A few years ago, I noticed an interesting phenomenom in online gaming; although it will be more conspicuous in the guild ecosystem, I have observed it also in the general populace.

One drama queen will be slain and finally, BLISSFULLY, is out of my gaming life, but, like lopping off a head of the hydra, another drama queen will arise to take the former’s place. After careful analysis (five minutes of drunken thinking one night), I concluded this was because nature abhors a vacuum.

Every stage must have a drama queen. WHY? I do not know, but drama queens are drawn to captive audiences like flies to shit. God love ’em.

Back in my EverQuest life, when I belonged to a high-end raiding guild, we had to endure a nightly live performance. For you noobs out there, a high-end raiding guild is like smoking EverCrack with a pressure cooker. I wasn’t really PLAYING EQ anymore, it was my second job and I was working it. Every night we had an assignment, and if it took two hours to complete (rare), I would get a full night’s sleep. If it took until 5 the next morning, then I got zero sleep.

I played with the same people every night, in just a handful of zones, killing the same handful of boss mobs, usually for zero personal reward, other than the reward of a job well-done and a guildmate pleased with his/her/its new elite lewt. (I am making that up … after about six raids, I was over the “helping others” thing.) Most nights we logged off barely speaking to one another.

Along the way, we recruited this druid, female (maybe), who, initially, was a valuable addition to our numbers. As time went on, my patience began to wear thin as she was CONSTANTLY chattering away in guild channel about her nonexistent sexual relations with her husband (did I need to know that?), what weird ass p0rn she had looked at while at work, or what her dog was doing at any given moment. And! she would end every sentence with lol.

Few days of that shit and she went straight to my ignore list. Sure, there were some embarassing moments when it was obvious that I had /ignored a guildmate, but the peace was well worth making up some bullshit lie why I hadn’t heard her seven responses to my question in a public channel.

Eventually, a few other guildies /ignored her also, to get some respite from the prattle, and it got so prevalent, that we had to arrange a system where we took turns taking her off ignore and reporting if she ever said anything important. I rarely took a turn — I couldn’t be trusted.

Fast forward a few weeks and the guildleader admits defeat in trying to reconcile The Ignorers and The Ignored. So he shitcanned her (after three hours of makeshift psychotherapy –comforting her while she sobbed, ranted, then sulked). W F E. Thanks for stopping.

NOT EVEN ONE WEEK LATER, one of our clerics starts up on the guild stage. How come she’s not the cleric lead? She’s just bitchy lately because she’s pregnant. Her hemorrhoids are so painful, she can’t sit through a whole raid (unless there was cleric loot coming up). Christ.

After a few weeks, I was begging for death.

I realize now that it IS too much to ask that we just play the game. Nightly dramatics, courtesy of the Queen Collective, are mandatory.

It’s always open mic night online. *insert sarcastic clapping*