"WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower...
...yes yes yes, that's enough; I'm sure you get the idea. The opening few lines to ’The Canterbury Tales’ by Geoffery Chaucer, (1342 – 1400), which even translated from Middle English to contemporary, is still borderline unintelligible, or at least hard work for the casual reader. The premise behind it is still pretty sound though; thirty pilgrims, of all sorts of types, meet in an Inn in London, and agree to all travel to Canterbury together, on their pilgrimage. To lighten the journey, they tell each other stories, and these stories make up the bulk of the Tales; sub-chapters called The Knight’s Tale, The Cook’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale and so on. (I think you can probably see where I’m going with this already…)
Written between 1387 and 1400, this is probably the first evidence of the Mini-Series as humanity’s dominant cultural form, and this medium lives on in Stargate: Atlantis to this day; The Incompetent Explorer’s Tale, The Weird Freakey Techno Space-Vampire’s Tale, etc. And frankly if it’s good enough for them, it’ll do for me too, as with the loss of momentum of Operation Cheapseats, I seem to be without a featurette, and that won’t do.
So the prologue then. My own role of narrator is currently in the capacity of Dwarven Priest in World of Warcraft, and assisted by my previously mentioned fascination with grouping, or ‘Playing MMOs as Intended’, whichever you prefer. In that capacity, I’ve met a great many bizarre, funny, eccentric, frustrating or just plain Stoopid, players, and this is the story of some of them. While certainly WoW is my current main thing, I do occasionally play other characters, and group in other games (listed to the left), so this needn’t necessarily be about WoW Weirdoes, per se.
Some may amuse, some may confuse, but all share the same common thread in that they have all had me, for one reason or another, staring at my monitor in disbelief and left me thinking, ‘I gotta tell someone about this!’
It has been a bit of a pilgrimage for me, these years online, although I’ve no idea what to see or do at the end of it all. And on that road, I’ve seen many things…
"WHEN that ADSL, with his bande widthe swoot,
The drought of data hath pierced to the router,
And bathed every harde dyske in such kbps,
Of which onlyne games engender'd is the flower...
(Edit: I'm now a Troll Warrior, but the principle is still the same...)