WoW Guilds: Relationship Advice

World of Warcraft is a great gaming passtime, guilds can be a blast and assist in many areas of your playstyle. Its pretty funny to see the responses, however, when a fellow guild member decides to ask for real life advice in a heavily game-centered environment. Here’s a little example that crept up on Ethereal Legion‘s site, a WoW Guild on Bleeding Hollow.

Caulderon, who’s in Highschool, one of our lead tanks, and a guild officer asks:

How do you ask a chick out?

Just simply say “Will you go out with me”? or would you say “Are you doing anything friday night?”

This is my dillema.

There are a few canned responses of: “Be cool,” “Be confident.” However, there are a few that stand out from the rest:

Tugsy writes:

I dont think a warcraft forum is the place you want to be asking these types of questions.

Meni writes:

As long as you don’t accidently introduce yourself as “Caulderon” you should be fine.

Sotel writes:

Actually laugh instead of saying elohel

Shadyfigure writes:

watever you do, if she responds:

you have done somthing right.

Shodan writes:

You’ve got to be suave. You’ve got to be debonaire. You can’t tell her you play an MMO.

Schizoid gives the most sage advice of all.

Fundimentally the dilemma exists because regardless of what you say, you are expressing interest in her without her having to express any interest in you first, which increases your chances of rejection and justifiable anxiety. To defuse this, you must talk with her for approximately 5 minutes (which really is not that much of an investment when you are trying to get an entire date), with the goal of getting 3 indicators of interest before you pop the question. So it goes like this:

Run into her when she is definitely not in a rush or too preoccupied, like in a library or something when she wants to be distracted and kind of not interested/matter-of-factly say:

“God, I’m trying to think of something to do this weekend. I don’t want to end up doing nothing.”

If she doesn’t like you she will say something like:

“Good luck with that, bye.” = Dude she hates you, bail now and don’t humiliate yourself.

If she likes you she will say something like:

“Hmmm… why don’t you just go to a movie?” = Indicator of Interest #1

If she takes the bait, regardless of what she suggests, you say:

“Yeah, I guess I could do that, but I still would need someone to go with. Give me something else, help me out here.”

If she doesn’t like you she says something like:

“You are such a loser you don’t have a friend to go with?” =Dude she REALLY hates you, bail, bail, bail…and save face.

If she likes you she will smile and give you another idea. = Indicator of Interest #2

Then you chit chat about her lame ideas for a bit and try to keep her smiling. Take about 3 minutes until you get another indicator of interest. If you get nothing then give up dude, she is probably wants you to leave her alone. Otherwise you say:

“Yeah, one of those might work. What are you planning on doing?”

1) “I don’t know yet.” Reply: “Hmm…well, I would like to see that one movie we were talking about. You should come with me.” Your accept ratio will be much better than just asking cold.

2) “I am definitely planning on something.” Reply: “Well, at least you have something to do. Have fun with that. Bye.” = Tough luck, dude, but she likes you, so try again next week.

3) “Me and my bicurious girlfriends were gonna have a pillow fight, but now that I think about it… things might be a lot wilder with you around.” Dude, you got game, score this one hard core (regardless of what she invites you to).

It is interesting that the close-ness of the guild encouraged Caulderon enough to ask for advice on a topic as RL (Real Life) as it gets…dating. Even though the responses were humorous and most useless…its as much as (and maybe more) than one can expect when asking a RL group of friends.