Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Happy Mother's Day (a little early)

When I played WOW there would be times when people would say to each other over Guild, or Barren's chat: "you play like my mom."  This statement was never intended to make that player feel good.  What I use to say to those insulting people in defense of the poor faildruid they tormented was: "you wish you played like my mom."


My mom has maxed out the levels, of all her characters, on every server she plays on in WOW.  She has even deleted some of her alts (characters) to make room for new ones on servers she likes.  She quests, raids and PVPs.  She is über. (In fact, I think of both my parents as the ones in this video: http://mashable.com/2009/08/11/n00b-boyfriend/)


My mom started gaming back when we had ColecoVision, but she really 'got into' games when we got the Nintendo and The Legend of Zelda.  However, the game that really hooked her into the gaming world was the computer game Age of Empires.  That was her gateway drug to the MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game).


When I was just out of university and my brother, sister and I were still living at home, there were 4 computers in the house.  (Which seemed kinda ridiculous at the time... and maybe still is for a family of 5).  I think it was my brother who first suggested that we all play Age of Empires together.  So we did.  I think Alan, my brother, thought he would dominate the game, crushing us under the strength of his armies.  Imagine his horror when our sweet, gentle mother destroyed all of his forces, farms and towns.


This became the theme to almost all the times we played together.  Sometimes it would be me, and my siblings with my mom, and sometimes my dad would take one of our places.  But invariably my mom would play, and dominate the game.


Every game I would think: "This is it!  This time I will beat her!"  Then after a 15 minutes I would begin to panic and have paranoid thoughts like: "Where is she?"  "It's too quiet." "Should I risk looking for her and attacking?  She is probably close by..."  Then I would hear the frustrated, anguished cries of my brother, sister or father echo through the house as my mom wipe the digital board with him/her.  Then the real panic would set in.  There would be is a few minutes of frenzied building up of my defenses before she came after me.  Then it would be all over. And she would continue on to her next victim.


We really should have known better; my mom was a natural at the game, and she practiced.  She had my dad downloading fan made scenarios to play, as well as making her ones to play himself.  What we should have done was bonded over our repeated trouncing, and joined forces against her.  But we stubbornly remained fighting in the style of: "everyone for themselves".  I think part of the problem was that we were physically isolated.  We played in different parts of house.  If we had Ventrilo or Mumble it would have been easier to coordinate our efforts.


My brother was so desperate for a win that he went so far as to find cheat codes to defeat her. And I think the essence of his actions was why we didn't join forces against her: we all wanted the glory of bringing down mom for ourselves.


Never happened.


That's my mom: pwning N00bs and taking names.


Hoping your mom is as über as mine!  Happy Mother's Day!





No comments:

Post a Comment