Online marriages can be a wonderful experiance. Especially to the female player.

He didn’t get into discussing kitchens and lack of footwear and buns in the oven, but, y’know, he’s probably saving that for Part II.

EverQuest 2’s first Fan Faire came to pass last week in beautiful Las Vegas. Here’s an official forum thread with the details. Don’t forget to check the 2nd reply on that thread with the SOE pics … including Smed (I could take him) and (creepy) Curt Schilling.

Also, aggrome has quite a few posts covering the festivities: this one is the first in the series.

Now, here’s my story from a past EverQuest Fan Faire. True story and I’m sticking to it.

If you’ve been around online gaming for more than two hours, I’m sure you’ve heard one player threaten to beat another player’s ass … IRL! If you’ve been around online gaming for more than three hours, I’m sure you’ve felt the same way yourself. Oh if only we could reach through the monitor and choke the life out of the asshats, our gaming experience would be that much richer. And asshat-free!

As usual, it will be hard to keep all the players straight, but here’s the setup: An EverQuest Fan Faire, couple of years ago, my guild had a gathering for those attending, to meet and greet … guildmates, servermates, and some of the server GMs drank the free liquor, also.

As you might suspect, I just went along for the (promised) refreshments; I bypassed all the Sony events. What the fuck was I gonna do there? Bitch and moan about zones that aren’t completed when an expansion ships? That was so five expansions ago.

I got to meet a few peeps from a rival guild that I was friendly with — met their significant others, too, what few there were. This one SO though … christ, she was a piece of work. Dumb as a fencepost and, I learned later, had been breeding with various men in her spare time. For sport, maybe, I don’t know. How she got time away from her small children to prance around at a Gaming Fan Event, I don’t know that either.

We’re walking through the resort lobby on the way to another bar (Foton was thirsty!), and the guy that the Fencepost was currently sleeping with (a servermate) did a doubletake, made haste towards some dude and hauled off with a right hook, momentarily stunning his target.

Notice I didn’t say that the dude was knocked on his ass, or had a bloody nose, or really even noticed the right hook other than to be stunned. (Ya, was that lame.)

You know how sometimes small athletes are described as “he’s small, but he’s scrappy” or “he’s wirey”? None of that applies here.

Before the stunned dude could react with a lame pop of his own, resort security swarmed and separated the two. (damn)

We found out, hours later, that both were perma-banned from the entire hotel chain’s properties and were given a stern talking to. (As if THAT will stop anyone, but better than a night in jail.)

I asked Fencepost, as they hauled off the two dudes, what was the deal there.

Her reply: “Oh, my boyfriend’s mad at that other guy cuz when we broke up a few months ago, I slept with that guy.” (as you do)

I can be slow at times, so I asked the obvious: what are the odds that her rebound fuck would be at very same resort as a fan event that she and her boyfriend were attending?

My god, what ARE the odds???

Her: “Oh, he’s here for the game event too. I met him ingame before *current boyfriend* and I broke up the first time.”

Aha! So the odds are astronomical, as I had suspected! And jesus, what did she mean “before they broke up”??

Me, still being slow and thirsty: “Ok. But still weird that they’d run into each other when we’re just hanging in bars around town!” A very large metropolitan city. With lots of bars.

Her: “Oh, I told *current boyfriend* where *other dude* would be. Kinda funny.”

… (that’s me, stunned and speechless.)

Me, thirstier still: “You are a piece of work. So who else is thirsty?”

Her: “Thank you.”

… (again, me stunned.)

I believe I owe an apology to fenceposts.

How do I know this? Because Lavishsoft advertises their EQPlayNice utility as reducing the amount of time dedicated to each EQ session. (Foton’s been around the block about 23,498,230 times. Anything that says it “reduces the amount of EQ time…” is a come on. i.e. SOE would not be pleased.)

But here’s where it gets good … RPGexpert asks, “I noticed on your website that you don’t play anymore, any particular reason?” Lax’s response: “I had actually planned on quitting EverQuest in the summer of 2000. My wife, whom I had actually only spoken to a few times in the game at this point, convinced me to keep playing, actually by asking to call me on the phone (the rest is history as they say).”

The rest of the interview doesn’t really matter at this point. Lax has already frightened the rest of us BEYOND recovery.

Really, how the fuck do you respond to something like that? He spoke to his wife only a few times IN GAME, she asks him to CALL ON THE PHONE … the rest is history? How ’bout NO, you crazy Dutch bastard!?!

Since blunt is your style, Lax, here it comes. Please do not pass on your damaged DNA. You are all that is wrong with online gaming.

Goddamn, good luck with all of that.

No small coincidence that most of the depravity comes from EverQuest, possibly the same would be true of Ultima Online (I didn’t put a lot of time into UO ever) — my theory on this is because EQ requires such a horrific time commitment, that the line between reality and fantasy blurs for some. Not to say that these assholes wouldn’t be assholes otherwise; they undoubtedly would. But it may be that the immersiveness of this niche fuels the flame.

Example III, however, comes from WAAAAY back. Back before there was an EverQuest, before there was an Ultima Online. I’m talking ’bout back to my gaming roots, man!, in a little PVP shooter called Rolemaster: Magestorm, previously chronicled briefly, here.

Since this game was so damn fun (fading memory can do wonders for how highly I think of a game) and there really wasn’t many other online games around at the time, there was a core of Magestorm players that hung out together almost every night … playing on the same team, playing against each other, trash talking, arguing about character templates, bla bla … and we all became quite friendly and close.

Some of us closer than others, as it turned out.

The one weekend, one of the regulars announces, in a conspiratorial tone (shhh, tell no one), that one of the female regulars (let’s call her BangsEmAll, to protect her gaming identity) is taking a trip to visit one of the male regulars (let’s call him CouldDoBetter, to protect his gaming identity). Most of us found this very curious, for a few reasons:

1. Bangs was in the process of divorcing the father of her children. And good thing too, since he was extremely abusive to her! So she said, and we knew she wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. (For crissakes, I was young, I believed any sort of shit people would tell me), and

2. Before this point, we had never imagined that people, who knew OF each other only through an online game, would be interested in meeting each other in real life, for what nefarious purpose, we could only guess … and guess we did! (For crissakes, online society was new. Did I mention that I was young?)

The next week, Bangs came back from her road trip and wasn’t shy at all about telling us that she and CouldDoBetter did indeed have sexual relations, many times and in many places and that they intended to continue, probably in other places. Well woopeefuckingdoo for you. We needed to know all of that, why?

Eventually, Bangs and CouldDoBetter moved in together, dragging along the youngsters to enjoy their new home. I will give CouldDoBetter credit here, for taking in that hosebag’s children and, from what friends tell me, was a very positive influence in their lives. (emphasis on “was” … c’mon! you just know this hosebag is gonna fuck this up somehow, don’t you?)

Fast forward a bit, and Bangs gets her divorce from the father, we all continue to enjoy battling in Magestorm, and then the shitstorms start arriving. The first one is named Ultima Online and the second one is named EverQuest. Bangs starts playing Ultime Online and falls in roleplay love with another UO player, marries the roleplay fiance, and starts spending every waking hour with him, maybe on their roleplay farm, I dunno. CouldDoBetter is not happy with the situation, probably because he is NORMAL (after a fashion).

CouldDoBetter puts his foot down, roleplay or not, let’s get away from this situation and go play EverQuest. *waits for laughter to die down* Isn’t it fun when you just know how a story is going to end? Most of the Magestorm crew had also moved over to EQ, so for a time, we played together. But then, it became obvious to Bangs that the rest of us just weren’t as commited to “winning” EQ as she was. So she moved on to other guilds, and other EQ challenges, and other online fake boyfriends.

Which became a problem for CouldDoBetter when Bangs started taking weekend trips away from her precious EQ, and ignoring her children, and quitting her part-time job as a temp. Eventually, Bangs and CouldDoBetter parted ways, much like Bangs parted ways with her children when her ex was awarded custody. Bangs went to live with one of the fake EQ boyfriends and did marry this one (in real life this time). She even got a FULL TIME job, or so she said. (By this time, I was old enough to realize that she could say it even if it wasn’t true.)

She never lost that charming penchant for sharing every aspect of her life with anyone that would listen: her sexual preferences, masturbation techniques, what her genitals looked like at every single moment, and all the different ways that CouldDoBetter sucked and made her life a living hell.

So this story really has a happy ending. She’s happy where she is, and we’re all happy that she’s elsewhere. Hosebag.

Of course, I’ve run across many thieves and cheats in online gaming, but I selected this assbanger for his completely-unrepentant behavior. I’ve seen my share of ninja looters, noob scammers, trade loggers, and loot whores — this fucker though … he was something else.

During our first few months on the EverQuest premium server, my gaming buds and I were in a raiding guild that spent a lot of time farming the Temple of Veeshan (just breaking into the NToV, for those who know what that is) and during our “free” time, we would farm the Kunark dragons, for fun and guild profit. A raiding guild in EQ burns through the platinum pieces faster than a crack ho with a bad shopping habit, so we regularly did plat raids.

One night, when the guild raid leader (my best bud) and I were offline, the guild slew one of the dragons and hit the jackpot, lootwise. The guild would have been set for platinum for at least a week except one problem … the loot disappeared. No, not a game bug — no one would admit to having the loot. (ya, it was a ninja problem. damn ninjas.)

For some reason, that became clear in hindsight, the Guild Leader accused my bud and me of ninja’ing the loot. And he didn’t make the accusations privately so we could defend ourselves and maybe clear this up, he voiced his bullshit accusation in the guild channel when we were still offline the next day. Later on, we both log on and are greeted by hate tells. (and a very good day to you, too!)

We both reminded the guild that we weren’t even online the previous evening, which a senior member in the guild (thankfully) remembered and confirmed to the murderous mob. One of the 15 year old punkasses suggested that maybe we had passed along the loot (that we never had seen) to one of our alt characters and that we should still be strung up by our plate boots.

Seeing that this bullshit was going nowhere fast, my bud and I called the GMs to come and check our accounts for the loot and reassure the guild that none of our characters had even so much as touched the loot. (This was back in the OLDEN TIMES when Sony actually had a GM/CSR staff.) The GM checked all of our characters and reported to a senior guild member that we were not the ninjas they sought.

Curiously, we didn’t see our much-beloved Guild Leader for several days … unusual, as he had been a daily player until the incident. You can probably guess where this is going.

Few more days pass, and one of our more industrious guildmates makes a character on our Guild Leader’s home server and does some snooping around with the /who all command. Sure enough, there he be, running around the common gathering area, auctioning off the purloined lewt, which also now includes the entire guild bank. (thanks for stopping!)

As our industrious guildie put it so well and so succinctly, “Wow, he really had a lot to sell.”

Few years back, in lovely EverQuest, I was playing on the premium server. This server was, by this time, only premium in its monthly fee; there really weren’t any benefits to playing there other than a lower population (albeit ALL level 65 characters of end-game raiding caliber). Hail, nightly races to whatever spawns we could scoop up!

Two of my fellow servermates were a real life married couple that had also originated from my home server, so I was very familiar with the kind of shit these two skanks would pull in the name of “roleplay”. Naturally, I didn’t acknowledge their existence and, fortunately for me, they joined a rival guild so our paths didn’t cross very often.

After they had been guilded with my rivals for a time, word started leaking out about their cyber antics … and I don’t mean antics with each other. *nudge nudge* Being the jaded gaming hag that I am, I don’t give much credence to cyber rumors — it’s one of the standard insults, particularly useful when attempting to insult a female: “Soandso cybers everyone!” “Soandso is really a guy, irl!”. You get the idea.

Apparently, Skank One and Skank Two decided to step up the cyber a notch because Mrs. Skank posted naked pictures of herself on their guild private message boards. How do I know this? BECAUSE THEIR GUILD SHARED SAID PICS WITH THE ENTIRE EQ GAMING COMMUNITY. How do I know the pics were really of her? Because Team Skank became infuriated and started threatening lawsuits and, basically, confirmed that the pics were genuine.

There were also rumblings that Mrs. (and Mr.) Skank had been trying to work out various real life hookups with guildmates. (run, run very very far away!!) As they never solicited me or any of my real life buds, I don’t know how valid this is, but I have a good guess.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the pics have made their way over to my home server’s privately-run message boards. Several pages of flames, hearty laughter and almost-audible wretching later, Mrs. Skank calls up the message board host company to complain and issue the standard Skank Lawsuit Threat. (wtf, how is anyone else responsible for your hosebaggery?) Host company is the employer of an EQ player from my home server, and he is promptly fired for (I’m guessing) moral turpitude — which frankly was not HIS turpitude, but the Skanks.

The message boards were shut down and eventually found another home, away from the Skanks, although if you were to visit the new boards to this very day, you will find a subliminal “FU Skank” in the logo and a warning to not post the Skank pics (even though you might be very tempted to do so). I’ve heard that you can Kaaza the pics, if you knew the Skanks’ character names and if you were very very very very very drunk and possibly had a serious head injury also.

That, in a nutsack, is how to create your very own Legendary personal p0rn. Legendary, in more ways than one.

O please. That is so five years ago and has been done to death.

Not that I blame him for being shocked; the first time I heard of such a thing, I was shocked as well. SWG is his first MMOG so it’s understandable that the seamy underbelly of MMOG society is repulsive and nauseating to him. To experienced gaming hags like me, it’s just business as usual.

It’s been my observation that in any online gaming society, there are at most five, maybe six normal people. I AM NOT BEING CONSERVATIVE HERE. We work, we interact with real, live people every day (with a certain amount of enjoyment), we have other interests besides catassing our way to gaming riches, we think cheating other players, even if it’s JUST A GAME, is wrong, etc.

Everyone else, all 1,995 of them on each gaming shard, server, et al, is the solid waste at the bottom of the septic tank. I know this to be true, and you would too if you’d stop hanging onto the delusion that human beings are inherently virtuous.

Still don’t believe me? Want examples? Hell, I could give you AT LEAST a month’s worth of examples, but since I’m inherently lazy (and virtuous), I’ll give you four days’ worth of examples. Tuesday through Friday … it’s story time.

And I’ve got some doozies.