This post kind of makes me seem like an asshole, but I'm really just awkward.

Compared to IRL, my rules for socializing within my guild are quite different, especially when it comes to fellow raiders and especially in a 25-man guild. When I'm out at a club or a party or even just standing outside of a building having a cigarette, I'll interact. I'll talk to people and find out what they're about. If someone turns out to be a douchebag, I can give the polite smile and incrementally edge away. But if we have similar interests and a good rapport, we can totally be facebook friends.

OMG FRIENDS WITH AVIA?!

However, when it comes to guildies, I've always kept a policy that I like to call the "office cleaning lady." That is, I'm my usual amount of friendly to anyone who wants to speak with me, and for anyone who does not, I'm just a person they see every day and that's it. It's not to be an anti-social jerk or because I particularly hate people. Rather, it's a strategy I utilize to minimize the situations in which I end up realizing that I spend almost twenty hours a week with someone I probably couldn't stand in real life. Sure, that happens outside of gaming too, and working anywhere inevitably involves being courteous to people one wouldn't necessarily invite to a birthday party. But in WoW, it's highly more likely that I could run into someone who thinks "God hates gays" or asks stupid questions like "If plants had feelings, would you still be vegetarian?" than I ever would in the protective bubble that I've created by living in NYC for years and then never leaving my apartment after moving away. Somehow, the raid environment feels more volatile than the real-life workplace, and every personal relationship or spat of drama has the potential to create toxic tension that makes raiding unbearably uncomfortable or to even dismantle the entire team.

That's not to say I don't develop and value friendships in game, because I definitely do. However, after years of semi-success as an office cleaning lady who manages to befriend one or two of the pencil pushers and trades a "good morning" and a "good night" with several others, I've somehow found myself willingly attending a convention at which almost thirty of my guildies from all over the continent are gathering and sharing the same house...

It's time to pull out my rusty social skills and polish them with some alcohol. I'll be back with some Blizzcon swag, embarrassing photos, and of course all the big convention news because RP Your Life! is heading to California this weekend.

-Avia.

I'm a liberal flower-picking hippie. Of course I have to care about this stuff.

The "Love is in the Air" holiday is so
gayovertly effeminate.

Oddly masculine...

Having played an MMO for five years, I've found that lately my vocabulary has been not so politically correct. Yes, "gay" does not necessarily denote a derogatory reference to homosexuals, and using the word to describe an in-game holiday that involves presenting faction leaders charm bracelets to receive pink cards does not make me a bigot. But as any post-structuralist will purport, language not only expresses what people feel, it also actively affects how they think until "just kidding, I know women don't exist to make me sammiches" turns into someone with a "make me a sammich" mentality for reals.

Unfortunately, certain words and phrases have become key elements in our, the MMO geeks', vocabulary, and we do need them to function and communicate our thoughts effectively. Lucky for you, my dear reader, I have taken the liberty of egalitarianizing common expressions to be more PC. I hope you will find these useful in your everyday dealings as a modern gamer.

Situation: Complaining about the nerfed state of WoW.
Not this: "And I was like hurrdurr move out of fire."
But this: "The game is so casual now that the mechanics are nothing but simple things like moving out of fire."

Situation: Gold farmers spamming trade.
Not this: "DIAF Chinaman."
But this: "Though we recognize that it is your livelihood to sell gold, it is inconvenient for us that you spam multiple chat channels and /yell concurrently."

Situation: Pugging with Latin American servers.
Not this: "Is everyone on Quel'Thalas fucking bad?!"
But this: "Because of the language barrier, I do not enjoy playing with people from Quel'Thalas since I cannot instruct them on how to prevent the adds on Corla from evolving. Repeatedly."

Situation: Interacting with girl gamers.
Not this: "Tits or GTFO."
But this: "I understand that you as a female will not gratify me by showing me your breasts, but I will be content in appreciating you as a player for your leet deeps."

Yea, they're kind of lengthy. Make macros.

-Avia.