "rp" thing and I tend to be rather leery of whether they realise I am a bloke or not... I tend to say my priest is married to some cause or other to ensure that rp sensibilities are not hurt and disentangling me from the possibility that they may not realise what I am in RL.

Edited, Jan 29th 2009 5:58pm by ElweSingollo