Wowtripping

So I was contemplating how we met Andy K. and how he could have turned out to be anyone/anything, maybe a fullonrapist? (sunny in philly reference). Thus I thought of how he could have been like the man I am going to blog about, who takes advantages of his wow friends and literally takes a shit on their clothes. I have linked a couple of friends the blog about Vance Phuoc the professional wow player who made a couple thousand winning tournaments. But to those who have heard this interesting tale of a man who spiraled into homelessness I will provide an Outline of his story along with links from those he had taken advantage of.

Vance was ranked 1 in arena for several seasons and was in the worlds top pve guilds and arena teams. This lead to him being sponsored and paid to play in tournaments. It also lead to him being hired by a high quality WOW blogging site where he is paid to blog about WoW. Being the nerd I am I read some of his blogs and his english / education seem pretty high caliber stuff or at least not that of a homeless shirt pooper. Thus from this blog called “world of ming” he became one of the most efamous wow players ever. However after several events, people noticed something about this amazing wow player…. He smelled VERY bad at torunments and at every one he would wear the EXACT same clothes shown in the following link

From this picuter the somethingawful esk people made hilarious jpegs and what nots. Then he did one more thing to discredit himself… he kicks a 12 yearold boy off a ranked 1 arena team at the last day of the season when the boy has probably spent 2000000 hours grinding pvp on that team because he “didnt want to share the title” details are in the blog im too lazy to find and its full of comments about guys ranting of how socially inept Vance is.

Fast forward a few months, a blog comes out explaining Vance’s situation which states he is homeless and asks his friend to stay at his house. The WoW friend (who also is the author of this blog) says yes, not knowing vance is homeless he lets vance stay about a week until he says enough is enough and that he knows that he is lying. He finds out that Vance is actually living in a LAN gaming place and when it closes he sleeps in the streets. So on the last night Vance steals the poor guy’s Ipod. That blog is right here and pretty worth reading (won the author 200 bucks)…..

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Zizeks-Blog/Serennia-stole-my-iPod

So this blog comes out and Vance is still working with the same bloggers as a paid blogger and to cover himself, he says he got a job and moved to new york. It is actually found out that he lied about going to new york and is actually still homeless in his home state of texas. After this the site fires him and he disappears completely.

Fast forward a couple months and another new blog comes out and apparently a super rich girl in the Orange County convinces her mom to give him 1000 dollars to fly him CA and LIVE with them while helping him find a job. This gets even more pathetic because he poops in their shirt drawers and ends up not getting a job and once again homeless the blogs that describe his sad story are here :

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/The-Re-Introduction-of-Trance-to-WOWriot-PvE-Coming-to-WOM-The-Phuoc-Lunis-Prince-Charming-ArenaCast-on-the-topic-of-WOM

and

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Serennias-New-Shirt

I am amazed that people are so kind as to take this gross man into their homes and provide care for him. Would we have allowed Koara / Droodtank to sleep in our homes before we even met him just if he said in wow “OMG ITS AN EMERGENCY PLZ LET ME STAY OVER”. Maybe?? and if we did, thank god he is not the type to poop in our drawers…. or is he….

ttfn!

Serennia Stole my iPod (Re-Blogged)

Serennia Stole my iPod

“The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep into the quick.” - To Kill a Mockingbird

So I met Serennia about two months ago at a LAN down the street from my apartment in San Antonio. It was a pretty nifty coincidence because I was interested in attending MLG Dallas running DK/Lock/Druid believing (correctly, I think) that the comp would be very strong come 3.2. Provided we could get an invitation, MoB was willing to send us given the extremely low cost of travel for two people already living in Texas. Unfortunately the MLG admins decided a 5 RMP cluster**** would be more entertaining to watch and we didn’t get an invite. A couple days later a friend of mine (Shouri/Snuggleme) approached me asking if I thought Serennia would be interested in pushing for FGlad, which he obviously was, so we made a new 3’s team and started to climb the ladder.

Now despite trouncing the entire BG with a 90% win ratio, playing with Serennia was pretty unbearable. Everyone knows Serennia’s a nerd rager, but I kind of assumed most of the stories told about him were exaggerated. Let me tell you- they weren’t. After every loss he would hold down his Vent bind long enough to let out a six second exhale and then proceed to nitpick every decision that we made in the game no matter how unavoidable the loss might have been, or that we’ve been playing for hours and just don’t care nearly as much as he does. After we got to around 2700, he insisted we keep playing against 1 point teams even though a lot of them were 2400 cleaves with a realistic chance of winning at least 10% of the time (enough to make queueing a losing strategy long term) and my/Serennia’s Internet occasionally disconnecting. Unfortunately Serennia had leader of the team and we had already paid for transfers, so we didn’t really have a choice but to go along with it. He wanted to play WoW 6+ hours a day, every day, with over a month left in the season.

He also insisted that Snuggleme play 2’s with him, even though Snuggleme hates DK/Druid, just because he wanted to get the title in every bracket. After three losses to Priest/Rogue playing as Priest/Rogue’s hardest countercomp, Snuggleme made it very explicit to Serennia that he was completely done with 2’s. But for some reason Serennia was hellbent on keeping the FGlad title from anyone else, and eventually we came to a compromise where Serennia would be content if Snuggleme and I played together and made an earnest effort to get 1st. Funny enough we went 104-3, including one disconnect, basically proving that it was Serennia that was holding the team back and this fishhead was making demands of us.

So after a week of the hell that is playing with Serennia, we get 2881 in 3’s which gives us a comfortable lead to get the title. Now we just have to sit and wait, get the title, and peace out off Hyjal. We kept our intentions of transferring off hidden from Serennia because he still had team leader and is a shady nutjob with a history of arbitrarily kicking people from his teams. When I mentioned today that this was the reason we had to lie about wanting to play with him in S7, this was his response:

[17:22] serennia: name more than 1 person that ive kicked frmo a team
[17:22] serennia: ever
[17:22] serennia: tigerlady aside
[17:22] serennia: go
[17:22] Zizek: 1 is enough
[17:22] serennia: rofl
[17:22] serennia: you retard
[17:22] Zizek: thats not exactly something normal people do ever

But of course the plan wasn’t that simple. Serennia messages me one day and asks for $120 to pay for repairs on his car. I tell him no, and a couple of days later he messages me at 3 AM asking if it would be okay if he stayed in my apartment for the night. He said his apartment was closed for “renovations” and apparently when his apartment complex does “renovations” their tenants are left with nowhere to stay for days.

I have a mild case of OCD, I’m not exactly a neat freak but sharing my living quarters with someone- even for one night- makes me really uncomfortable. Moreover I have a lot of valuable electronics in my apartment and thousands in my poker account that Serennia knows about. I reluctantly agreed since he sounded really pathetic and said he had nowhere else to stay for the night.

MONDAY

When I picked up Serennia from the LAN, he smelled like living death. It was really unbearable. As if his story that his “apartment” was closed for “renovations” wasn’t implausible enough to suggest Serennia’s actually homeless, walking within five feet of him would remove all doubt. He has one set of clothes- a long-sleeve shirt with khaki pants – that he just wears all the time like Borat. If you’ve seen the YouTube video of someone throwing water on him while he was sleeping then you know what I’m talking about because they’re the exact same. His socks were jet black and the shirt had pit stains the size of his head. Needless to say when he asked to use my bed, I immediately told him no. I was preparing to move to Austin within the week and didn’t have time to delouse my mattress. He slept on the floor and then one long, uncomfortable night later, the LAN opened and I dropped him off.

TUESDAY

I spent that night playing some live poker, and 3 AM rolls around and sure enough Serennia calls me again. I know the LAN closes at 3, I know Serennia is homeless, so I already know what he’s calling about. I decide not to answer and he calls me 3 more times. I go home around 4 and see that he also frantically messaged me on Xfire like 6 times. So now I get to enjoy another uncomfortable night having it on my conscience that I basically left Serennia with nowhere to stay for the night.

WEDNESDAY

I “call him back” at 10 AM the next day and he tells me that he was trying to get a hold of me to let me know that the 2nd place team was queueing that night (they weren’t), and I apologized for “missing his calls”. Fortunately that night I had a true alibi for why he couldn’t stay in my apartment since I was going to be staying in Austin overnight to finalize my new lease and finish my registration at the University there.

THURSDAY

Serennia decides to call me at 1 AM this time, and since I was still showing activity on Xfire I knew I couldn’t get away with just ignoring his calls again. This time I make it very clear to him that I don’t want him staying in my apartment, and I ask him when the “renovations” are going to be finished. He tells me Friday, which just happens to be the same night that the LAN he spends every waking hour has extended hours. I very begrudgingly agree to let him stay since this was apparently the last night he needed somewhere to stay. Before picking him up, I Serennia-proofed my apartment. I hid the power cord to my processor so my computer would be inoperable (I planned on spending the night watching Lost) and moved some of my expensive smaller electronics into my bedroom where they would be out of sight. This included the iPod touch my parents gave to me for my birthday. I pretty much never used it, but I planned to once school started back up again.

Over the course of the night, Serennia was complaining he couldn’t really sleep in my living room so he was going to try to sleep on the floor in my bedroom. It completely slipped my mind that I left my iPod in there, and come morning I was so eager to get him out that I didn’t think to check to see if everything was still there until after I got back. Sure enough, I check the cabinet where I put the iPod and it’s missing. I realized that there was no point confronting Serennia about it because he would just claim that I misplaced it even though I never used it and explicitly remember moving it there less than 12 hours earlier.

Truthfully the cost of the iPod doesn’t really matter that much to me, I have low living expenses and make enough from playing poker online that it doesn’t really concern me. What pissed me off was that it was a birthday gift from my parents, and when they came to help me move I’m sure they probably assumed I sold it because that’s more plausible and frankly less embarrassing than the story that I let some homeless drifter spend two nights in my apartment.

So Monday night rolls around and the LAN is back to its weekday hours. Sure enough Serennia messages me again asking to stay at my apartment again, this time with a brand new story saying that his lease had expired and his old roommate decided to move to Houston so he had nowhere to stay. This is- of course- just a big coincidence that the previous week his apartments were renovating, he can’t stay in his car because it’s in the shop, and he’s been using this LAN for the last month because his computer is being repaired on warranty. This time I have no guilt telling him no, even though he was practically begging me. I told him straight up at this point that I’m not an idiot and know that he’s lying, and really has no place to live. You can read the full transcript here (http://www.geocities.com/snuff_out/serennia.txt).

Amusingly he claims he has “plenty of money” and that if he finds a place his parents will cosign for it. When I ask why he doesn’t just stay with them, he says in truly dramatic fashion that there’s no time to explain and logs off.

Fast forward to today, I confront Serennia about the missing iPod and (as predicted) he denies it.

[17:24] serennia: and then we come back to the point of who would ******* buy a used ipod with new boxing, software, or components
[17:24] serennia: no boxing*
[17:26] serennia: even a ******* pawn shop requires all packaging im pretty sure and they pay 1/3 retail value which would be an amazing $50 if you say it was worth $150

Nevermind what he’s saying is just blatantly stupid and people steal iPods all the time (Chris Hansen even did a series about it!). I made no mention the iPod was taken without the charger. He knew without me telling him even though he claims to know nothing about it. When I brought up this inconsistency his story, he went off on some ad hominem tangent about things Zecks and Ohnoes said about me two years ago (as if I would still care).

I think we all underestimated just how ****** up Serennia really is. In one of his previous blogs (http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/Proven-Fact-The-Average-WoW-Player-is-a-Complete-Scrub), he hinted that he attends school , but I don’t see any way that that’s possible considering the LAN he lives at has shown him playing HoN every hour of the day for the last two weeks. In case anyone’s wondering, you too can view the SERENNIA TRACKER here (http://www.goxgaming.com/). Click on Status and you’ll see him right there at trusty computer #1 all day, every day, no job, no school, barely living off the meager paychecks Ming sends him.

Highest Rated Warrior (Re-blogged)

Another article regarding Serennia.

Highest Rated Warrior In The World Abandoned By His Own 5v5 Team

I would like to point out Serennia’s latest PVP video is full of false information. 14-1 vs Ming and 19-1 vs Neilyo, yeah right. Even in friendly’s using three different prep specs, I won 30-40% of the matches. Almost all of my losses came against his tanking gear. I have an overwhelming advantage against his PVP gear in every patch we fought and I can prove it any time. I am sure Neilyo can too.

With that out of the way:

If you are a fan of Serennia, the highest rated warrior in the world, you probably check his armory every week or so. Not long ago Serennia had an average score of over 2600 across three brackets, whether you like him or not it is hard to dismiss his tremendous success.

Warrior is the most gear dependent class in the game, and Serennia took full advantage of it. In term of raw skills he is probably on the same level of Inactive and Noktyn, the difference is his wardrobe. Against prep rogues that destroy warriors in duels, he uses full tanking gear. Against warlocks/shadow priest in arena fights he uses shadow resistance gear. If your team focus fires him he puts on full resilience set. If your team leaves him alone he uses full DPS set. While you can no longer gear swap in arenas, once you reach a high rating you will be fighting the same team multiple times anyway. Supposedly Serennia also has a dodge set, a AP set, and a crit set depend on the situation. The man is into cosplay for sure.

In any case, the drama started when Azazael (also known as Azael, proven top dueler on PTR, swept countless top rogues with Felguard in 2.1 and 2.2, and probably the best overall warlock today, he has a video coming out any day now) was away from the game for a few days, and Serennia’s 3v3 team was gasp, no longer #1 in BG9. Serennia has a thing about keeping all three of his teams #1, because “so many people browse my armory everyday”. So he asked Affix (a top mage in his own right, but when it comes to warlocks he is obviously not on Azazael’s level)’s warlock alt to play the warrior, druid and warlock combo with him. Affix was hesitant because he had very little confidence in his capabilities as a warlock at 2500 level but Serennia pretty much gave him very little choice.

Fate has it that they ran into Hafu/Xyi/Kanamii’s red hot cutebabyelephants, who also ran the scrub express warrior, warlock, druid combo (thanks to Serennia, Hafu and company are now 2576 with an amazing 92% winning percentage, #1 in BG9) but much lower rated at the time. In a mirror match, a weak warlock is obviously going to show a lot more than say, if you are up against rogue/mage/priest, and Serennia’s team dropped well over 100 points that night.

Ever since then, Serennia was begging his teammates to play 3v3 instead of 5v5. Due to the lack of participation/interest, they went two weeks without playing a single 5v5 game. So on a fateful evening, most people from his team were on, and they were ready to do some 5v5. Serennia pulled a Scottie Pippen and refused to enter the arena unless his teammates get him back to 1st in 3v3 first. A player of Serennia’s attitude and ego was already very hard to deal with, and when you have a 2700+ team full of star players in their own rights, I guess they were simply sick and tired of it and wanted to do something about it.

After a brief team meeting, they gave Serennia a choice, either play 5v5 with us, or we abandon this 5v5 team and make a new one without you. It says a lot about the heart and morale of these players, that they could have kicked him and kept the team, but they wanted to prove that they could reach the same ratings without him. Serennia first thought it was a joke, then thought he was simply too valuable to be kicked. What he didn’t realize was no one is irreplaceable in team sports. Regardless of how talented a player is, if he can’t show a very basic level of respect to his team, he can and will be replaced. In WOW this is especially true when you have a lot of players who can play at a similar level, and for the warrior class especially the skill cap is never as high as the gear cap.

Anyhow, Serennia was given plenty of warnings, and he simply ignored them and refused to play 5v5 unless they did 3v3 first. For someone who already screamed a lot on ventrilo, you can imagine the bleeding ears when he was kicked from his 2700 team. I been searching all over the internet for clips when he was removed from the team, as I believe they should be extremely entertaining. Unfortunately the best I could do was vent conversations that occurred many hours after the incidence, when Serennia already went from anger to denial to negotiating his way back to his team. The conversation was not nearly as spicy as it should be, if anyone has the vent conversation for the exact minute he was kicked from the team, I will host it here on Gameriot!
Note: Open ventrilo, right click > View > Record/Playback, this file requires vent.

While very few would feel sympathy for someone like Serennia, one can conclude that no matter how good you think you are, you should always remember you are only as good as your team. If Shaq can be traded, so can Serennia, the question is after burning all of his bridges in BG9, can he find enough talents around him to build another #1 5v5 team? His teammates’s new team is already comfortably over 2300, and will soon be competing for top spot again.

On Ultimus vs Serennia 2 that probably won’t happen:

Venruki, if you are reading this I would also like to record a best of
7 series between you and Ultimus, who has a completely different
anti-mage game via shadowstep. PTR is over on Monday and Ultimus and his friends made multiple attempts to challenge the best warrior in the world on PTR. Ultimus is confident he can defeat Serennia’s last stand + full tanking gear but it seems like Serennia has been avoiding him. I would like to get one high profile series to show off the capabilities of shadowstep in the hand of a top dueling rogue. “The best hemo rogue” according to Dahis, someone who played the spec through all the weak patches and is good enough to sweep Serennia’s PVP set as shadowstep.

And a final word to Serennia:

Like I said before, you are still a child. You gained short-lived e-fame that carries very little real world value, while I am the one getting real benefit from it. No amount of arena success will change this situation. It is like fighting the Sharingan, you just can’t win you know what I am saying?

Estel is a fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Cao Cao (her favorite character) has a very famous quote. “I can give away fake titles and empty fames, but I will not give up true power and real values.” Perhaps you can learn a thing or two from this. Until then, you are a broken toy with very little value left for me.

Serennia's New Shirt (Re-blogged)

World of Ming on GAMERIOT. No longer exists I found this gem on

http://vancephuoc.tumblr.com/

This is probably the most amusing article I read on World Of Ming. I'm speechless actually.

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Serennia’s New Shirt

In order to remain as respectful to my sources and those involved I have altered some names to keep their privacy. Trance, with colorful details added, briefly told the story of Vance “Serennia” Phuoc’s adventures on the west coast. This entry will be wholly dedicated to expounding upon that story concerning the time between the middle of December and January where I had the pleasure of meeting the nice people who took him in along with the concurrent displeasure of trying to help someone who simply did not want to be helped. I told the short introduction to this saga in my blog ”Dinner with Serennia”. This is not written to made fun of or beat down Vance or any party involved. I’ve kept it straight to the facts for people who are curious and so people know exactly what happened so that this sort of thing can be avoided in the future.

The second meeting between Vance and I occurred once again in Downtown Long Beach, CA at Pho Cafe. I’d never experienced having pho in little Saigon so to me, this was good enough pho. My fiance and I arrived a little early so we ordered a couple of drinks and discussed what we had in store for ourselves. She’s convinced that Vance has a severe psychological problem, as is Grayson’s mother, Renee. She’s been working in the medical industry before I was born, so there’s some weight to what this woman thinks.

I do my research.

The wonderful thing about my fiance is that she has all sorts of useful books lying around as a med student. So I look up the Behavioral Sciences portion of her USMLE Step 1 text. Specifically, “Personality Disorders” is of great interest to me.

Here’s what I find:

Personality Disorders
1. General Characteristics:
a. Inflexible, inability to adapt
b.One way of responding
c. Lifelong
d. All areas of life
e. Maladaptive response to stress; response to social context
f. Can thrive if situation is right
g. Interactive, interpersonal disorders
-Patients really annoy others
-Symptoms are ego-syntonic
-Patient seeks to change the world, not self

Cluster A: Odd or Eccentric
Schizoid
i. Lifelong pattern of social withdrawal, and they like it that way
ii. Seen by others as eccentric, isolated, withdrawn
iii. Restricted emotional expression
iv. Prevalence: 7.5% of population
v. Males two times more than females

Cluster B: Dramatic and Emotional
Narcissistic
i. Grandiose sense of self-importance
ii. Demands constant attention
iii. Criticism met with indifference or rage
iv. Genuine surprise and anger when others don’t do as they want
v. Can be charismatic

With this in mind, I’m going to tell Grayson’s side of the story from her perspective. This is her story told to me through numerous interviews and notes she kept on the entire situation. I kept straight to the facts.

High school senior Grayson was sleeping in her Orange County home in the beginning of December when she received a text message on her phone from AIM. It was Vance “Serennia” Phuoc, stating that he was in an emergency and needed to speak to her immediately. Perplexed, she gave her his number. He’s in a panic. Every syllable he managed to squeeze out was laden with the inextricable desperation of a man quickly running out of options. His story was that he’s evicted out of his apartment and has no place to stay due to his roommate’s irresponsibility.

Taking pity on Vance, Grayson consulted with her mother, Renee to find a potential solution to Vance’s situation. They were incredibly reluctant to have him in their home so Renee suggested that she wire him money to pay for a motel for him to live so he could find a better job and a new place to stay. He pushed on, saying that this particular scenario won’t help him at all. He’s able to convince them to fly him to California claiming his family cannot do anything since becoming poor in the aftermath of his father’s death. He reinforces his pitch by stating that he has a MA in Game Design and Development from the University of Houston, which he can leverage to get a job at Blizzard Entertainment in Orange County. Renee and Grayson reluctantly agree.

Upon arriving in John Wayne Airport (SNA) they take him to In-N-Out because he claims it as his favorite burger place. He acts nice to Renee but is cold, distant with Grayson. She gradually realizes that he simply lacks social skills and doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

Upon them arriving at their house in Huntington Beach, CA is where Nick comes into play. He had been keeping in sporadic contact with Vance as former co-workers and wanted verification that the story Vance was telling him was true. Grayson speaks to Nick over the phone. He verifies that he’s in California. When Nick asks Grayson if he flew from New York City, where he had been claiming to live for the past 4 months or San Antonio, Grayson gave the answer Vance urged her to give him: that he flew from New York, NY (LGA) as a continuing fabrication he’d carried on from months ago. Later on that night, on Facebook, Grayson reveals to Nick that Vance actually flew from San Antonio (SAT).

Nick, a little shocked that a family would be so nice to Vance without knowing him, offers his resources to help Vance find a job and suggests that they all meet for dinner so he can get a more accurate picture of Vance’s qualifications. Grayson agrees. It’s during this conversation that Nick informs Grayson of Vance’s reputation and links her to a number of articles written about Vance’s antics. From here on, they keep in constant contact to fact check everything Vance tells them. They work together to find ways to help Vance, who has proven to have lots of potential but seems to drop the ball on the execution.

For the first couple of days of Vance’s stay, Grayson and Renee show Vance places where he can find work and give him a little bit of money to buy new clothes. Vance doesn’t comply. He’s completely content on sitting in their guest room using a spare laptop they had lying around. He claimed that he had been speaking regularly with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street about getting a job for Blizzard. “I already have an interview with them next week,” he says. He doesn’t leave the guest room the entire week, opting to wear the same clothes he had arrived in California the entire time instead of using the money provided to get new ones. Vance has a cough. Grayson supplies him with medicine daily.

Having much gratitude for their family’s hospitality, Vance promises to pay them back, saying he has money waiting for him only he is unable to access it. She has her doubts about this mysterious “ESL” company and the nebulous concept of “money” they supposedly pay their players along with his claims of getting money by blogging for SK. Nonetheless, they’re patient. They have a meeting with Nick the coming weekend so she hopes she can do something for him.

During the week before the meeting Vance is very nervous that Grayson is speaking with Nick. He tries everything in his power to discredit Nick as a player who only wants to make another Asian woman angry by sleeping with her daughter. Grayson ignores this and pushes on to the rendezvous. His last minute attempt to not go was a claim that he was waiting on receiving an important package that night from Texas. A package that ultimately never came.

They went out for seafood and Nick orders a martini for himself and for Vance. Nick is aggressive with Vance after looking over his half a page resume. He grills him about his computer science knowledge, having quite a bit himself yet comes up with nothing. Nick stresses the importance of verifying everything so that if he puts his professional reputation on the line, he can do so with confidence in knowing exactly what he’s getting his colleagues into. Grayson and Renee sit at their places, content on letting the two talk. Vance has pushed himself as far away from Nick as possible.

Vance is on the defensive, so he decides to attack Grayson. “You’re such a player Nick and you know it. You’re just trying to flirt with Renee’s daughter.” This makes Nick very angry. He leans toward Vance with a rhetoric that can only be described as a mixture of eloquence minced in with venom.

“Look, you recieved $160 for new clothes and you’re wearing the same exact thing that I’ve seen in every picture taken of you at events.”

Vance looks at Grayson.

“Don’t ******* look at Grayson. Don’t try to blame her and make her look bad in front of her mom after everything she’s done for you. This is you and me now. You. Me. I need a copy of your diploma or some verification that you’ve done all that you’ve said that you have. Right now, as far as I know, you don’t know anything. I’m trying to help you -“

“I know you’re trying to help me.”

“Then ******* let me help you and stop lying to me. Otherwise, you’re useless. I need your diploma verified.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Thanks! Now stop trying to make Grayson look bad. You know I’m ******* engaged.”

Grayson and Renee sit quietly.

Fast forward a few weeks…..

Renee is fed up. Vance has yet to shower or changed his clothes. His soap bottle has never been used, same as the bathroom towel. She then insists on cleaning out his room. Upon doing this she discovers feces wrapped in her nephew’s underwear and neatly wrapped in one of her son’s shirts. Vance claimed it wasn’t him who did it but it was fresh, still smelled and he was the only one to use the room recently. There was trash found in every cravece of the room. From the desk drawers, night stands, walk-in-closet, desk hutch and on the floor. Vance denied all of this as well. Grayson recognized a recent wrapper she’d gotten for him: a giant-sized Hershey crunch bar.

After a week of nagging, Vance is given more money for clothes and forced to go shopping on New Years Eve. The family decides to use this opportunity to unclog the toilet in the bedroom he was sleeping, as Vance had taken to using the downstairs bathroom for the past week but neglected to say or do anything about it. After Serennia buys his new shirt, the second meeting with Nick occurs.

Grayson trails behind Vance and they enter Pho Cafe to meet Nick and his fiance Loan. Renee parks the car and joins them all later. Vance says he needs a fax number (which Renee then gives him) and that’s why he has been unable to receive the diploma due to his mother’s refusal to send it to him. Nick cusses out Vance again and tells him to step it up. Loan and Grayson talk about med school stuff while Renee sits quietly eating her food. Everyone leaves the restaurant still feeling frustrated but slightly amused at Nick’s public antics as well as Renee ninja-paying the check before Nick can ask for it.

Another week passes….

Fed up with Vance’s stalling, Renee takes matters into her own hands. She calls the Univercity of Houston to get Vance’s ID number. She uses the number and his last name to access his records on the site they have set up for that. There is no diploma. She gets her hands on Vance’s mom’s phone number. Here’s what she learns:

-The first thing his mother says is “don’t waste your time”.
-Vance never graduated from the University of Houston or ITT tech
-Vance did graduate from HS at memorial HS
-He was at University of Houston for less than 2 years and was kicked out of ITT
Tech 3 times, each time for not going to school (mother begged school to let her son back in and they complied)
-Vance is addicted to games and let his life go to waste as a result of his addiction.
-His mother spent 300k on Vance during his troubled time, to encourage him to study, which included hiring a guy for 3k a month to follow Vance (buy him food, take him to the supermarket, see to it that Vance cleans his clothes and does his hw, etc).
-this also included buying Vance a car which “disappeared” somehow.
-Vance’s father died after Vance was addicted to video games, so we shouldn’t pity Vance over the incident, as it was not a coping mechanism on his part.
-Vance never called his mom once to retrieve a diploma.
-Vance dropped out of the military because he told them he had TB (the man who followed Vance around stated something different, however; he stated that Vance told the military he wanted to commit suicide, so the military gave him an administrative discharge).
-Vance didn’t show up when his dad died; he swore to his family that he’d change, but never did
-He left the family and told them that he didn’t need any of them anymore.

After this conversation, the family confronts Vance. He breaks down into tears saying that his mother is lying, he does have a diploma and that Nick ruined his life. He presses on, saying he’s waiting for $800 from ESL and at least $2k in funds from selling his WoW account on top of money for writing for SK-Gaming. He goes on to claim that no one has ever given him a chance to prove himself. It’s at this point that the family notifies him that he was a week to find a job and a place to stay.

Here’s Grayson’s take on the situation and how it ended: “Ironically, Vance has the gall to call me spoiled when I helped take care of him. I know I’m spoiled, but Vance has no right to say that to me. My mother had to clean up after him as well. Turns out that’s the way he lived in San Antonio. His family was well-to-do and Vance had everything (food, dishes, laundry, housekeeping) all taken care of for him and yet he couldn’t complete school. At the age of 25 he never learned how to take care of himself. When we evicted him, he cried, even as my mom gave him $700 and dropped him off at a motel, which is walking distance from John Wayne Airport. He kept saying that there was no way he could possible take care of himself, at the age of 25.”

Upon being dropped off at the motel, Vance was adamant about staying in contact with the family. Vance stated the Blizzard Entertainment had given him a job at their Dallas HQ and would start the job that Saturday. He claimed to be leaving the airport at 5am. The airport doesn’t open until 7am. The next day (Sunday) Renee gets a ticket for Vance back to San Antonio because he never left. Whether he was unable to buy a ticket or unwilling is still unknown.

A short conclusion

People often ask me if Serennia began playing WoW again if I would hire him. I would hire him. In a heartbeat. He’s very talented and for a long time has been one of the best bloggers and most important members of the community. However, I wouldn’t recommend that he begin playing again to begin with. I did all I could in my power to help him but ultimately he did not want it. When I told Trance that I was tempted to hire him for my company myself, he said it’d only make me look foolish.

It’s difficult to write this as there’s no way I can come across as beating a dead horse. But even as his time on the west coast had come to an end, he was trying to talk another girl into taking him in over AIM. The messages were intercepted and Vance lost his computer access for the rest of his stay there. It’s my job as co-leader of World of Ming to ensure that you get the most useful information possible and that the most useful information reaches audiences beyond our community. This situation has proved to me why that is important. When people don’t want to help themselves, we can at least minimize the damage they cause to others while they do harm to themselves.

If you have any questions regarding anything dealing with this situation and World of Ming, check out my Formspring and ask me anything.