Snake
I posted recently about a positive relationship that was mostly formed within the context of WoW. Today, I’d like to post about another WoW relationship.
Her character’s name was Mayfair. She came to our guild with her boyfriend with whom she was living and immediately became the darling of the guild. She was born in London, grew up in South Africa and had moved to the States in the last few years. She had a charming, intoxicating accent and was exuberantly friendly.
She and I hit it off immediately. We compared opinions on the best roleplay outfits in WoW, what style high heels we liked in real life, and why we both played Warcraft. She was understanding, intelligent, witty and unfailingly kind throughout our discourse. She feigned reluctance to speak in vent for a short time but quickly stole the mic as it were from everyone else. She enraptured the men of the guild by doing a spot-on impression of Lois Griffin from Family Guy and by being juuuuuust slightly flirtatious. Tasteful of course but flirtatious.
I became good friends with her because she understood the massive problems the guild had lurking beneath the surface. Favortism, ignorance, cliques, etc. She understood everything. The problems I had only discovered after months of thought and experience she picked up on almost immediately. She had a gift for perception.
We stayed up late many nights on ventrilo where she would listen to the rantings I had against the guild, against the injustices I perceived and she was nothing but encouraging when I talked about crazy ideas like starting my own guild. She was as good a friend as any.
After I left that guild I stayed in touch with her. Not long afterwards, she and one of our other mutual friends left the guild as well under bad circumstances. I asked if she had any interest in helping me form a new guild like we had always talked about but she was reticent for a reason I couldn’t fathom. I also didn’t fully understand why she was clinging to this other mutual friend with whom she had left the guild.
It didn’t matter to me, I only wanted her to be happy as she played. We stayed in contact for a while but our relationship fizzled slowly over time. I always wondered what had happened to her after I lost contact with her when it appeared she no longer played the game.
Fast forward a year and a half.
A few friends from that same guild Mayfair and I had both left so long ago suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I was happy to rediscover them and asked how Mayfair was doing and that’s when I learned the truth about her.
She was a con artist.
She wasn’t from London, probably hadn’t ever been to South Africa. She had stolen thousands of dollars from the boyfriend she was with when I first met her and had run away with the mutual friend with whom she left the guild at the end of the Burning Crusade. No doubt he too had fallen under her siren song and would be exploited, stolen from and abandoned. This was not the first, nor would it be the last time that this woman had assumed an identity with the ultimate goal to rob, steal and plunder.
I can’t help but wonder how much of my relationship with her was false. Its obviously best to assume it was all false, that she was always playing a game with me. Still, we spent many nights talking about things that I guess really only mattered to me. It was her constant reassurance that gave me the resolve to eventually form Nocturne some time later. She didn’t get anything out of those late night, private discussions. I know she was probably assessing whether or not I had anything she wanted but still, her guile and her illusions were so perfect that even now that I know exactly what she is I still can’t help but fall for them a tiny bit.
She’s still out there somewhere and while I feel sympathy for her victims past and present I still can’t help but be grateful that I knew her.
She’s very, very, very good at what she does.
To add to this terrible story:
Mayfair was claiming to have a terminal illness when she was living with the BF that she bailed on, who we felt no end of sympathy for because he always struck us as a genuinely nice fellow. She bailed on him to run off with the biggest scumbag I’ve ever known in this game, a married guy whose paladin went by the name of Mastris, someone who lobbied extensively to keep me from joining and becoming a full-fledged member of the guild my significant other was in (who he also sexually harassed). I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing now, but I hope it involves playing in traffic.
[Reply]
Zindo
15 Jun 10 at 4:36 pm
Not many people can punctuate true life experiences with “she was a con artist.” This story is fantastic. I imagine having an relationship so drastically retroactively altered would be a shocker, but congratulations on having gained from your relationship with her, unlike her victims.
[Reply]
Philosophy
16 Jun 10 at 1:11 am
It’s the sad truth but I’ve come across a couple people like this whilst playing. Although none of them on the same scale.
The guild I’m in now was a previously server first guild that had moved server then all came back when they realised the grass wasn’t greener. Some of the players stayed on our server in another guild and didn’t rejoin us when we “rose from the ashes” following a merger with my small guild.
The only reason I mention this is because a resto shaman joined us as a friend of somebody and quickly made herself a reputation. She was very vocal and whilst it was fine normally, when things went wrong she’d call people out even when she herself was playing terribly. She’d also, in trade chat, join in with the other people saying we were shit and that our glory days were past. She’d attention whore on vent in the middle of raids – basically whilst I feigned indifference and occasionally told her to shut up and heal we tolerated each other.
Even though she had a BF a lot of us used to play with she’d string along some of our more naive members and have them farming her shit and giving her gifts (massive amounts of cyber if the stories are to be believed). If some schmuck wants to do this then they can feel free but when she actively started dicking around with people it really annoyed me. I vented once at her for messing something up and then blaming those around her and things changed. It wasn’t just her mistake, but the way she’d treated a friend (using him for a couple months then puttin him on ignore), combined with a couple months of mutual loathing.
I got harassed by her followers both in and out the guild, left out of social runs we did and even as I found out later she’d been actively trying to turn people against me. I’d thought it was the vent incident that caused it but apparently she’d had a grudge against me ever since I joined the guild for no apparent reason. Probably because I was the one guy out of the people who chill on vent when we weren’t raiding who took her with a pinch of salt and called her out occasionally.
Now while this drama bothered me I had some great friends within the guild that she also hung out with. One of these guys became her new BF and pretty soon things changed. He left the server to join a world first guild and she stayed about constantly lamenting how shit we were. Eventually another argument followed and she left to join the server first guild. Who disbanded. And the remains joined us. Last I heard she’d dumped our friend after he’d moved country and his job to live with her. She used people and it was horrible to watch.
Obviously not on the same scale as yours shay. At least Mayfair was charismatic.
Echo´s last blog ..Update!
[Reply]
Shayzani Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
I think what’s scariest about these kinds of people is how they actually do manage to get seemingly sane and reasonable people on their side. Even knowing what I know now about Mayfair I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, to defend her. That’s just insanity.
Even people who seem entirely odious with no charisma like the person you described can recruit all kinds of people to fight for them. Its really unsettling.
[Reply]
Echo
16 Jun 10 at 3:09 am
Fucking hell, that’s amazing and horrible.
Gravity´s last blog ..The question that isn’t a question
[Reply]
Gravity
18 Jun 10 at 3:04 am
[...] Talisman is also where I met Mayfair who I’ve written about before. [...]
Leaders and followers, heroes and villains | 2fps
16 Aug 10 at 7:33 am