THEM

The other guys. You know THEM (not us).

Scenario . . .

Esiwlil, a little level 6 mage just running for her life from wolves, defias gang, and spiders in Elwin forest runs into the village of Goldshire. Whew! As she stands panting in front of the inn, she sees and hears a commotion. What is that? A huge Tauren warrior, so far ahead of her in levels she can’t even see his level. The Chuck Norris of Warriors! She watches in horror as he swings his axe and kills 4 toons in 2 seconds. Her hands clench a little stick of a staff, but she has just learned a couple of new spells. She positions herself in the doorway of the inn, takes a deep breath and casts a bolt of pain. As the bolt barely touches the Tauren Hordie, she becomes “marked” and the Tauren laughs at her pitiful attempt as he slices through her without even seeming to move. She falls. Dead. She can hear the Tauren laughing even from the graveyard. As a spirit now, she runs back into the doorway where her body is laying twisted in death. Horror!

She can see that she is still marked and remains a ghost for 5 minutes. The mark goes away. She bends and caresses her own dead face and re-enters life. She is shaking a little and needs time to regain a bit of health and Mana (the force that allows her to use magic), but she is safe because she waited until she were no longer marked PVP.

The Tauren is still there. He is dancing on the body of his latest victim. Furious and fearful at the same time, the little mage yells . . . “Where are all the heros of this land!? Don’t you care that we apprentices of warcraft are being dealt death from this brute?”

Someone yells back, “Leave him alone!” or “Ignore him.” But, the mage looks around and sees that all the NPCs are dead and so she cannot speak with them. She really needs to speak with someone about this last quest, right now. But they are all dead. Killed by the Hordie, by the “THEM”.

She yells, “They are killing us all! We need help!” “Please?” She remains hopeful that some high level will come to rescue the denizens of the town of Goldshire from this horrible fate. Hordies. “They are dancing and making chicken noises at us . . . Where are the he . . .” Her voice falters as she sees a group of her allies riding (They have horses? Wow!) down the street toward the Tauren. Her allies are all very big, wearing armor that glitters and shines and they carry huge weapons.

Big fight! Tauren dies! Finally! . . . most of the others new toons make their way to the newly spawned NPCs to continue their gameplay, but not Esi. She looks at her saviors and /bows and /claps and /cheers and /dances!! She is ecstatic!! “Thank you, Thank you!!”

Those allies on horseback (they have horses!) . . /nod to her, turn and saunter back to the big city of Stormwind.

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In World of Warcraft there are enemies or “bad guys.” For example I might walk up to a computer generated character and this character gives me a quest (a job) to go kill, lets say, a character named “Hogger”. Now Hogger is a computer generated character that when engaged will fight and give me the chance to kill and loot him, thus completing a particular quest. I then go back to the quest giver to let him know I completed the task he has set me, and he rewards me with goods, money, and/or experience. (He has killed me several times!)

Hogger is NOT the THEM .

To play World of Warcraft you create a character or a “toon”. For example you may be human, dwarf, gnome, nightelf, draenai, death knight on the Alliance Faction or troll, orc, tauren, undead, bloodelf, death knight on the Horde faction. Since my character, Cantique is a dwarf, I am Alliance. That means all Horde are THE OTHER GUYS.

You cannot have both factions in one guild. You cannot have the other guys as “friends” in your in-game friend list. In fact they even speak a different language. You cannot send mail (unless the other guy is one of your toons and you are sending a piece of equipment called heirlooms which are bound to your account with Blizzard.) You cannot group with the other side to go into a dungeon. You cannot trade with them.

You can “emote”. An emote is something like /dance or /rude or /laugh, wave, hug, kiss, poke and on and on. You can purchase items they have placed on neutral auction houses. You cannot go into one of their towns or cities without serious consequences from the computer generated characters or from actual players!

Upon entering the other guys’ cities you activate something called PVP. PVP stands for Player (real person) versus Player. Suddenly any of those OTHER GUYS can attack you whether you want to fight or not!! (NOTE: There are different servers where you are always tagged PVP as well.) I happen to belong to a RP (role play) server. So, unless I do something to cause myself to go PVP I am safe from THE OTHER GUY.
Gotta go for now, /wave /bow ….