My friend Christiana and I started playing Realms of Questing,
an MMO, right after the start of our second year of college. Flush
with money from the last few years of summer jobs we had elected to
dump the crowded dorms and get an apartment together and were wildly
excited until my recently graduated cousin decided to rain on our
parade by telling me that we absolutely must have a hobby
together to keep us close and bleed off tensions or we would end up
hating each other by Christmas. This seemed a little far fetched
given that we had survived the stresses of giant physics projects
together. But, at the same time, it made me nervous because, other
than our major, we really didn't have any interests in common. Our
friendship was entirely founded on the fact that we really loved
physics and worked really well together. But, my cousin grimly
pointed out, a shared enthusiasm for our studies wouldn't cut it
against the pressures of day to day life.
“Would you
relax?” said Christiana easily, as we sprawled on the floor among
half unpacked boxes during our move in. “Cathy and I lived
together for two years with no hobbies and we haven't killed each
other yet.” Though irritated, she was still patient with me and
kept her voice calm, being now well used to my worries, having seen
them plenty of times in the past when I'd gotten stuck on tricky
physics problems. This was part of why we worked so well together.
Even though she was so laid back, she never made me feel my concerns
were seriously invalidated, like this time. Even though she didn't
seem worried, she agreed to ask her former roommate Cathy for
suggestions. Cathy proposed Realms of Questing very
enthusiastically and even provided a code that allowed us to get our
first few months at a discount so we felt we at least had to try it.
It was only latter that we found out that the game offered rewards to
players for getting new people to join and Cathy had happened to be
two recruitments away from her next reward.
We had
both chosen to play female characters even though Christiana grimly
predicted that two female characters alone would probably get
harassed all the time. Then, she had turned around and started
designing the most harassment inviting character possible: an elf
girl with perfect features, flawless skin, and maple colored hair, to
which she gave the extremely unoriginal name of Kimmy. Wanting to be
different, I had chosen the demon-kin race, unnaturally tall with
mottled skin, fangs, claws, masses of wild hair, even a tail, not to
mention bulging eyes and a protruding tongue. I named her Roanhild
after a character I had admired in a quasi-Viking fantasy adventure
movie and, like the character that inspired her, I decided to make
her a berserker.
“Wow, you look
like a freak,” Christiana had told me, while putting the final
touches on her elven sorceress, but I thought my appearance might be
an effective (and necessary, considering her character) way to deter
potential harassers. It didn’t really work at all. That was how
we joined the guild, after we had been playing for three months and
were already at level forty. We met Bjorn, the guild leader, a male
dwarf played by a single mom in her thirties, when she had helped us
run off some guys who were trying to “role play” (read have
cybersex) with us in Forevermore, the capital city. After that, it
was just a matter of getting accepted by the other members, though
she assured us that would be no trouble at all. All we had to do was
run some dungeons in groups with other guild members and see if they
liked us.
On the day of our
first guild run, our party consisted, in addition to me and
Christiana, of The Wiz, a demon kin wizard, Maran, a human fighter
with a long, evil looking mustache, and Svalin, a female elven
crusader with a delicate blond up do. I was terribly nervous about
joining a group of strangers, who all knew each other no less. Yes,
Bjorn was supportive and caring, just like the big sister I had never
had. But now, she had asked us to go on a mission with other guild
members, just to make sure we all got along and she couldn't even be
there because she had to go to her daughter's dance recital. I felt
sort of relieved that there was a another girl in the group. It made
us seem slightly less weird. I felt like some groups hadn't taken us
very seriously for this reason, even though Christiana swore over and
over it was only my paranoid imagination.
Way back when we were only around
tenth level, we joined up with this guy to steal gold from a giant
eagle's nest. My task was to use one of my special attacks to
paralyze the eagle while we made off with the treasure but I was
still learning the game and could never manage to find the correct
button in time. Eventually, the guy had subjected us to a flood of
insults so that I logged off in tears. The next day, I spent three
hours mechanically killing dire rabbits outside Forevermore to
practice using the skill. Nothing that bad had happened since but I
still worried about it all the time.
"Relax." Christiana leaned
over out of her chair to pat me on the back. "The more you
worry the more likely you are to screw up." I made a face at
her but she didn't see because she had already turned back to her
computer screen and, being the social butterfly that she is, was
having Kimmy wave, toss her hair, and blow kisses at everyone.
[The
Wiz]: I'm flattered, but I only go for beings from the underworld.
You earth creatures can't handle me.
Everyone /laughed, even me, despite my
nerves. And then Christiana did a wonderful and very clever thing.
[Kimmy]:
Well then. You should check out Roanhild. After all, you're the
same species.
So he turned towards me and offered me
a very nice welcome, saying he was very pleased to meet me as he had
never seen a female demon kin before. Which was probably true.
Apparently, we're the least played race gender combination
(except maybe for male pixies), which gives me a certain measure of
perverse delight. It made me feel much better so I decided to join in
the joking as well.
[Roanhild]:
I suppose we should leave the pathetic earth creatures to their own
devices. So nice for Maran. He gets the two lovely elf girls all to
himself.
[Maran]:
Ur...not exactly.
[Svalin]:
Maybe the two lovely elf girls would rather just be with each other.
I
was a little concerned at first that the guild might be into “those”
sort of jokes or even that they were semi-serious and, in either case
Chrisiana and I would be expected to play along. I couldn't envision
Bjorn tolerating that but you never knew. As Christiana was always
telling me, I needn't have worried. It was all in good fun and the
run itself went very well also. When Christiana screwed up and
released her arcane blast spell to quickly, temporarily pulling
threat from Svalin, I was very worried that they were going to
criticize us, think we were not good, and tell us to get lost. No
such thing. They just turned the whole thing into a joke and when, a
couple rooms later, the Wiz didn't do his crowd control abilities
correctly so Svalin ended up getting chased around and around the
room by a giant bat, they just laughed at that too, as if there was
no difference between us. Halfway through, I forgot about being
stressed and started really enjoying myself. We were officially
accepted into the guild at the next meeting and came highly
recommended by everyone who was in our party that day.
With this stress of being either
harassed or told to learn to play largely removed, things became much
more enjoyable. I felt a strong motivation to do well in order to
support the people who were encouraging rather than criticizing me.
And they were always glad to help. Since Maran was also playing a
mêlée
class, he was able to give me lots of suggestions about what
abilities to use and what equipment to get. Running things in a
regular group was helping a lot too. We were starting to get a good
sense of teamwork. In addition to Svalin, Maran, and the Wiz who we
had met initially, we got to know the other guild members of similar
level quite well. There was Lyla a female pixie and primary healer
for our guild and Herumor, a male human ranger, who must spend a
great deal of time in the woods in real life, either that or he had
researched his character really well, as he seemed to have an
inordinate amount of information about survival skills.
Turns
out that, weather we would have ended up killing each other without
it or not, playing Realms of Questing had been a great idea.
I remembered how much I had missed Christiana over Christmas break
and over summer last year but, now that we were still logging on
almost every day while home for the holidays, this wasn't a problem.
Of course we'd had text messages and instagram before but it wasn't
the same. Sometimes we'd have nothing interesting to say or we'd get
caught up in family activities and forget. But now that we had
shared goals and purposes, keeping in touch was a top priority. We
were in a hurry to get to max level as quickly as possible. Some of
the other guild members, like Bjorn, Svalin, and the Wiz, had maxed
out a little over a month ago and started doing end game instances.
Not only did I not want to be missing out on the fun but they also
complained a lot about having to join pick up groups as the guild
didn't have enough high level people for a full party yet.
Unfortunately, finals were coming up quickly at that point so we
didn't have a lot of free time to invest in leveling, something we
made sure changed as soon as break started.
And
we sure did, logging as much time as we could without making our
families fear for our sanity. We reached the coveted goal late at
night just before New Years. I let out a squeal, probably waking up
my younger brother in the room next door and wished Christiana was
there so I could hug her.
[Maran]:
I'm popping the cork on a celebratory bottle of wine I've been
saving for this.
Svalin
and The Wiz, who had stayed up just to see the event joined in the
general good feeling though Christiana was pouting because
Svalin had threatened to make her respec for healing so we wouldn't
have to go outside the guild for a healer. Fortunately, Lyla maxed
out a couple days later before this became a real issue and, soon, we
were running together as a guild almost every night. In addition to
being challenging in their own right, these top level instances were
the main source of the basic minimum gear needed for raiding.
Raiding! It was ultimate achievement of Realms of Questing
and, besides it sounded like so much fun, like an instance but with
more of us all together at once, with more challenge and more
teamwork. But it was a distant dream for me. There was no
discussion of raiding in the guild and, besides, these high level
instances were proving difficult enough and I would not have presumed
to risk messing up a guild raid, if one was to exist, by inserting
myself into it. Still, as the holidays came to a close and we headed
back for spring semester, I couldn't help worrying about it. If they
did start raiding, would I feel left out and resentful? What if
Christiana got invited along but I didn't? I was pretty sure she
would say no, would always put our friendship ahead of the game, but
I hoped that the mere fact that it happened, if it happened, wouldn't
ruin things for me. Still, there was no sign of this being a risk
and everyone seemed happy to have me along on the instance runs so,
everything was safe for the moment.
Outside of the game
too, life was going all right. Physics was going well, and that was
the important thing. We had a big project coming due, but Christiana
and I had a year and a half of teamwork on this sort of thing and
were able to knock it out in record time, not that different from how
the guild was getting about running some of the top instances after
we had been through them several times. The real problem was
English. We were taking an English literature class to fulfill our
upper-division humanities requirement and both of us were kind of out
of our depth. Some of the readings for the first unit were even in
some weird ancient form of English where everything was spelled and
pronounced nothing like we were used to. I was actually grateful
when we moved on to Shakespeare, even though I had always thought
that was horribly difficult before. Fortunately, we found an
unexpected ally, a girl named Naomi, who we happened to be sitting
next to on a day when there were group activities and had a fun time
working with her. Turns out, she was actually an English major so
the weird language made perfect sense to her. Naomi had two great
obsessions, shirtless celebrities and real food, as opposed to
cafeteria swill, which she couldn't afford. So, we started inviting
her over for “study sessions” for her to explain the readings to
us, by offering to order take out for her while she was there. As
Naomi is actually a pretty fun person, these study sessions gradually
morphed into all night movie marathons or epic games of Cards Against
Humanity.
The only downside
was that this also meant we had to spend a lot time listening to her
talk about both her obsession and I, and even Christiana, got pretty
tired of it. Heaven for Naomi is high end burrito or naan wrap in
one hand, stuffing face, and remote in the other hand, high speed
scene skipping to the juiciest movie moments of her actor crush of
the moment. Because of our willingness to do what we could to keep
her in this state of bliss, she was willing to do pretty much
anything for Christiana and I, including semi-writting a lot of our
papers for us. With Naomi's help I was managing to pull off at least
a low B in English and, in other news, I actually had a date on
Thursday night. He was a reasonably nice guy. The only thing was
that I didn't really like him. I felt that we didn't have much in
common and our conversations had far too many awkward silences but,
because he was semi-popular, "hot," and not a major jerk,
my friends would not allow me to say no. Still, I figured it was
harmless to see him. We might always magically discover something to
talk about. Then I found out we had a guild meeting that same night.
When I asked Christiana what I should do, she acted like I was stupid
"How can you
possibly even be thinking of canceling? You haven't had any dates
in, like, ages." Gee, thanks a lot. "The guild doesn't
expect you to have no life. No one's going to be mad at you."
I wasn't entirely convinced on that point and, besides, as I tried to
explain to her, I felt bad about missing the meeting. But she wasn't
buying it. "You know we never really do much at these meetings
anyway. I'm sure no one will miss you. I'll just explain and let
them know I'll fill you in on anything important. I'm sure it won't
be a problem." The idea that no one would miss me didn't
actually make me feel any better but I could see there was no point
in arguing with Christiana. She wasn't going to help me get out of
the date but she would help me get out of the meeting so I didn't
really seem to have much of a choice.
The date wasn't
horrible. As I said, he was a reasonably nice guy but we didn't
discover any special connection. Mostly, he seemed to like crime
shows which don't really interest me. I listened politely which was
probably a mistake because, at the end of the evening, he asked me
out on another date. I told him I would think about it. I didn't
know what else I could say other than that he was boring and I didn't
really want to do that. I needed advice from Christiana. This was
the kind of situation she knew how to get out of gracefully. But,
first and foremost, I wanted her to tell me about what I had missed.
“How did the
meeting go?” I asked as I pulled the apartment door closed behind
me and flopped down on the couch next to her.
Christiana looked
up from her physics text book. “It went fine.” I raised my
eyebrows sharply. “No, no one was upset about you not being
there,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “Well, except for Svalin.”
“What? Why was
Svalin upset?”
“Jealous about you being out on a
date. Said your boyfriend is such a lucky bastard.” It took me a
moment to register that there was something odd about this. “Svalin
is a guy,” Christiana said, noticing me with my face screwed up and
one eye closed like when I was trying to solve a difficult physics
problem. “He’s bitter that some other guy gets to go out with a
girl like you.”
I felt a warm embarrassment flow
through my stomach. I had gotten so little attention from guys that
it was always a novel experience when one had something positive to
say about me. I took out my copy of Paradise Lost and began
doing the reading assignment for the next day but what I had just
learned kept hovering in the back of my mind, distracting me. We'd
need to schedule another emergency “study session” with Naomi for
sure. I wasn’t sure which was weirder for me, learning that Svalin
was a guy or that he didn’t put me in the absolute non-option
category. Although the latter was obviously only because he knew
nothing about the real me.
Well, whatever. It didn't really
matter what gender somebody's character was as long as they were a
nice person. After all, it had never bothered me that Bjorn's was
played by a woman so I couldn't figure out why this did. I guess,
because I had known Bjorn's true gender almost as soon as we met and
had never felt used or misled. But Svalin wasn't trying to conceal
it either. I had just never picked up on it. It was a little
awkward for me the next time we ran something with him especially
because a number of his comments, like the suggestive jokes, could
now be seen in a very different light. But, with time and exposure
it went away and everything was pretty much the same as it had always
been.
There was one unfortunate side effect
to Svalin's gender. I was so floored by what I had learned that I
forgot to ask Christiana how to turn down my would-be admirer and so
I ended up going on date number two by default. I thought about
researching crime shows beforehand so we would have something to talk
about. But I logged on to do some quick practicing in Realms of
Questing first and, just as I was finishing up, Heru and the Wiz
hit me up to help them run a dungeon, which I considered a far more
enjoyable way to spend my time. So, instead I asked Naomi who does
enjoy those kinds of shows, to give me a quick synopsis.
About a month
later, there was some important news of the guild meeting. We
were going to start raiding. Or, at least some of us were. We were
reasonably small guild but still had more people than are in a raid
group. I was completely shocked when Christiana and I were selected
to go. I'm not sure why, we had always performed well on normal
guild runs in the past. Maybe it was because we had started the game
on a lark and so I found it hard to believe anyone would take us
seriously. Or, maybe it was just my long history of being one of the
people who always got picked last, ever since the first day of gym
class in elementary school. In any case, I felt it was of the utmost
importance to prove myself worthy of the honor I had been given...and
to avoid the humiliation of losing it. I knew there were other
people who wanted the spot I had. It seemed kind of unfair since I
couldn't imagine they weren't better than me. But I also didn't want
anyone else to find out they were better and give them my spot. I
knew most of our team, Svalin, Bjorn, Lyla, the Wiz, Herumor, and
Maran, and knew they were as good or better than me. But the group
also included Aryin, who I didn't know, who had only just reached max
level and was seriously under-geared, because we needed him to fill
the team. Svalin was expounding on our duties in the coming weeks
involving running stuff with him to get him up to speed as fast as
possible. But I was mostly thinking about the possibility that he,
or one of the other people Svalin wanted to start training up as soon
as they were high enough level, to serve as substitutes if one of the
main team members couldn't make it, would pass me in ability and be
given my spot.
"Isn't this
exciting?" Christina cried, looking over her shoulder at me.
"Yes," I
laughed uneasily, "but it's kind of scary too."
"For sure,"
Christina agreed. "We'll just have to practice a lot." And
we did. From then on, we ran an instance every night, even enduring
pickup groups when no one from the guild was interested that night.
Amazingly, I got very few complaints even from strangers. My time in
the guild had really improved my play but it was still a hard concept
for me to grasp and there was still more to do. The first thing we
needed to accomplish was set up our skill rotations, the optimum
sequence of ability use based on the cool down of each ability. For
example, my rage ability had a sixty second cool down and it was one
of my best abilities so I needed to remember to use it every minute.
Skewer, with an eighty second cool down was next in priority. Then
there were other, smaller abilities like boiling blood with a thirty
second cool down, but these were lower priority and were only to be
used if both rage and skewer were still on cool down and then there
was my special weapon, the coup de grace ability that I could use to
finish off enemies on low health. Obviously, that took precedence
over everything else when it was available.
We key mapped all
these abilities and the main purpose of all this practice was so I
could hit the correct keys in the correct order even in my sleep. It
reminded me a lot of learning to play piano as a child, learning to
make the fingers bend perfectly in the right pattern over and over
and, like learning the piano, I drilled so much that, eventually, my
fingers would start tapping the correct pattern without me even being
aware of it. I would be sitting in class, listening to a lecture and
suddenly become aware that the hands on the desk in front of me were
going through the rotation: rage, skewer, boiling blood, rage, pound
down, skewer, rage, boiling blood, pound down, rage, skewer, etc.
But, unlike playing piano, where the patter never changed and there
was nothing to think about other than executing it as precisely as
possible, raiding meant being constantly on your toes. You had to be
ready at any second to move to a new enemy or get out from under a
deadly attack, or to use a specialized ability that wasn't part of
the normal rotation but would be extremely useful in that situation.
To make this easier, we also positioned all the buttons for my main
abilities around the screen so that I could see if they were off cool
down without having to fully look away from the main action. But,
although this was always useful as a precaution, in time, the rhythm
of the rotation came to be so deeply ingrained in me that I rarely
had to check the cool downs.
Another thing we
had to do was to download and install several program that were meant
to help us play better. Chrstiana had some related to her spells
but, for me, the main one was a threat meter to show me if I was
doing too much damage and was in danger of pulling aggro from Svalin.
We also both had to get a program called ventrilo, vent for short,
that would allow us to talk through the computer so that everyone in
the raid group could communicate simultaneously and not have to waste
time typing out things. I was excited and curious to finally be able
to hear people's voices but I was worried as well as I have never
particularly cared for the way my own voice sounded. Once we had
gotten our headsets set up and calibrated, Christiana wanted me to
practice talking to help me get over my “stage fright” but I
absolutely refused, fearful this would confirm how bad my voice
sounded and make it absolutely certain I would never talk to my guild
mates.
Finally, it was our
first raid night. I was so nervous my hands were sweating. I
touched my fingers lightly to the keyboard and felt the keys, but
only barely. They seemed almost to waver and slide back and forth.
In a panic that I had messed up my positioning, I glanced down. No,
they were still perfectly placed for using the special interface
Christiana and I had spent hours designing and testing. We had taken
the precaution of arriving early and, as usual, the open space
outside the doors to Zydakar, the beginner raid dungeon, was packed
with people waiting for their groups to arrive and I felt intimidated
as most of these people probably had more raiding experience than me.
I wondered if any of them were checking out my equipment and
whispering to each other about how under-geared I was. I even saw
some people from Murd3r H0b0 Allianc3, our server's premier raiding
guild. Of course this couldn't be their main raid team who had
completed Zydakar ages ago, probably even before we started playing.
This must be a secondary team they were training up to understudy for
their main team if need be.
This is a short story sample.
Read the full story here.
© Amanda RR Hamlin 2025
