To Err is HumanJanuary 26th, 2008 by Monique
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If to err is human, then why do we always remember the times we fucked up in great detail as if it’s a special and rare occurrence–even in video games? I mean, in video games, it’s not our asses on the line when we die. It’s not real. And yet, I can recant millions of times I’ve done stupid things in video games and paid for it with my gamer pride.
Hell, I’ll even blush while doing so.
I mean, there’s the time I was playing Counter-strike on a clan server years back auditioning for a main spot. I still haven’t gotten over this one, and it was almost eight years ago. It’s de_dust and things are tense—we’re scrimming 
against a good clan from California. I’m the only one up. I have less than half health, and although the remaining Counter-terrorist probably has full, I’m not really worried. I have good aim and good reflexes. I’ve found the bomb lying directly in the hallway and picked it up, but I decide instead of potentially getting sniped when I go to plant, I’m going to actively seek out the remaining CT really quick.
This is already good, right?
Well, let’s just say I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in bomb site A. He wasn’t in the tunnel. He wasn’t at the bridge. He wasn’t hiding behind crates. He wasn’t anywhere. The room is quiet, laced with anticipation. “Fuck it,” I say. “I’m going to set up the bomb.”
And then the announcer says that CTs win.
Yeah, I ran out of time.
In my grand search for the CT, who was by the way afk under the bridge crouched against the wall, I had forgotten the server had shorter than normal rounds. While I’d thought I had roughly a minute more, I didn’t. My clan never let me live that one down, and for several months, I was relieved if I got killed after getting a few frags. Better dead than alive if your pride is on the line.
There’s also the time where I fought Tyrant for about two hours with a knife only to find out he was unkillable. It was Resident Evil: Code Veronica X and there was much at stake: my reputation as a gamer. I had boasted how I knifed my way through every RE except this one, and my friends had told me they didn’t believe it. So, being the idiot that I am, I picked up Code Veronica and put it into my PS2 during a study session.
If you’ve played Code Veronica, you know that there’s an airplane scene where the heroine Claire Redfield is escaping the prison. You also know then that Tyrant has somehow gotten onboard. I started knifing him. My friends were impressed for the first ten minutes.
Then one of them turns to me, and goes, “Hey, why isn’t he dead yet?”
“The knife has low damage,” I replied.
Almost two hours later, finally whipping out the rocket launcher to see if perhaps the knife had bugged out to do zero damage, I shot Tyrant full of missiles and he still didn’t die.
Consulting a strategy guide online much later, I discovered you have to hit a switch on your left to open the airplane’s door and physically push Tyrant out.
It was nice to know.
Here’s another Resident Evil memory I still feel embarrassed about: I’m playing with my old best friend in her basement. It’s Resident Evil 0 and I’d never played it before. I made it through the train level without saving and entered the mansion. Zombified apes set siege to me and I dispatched them without a second thought. My friend says that maybe I should save—it’s been over an hour and a half of gaming, and one save wouldn’t completely ruin my score. Plus it’s my first run through of the game, it’s not like we need an A on the completion.
I shake my head, and open the door to the next room. “This game is easy,” I say, turning to her. “Nothing could kill me here.”
Cue a shrill scream coming from the TV. I turn around quickly to see a giant mutated bug on top of Rebecca Chambers. Mashing buttons frantically I try to push it off me, but I don’t find it in time, and I’m soon faced with the bleeding text of “You’re dead.”
My friend slaps my back and tells me I’m awesome. I thank her, unabashedly.
The next one isn’t really about skill, so much as sheer stupidity. As one knows,
World of Warcraft isn’t exactly all about the camaraderie. Sometimes you hate guild members, but you play with them for the phatz [loot]. Sometimes you really fucking hate someone that’s your class. Sometimes you want them to di—anyway, I hated a guy in my guild. He was a Paladin, like me. It was in March of last year and we’re doing SSC prenerf, wiping to trash and Tidewalker. Finally, we down Tidewalker, and he’s bitching about loot and making racist comments on vent. I whisper my friend about how fucking terrible he is and how he’s the worst paladin I’ve ever seen, then proceed to link healing meters where I significantly outheal him.
The only problem?
I didn’t exactly whisper my friend that. I whispered the guy I hated with that. You see, somewhere in between the death of Tidewalker and pre-trash, he had whispered me asking if I was still doing Kings. So when I typed a reply, it replied to him instead of my friend.
Oh, yeah, oops.
Another WoW story: We’re donning our frost resist for Sapphiron, the second to last boss in Naxxramas. We’re buffing up, potting, flasking, chugging literally thousands of gold down for what should be a one shot, one kill. We are told to get into position at the doorway. For those who haven’t done Sapphiron, the doorway is right next to Sapphiron himself, who is a giant dragon that is about 100x bigger than a single character. One false step and you’ll aggro him, bringing doom to your raid and durability hits to all—as well as wasting those potions we all took.
I’m talking in ventrilo, about our strategy or something. I have a few whispers going. I’m not paying attention to much else other than the game. When the raid leader says get into position, I move. I play with the camera angle a little, mouse over my RDX buttons, and make sure I’ve got my healing assignment down. You know, the usual things to do.
I then knock a whole bottle of water onto my laptop. It didn’t fry my laptop, though, because I’m not that lucky–what it did instead was worse. Somehow, out of all the buttons to hit, the water bottle hit my autorun button sending my paladin careening into Sapphiron and wiping our entire raid.
Sorry guys? Enjoy your durability hits?
(For the record, no, they didn’t enjoy the durability hits.)
I think we all fuck up in real life and in video games–big time. And for someone who has been gaming before the lipstick and school dances, these mistakes aren’t too bad. I mean, I’ve been a gamer for over half my life; much like bad boyfriends and bad grades, bad gaming baggage is now a part of my life. And honestly, fallen water bottles? Bold claims? Egotism? That’s normal, isn’t it? Everyone makes mistakes and feels bad the next day–don’t they?
Or maybe I’m just terribad. Egotistical and terribad, no less.
Still, instead of a pint of ice cream over these memories and some Sex and the City, I think I’ll go watch the Lara Croft death tributes on Youtube. No offense, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sarah Jessica Parker’s nose, it just floats my boat a little more–though I’m sure hearing about other colossal fuck-ups would help even more.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
lol, i’ll chip in.
I remember one of my first times doing void reaver on my draenei shaman. I was the one of two resto shaman in the raid, so we were tasked with chain healing all the melee. Things are going along just fine. I’m dodging the sparks, and chain healing like a master. All of a sudden I see a mage with a skull over his head run in front of me. OH CRAP! Here comes another bomb! In my panic to strafe and run, I end up clicking my mouse madly. (I’m left handed and sometimes my right mouse-using hand spazzes out)
After a few seconds of running I start spamming chain heal like nobody’s business. I notice that no matter how many times I cast, the melee’s health keeps going down. What the crap?
I take two seconds to look up from my raid windows (I was a healer that kept all the raid windows for every party open so I could efficiently raid heal. However, they took up the better part of my screen) and see that I’ve been chain healing my wrath of air totem the entire time. looool.
Then the time a couple friends and I were fucking around with binds on vent. I made one that was ~~~~~~~ and had it binded to like, my S key.
We go into SSC the next day and I’m typing away in whispers during trash. All the sudden on vent every 3 seconds I heard, “Tilde tilde tilde.” “Tilde tilde tilde” “tilde tilde tilde” and the raid leader goes, “Who’s doing that?!” I was like, “lol that sounds like the bind I made yesterday. WAIT OSHI” and disabled it before I got in trouble.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I think it’s just human nature to take it personally when you mess up, especially if it’s something you care about (like video games =).
I was screwing around on Counter Strike a while back and was playing some matches with some random guys I had found. We’d been playing for a while and we set up a new match in an office building map. Towards the end of the match, there were two terrorists and three counter terrorists left. One of my fellow CTs said he was gonna go get the hostages and the other CT said he’d go with him. I told them that was cool and I was gonna go hunt down the last two Ts.
So I’m sneaking through the offices in the building and suddenly I see a guy come around the corner in front of me. I open fire -
blam blam blam blam blam
When the smoke clears, I’m lying dead on the ground next to one of my teammates. The guy I saw coming around the corner was one of the two other CTs leading the hostages out. Apparently I killed him, and then the other CT - who was either as confused as I was, or saw me in the middle of a TK and decided to kill me to try and stop it - mowed me down.
The chat channel absolutely erupted with “lolz” and “ur such a noobzor.” Not that I heard much of it, I just quit the game. And oh yeah, we lost. ><
January 27th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Gloria–
You reminded me of a healing embarrassment. My char when MC’d LoH’d Kel’Thuzad. Not even joking. Cringe-worthy much?
Adrenis–
Friendly fire always made me uneasy. It makes you a better player eventually if that’s any consolation? I always had bad luck with nades in that game, though. Most of my stories start with “and I saw a flash of light” and end with “when it cleared, I was dead.”
Do you still play CS? If so, wanna exchange Steam names?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/monique
January 28th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Remidns me of the time I wiped the raid in C’Thun. Twice. I was hopping around on the other side of the doorway, being bored, waiting for people to buff and get ready. Then I jumped right in frnot of the doorway. I meant to jump to the right, but somehow I pressed Q. Needless to say, C’Thun chain beamed the whole fully buffed raid and Vent exploded in e-rage. I apologised like a million times and people res again, but this wasn’t all of it. By now I’m so embarrassed and shocked by my stupidity and carelessness that I just want to run to a corner and stay still till everybody’s buffed and ready. I’m half way looking at the ground and see somebody on the right side res me. Ok, good. I will run there and wait in safety. I get ressed, and I start running towards the spot… And C’Thun beams the raid again. Apparently somebody had ressed me on the other side of the doorway at the same time and since I was looking at the ground… Yeah. I got -200 DKP for it and the eternal hate of certain people for being a “stupid bitch who shouldn’t be allowed to play WoW”. Some people did comment they were laughing so hard they were crying, but I guess the raid leader didn’t have enough sense of humour to spare me the DKP minus.
I ended up leaving the guild for 2 weeks and spending the time in the world of real life. I was that embarassed. It’s the same with all mistakes I’ve done in WoW. I still remember getting the core out of nowhere at Vashj and not knowing what to do with it since I had ignored the tactics watching House or something on the TV; it was something that the rogues were supposed to handle, so no problem! Right? Yeah right. I got raid leader aggro and an hour of lecture and reviewal of my raid section spot for that, and a massive punch on my gamer ego. Ouch.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:49 am
@ Monique - I actually haven’t played CS for a couple years now. I seem to remember having to uninstall Half-Life/Steam to make room for something else on my computer a while back (may have been WoW?), and I never got around to putting it back on later. If I ever get back into it, I’ll let you know.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Aside from the obvious Vael or Gheddon wipes, my personal fuck up du jour was when I was mting Grobbulus… and I messed up pretty fucking badly! I got everyone killed because I moved him around like a dumbass and then pulled too early the next time, ruining our wipe recovery lol.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Selphie, I think I love your stories. I never pulled the C’Thun wipe, but I do remember a great officer (sarcasm) purposely pulling C’Thun to wipe us when he was bugged. Not a fun memory.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
LOL at all the WoW stories. My “embarrassing WoW moment” would have to be the time I accidentally needed on an item I didn’t need…and won it. Honest to god, my finger slipped. Of course, someone else in the group needed it and I got flamed by everyone. I apologized like crazy and fortunately they let me complete the instance with them, but I didn’t say another word until it was over, I was so embarrassed. I’ve always payed very close attention when I need or greed loot ever since.
And wow, I remember the first time I played RE4 and I was NOT expecting Dr. Salvador to come running at me with a chainsaw. My head was his.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Alyssa, did you know that you can somehow avoid the chainsaw guy? When I first played, I died a lot. And I was upset. Then a few years later I learned you can avoid the chainsaw guy in the beginning by never entering a room and just killing villagers. So random of Capcom
February 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I still kick myself for wasting honor on that damned heavy cloak. *shake fist* Damned bugged out ratingbuster.
I’m a bit embarassed about how spazz I must’ve looked right after I re-did my ability layout now that you can just click your heal and auto-shift out to cast it rather than shifting first, and trying to maximize efficiency. Sometimes when in frantic pvp I’d accidentally hit faerie fire, when I meant to hit the feral version. Obviously randomly going humanoid and then straight back to animal.
February 12th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Ever accidentaly stepped on a switch during a LAN? Not appreciated
February 14th, 2008 at 8:01 am
My most embarrassing was when we were fighting maybe Gruul? Maybe Tidewalker? I can’t even remember the boss. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I died early like a noob, and decided that well, since they’re not gonna BR a lock, I’m going to go get some food. I grab a frozen dinner and pop it in the microwave. Unfortunately, I forgot that sometimes when I start the microwave, it blows the circuit breaker the computers are on.
No big deal, since I’m dead, right? Wrong. I game with my husband. He’s the main tank.
Fortunately, through MDs and his already substantial lead on threat, he still had aggro after I managed to sprint to the fuse box and restart the computers. When I die now, the officers remind me not to get food, and if I ever vanish suddenly, people are always like, “Lol toast?”
I had a paladin friend who was healing on Vael, and the first tank runs in and suddenly finds himself in a bubble while Vael runs amok and eats everyone. Turns out her DI button and Holy Light buttons were right next to each other. Ooops.
The legend among our raid, though, is the hunter who meant to left click to target Hakkar in ZG, but instead right clicked. This of course started his autoshot, pulling Hakkar and wiping the raid. Glee.