Project Lore

"If you reach 80 before I do, I will pull out my hair." Not the smartest thing to say to your competitive friends. Especially not with witnesses online. But it started off innocently enough. A couple weeks ago, I was enjoying a nice evening of playing WoW and chatting it up over Teamspeak with the RL friends in my small guild. I was commenting on how quickly a couple of my friends have been leveling. The guild leader's alt and one of my friends who is new to WoW had been playing together and already reached level 60, in the same amount of time that it took me to go from 60 to 70. But I'm not the fastest leveler by any means. I like to take my time enjoying the lore and quests, I get distracted in-game pretty easily by non-xp-driven tasks and to top it off, I just don't play quite as much as my buddies. They've been bugging me for a while about my not-so-hasty leveling process. Sure, the comments always are friendly, but I know they really do want me to get to 80 fast ("We want to start on those 10-mans, Pixie, hurry up already!"). So, I started to pick up the pace a bit in Northrend. And by the time I reached level 76 a couple of weeks ago, they were at level 70. Not too bad on my end. So when one of them commented that they would reach level 80 before me, I was feeling a little over-confident. And in a weak moment of expressing my frustration at their seemingly limitless play time, I said it. "If you reach 80 before I do, I will pull out my hair." As soon as they started asking how I would look bald, I knew that they wouldn't back down. Although I hadn't REALLY meant it seriously, it didn't matter. If I take it back, I lose. So I logged off that night determined to make it happen. Then life took over, and I didn't log in for two weeks. Every day that life kept me away from WoW, I dreaded more and more the thought of logging in and realizing that I had lost. Then, last weekend I finally got some free time back again. The first thing I do upon logging in? Pull up the guild window and look at everyone's levels. Turns out, RL kicked in for them, too. Or maybe just summer. Because they're only level 72. /Cheer! Now I have to get busy! Whether they start seriously or not, there's plenty of friendly in-game bets that add another aspect to gameplay. You could make it a race to complete quests under a certain amount of time, or time how long it takes for each of you to reach a certain level, or you could compete to get specific achievements before the other. What are your stories of wagers or competitions you've had in-game? Did you come out on top, or lose?

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