Can't touch this!

The race on horde side is over for tier 15.  Remix takes it.  Now the heroic fights start.

But before I even start waxxing poetic about heroic modes, I want to wax poetic about competition and gamers.

I grew up in a time when arcades were a thing.  I'm not talking about your Dave N Busters, or your mega bowling alleys with bars and pool tables and a few arcade games.

I'm talking about the places like Aladdin's Castle, or The Gold Mine (two of my memorable places in the local malls where I grew up).  Large rooms full of coin-ops, all of them making a million different noises, flashing lights, with people of all ages lining up or roaming around feeding quarters into each game.

When I was a kid (read as grade school, or elementary/middle school, depending on where you are from), the original Street Fighter hit the scene (1987 to be precise).  At the time, I was 9.  As a 9 year old, everyone in the arcades were much older and more imposing and threatening to me.  At that age, everyone is an adult, and they are all better at everything than you are.

There was an arcade code back then.  You put your quarter up on the cabinet, usually in either the left or right corner of the screen, and that signified to everyone standing around that "you had next".  Whomever lost, they gave up the controls, and you would step up and feed your money into the game, and you would take your crack at the current reigning champion.

For me, at 9 years old, that was the equivalent of asking the hottest girl in the world out on a date.  I was scared shitless.  For the longest time, I only played Street Fighter whenever nobody as at the arcade playing it.  I'd get the rare moment of time, usually very very early on a weekend when my parents would take me right when the mall opened.  During those times, I'd have my pocket full of quarters, and I'd play until other players showed up.  After that, I was too scared to keep playing, but I would stay and watch.  I noticed trends, learned all the "special moves", and on those mornings when I could practice alone, I learned how to play.

My first time playing against these "adults", I was pretty much shaking.  By this time, Street Fighter 2 had shown up (1991), and I was now 13.  Yeah, four years and a new version of the game later is when I grew the balls to try to play a real person at the game.  To me, they were all college guys, and they were loud, obnoxious, and they cursed and made fun of you and that was the first time I really learned what "trash talk" was.  A real cocky asshole was playing as Guile.  He played defensive, using sonic booms and flash kicks, since you could charge up those moves at the same time and still be blocking attacks constantly.  It was an infuriating play style, and it worked on most people.  Everyone's instincts are to play aggressive, moving in and jumping in and getting into their faces.  This guy was patient, and knew how to wait people out for the right moment to attack.

So I picked someone that, at the time and the meta game that was played most of the time (read shoot fireballs constantly), nobody ever picked.  Zangief.  I took my time, timed my movements and jumps just as he would do the wrong thing against me, and I would use his rediculously damaging throws and tossed the guy around, because you couldn't block a throw.  His defensive way to play would let me walk right up to him and man handle him all over the place.  It pissed him off, it made the crowd go nuts.  Because nobody played Zangief.  Nobody.  And this little 13 year old kid just did it and kicked the crap out of the guy.  My hands shook the entire time, I was sweating, I was ready to vomit.  I have no idea how I kept breathing, I was so scared the entire time.  But I won.  And that feeling, that right there, there was no greater feeling in the world, no where else to be than right there, right then, beating an adult, and hearing people around you, total strangers, cheering you on.

Since then, realizing I was actually pretty good at games, well then on, I started to take a new sense of satisfaction from beating people in them.  I hated losing, I lived for the win.  And I wanted it and expected it every single time.  The games would change, I would get older, and over time arcades would close and move to home consoles and pc's and the internet for multiplayer experiences, but I played them all.  I crave that win.  I still do.  I crave it in WoW, with raiding and with pvp (I just recently got back into WoW pvp again).  I still play LoL too, and I like to think I'm good there as well.

I'm a competitive person.  So is my wife, and everyone on my raid team.  We killed Lei Shen last night.  After about 30 or so pulls, and changing up our strat a couple times, but we finally killed him, and we did it first.  Not first for the server, Impudence has that honor.  And we don't compete with the few handful of 25man teams, there aren't any on horde anyways.  But for 10 man, we're number 2, and for horde, we're number 1.  And it feels damn good.

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good right now.