xp_logs | Doug and Angie

Friday evening, Doug is puttering around on his computer when he receives a sweet and thoughtful surprise from Marie-Ange. Nerd romance at its finest.

"Damn, this guy hits like Patchwerk on 'roids," a voice said from the speakers attached to Doug's computer. "Arcing smash for...uh...twenty thou?" A general stream of chatter continued as Doug watched the large green pit lord that filled his screen intently, tapping keys in a complicated sequence and occasionally speaking into the headset microphone he was wearing. After a tense couple of minutes, "Enrage, enrage, wipe it," came the call. Doug leaned back and checked another screen, where several tabs were open in his web browser. "Vis Maior and Forgotten Heroes got Felmyst," he reported, to varying reactions. "At least it's not Death and Taxes," one person opined. "Everyone rezzed?" A chorus of assent followed. "Okay, let's go get curbstomped again by Mister Brutallus."

After another spectacular wipe, Doug's concentration was interrupted by knocking at the door to his apartment. "Rez me last, guys," he said somewhat confusedly before setting his headset down and walking over from his desk to the door. He opened it to find a pizza delivery girl. "Um, I didn't order a pizza," he said after a moment, even more confused. "It's prepaid. Have a nice night!" the girl chirped as she headed back to the elevator. "O...kay," Doug said as he shut the door. He set the pizza box on an edge of his desk and flipped open his phone. [did u order me pizza?] he sent to Marie-Ange's phone. He picked his headset up in one hand and a slice of deep dish in the other. "Pizza's here," he told his guild around a mouthful.

Not more then a minute after Doug's guild sent him assorted notes of hate and violent wishes for his death, his phone chirped with a returned text message. [no i ordered us a pizza mushrooms and peppers is my half]. Another minute or so after that, and the door to his apartment opened, and Marie-Ange entered carrying a brown grocery bag in one arm, and with her laptop's traveling case over the other. "I also brought you some sodas. The Trader Joe's had that orange soda you like!" She set the bag down on the low table in Doug's living room and pulled out a six-pack of soda, and then pulled out several assorted snacks, some obviously purchased just for Doug - hot salsa and tortilla chips, and some closer to Marie-Ange's tastes - cheeses and savory crackers. "Oh! And they had the chocolate moshis, and the matcha ones!"

"Huh wait what?" Doug asked. "No, not you guys, my girlfriend just came over," he replied to questions from his guild. A chorus of derisive noises came out of his speakers.

"Is she hot?"
"Is she naked?"
"Screenshots or it didn't happen."
"No way a scrub like you has a girlfriend."
"Rosey Palm, amirite?"
"Does she have a sister?"

"Oh for chrissake," Doug muttered. "Angie, honey, you want to come say hello to all these dateless wonders who disbelieve your existence?"

Marie-Ange walked over, kissed Doug on the cheek and raised an eyebrow at the further comments on the screen, and shook her head, giggling. "Did I interrupt your killing that fish monster again?" she asked, loudly enough to be picked up by the microphone. "Or have you moved on and are killing the giant with the steering wheel belt?"

Doug hit a couple of keys and muted his speakers. "Actually, we're messing around on the PTR right now." At Marie-Ange's somewhat confused noises look, he elaborated. "Public test realm. They're about to put a new 25-person dungeon in, so before it goes out to everyone they have a server set up where you can test the new stuff."

The explanation only helped the confusion a little bit. "So.. you are testing to see if you can kill another different monster? That is not a fish? So it will not make those noises?" Marie-Ange asked, while folding up the now-empty paper bag, and carrying the two packages of mochi into Doug's kitchen. "Do you have an extra monitor? My laptop's screen is not very big at all..." she said from where she was moving a few things around in the freezer to make room.

"I am so confused." Doug typed quickly to let his guildmates know something had come up, then walked from his computer to the kitchen. "What do you need an extra monitor for?" he asked.

"Why do you have frozen rhubarb?" Marie-Ange asked, entirely non-sequiturly. "And the answer to your question is in the outside of my laptop case. It will make sense if you go look.." She looked at the package of food in her hand, turned it over a few times, and then put it back in the freezer, all the way in the back.

"I dunno, in case I ever want to make rhubarb pie." Doug shrugged and went over to Marie-Ange's laptop case. Reaching into the pocket, he pulled out a small card with a purple portrait of an elf on it. "Angie...why do you have a WoW game card?" he called out.

Marie-Ange closed the freezer, and opened the refridgerator door, putting the sodas inside to cool. "I thought that maybe I would try your fish monster game, and the cashier at the game store said that I could download the game from the website. And she was so nice that I felt bad about not buying anything from the store, so I got the card with the game time on it. And that is why I need a monitor because my laptop's screen is not very big, and you always use those big screens to play."

"I...buh...duh...okay," Doug stammered, scratching his head. "You want to learn how to play WoW?" he managed to string a complete sentence together. "Why? I didn't think you were interested in it? Beyond making fun of the murlocs, that is."

"I do like making fun of the fish monsters. They make a funny noise." Marie-Ange explained as she came out of the kitchen. "I am ... not all that interested in the parts of the game you seem to like so much, but you have done things that I enjoy because I enjoy them and you wanted to do them with me, so it only seemed fair that I should try something that you like very much." She sat down on Doug's sofa and slipped her shoes off, kicking them under his low coffee table. "And I do very much like all those cute little frogs that people have in the game. Any game with little cute frogs has something good in it."

---

"Okay, character creation," Doug explained after the game had finished downloading and patching. "This is where you pick what race and class you're going to play. You get to name your character and you can change certain aspects of their appearance until they look how you want."

"It is not going to take this long to load this every time I have to play, is it?" Marie-Ange asked, looking at the screen. "Or every time one of those patches is made? When do they make them?" She clicked her mouse a few times, and frowned at the screen. "What does this mean, Horde and Alliance?" She leaned in towards the screen, obviously carefully considering her options. "What is the different between these races? I like these little tiny ones. They are cute!"

"The first time takes a while because you have to download all the
previous patches, but after that it only takes a while when they put out a new patch, which is once every few months." Doug waved over in the direction of his own computer. "They're testing a new one now, so it'll probably be out some time in the coming month or two, I'd guess." He turned his direction to the screen. "Okay, so there are two factions, the Horde, and the Alliance. There's a whole lot of backstory about wars and stuff, but what it basically boils down to is that the two groups of races fight each other a lot. So if you're on a PVP server like mine, my warlock is always fighting the Alliance people, because he's Horde."

"Oh." Marie-Ange sounded disappointed, and pointed at the screen, where she had lingered on Gnomes. "So I have to be one of those Horde ones if I want to play the game while you are playing it and be able to talk to you? And these short ones are not a Horde?" She frowned, and clicked on the other column of icons, selecting several of the races and switching back and forth from male to female. "Doug, all of these are ... ugly. Why are they all so ugly? Ugh. This one looks like your person with the blue monster with the spikes on his head! They make girls of those? Why?"

It was obvious this was not going quite as she had intended.

"Um, yeah, about that," Doug rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. "I play an undead, which is Horde, and gnomes are Alliance. Alliance is generally the 'cute' races, and Horde are the uglier ones." He chuckled. "Which is kinda funny considering how dysfunctional all the Alliance leaders are compared to the Horde ones. In some ways the Horde are more 'good guys' than Alliance." He shook his head. "But yeah, if you really want to play with me and be able to talk to me, you'll have to be one of the Horde races. And on a PVP server like mine, you can only have characters from one faction, so you'd have to put a gnome on another server if you wanted to play it."

"The rules of your game make no sense." Marie-Ange complained. But she'd decided to give this a try, even if it meant playing an ugly skeleton monster. "Do I have to play undead? Can I be a cow monster, or one of these green people?" She further down the boxes, selecting the last one. "Oh! These are pretty! I thought all of the Hordes were ugly?" On the screen was a trim pointy-eared male character with flowing blond hair.

"Ah, the blood elves. I owe myself five bucks." Doug smiled at Marie-Ange. "They're kind of the answer to 'all the Horde races are ugly'. There's a whole bunch of storyline about why they're aligned with the Horde, but really what it boils down to is that the Horde finally get a 'pretty' race. I take it you'd prefer one of them?"

"If I have to look at this person while I am playing them, then I do not want to look at bones or green scaly parts." Marie-Ange explained, clicking through what Doug had indicated were the selections for hair color and style. "They all look so angry. Do the Alliances have an ugly race now too? I think that would make sense." She finally decided on the same long hair, in black, and an expression that looked haughty, instead of angered. "Did you expect me to pick a blood elf? Maybe I should pick a cow monster instead..." But her expression clearly indicated that a cow monster was definitely not what she wanted to look at for the next few hours.

"Well, I don't know about 'ugly', but not so much stereotypically pretty. The draenai are...blue space aliens with hooves, I guess is the best way to put it." He observed Marie-Ange's choices. "And yeah, all the blood elves are pretty angry. It's a storyline thing. Their race is addicted to magic, and they've been all but wiped out by war and stuff. But on the plus side they have great hair..." he joked.

He was right, all of the selections for hair had been to Marie-Ange's liking, except one. She giggled a little and then looked at the screen again. "And now I have to pick a class? That is my character's job? So.. how do I pick that I just want him to hit things with a sword? Can he do that?" The descriptions of the classes were helpful as she picked through them, but none really seemed to be what she wanted. Hit things. With a sword. "A warlock is what you play, yes? And they have the demon pets? I do not want that one. If I did, I would have to make a girl and name her Illyana. I do not think I want to do that."

'Never ever make blood elf warlock jokes about Illyana' was already one of Doug's instructions to himself. The Russian teleporter had a...skewed sense of humor, and there was no telling how she'd take it. Not to mention he'd been avoiding her since the events in Adenville anyway. "Your options are warlock, mage, priest, rogue, hunter, or paladin. If you want to hit things with swords, your best bet is probably a paladin."

"Do I get to make him wear armor and a cape? I want to make him wear shiny armor and a cape and have a big sword." Marie-Ange said, quite firmly. "And kill monsters. With a sword." She obviously had some very clear ideas in her head about the game. "When do I get to kill the fish monsters?"

"I smell a ret-noob in the making," Doug muttered to himself. Really, it didn't matter how she wanted to play the game, though. He imagined she wouldn't be doing much raiding or anything where her talent spec would really matter. "Yes, there are capes and armor that you'll get as you adventure. And big swords too," he reassured her. "As for the fish monsters, they aren't all over the place, but there are some in the blood elf starting area, so you'll be able to kill some."

After several attempts, Marie-Ange finally selected a name for her new Blood Elf Paladin, and watched the intro animation silently, seeming to take in all the information that the narrator had to give. The game's camera panned down finally into a lush green area with brightly colored buildings and the interface for the game appeared on her screen. "Now what do I do? How do I make him move? Where are all the monsters?"

"You can use the arrow keys, or w, a, s, and d to move around. W moves you forward, s moves you backward, a and d turn you left and right." As Marie-Ange slowly turned her paladin around, Doug pointed out another blood elf with a yellow exclamation mark over his head. "That guy has a quest for you."

It took Marie-Ange some time to get used to moving her character around, and then clicking on the quest giver. And then she spent some time reading the text, and looking around the screen. "And so now I have to go kill those... are those fish? The quest says they are manawyrms but they look like eels to me. Maybe they are mana eels." She moved her character over to one of the monsters and looked at the available actions across the bottom of her screen. "I click this picture of a sword to make him attack? What else should I do?" She clicked the attack button, and a red message appeared on her screen. ".. it says I am not close enough. But the monster keeps moving away... Do I have to chase the monsters? What if they run away? Do I fight them and run around?"

That last came out through slightly gritted teeth, and Marie-Ange's shoulders were hunched forward. She probably wouldn't come out and say it, but Doug could see that she was starting to get irritated. "You don't have to do this, you know," he told her quietly.

Ignoring her screen, Marie-Ange turned to face Doug. "How many times have you gone to art galleries with me, and spent the whole time trying not to text Forge or Mark to complain about pretentious artists or bad finger food?"

"Um, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes I -am- texting Forge or Mark about the pretentious artists and bad finger food," Doug admitted sheepishly.

Marie-Ange smiled a little, not at all surprised. "Yes, but that is not quite my point. Why did you go with me to those art galleries?"

Doug shrugged, embarrassed a bit at being put on the spot. "Because it's something you enjoy doing, and I don't mind doing it with you. I mean, sometimes the art is good. And sometimes the finger food is tasty. Mostly because you enjoy it, though."

Reaching across her laptop to poke the end of Doug's nose, Marie-Ange smiled. "That is why I am learning how to play your game. Sometimes it looks like it is fun, and I like the little frogs, and you enjoy it, and it means I can spend time with you while you are killing a giant fish monster and understand it a little more." She pointed in the direction of the kitchen and laughed. "And it means I have an excuse to buy little finger foods and order a pizza."

"Like we need an excuse to do that," Doug replied with a chuckle. "Okay, so you're a paladin. You can do a little bit of everything. Heal, do damage, and keep monsters from hitting other people if you're in a group. You only start out with a couple spells..."