Hey all, the inactivity on here’s been bugging me, so it’ll get a bump here soon, I promise (to you, the one reading this – and feel privileged. I mean “one” as in “you [singular], the one individual who’s eyeballs will be taking in these words besides my own.” Meaning this is strictly between you and I. Traffic through here’s been down lately, and, I mean, c’mon, can’t blame anybody, am I right? So, anyway, this parenthetical one-on-one has gotten a bit stretched, so onto the body of today’s agenda…).
If I’m lucky, you’re a gamer. And if I’m doubly lucky, you’re a gamer in your mid-twenties or so, and have probably heard of, if not played Blizzard’s ‘Diablo II.’ I found the game when I was about eight and played it like it was my job- nay, religious duty, and my favorite playable class was The Necromancer.
Not that I’ve always had a bend towards corpse jockies (called such by an issue of ‘The Shaman King’ in Shonen Jump I read at about the same age, and I’ve never let it go), I actually began with a penchant for the good guy, so I leaned paladin. But after I grew up a touch and discovered the power of having pets and monsters do my bidding for me, pet classes have become a favorite.
When I was about sixteen or so, I’d started yet another play-through of Diablo II, and with a combination of luck, strategy, planning, and patience, I’d built the BEST Necromancer to date. With a focus on a narrow selection of skills and carefully laid out enchantments, aided with lucky finds, Xavier Gravetide (I was sixteen) had a near-infinite supply of mana, bone shields provided at no cost to him, curses also provided at no cost, and a Seal Team Six formation of skeletons, golems, followers, etc. Didn’t have a ton of health, but it didn’t matter – he NEVER got hurt.
Never.
Ever.
I made it through every on of each Act’s bosses without taking a single point of damage. Just send in the horde, back them up as necessary, curse here or there, and boom, job done. That was Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto the Lord of Hatred, Diablo the Lord of Terror, and Baal Lord of Destruction all pathetic dead goop under my shoe without a single hit landed against me.
But even all that fearsome might couldn’t stand up to the ultimate mega-villain…
Geek Squad.
After a while, the laptop I ran all my games on had lived its best life through to the end. It lived a hearty six years up to that point (and would go on to serve another valiant four more), but needed some resuscitating. And so, lacking any meaningful tech savvy myself, I asked my mom if we might take it into Best Buy to see Geek Squad.
They said, “Ah, sure, dude. We can totally fix ‘er up. Basically a hard reboot. Just do a solid back-up of what’s on it, wipe it clean, tune it up, and reload the data. Boom, good as new. Is there anything in particular you want saved?”
I’d never been more serious with anyone in my entire life: “Yes. Dear God, yes,” I said. “Anything and EVERYTHING to do with ‘Diablo II’ or ‘Xavier,’ keep it like your life depends on it.”
You…you know what they saved inSTEAD of those things?
The ‘readme.txt’ file.
The goddamn readme.
Anyway, the fall of that mighty hero that I sunk probably some 200+ hours into is what ruined my faith in humanity. You’d think it’d be something more dramatic on a world scale to do that, but nope. It was Geek Squad “agents” murdering Xavier Gravetide through sheer incompetence.
Ciao, everybody (again, meaning YOU, person reading this).
PS – And to address any concerns or would-be waggled fingers, I wound up not ACTUALLY being all that torn up about it and the “ruined my faith in humanity” thing was more of a joke. I actually sort of thought of it as an honor, to think that I’d built a character so strong that only a force from OUTSIDE the game was powerful enough to kill him.
The Light of Day 