This past weekend, I had a rather bizarre experience that could only occur in an MMORPG, where your character’s name identifies you more uniquely than your real name.
Once or twice a week, I play a level 65 Tauren Hunter that I am slowly taking to 80. The other day, as I was working on the Nesingwary quests in Nagrand, I get this whisper out of the blue from a player we’ll call Drakuru: “Matt, is that you?”
Surprisingly, I wasn’t too shocked by this. Our guild leader sometimes calls me by my real name. I didn’t recognize the character name, and the player wasn’t in our guild…but we all have unguilded alts. Maybe this is one of her secret alts, I thought.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said.
“I thought so. Leveling your hunter, eh?”
“Yep,” I said. “I think he has a better shot at reaching 80 than any of my other Horde characters.”
“What level’s your DK?” Drakuru asked.
“Level 62 Orc DK,” I said, “but I decided I don’t like playing a DK. I don’t want to tank.”
“I thought you had a Blood Elf DK?”
“No, I don’t have any Blood Elf alts at all,” I said.
“You sure?” Drakuru insisted.
“Yeah, no BE’s here.”
“I coulda swore you ran me through SFK on a BE DK,” Drakuru added.
“When was that?” I asked, “I don’t remember.”
At this point, I was really confused. It occurred to me that maybe the person I was talking to wasn’t the person I thought.
When Drakuru didn’t answer my question, I said, “Is this <insert guild leader’s name>?”
“Who?” Drakuru responded.
I repeated the name.
“Oh no, this is Marty from work. This is Matt I’m talking to, right?”
“My name is Matt, but I’m not sure I’m the Matt you think I am.”
“Are you sure?” Drakuru asked. “You sure talk like him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I imagined myself saying, in my best Alec Guiness voice, “I am not the Matt you’re looking for.”
Instead, I said, “No, I think you’ve got the wrong person.”
Silence for a long while. I imagined him trying to work out what was going on. Was I really “his” Matt, and was I fooling him, or giving him the brush off because I didn’t want to bothered?
Finally, he said, “Well do you know the name of Matt’s DK? He’s in your guild.”
“No,” I said, “I have no idea. What’s his main’s name and I’ll keep my eye open for him?”
Drakuru told me the name, and I agreed to send him a note if I found out the name of Matt’s DK.
It was really quite the bizarre little mixup. As I said, the ironic thing is that in this situation, my real name meant less than a character’s name. In real life, multiple people can and do have the same names. In an MMORPG, no one can have the same name; we are all truly uniquely named, though our characters themselves are little better than templates.
What are the chances, though, that I would have the same real first name as the person this random player is looking for? If he had said, “Chris, is that you?”, the story would be totally different. As uncomfortable as we felt once we realized the mistake, it’s become one of those odd incidents in the game that will remain with me long after I stop playing.
