"Yeah, sounds about right," he said. "Face it, dude, you're ready for PvP."
"But I hate PvP," I protested. "The whole reason I play World of Warcraft is because I despise interacting with people. I don't want to romp around with a bunch of twelve-year-olds with the collective linguistic skill of a capybara."
"You're preachin' to the choir there," he countered, "but you've said it yourself: PvE is too easy. Levelling up isn't doing it for you. Even your vaunted soloing of 5-man dungeon crawls are getting boring. What else is there?"
I sighed. "Fine," I said, "I'll give it a try."
---
The Arathi Basin began to fill up with Horde preparing for battle. Visibly nervous, Oa tried to hide her inadequacy by handing out buffs to everyone; she figured it was a polite thing to do.
"You there, paladin!" yelled a mage. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Uh," stammered Oa, "I was just, y'know... figured I could help..."
"Blessing of Might is a melee buff," huffed the mage. "Do I look like a melee combatant to you?"
Oa felt like an idiot, but before she could respond, the gate opened. The Horde poured into the valley, splitting off into groups in order to capture the resource positions. Oa was rapidly left standing alone, having no idea what to do. She felt her heart jump to her throat. Stupidly, she stumbled out of the gate and ran towards the nearest outcropping of rocks to hide behind.
She could hear the sounds of battle over the ridge. Her teammates were engaging the enemy, and here she was cowering and hoping no one would find her. "I'm pathetic," she cursed herself. "Some paladin I am. I'm supposed to be a natural leader, but the only courage I have is when I'm fighting predictable foes. I'm a phony."
She heard a sound, a footstep. Timidly she peered over the ledge. There was a night elf on a cat mount; she hadn't even realized until then that she could use her mount. "He's alone," she thought to herself, "and he looks like a hunter. If I can surprise him, I might be able to take him." Steeling her reserve, she summoned her warhorse; the mighty steed leapt from behind the rocks with a fierce whinny.
"What the-" said the night elf aloud. He panicked and ran; Oa gave chase. Through the basin the hunter zig-zagged, trying to shake the paladin, but she stayed with him.
He rounded the stable house, disappearing from view. As Oa came around after him, he leapt off of his mount, sending his pet in to attack her. "Surprise!" he shouted, firing a volley of arrows at her -- and that was when Oa saw his teammate, another paladin, rushing up on her. Three against one.
Oa froze with fear for the briefest moment. She swung her Sword of Omen, let Judgements and Consecrations fly, tossed dynamite willy-nilly into the fray. She encased herself in a bubble and healed frantically. Her strategy was nonexistent; she was quite simply doing anything and everything she could to stay alive. The only driving force of her actions was the sheer terror of death.
Then it was over, and Oa was panting, and sweating, and she felt on the verge of tears. She heard another noise behind her and swung around; it was a blood elf, like her -- a hunter by the looks of him, walking up to where she stood. Behind him were a troll shaman and a tauren druid.
"Whoa," said the tauren, looking over the battlefield. At Oa's feet, three corpses laid bleeding into the fertile green earth.
The troll whistled. "Three on one," he said. "Pretty impressive."
The hunter said nothing, regarding Oa for a moment, then offering a simple nod.
Oa averted her eyes from them; she couldn't look them in the face. There was nothing heroic about what she had done -- she had moved from a position of cowardice to a position of backstabbing, and gotten in over her head, and got lucky. Saying nothing to the group, she mounted her steed again and rode away in a random direction, wanting only to get away from the site as quickly as possible.
The three Horde got on their mounts and followed her. She stopped, turning to them. "Why are you hassling me?" she demanded.
"I'm sorry!" yelped the troll, looking embarassed.
"We just, you know," started the tauren sheepishly, trailing off a bit before coming back to his train of thought, "...we figured you knew what you were doing, so we decided to back you up."
"You're a paladin," agreed the troll. "You're a natural leader."
---
"So you liked it, then."
"I had a blast," I said. "I don't know why I waited so long. I didn't do incredible, but I was in the top third of the rankings."
He laughed. "I knew you were going to love it. Don't get me wrong, PvE and dungeons have their place, but if you're not doing PvP, you're missing the greatest challenge."
"This may be hubris," I pondered, "but I almost feel like I know what real war feels like. Of course, I was never in any true danger; it's just a game. But for a game, it managed to scare me pretty shitless. Real combat isn't scripted. It's stochastic, like an earthquake."
"And like an earthquake," he added, "all you can do is ride it out and try to stay alive any way you can."
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