I was a bit freaked out to see this message. I wasn't sure if the person on the other side had a good or bad memory of me, maybe I had trash-talked them (unlikely, but maybe I was in a party with someone who did trash talk them and they associated it with me), maybe I had corpse camped them on one of my world-PvP romps with various people, I couldn't tell! So I tried to keep my reply pretty neutral.
I was doing a bunch of quests with cutscenes, and didn't see a reply for a while, until...
Now I was pretty freaked out. I still didn't know if it was a good or bad thing! But I figured the person was probably from One, as that was the most likely way they would know my first name but not already have me on steam / Facebook.
I nearly screamed with joy when I got this response. The only thing that stopped me was that I was completely stunned. IT'S HIM! It's been a while since I mentioned him, but Soulcry was a mage in One. He was an incredibly dedicated and talented player, but more importantly, he was one of the most nurturing players I've ever met. A few people in the guild would get together and play DotA (the Warcraft 3 version), and I'd often ask if I could join - sometimes they'd even ask me if I'd like to join! To say I was bad was an understatement. I didn't know any heroes and as I mentioned in that blog post, I'd often random and rely on Soulcry to tell me what to do. I bought Diffusal Blade on Anti-Mage, I would Omnislash when there were lots of creeps. I'd be off farming while my team was dying. I was the world's biggest anchor, and whether we won or lost was probably due to how much I fed.
I've come a long way since then, and the last time Soul and I played together was when we randomly bumped into each other on the Bored Aussie server. I pulled my weight in that game as Dazzle. I had his email address from the time that I tried to meet up with him when I was in his city briefly, and we were even both going to be at the airport at the same time, but unfortunately, he was arriving and I was departing, and we missed each other. I felt weird contacting him out of the blue after I stopped playing WoW, so I never did. But I still thought about him. A lot.
To bump into him in Final Fantasy XIV was an amazing stroke of luck. It turns out he was invited to join our guild, and he was guildless at the time, so he accepted.
Anyway, his statement hung in the air for a while, "dont know if you remember".
I wanted to say, "Of course I remember you! You are the most amazing gamer I've ever met. You always kept your cool, you're such a great coach, you're so good at everything you do. I wanted to be like you for so long. I still remember that time TheShadow (?) raged at Moo for buying Mechansm on every single hero, and he just snapped when Moo bought it on Alchemist. You were trying not to laugh, but you didn't quite mute your mic in time. Or maybe you hit your PTT button by accident. I'd recognise your laugh anywhere."
Too intense. Too creepy. Gotta try again.
Take 2: "Yeah, sure, you were a mage, right?"
Pfft. Complete lie. The fangirl in me could never say such a thing.
I felt so nervous. It felt like an eternity had passed and I still hadn't typed anything in response. Even though most of my time with him was through WoW, I mostly associate him with DotA. Whenever I play well, I imagine him being proud of me. Whenever someone picks Vengeful Spirit (one of his favourite heroes), it always makes me think of him (he played carry VS, as opposed to my support VS). He just had such an easy-going nature that it made me feel good to be around him. He never made me feel bad about feeding, and always had something helpful to say. Despite that, you could really feel how intense he was when he was completely focused on something and it felt like he was good at everything.
So this is what I ended up saying to him:
Cool as a cucumber.
Then redbeanpork said it was time to play Dota, so I said bye and logged out.
And then I started kicking myself. What was I doing?! Even though we were in the same guild, that was such a crappy response. After explaining to redbeanpork that I wanted to wait a bit before we queued, I logged back into the game (and was put in queue to get onto the server!!!!! T_T), and quickly messaged him asking if he still played Dota.
He responded that he stopped playing a couple of years ago, but he'd be up for playing again if people he knew were playing. I linked him my Steam profile and he added me to Steam.
HE ADDED ME TO STEAM!
I'm really trying to suppress my innate stalker urges right now. I've only looked through his library. And found an old WoW video that he uploaded (I didn't watch it).
I finally worked up the courage to ask him to join us for a game of Dota 2, but it wasn't meant to be. :'(
We chatted for a bit, but there was Dota to be played, so the conversation died off.
I still feel like I'm on cloud nine.
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