A story of life, love, and WoW

Kerensky, a human mage from Archimonde, meets a woman through WoW. A real life female, for reals.

Summary:
Some might call me a fool, some might call me a sucker. I may be a hopeless romantic looking for love in all the wrong places, some may say I no idea what that word really means. What I do know is I did something, I took a risk and grabbed it by the horns.

What follows is a long story of how things don’t quite work out for him the way he hoped for. In case it gets deleted, the full text will be reproduced at the end of this article. Entertaining moments include his measurement of time (how long he’s known the woman, length of their trip together) completely within WoW terms. Just as entertaining, if not more so, is the outpouring of support, mockery, and advice from the WoW community’s cadre of elite relationship experts.

“hopeless romantic” …??? i hope this experience has taught you to start acting like a man!!! unless you are a girl, then this story was HOT”

“dude, you got used. end of story.

don’t be bitter about it though, it’s just in their nature. just please don’t get suckered again by another sob story.”

The original saga:

0. A story of life, love, and WoW | 05/10/2007 03:17:10 PM EDT

They say that all truth is good but all truth is not good to say. I’m still sharing it for anyone who wants to read it though, because I don’t want to bury it or ever forget it.

Summary:
Some might call me a fool, some might call me a sucker. I may be a hopeless romantic looking for love in all the wrong places, some may say I no idea what that word really means.
What I do know is I did something, I took a risk and grabbed it by the horns.

The following is a true story, the names of the people involved have been left out to protect their identities.

I’d like to think I’m a good mage, I’ve been around off and on since release. I’d like to think I’m a helpful person, I’m exalted in almost every BC faction because I re-run instances that I don’t need to for people who needs items/rep/badges. I don’t spend time with my family, I work full time for the Judicial Branch of the US government, don’t have any RL friends anymore, and spend most if not all of my free time on WoW.

One day… before BC even came out, about seven months ago, I met this paladin running Stratholme. Back before BC I ran that place so much, I collected a full stack (250) corruptor scourge stones… just to collect them. I can provide an SS of this or show anyone my stack in game if you so desire. This one run is special though, because I get invited onto vent. Low and behold, this pally is a girl. So after the run we kinda hung out.

We talk about stuff, get to know each other. I run things with her, help her alt out. She runs stuff with me, helps my alt out. Had a lot of fun doing those tier .5 quests right before BC hit, heh. Eventually I find out that she is moving to another country… Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, I said to myself.

However when she gets there, she ends up spending even MORE time online and on WoW, because things did not work out the way she had hoped after moving. Things being school, work, and the guy she met. So we continued to spend time in WoW and doing stuff in BC. She actually rerolled a mage so we could AOE together because she was so impressed at how I was able to AOE the heck out of everything.

So one day in early April she messages me says she wants to talk. Apparently things over there were falling to pieces, and now she wants to leave that country and go home. Trouble is, she drove all the way there and now has to drive all the way back. She didn’t want to do it alone and she was in a major financial crunch because she wasn’t working for all those months in that country. So what happens? She invites me to go on this road trip with her! Things were said, e-mails were sent, we exchanged pictures and phone numbers. I got a passport and a plane ticket and took a week off from work and I was gone, this was an opportunity of a lifetime!

Note: I did not go on this trip with the intention of doing you know what. I made this clear to her, and it was clear in my mind. I did however, expect to be intimate with her because of all the time we’d spent online over the past several months and because of the things we had said while organizing this trip.

There’s a quote from that Nicolas Cage movie Lord of War I’d like to share with you now. It goes something like: “The problem with meeting the girl of your dreams is that they become real.”

I hadn’t seen her picture until a week before I got on my flight. I never wanted to see her picture before that because I knew if I didn’t like what I saw, I wouldn’t be as nice to her as I was being. If I did like what I saw, I would have treated her differently as well. I was happy to just hang out with her online and have fun, she invited me on this trip.

When I landed… I found that she fit her picture almost perfectly… just her hair was a little longer. And God, she was beautiful. Lean brunette with a nice figure and even prettier face. So far everything was still too good to be true.

The trip itself, however, was a completely different story.

I offered to take our time, to stop in cities along the way, to go sightseeing, have fun doing all kinds of stuff, anything we could find. She wouldn’t have anything of it though. She insisted on driving for 12+ hours a day, stopping to sleep, eat, or for gas and nothing else. Driving from 7 AM to 11 PM every day. I paid for gas with my credit card cause she didn’t have one, and I paid for lodging at the motels we stayed at. I tried talking to her, and we did have some interesting conversations, but I could not convince her for the life of me to stop so we could do something! All we did was drive and drive… Eventually I was getting quite flustered, and started saying some stupid things in an attempt to understand why and what was happening, but that only seemed to make it worse. I could do nothing because she wanted to do nothing.

I left SFO Thursday night, landed in Montreal Friday morning, we reached our destination in Washington State by Tuesday afternoon. I went across the continental US by air and then back again by car in less time then it takes for $^&#ing Molten Core to reset.

I took a 6AM flight out from Seattle Wednesday morning, and was back home in San Francisco by noon.

Wtf? What happened? I couldn’t understand it. 7 months we get to know each other online, and when we meet she tells me that amounts to nothing? That she didn’t want to do anything? Just beeline straight home to Washington state?

I felt like I was coming apart, like I was out of phase with reality. What had I done so wrong? I exercise by going running five times a week, so I’m not a stereotypical overweight gamer. I’m not a bum, I have a decent job that I enjoy. What’s wrong with me?

I’d taken the whole week off for this trip, and being back so soon with nothing to do, I go online later that night, and she’s there too. Wtf? We blitzed all that way just to get right back onto WoW? We ended the trip on a better note that once we understood she was just looking for a friend, I guess I was aiming for something more. Of course though the time we spent on WoW was different, and definitely for the worse. We stopped running heroics together, and she stopped answering my e-mails…. So obviously something was still amiss.

So a week or so passed by and I get a random message from someone in her old guild while she was in Canada… “So was she a good %$#%? (rhymes with yuck)”

What the hell? Who the hell is this? Why are they asking me this? I blow them off and ask her, why is he messaging me. She says because he thinks I slept with her on the trip, and he won’t believe her when she says she didn’t, so now he bugs me. Rofl.

He bugs me again the next day and asks the same thing. Wtf? Now I’m not gonna blow him off, I want to know why he is even asking me this.

Turns out her mad blitz to rush home and not doing anything with me or anything I did wrong or right. It was because she was pregnant…. Not with the guy she moved out there to be with, but by this guy! The pieces of the puzzle finally fit in. She couldn’t see a doctor out there, so it was a crazed rush to get home. It finally made sense… He made it clear to me when I grilled him for information, and when I confronted her, all I got was confirmation.

When the trip ended, I was angry. I felt I was used for my money, everything that happened pointed in that direction. I tried to push it out of my mind, to forget it entirely. Just drown out the feelings playing WoW and let time heal the wound.

Now, after finding this out though, I don’t feel angry, or hurt, or even taken advantage of. She needed help, and there was literally no one else in the world who was available or willing to do what I did. Fly all the way out there, keep her company on the trip, keep her safe in case something happened, made sure there was enough money for gas and food and lodging. That was my role, and that’s what I did. That she neglected to tell me all of this at the time is immaterial now. It hurt me that she didn’t tell me this before we started, but I understand why she did what she did. It was never about me or her or us. It was about the baby. She trusted me enough to take me along on the trip, but not enough to reveal her true reasons until well after it was over because of what was really at stake.

Some might call me a fool, some might call me a sucker. I may be a hopeless romantic looking for love in all the wrong places, I may have no idea what that word really means.

What I do know is I did something, I took that opportunity and grabbed it by the horns. I am not ashamed that it ended in failure. I take pride in the fact I tried instead of letting it just pass me by and always wondering ‘what if’ afterwards.

There was an opportunity to meet someone special to me, I took it. I flew on an airplane alone to an unknown destination for the first time in my life with only a cell phone number to reach her when I landed. I took a foolhardy risk for a chance at finding love in the most unlikely of places. But I really did it, I took that risk and even if it ended in failure for me, it really happened. I do not want to hide from my past or what I’ve done or what happened, I want to celebrate and share the experience. Live and learn, and that’s what I intend to do. I do wish the best for her though, with all that moving and instability and now a baby on the way… I understand why she did what she did. I hold no resentment or ill feelings towards her, I only wish her the best in what is going to probably be incredibly trying times ahead for her.

For anyone who managed to read this entire story, I tip my hat to you. It’s long and windy, but I wanted to share my RL/WoW experience, so thank you for reading it. If you have questions or comments, feel free to post here or contact me in game.

- Kerensky

P.S. I do take some comfort in the fact that my tax refund paid for most of the trip, anyway.