Some of you may have recently heard the touching story of Jeff Dunkin, a.k.a. Rurik Grvdiggr, a New York native with a unique, almost criminal, affection for Guild Wars 2.
He’s read every blog post, followed each developer’s Twitter account. “I watch every conference video, and was even able to find most of the developers and their families on Facebook,” he recently said. Despite his best efforts, he didn’t visit Gamerscom 2011 due to a court order issued against him.
“That was quite unfortunate,” said Jeff. “I would really have loved to play the game for a couple more hours and maybe even chat a bit with Ree Soesbee. There are still some parts of the lore I would put… differently.”
Since we last met up with Jeff, the April beta has come and gone and a flood of new video coverage of the game has hit YouTube. That is where, at least for Jeff, things sadly turned for the worse.
With the success of various YouTube channels covering GW2, numerous people started their own little channel. Recognising this new potential, Jeff started a “Watch ‘em all!” campaign, where he streamed himself watching every single Guild Wars 2 video on the web. At first, he watched video content on two different screens and trained himself to read two articles simultaneously. He modified the sound in such a way that the different video operated in different channels allowing him to discern the two.
Today, he operates with eight monitors at a time, listens to podcast while asleep and has his pet monkeys read out blog posts via a morse code pinching of his arms. After a week, the energy and bandwidth demands on his apartment brought police to his door for well-being checks, which he soon interrupted by barricading all entrances to his flat so any outside interference wouldn’t delay his Watch-a-thon.
Two nights ago, he was seen screaming on his Twitch stream. “I can’t do this anymore!” he shouted, blood visibly draining from his eyes. “One more centaur attack fought off by some incompetent elementalist and I’ll show my cat how Hulk treated Loki in The Avengers. And the way people fight, one would think dodging wasn’t even implemented in the game yet.”
At 5:41 a.m. this morning local time, police were called once again to Jeff’s flat, this time on several reports of “what sounds like a cat screaming, and five pounds of meat being slammed into a wall.”
He is due to be arraigned in court tomorrow on several charges, including 29 counts of animal abuse, which covers one cat and 28 monkeys who were either neglected for the last several weeks or put through walls, according to police reports.
Though Jeff’s tale is a cautionary one for what can happen when passion turns into obsession, another beta weekend is on the horizon. With that in mind, Guild Wars Insider asks – pleads – that you stay within your bounds and, if possible, check on your guildmates and Tyrian friends frequently.
Bear the monkeys in mind.
Something Silly and Something Stupid is an alternating weekly column written by GWI staff MouseBurglar and HAPPYcat. The contents of the column are intended to be humorous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
