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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.