so easter happened… (g2)

I ended up with a three day weekend this last week because the owners of my company are Catholic. For me, that’s just a huge score because hey, three day weekend! As you may know from a prior post, I’m not religious by even a molecule. I don’t believe much in a higher power, but I amaze at the phenomenal power in the human race to expand their knowledge and ability in ways their bodies were never meant to, yet spend a great deal of their lives trying to find and/or invent a reason why they are here.

Easter for me means one of the four major candy holidays. It means Spawn can have cadbury eggs for breakfast and I won’t care. I have never been one to regulate the chocolate in our house, most especially on holidays where its the the centerpiece of childhood. In turn, Spawn is one of those weird kids to whom binging means eating about four pieces and going off to find a bagel or something more wholesome.

I don’t get it either.

I guess it seems weird that I would honor holidays such as Christmas, Easter, etc… but I don’t. It was the period of my life where I only briefly could believe in the presence of magic. I think taking that away from any kid because I want to be a hard-nosed dick about religion is stupid. I may not believe in a higher power, but I’ve never try to force my kid to think the same way. Spawn knows religion is a journey of the individual, and whatever they believe should simply feel right for them.

Three-day weekend means we spent a great deal playing video games with each other. Both of us are spring babies, which by some sarcastic dick move in the gene pool also means we are completely allergic to most of the shit having orgies outdoors right now. If it grows out of dirt or orgasms yellow shit all over the place, I will be hiding from it or look like I have the worst combo of pink eye and COPD/bronchitis known to man.

When we play, I’m easily the one ooooohhh’ing and aaaaaah’ing over the visual eye candy going on all around us. So much so that Spawn goes to significant efforts to obtain the tools necessary to be able to maneuver me in game when I get distracted and wander off (teleport, tether spells for example). I love admiring the work of the programmer, I love when they spend so much making an environment immersive, its wonderful. I drive Spawn crazy. 🙂

I’ve been gaming long enough to have experienced my fair share of “d00d’s” along the way. These are guys who often bitch about “newbs” or “noobs” (new players) and generally seem to be having an overall penis size competition when among their brethren. They absolutely cannot handle criticism of any kind, are convinced of their own superiority, do not believe women are really gamers and everything is always someone else’s fault when things go badly. They are why I was pretty pissed with World of Warcraft when I realized it was not very supportive to solo play. They are also why I usually ignore the chat windows when I’m playing any game that has other players. Skyrim had my attention for a long time as a source of recreation simply because no one else was in it.

However, I like playing video games with my kid, especially now they are old enough to get into it. For the longest time, my kid was having to play catchup to my long history of WoW play, so we decided to start some characters from scratch that were different than what we’ve played so far, so we could get the experience of it being completely new to both of us.

Over the last few months of playing WoW again, since players can now interact with players across servers, I’ve noticed a huge reduction in the dickhead population. Dungeons have actually been fun, the people supportive, the feedback positive but informative and helpful, the interactions enjoyable. I’m a pessimist by nature, so it has been difficult to get comfortable. I’m always expecting it to end. This usually happens with the initial newness of an added expansion (or even a new game) while everyone figures things out and new people take up the game. It’s what I consider the best period to be playing.

Then the little pack of dicks who have spent most of their time power playing to get the best of anything that can be gotten finally get to the end of that, realize there is nothing else to do, then run through group events just so they can berate, criticize and blame anyone else they come across as “noob’s”. From what I can tell, they don’t even enjoy playing, it is simply something they can conquer quickly to lord over others, likely because they are rather small and insignificant otherwise.

This weekend, a religious holiday I might add, seemed to be the weekend they came back. For whatever reason, Spawn pointed me to a conversation going on in the general chat in which a group of players were discussing the disrespect of noob’s. They called them beggars, immature, made fun of their lack of knowledge, skills or gear. They speculated on how they were all probably twelve, etc and wondered what they would likely grow up to finally be.

Being the chronic shit disturber that I am, I joined in with “likely sitting around general chat-rooms bitching about how great they are and how everyone else sucks.”

It took a while, but I was honestly impressed that one of them showed enough self-awareness to realize I was referring to them. Of course, this garnered the you’re-nothing-but-a-level-x-character-you’re-the-exact-problem kind of response. I’ve been playing the game almost ten years, so I found it stupidly funny how the natural assumption is that if my avatar isn’t geared and leveled to the max, I have no credibility. It also exemplified just how stupid this bunch really is. The difference between us is that I can just enjoy the game and when I log off, I still matter… you know, in real life. For whatever reason, it seems like they just don’t, whether that is real or imagined.

Spawn and I did try to run a few dungeons, a couple were ok but we just seemed to perpetually hit the d00d’s one after another. The last being a particularly poorly abled player who was attempting to lead. I would usually not have a problem with this if they were somewhat humble about it. But the guy just didn’t have the right equipment, got in over his head, then wanted to turn and blame and boot everyone else, most especially the one person who had been trying to keep his weak behind alive (groups usually have an assigned healer). It goes without saying, most of us just left him.

I find it very ironic that on the day of a deeply religious holiday there seemed to be a higher presence of dickheads… are they the bored kids of the parents trying to honor the holiday? Does the sugar make some people stupid crazy? Was there simply a higher percentage of people online because of the holiday, a Sunday of all things? Spawn and I logged on again Monday to join in the holiday events going on and things seemed back to people being less shitty. You’d think every weekend would be like this, but it hasn’t been. It’s all very strange. I have seen the same anomaly occur during Christmas holidays as well. It seems the more religious or spiritual the holiday and the more empathy you are encouraged to embrace, the more some people show the shittiest sides of themselves online.

I wonder what the connection is…