Little Moments

It was Thursday evening and I was in Undercity trying to get ready for Naxx. To be honest, I was supposed to be ready already, as I'd logged out at Light's Hope Chapel in preparation for the raid, but then I realised at the last moment that I'd forgotten something and had to fly back to Undercity to retrieve it.

As I was flitting around the central area surrounding the bank, I noticed a low level character emoting /wave at me. I didn't recognise the name, but I figured it might be an alt of someone I knew, so I politely /waved back, not really thinking anything of it.

As I continued my running around, trying to get my act together, I noticed that the lowbie had done a /kneel where I'd just stood a moment ago. Was he... trying to kneel in front of me? Why? Was he roleplaying a beggar?

Several thoughts wrestled for my attention in my mind. The Pyrewood cluster isn't officially an RP server, but as a former RP server refugee, it still delights me whenever I see people with more of a roleplaying mindset. Then again, I'm generally not too keen on people begging strangers for money or boosts - though my response does kind of depend on my mood and how exactly they're going about it.

I walked back to him and quickly inspected the character. He was an unguilded level 10 rogue, dressed in nothing but some grey and white rags - definitely looking like a genuinely new player. "You look kind of poor," I commented in /say, before opening a trade window, handing him one gold, and then once again returning to the task of finding all my stuff.

This is when I noticed that my whisper window was flashing. I've separated whispers from the rest of my chat so I don't miss any messages scrolling by during the announcement spam that happens during raids, but what happens in practice is that I often miss my whisper window flashing instead and don't immediately see direct messages when I first get them. I'll usually see them eventually, but it might be much later.

In this case, I found two whispers from the little rogue. First: "Huhu, do you have 5 silver for me, that I can learn how to fight with a sword?" And then: "OMG, thank you very much!" I had a good chuckle and responded that I hadn't even seen his whisper; he'd just been too good at RPing being poor. "This is something I hear very often 😑," he replied. Finally, I told him to go forth to train how to stab things, and he promised to do his best.

I just loved this little encounter because situations like these are the sort of thing you just don't get in more modern MMOs. They have other parts that are fun, sure, but random community interactions like these are usually lacking.

Though I did wonder whether I had somehow placed a mark on my head now, as literally the next day, a level 38 from another guild whispered me to ask whether I was up for donating to his personal fund for his first mount. I gave him five gold. Is it all the Naxx gear that makes me look rich?

In totally unrelated news, except that it's also an example of a "little moment" I guess, we've got a new guild on the server that advertises as follows: "Are you a boomer? Have kids? A job? Big cock? Then <Quitting In A Month> is the guild for you. We've got an honest name to match our realistic expectations. Join us and be welcomed into a casual guild where you'll get some free rose tinted glasses." For obvious reasons, I'd love it if they actually stuck around.