A Pounder Who Ponders

“And heaved, and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the dark sea.”

 

I’m thinking about that quote from Moby Dick as I await my next interviewee, one player by the curious name of BrnEye Pounder. 

He demanded that I meet him on a rocky beach surrounded by high cliffs in a hidden part of the Kingdom.  I’m enjoying the salty air, but needing to rest a bit from lugging in my interviewing equipment here from my boat.

Rounding the bend, I suddenly see a ship moving into the secret cove.  The dark, and cannon-infested warship has the pirate skull and bones flag flying, and I can hear the rowdy songs of its sailors.  I blush to myself when one of the songs appears to explain Mr. B. Pounder’s name.  I decide not to share this wee bit of TMI with you, my gentle readers.

A commotion erupts from the ship as a cannon fires.  I duck behind the chair quickly, but the strange laughter and a whistling I hear make me peek through my fingers.  I chuckle when I realize Mr. Pounder is the one who has been shot from the cannon.  He has a full laugh, and mischievous smile as he lands smartly on the beach near me.  He kicks the waves, breathes deeply and lets out a gigantic, raucous yell, “Chaos rules!”

I know it doesn’t help to encourage more of this behavior, so I sit quietly in a chair, take out my laptop to take notes, and point to the remaining chair.

He appears a bit peeved not to have gotten more of a reaction.  He says, “Don’t you know the difference between dessert and a desert?”

I’m mortified that he noticed my error in a previous blog interview.  Covering my eyes with my hand, I nervously say “Just tell me some stuff about yourself Mr. Pounder.”

He tells me that he is presently at level 137, and an elf mage.  He proudly wears the blue crashing wave of his clan Chaos in his name.  He says he first being playing KL about mid-year 2009, and that he plays as often as his RL (real world) will let him.

He begins to pick his teeth.  I think, “What is it with these players and teeth picking?”

I ask out loud, “Has playing ever become a distraction at work or in your home life?”

“I wouldn’t be the badass I am if it hadn’t!  Yes, a few times I’ve been caught on the game when I should be doing other things—both at work and at home.  It seems to be my luck when something big is going off with my clan, I have something going on in RL.  Just my luck!”

I start to ask the next question, but he interrupts with, “Aren’t you going to ask me about my clan?”

I nod for him to continue.

“I don’t know if you ever have heard of my clan,” Pounder says smiling wryly. “But I am a member of a little clan named C-H-A-O-S! The clan is the reason I still play. There was a point where I was going to quit playing due to the continuous posting on my wall of players whom didn’t like the way I played the game. One time it took me almost 20 minutes to clear my wall from these posts.”

“How did you come to join them?”  I ask.

“As a last chance effort, I BC’d a message to my army asking if there was a clan that was about playing the game how it was designed and had no crybabies in it. Thirty minutes later, a player name Halseth told me about Chaos. It took me little over 3 weeks to get accepted.  I bumped heads with some members right away due to a misunderstanding. But once I joined I wasted no time becoming a member and not just a name on a list of clan members.”

“Some people move in and out of clans pretty freely, having dual memberships, etc.  Would you ever do that?” I ask.

He gruffly stares at me, “NO AND I NEVER WILL! I will always be Chaos and I’ll be the last standing member if everyone else leaves.”

I notice my next “story salt” question is about his name.  But, I decide to avoid that one entirely.  “Mr. Pounder,” I ask, “Is keeping your personal identity a secret important?”

“Um, there are a select few players in KL that know personal info about me. And my clan knows the basics—well at least the members who care to know.  My real name is very average and sometimes when I say it others tend to think it’s just some random name. I’ve posted my picture a few times along with projects and toys I’m working on or building so I’m not paranoid about people knowing what I look like. I think anything involving kids is completely off limits. There are a lot of fathers in my clan, so we chat about situations going on in our lives.”

 

I surprise myself in how much I am enjoying this player talk about what KL means to him.  I realize I can’t judge a book by its cover, or a player by his name as the case may be.  I ask, “Do you have friends in the real world that also play KL?”

Pounder says, “I do have one who plays, although he’s not into it like I am.  Hell, I don’t think he’s logged on in over a month!”  He suddenly shows his white teeth, “I should have clan mates farm him now that I think about it!”

 

I ask next, “How many enemies have you made in KL?”

He’s LOL, now: “Yeah, I got a few! Oh yeah, I’ve got a group of enemies I’ve had before Chaos, whom still believe one day they will destroy me.  It hasn’t happened yet, and I wish them good luck!”

Mr. Pounder pauses, thinking.  “But I have a few players who were once rivals and or enemies and for the simple way they handled situations became good friends. One of them, whom I have to say is one of 5 players who I have the highest respect for and encourage players to follow their ways—I use to farm for I don’t know like 20 levels.  And I don’t mean once or twice a week. I mean daily!”

He continues to ponder: “One day I went to farm him and I hit him 2x's and lost both. In a split second he posted back ‘NO WAY! THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN,’  Which was a big slap in my face.  So I unloaded rest of my spirit, and out of like 15 attacks I won just one of them. Oh did that just make his day!  And, rightfully so.  I just sat there going over my equipment and stats and trying to make sense of what just took place while the smack talking was being posted!   Never, will I forget that time.”

Pounder seems a bit lost in telling the story.  His face is quiet and he has been looking up into the sky, following the occasional gull: “So I posted back that he deserved those wins and I was much impressed with the manner he handled all the time before with my farming.  It took me I want to say 8 levels before we could consider us an even match.  And through that time we got to know each other better.  We had agreed that we liked each other but should remain each other’s nemesis due to our history.  We joined our clans close to same time and grew closer as friends. He is more of a noble, honor player and is currently a high rank in his clan—like 2nd or 3rd if I understood right.  We now only hit each other to test out different equipment set ups.  Although I still call him my old foe, we even look out for each other while the other one’s camping.”

His face then changes to a scowl as he turns back to look at me, “So in this very rare case the fury turned in to great respect. But the rest of my enemies the rage remains!”

 

“Pounder, we have reached the end of our time together.  Let me close with this question:

Would you try other similar Storm 8 games?” 

He says, “I play a couple of others, not nearly as much as KL. I don’t know how long I’ll play KL.... part of the enjoyment is the interaction of so many different personalities in this game. So, I guess if there were to be less and less people playing I would hang it up then.”

I thank him for his time, and ask if he might need a ride or some type of cannon ball to get back to his ship. 

He smiles and then pounds the ground strongly with his left foot.  With that bit of magic, a multicolored, shiny surfboard appears.  He leaps into the heaving sea nearby, and quickly is paddling out to the ship.  He yells back, “Oh yeah, I want to give a shout out to my buddies Ashen and The Riddler!”

I wave.  His last word to me is “CHAOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

And there were really that many exclamation points.

This concludes my latest player interview.  Believe me when I say there are many more interesting characters to follow.  If you would like to participate I would welcome it.  Seek me out in KL, through generalcandel@gmail.com, or through my Palringo group ‘candel’s coterie on kingdoms live’. 

Comments

[Paradox]

Hey Candel, nice interview.
It is kinda annoying that I had to scroll all the way down and go to the second page to read this post. Could you make the newest appear as the first?

[Anti-Hero]

Nice Brneye.