Gaming Terrors

BloodNGore84

I remember it like it was yesterday. The Wrath of The Lich King expansion for the World of Warcraft massively-multiplayer online role-playing game had just come out, and nobody thought more of it than myself, and my younger brother, Derek. I was 18, in my last year of high school and ready to take on the challenges that life brought afterwards. And, although my brother was only a year younger than me, he was my complete opposite. I was quiet, didn’t have a lot of friends, and rarely left the house on weekends even during school breaks. Derek, however, was very outgoing and was out every Friday partying with his friends, and during the weekdays would often go to have coffee with them. I think that he went through three girlfriends before I even had one. But there was one thing that we most certainly agreed on – video games.

So after we each got a copy of the expansion, we installed it and started playing like there was no tomorrow. After three months, I had already earned about 80 percent of the in-game achievements. Due to my brother’s constant nights out and occasional hangouts, I was way ahead of him in the game. At one point, after defeating the game’s final boss, The Lich King, I started feeling that the game had little left to offer, and with time, stopped playing altogether. Derek didn’t follow in my footsteps, as he still had a lot of work to do in the game. I even gave him my account so that he could play through the rest of the game easily.

Weeks passed, and I noticed that my brother wasn’t going out as often as usual. When I confronted him about it, he answered that it is simply because he enjoyed playing the game, and that he started playing with someone off of my in-game friend list, bloodNgore_84. I looked at him with confusion. I said: “Come again?” He again said the name, bloodNgore_84. I found this weird as I didn’t have anyone on the friend list, except for Derek and a couple of my real life friends who played the game, but none of them went by the name of “bloodNgore_84”. I explained this to him, he shrugged his shoulders and brought me to his computer to see it for myself. Indeed, there it was, on my friend list: ‘bloodNgore_84’. My brother continued on, saying that while talking to bloodNgore_84, he stated that he was a girl from a town near ours, and she was playing as a female blood elf paladin. I asked what the ‘84’ stood for. My brother said that it is probably her birth year. She didn’t give him her full name, she just introduced herself as Lucy. She confirmed that she didn’t know me in real life, just through the game, so I deduced that I added her to my friend list after we raided together or something.

The girl eventually gave Derek her full name Lucille Ferdinand, and even her phone number so they could stay in touch via text when they weren’t playing the game. During the next couple of weeks, Derek turned into a complete couch potato, his skin turned paler than a moldy cheese block. He never went out, started neglecting his schoolwork. All he did was talk to her, either in-game or over the phone, stating that she is a really influential speaker and that she knows a bunch of things about weird subjects, like suicide or life after death. It annoyed me as well as our parents. They then asked me to talk to him. I went up to his room, his face glued to the computer screen, and after calling him out about three times, he finally acknowledged me and responded. After telling him that mom and dad were worried about him, he brushed it off as a minor inconvenience and went on with his gameplay. I then flipped, and yelled at him if he is really ready to let his life fall to ruin because of some stupid game and a girl he’s never seen. He then admitted that he has no care whatsoever for the game, that he just enjoys conversations with Lucy, noting that she is very deep-minded and smart. He continued, saying that she knows a lot about religion, death and what happens after it, and that she completely changed his views on life and our religion, pointing to the crucifix, which once hung from his wall, in the trash can.

It was then that I asked myself: “Who the hell is this girl?!” After seeing the trashed crucifix, my face became pale and expressionless, as I walked out of the room staring at the floor. Countless other questions plagued my mind before I went to sleep that night:” “What happened to him? Did he lose his mind? If this girl is really this advanced, why does she go by the name of bloodNgore_84? Why does he crumble under her claims?” The next day, after I came home from school and ate my dinner, I noticed my parents were gone. My brother came downstairs and said that they went over to our uncle for a poker night. He followed by saying that he needed to ask me a favor. When I asked what the favor was, he said that he needed me out of the house for the evening, as Lucy was coming over for a WoW playing session, and that this could be his chance to ask her out and start dating her. I reluctantly agreed, because it really seemed like my brother was into the girl. I then noted that since she was born in ’84., wouldn’t that scare him a little cause she’s older? He stopped to think about for a few seconds, but then answered: “No, I am 17, and I know how to take care of myself.” I gave him the seal of approval, and went to have a drink with my little group of friends at the local 24/7 pub. “Bye bro, take care!”- I smiled as I left the house.

It was about 4 am when we called it a night and all went our separate ways. Driving toward my house, I saw what looked like police lights flashing in front of it. It really was the police. I exited the car and saw my aunt holding my sobbing mother. When I asked what happened my aunt said that when my mom and dad returned, Derek was nowhere to be found and the house was ransacked from top to bottom, and that my dad and uncle went in my uncle’s car to go look for him. My eyes tearing up, I burst into the house, there were policemen everywhere, taking notes and photographs. There were black stains across the walls, the chairs thrown all around, some even broken. The plasma TV was lying face down on the floor. I then heard the policeman say: “You’ve got to see this, chief!”

In the trash can in the kitchen, was a heap of crucifixes from around the house. I started yelling: “It was her! bloodNgore_84! That bitch!” The policemen looked at me as if I was some crazed drug addict. I ran frantically into my brother's room, turned the computer on and logged into my World of Warcraft account. What I saw made all the blood in my entire being go from warm to cold, and turned my face into a shade of white paler than snow. One user from my friend list was online, and the username wrote: ‘bloodNgore_85’. I sent a threatening message, and a dozen more after that one. I never received a response. I always blamed myself for what happened, because she appeared in MY friend list, and the question still haunts me: "Was I her original target? And if I was, why?". To this day, the number in the username keeps going up.