The One Where I’m Simultaneously Proud And Ashamed Of Myself

I am a very easy-going person. I am shy and awkward, yes, but at the same time I like to constantly be surrounded by friends. These days most of my closer friends (thanks to video games) are not near my geographically, so I guess that should be amended to say I like to constantly be in communication with friends. I hate to upset people, which unfortunately does make me a bit passive/aggressive. I know that’s considered bad and I really try to stay aware of when I’m doing it and bring it to a halt. Luckily for my parents and siblings, most of my passive/aggressiveness is used on them. My point is, I try to be nice at all times because I am a nice person. I have a lot of patience, I’m very accepting, I am always willing to adapt to others, and I venture through life with a great sense of humor.

These things probably tend to make people think I’m a pushover; and I’ll admit I am one of those people who seems to be invisible a lot in the outside world. I’m the one who people step in front of at the counter even though I had been in line waiting. Or the one who finds the door shutting in my face thanks to the person who just held it open for the 3 people directly ahead of me. People talk over me. People forget to introduce me. But it’s not because I’m all withdrawn in on myself and looking at the ground. It’s because I’m one of those people who will automatically stay a bit back away from the counter in case someone decides they really need up there first. I’m the one who will start to hesitate as I approach a door being held open because I want the person holding the door to be able to make the decision to be finished holding the damn door. Does that make sense? I put everyone’s needs (needs that I imagine they have, because most of the time they are total strangers) above my own. But it’s not because I don’t feel I’m worth it. It’s because I think you’re worth it. True story. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It works out for me only about .005% of the time, but I still try.¹

I’m not trying to toot my own horn here. I just wanted to point out how I view myself (because seriously, I’m sure there are people around who would disagree with my previous statements. Even I can’t please all the people all the time. Though I do try my hardest.) before posting the below screenshot of a conversation I just initiated in WoW. We all know that internet anonymity can turn any average nerd into a troll. Well there are times when I find myself pissed off at some random person in-game. It’s not very often and it usually involves them ninja’ing (made that word up right there, yo) a node I’m going for. The reason that will piss me off is because I never race anyone towards a node. I see someone in the general area and I’ll just stand and wait to see if that’s what they’re going for. [See second paragraph for reference]. So after inconveniencing myself that way for long periods of time it will occasionally hit me the wrong way when someone takes my shit.

And when that happens, this type of thing happens:

I hate when I do this. It’s like I don’t have the balls to just be outright mean but I am to the point where I want them to acknowledge they wronged me. I hold back from outright asshattery (or try to) because Elfi is known publicly by a small crowd and I don’t want that name tarnished. So it’s a combination of a few ranty sentences and a few passive aggressive sentences and it’s all pointless. I need to learn to just ignore it. These people are certainly ignoring me. But then, maybe that’s why I can’t ignore it. If someone grabbed a node from me and said “sorry” or “sucks to be you” or “take that fucker” as they ran away, I really think I’d get a good chuckle out of it. They knew I was there, they acknowledged that something has just happened. But to not say anything makes me feel like you haven’t even taken the time to acknowledge my existence and that burns my ass.

In closing, I really don’t know what the point of this post is. I just got wound up after the above conversation and started writing. I guess to feel like I’m serving a purpose here I will toss in a quick suggestion to everyone out there to tell me how I can improve the above conversation, or how I can train myself to not say anything, or even how you handle things of this nature. I can’t wait to see everyone’s take on this.

¹ Disclaimer: I am not saying I am like this all the time. I do have my bad days like everyone else. I can be grumpy, whiny, irritating, and everything else.

So The Scroll Of Resurrection Seems To Be Popular

You gotta hand it to Blizzard, they know exactly what type of carrot to dangle in front of us. The Scroll of Resurrection seems to be going over very well. Heck, even I managed to find some poor fool… I mean, old friend who I could sucker into using the scroll so I could get a cool spectral mount added to my collection. Of course, I had to buy a 30 day game time card for him to use but oh well, it was worth it. In fact, speaking of adding mounts to my collection, I totally bought the Heart of the Aspects mount while I was at the store buying the card. That’s the prettiest “real money” mount there is, in my opinion. So I dropped $40 but it made me happy so it was money well spent.

I took the screenshot above after I had rolled an alt to check out a server for possible transfer and within my first 2 minutes there I happened to be standing next to two players who had just created characters with the scroll. It was freaky seeing all the achievements roll by. I almost wish I had a second account I had let lapse just so I could take advantage of the instant leveling to 80. Especially since I still only have 1 level 85 character EVER. Ah, the life of a slacker.

The One Where Trade Chat Can Be Entertaining

Most of my WoW friends do not understand why I keep an active trade chat window open. They wonder why in the world I want to expose myself to the immature noobs that seem to login just for the pleasure of trolling others in trade chat. To be honest, it actually serves two purposes for me:

1. Sometimes I have total noob questions (such as not knowing what an acronym stands for) that I’m too embarassed to admit I need to know… and if you wait long enough some noob in trade chat will ask the same question. And somewhere among the 37 lines of ridicule, someone will actually answer the question. Boom! I’ve learned something I needed to know.

2. I am basically a generous and kind person (please don’t ask Kimber to confirm, I do not believe she would agree) and I do approach WoW with a “do unto others” type of mentality. I also have very vibrant memories of how badly I struggled as a newbie player and how I was in awe of high level players who would run by and take the time to stop, come back and either buff me or kill something for me. Keep in mind this was pre-Wotlk, well before Azeroth received an influx of spoiled brat players who only think of themselves. My point is… I’m not actually enough of an expert in anything in-game to offer up amazing internet guides, so I try to help the world out by answering noob questions in trade. Of course, I’m smart enough to whisper them the answer instead of subjecting my words to the trolls.

Apart from the two things I mentioned above, I mostly ignore trade chat and let it just scroll by without paying much attention. But sometimes… sometimes… sometimes trade chat is very entertaining. *some language nsfw