Gonna Get Burned...

My ATITD hardcore guild chat just blew up in a little firestorm of drama.

Me, I'm caught between trying not to smile wryly (because it's inappropriate to, y'know) and sighing in resignation at the foibles and humanness of humanity. But mostly the former, inappropriate as the emotion is.

If you care too much, you're gonna get burned.

This little comment about the universe (which I think I coined, I hope) has proven itself true over and over.

Of course, it's perfectly okay to care too much if you want to, and get hurt in the process. Just don't look so surprised when it happens, eh? Giving love offers the chance for betrayal, trusting others means you acknowledge there is the risk of being backstabbed. S' one of those laws of nature.

So anyway, the story. It all revolves around one of THOSE tests again. Yep, those specifically designed to generate high drama and push buttons.

The Test of the Pilgrim's Path.

One is supposed to gather together in a group of 7 people, no more, no less. This group of 7 people must work on this Test together for the whole duration - which can be weeks and weeks until a successful pass. One scores points by donating a shit-ton of materials and resources into various pilgrim shrines built all over the countryside, and it involves a lot of work and running around in a big group of 7 and strategic gaming to score the most points over everyone else, because only one group passes in a week.

The only good news is that you keep all the points previously scored if you don't pass, and you can continue to chase Sisyphus' boulder over the next hill and next week.

There are so many outlets for emotional push buttons, I don't know where to begin. First, you have the whole ingroup/outgroup thing, plus being chosen last (or not at all) for the ball game.

That one stung me, for all of five to ten minutes, before I got over it - which is pretty durned good an emotional hit considering I'm trying to be as relaxed as possible over it all.

See, my hardcore guild was, of course, gathering people for their groups of 7. And they had a group of six, and it was pretty much a toss up between two newbies - me and another guy. The other guy is a lot more achiever gungho about passing Tests, so I didn't push too hard over the issue, I only hinted that there were other people in the guild and maybe we should form two groups.

Turns out the remaining people in the guild were going to join other pilgrim groups, so yours truly ended up left out like the geek nobody wants to sit with. Ah well. So yeah, it hurt, for a while, but I am patient and willing to wait for the right opportunity and don't want to compete with the folks who care too much. So I get over it.

But this isn't a story about me. It's a story of the guild's group of 7, who are highly competitive, who ended up in competition with the a few other pilgrim groups - who contained the others in the guild.

The guild group lost twice in a row in two weeks now. They're frustrated. They're hurtin'.

And one fool girl in the guild group, naturally chatty, y'know, goes and blabs their group's test score to another guildie (in another pilgrim group) cos they were expecting to win after this week, and when they didn't, she held up her end of the bargain anyway and tells it to him.

Who then promptly (accidentally or on purpose or accidentally on purpose) blabs it to another guild's open chat.

Naturally, he claims it was all one big unintentional accident, and she claims that he's a lying backstabbing unsavoury git (and she has a spouse to support her too) and needs to tell everybody else in the guild (and his husband-yes, ATITD has same sex marriages) that he's a dirty rotten scoundrel who violated a trust placed in him.

So why are people concerned in the first place? Well, if you know another group's pilgrim score, presumably you can work your ass off a little harder in the week to beat them. And they will lose. Again. Next week. And that would suck, y'know.

And there's the whole trust issue. If someone tells you a secret, you're not supposed to tell it to anyone else, are you?

And of course, if it really was an accidental mispost/mistell as claimed, then it's a massive histronic overreaction from a chatty female (who have high tendencies to be drama queens, remember) who now wants to quit the game (or says she wants to) because of this.

*rolls eyes*

As with any quarrel, any disinterested or neutral outsider can tell you the problem. They're both wrong. And they're both right. And perfectly justified at the same time.

Chatty female screwed up. Shouldn't have blabbed the confidential info in the first place. Now she risks her ingroup of 6 high achievers (maybe minus one cos of a husband factor) being very angry at her if they lose again.

Other guy also violated her trust (accidentally or not) by announcing the test score to a whole group of other people. Maybe he just likes the other people more, maybe it really was an accident. Who knows. Only he does.

It's just a very human sort of thing to happen, y'know?

If I were in her place, this wouldn't have happened because being a paranoid fart, I would not have revealed my scores to anyone. I'm all too aware there are plenty of people who would game any kind of system to win. Trust no one too much is my operating rule.

If I offer trust in some small way, in the hope that people are generally genuinely good, I also keep a little back, in the expectation that I could very well get burned.

That's why I keep my own personal compound with my own personal stuff, so that if the unthinkable happens, I still have my own things to depend on. I try to make networks elsewhere so that I am not totally dependent on only one guild.

And of course, I shamelessly will happily 'parasite' off the more advanced hardcore guild while I'm in it - while being civic-minded enough to contribute my own share so that I'm not seen as a slacker or a true parasite.

It's all a kind of strange balancing act, methinks. And being able to spot opportunities.

I've managed to pass my first Test ever this weekend. The Test of the Prophet. One has to pick people you think are going to pass Tests. Pick the most correct and voila, you win. (Easy enough when I saw how all the members of my gungho guild were going all out for Tests. So I kept putting their names up. Sure enough, over the course of several weeks, the points fell into place.)

For the heck of it, when I saw that the second obelisk had opened and no one had built it yet in my region, I went and built a baby 7 cubit one. (Being a paranoid git, I was actually making plans for a 50 cubit one, just in case someone backstabbed me by building a bigger one on top of mine.)

Well, it's been two days, with two days still to go. Hopefully, all the rude people have left and all the competitive people have already passed and no one will contest it. But if someone does build on top of mine, I am braced to expect it - because it's human nature after all.

In fact, though my first impulse was not to give in and I was going to prepare to build over it and continue a nuclear obelisk escalation if someone did that to me...

...on second thought. It seems wiser all around to just leave it be even if it does happen.

Y'see, it takes 4 days and 16 hours to pass with this second obelisk. What's going to happen if we get locked into a massive obelisk war? No one passes. No one wins. The whole region loses because the required obelisk height gets bigger and bigger. More and more resources and time get diverted into building e-penii.

On the other hand, if I just let it go by, in 5 days, I can try again and build an obelisk of the next height. What's the other guy going to do? Build on top of his own? By not offering any competition or prods on anyone's ego, the total maximum obelisk height remains low. Materials saved all around.

Patience seems to be one of the keys.

After all, does it really matter who got there first? If we all get there in the end?

Yes, I know some individuals do care. Only human nature. But they also open themselves up to being burned. That's also one of those facts of life.

Choices and consequences... Life lessons from a computer game. :)