History Lesson!

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I first started playing WoW about... 9 months ago. And it all started at a restaurant.

But let's give a little background first. I had always been a fan of video games, mainly N64 adventure-type games: Mario64, Donkey Kong, Zelda, etc. First person shooters never did it for me (although 007 Golden Eye for N64 was a pretty sweet game. My brother and I had a lot of fun with that game in high school).

So about 2 years ago, I had bought a Wii my senior year of college (soley to play Zelda), finished playing Zelda, sold said Wii (I was poor!) and was videogameless. I checked out the World of Warcraft website a few times and thought the game looked pretty neat, but was immediately turned off by the 15 dollars a month. There was just no way I could justify that for a game that I might potentially not enjoy - besides, I didn't know anyone who played.

I graduated from college in May of 2007, got a job in mental health insurance, absolutely hated it, and resigned after six months. I halfheartedly looked for other jobs, and ended up waitressing at a restaurant near MIT.

This particular restaurant just *happened* to host a drink-up party in their back room for ROFLcon, a weekend long convention where all those famous internet people show up (xkcd, i can has cheezeburger, etc) and talk about being nerdy and how much the internet is rad. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Honestly, I wish I had gone last year. LE SIGH.

I was supposed to be working on the patio that night, but it was about to rain, or chilly or something, which meant I'd be sent home early - and I really wanted to work late and make some good money. The girl who was supposed to be working the ROFLcon party wanted to jet out asap because she had to wake up early the next morning for something or other.

So we switched.

So one of the first people to show up at this nerd convention is this guy.






"Hi, I'm Pete" he says.

"Great," I'm thinking, "pretentious emo-nerd kid comes to this convention, wants beer, will probably hit on me after he's had a few by quoting some modern philosopher that I've never heard of, or telling me to check out some new underground band called "Everyone Sucks and I'm Whiny About It." Awesome."

I ask him what he wants to drink, and he orders a Guinness.

The room starts to fill up, a LOT, and I'm running around getting all these nerds drunk. It's AWESOME. Drunk nerds are *fantastic*. And they all totally love me, too. I'm getting some major tips, from a lot of different people. It's an open bar, so all their drinks are free - so they're feeling pretty liberal with the tipping. PLUS, I'm getting an 18% gratuity on the entire bill from the guy who's paying for all this (Laughing Squid paid for it, I believe), which I *tell* people about, but they're like "Here, U can has MOAR tip."

Pete orders a few more Guinnesses throughout the night, and I forget to punch in about 75% of them (in my defense, I was trying to serve a room of about 60 people, who ALL wanted drinks, who are all moving around, and who all kind of look the same >.<)

But he's super nice about it, I apologize profusely, he's all like "I know you're busy, it's ok!" He's not at all emo or pretentious, and he's pretty hilarious. And he doesn't quote any philosophers, or talk about underground bands. And he's *really* polite. Which, when you're a waitress (or anyone, really), means a lot.

At the end of the night, he stays late to help me clean up the room (cute!), and then he says:

"Hey. Do you play MarioKart?"

Best pickup line, ever.

So I give him my number, and long story short, we start "officially" dating about a month later.

Early on, he says to me, "Um, you should definitely know that I uh, play a lot of World of Warcraft. There are these things called guilds, like a group of people that you play online with, in the game, and I'm the guild leader. And, well, we do this thing called raiding two nights a week, so I really can't hang out then."

I'm like, "Hey! I've really wanted to play that game! Can I watch you raid? Is that like where you beat big bad stuff? Is it awesome? Is it worth 15 a month? LOOK there's a free trial.... ok I'm totally doing this"

And he's just like... =O

So I started playing.

Side note: when you apply to our guild, you have to fill out a little form with information about yourself. The last item on that form is, "Tell us a joke." When I applied to the guild at level 22 or whatever (because even girlfriends have to fill out the app ^^), my joke was "I'm dating your guild leader."

Bwuahaha.

Next post: Why I chose to be a druid!

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