yes, we can all just get along!

today was a pretty good day all around, even considering the rainy, stay indoors weather. i topped it all off this evening with several hours of world of warcraft. around 12:30 a.m., one of the most engaging experiences i’ve had yet in the game occured. those of you that do not play and/or have not played MMORPGs before, i may entirely lose you here, so forgive me. in any case, i was questing alone, save for my pet nightsaber guernicita, in the lush green hills north of astraanar. i use guernicita to hold the attention of and distract monsters, while i primarily use a range weapon like a bow and arrow to take them down. looking back down the narrow valley i had been climbing for about a half hour, i saw some combat going on near a furbolg (big humanoid bears) encampment. a lone horde troll rogue, several levels higher than my character, was working his way up the canyon behind me.
i play on the alliance team. my sworn enemies are the horde. i am on a player versus player server, which means that this rogue character and i can engage in combat at any time. he is higher level than me, and very likely would dispatch my character in short order. and i have been working for about a half hour to make it to where i am. the situation is tense. and is suddenly made more so, as the rouge engages his cloaking abilities and disappears from my sight. i scramble to find my spell to sense invisible entities. i watch him coming up the canyon for a couple minutes. he is getting close to the range where he could go invisible and be on top of me in a matter of a minute or so. he reappears. he waves.
i wave back. we continue up the canyon, him a safe distance away, me sweating the fact that i have a higher level enemy back-stabber coming up behind me. he speaks orcish in the game, and we cannot communicate with each other, so even if we wanted to, we could not establish what at this point is something of a tacit acknowledgement that we are both here to kill furbolgs, not each other. if the two of us start scrapping out here in the middle of this encampment, we probably both will be overrun by these ursine mages and warriors. we continue up the canyon and into a cave.
it takes a while to establish trust once we get into the cave. now we were fighting side by side. when i type at him to communicate, it comes out garbled. when he types to me, it comes out as orcish, indecipherable gibberish. we can, however, shrug, laugh, point, and several other physical gestures. it was pretty hilarious and exhilirating. either of us could have broadcasted on our respective world defense channels, calling for reinforcements. neither of us did. if members of our respective factions had stumbled on us fighting together, there would have been serious hell to pay. but for the next 45 minutes, we worked side by side, clearing out the cave. we cooperated and took turns, and split treasure fairly.
in the end, he attacked me, accidentally i believe. guernicita went apeshit and pinned him against the cave wall. i called her back by my side and we faced each other down, weapons drawn, for about two minutes. finally i took my left hand off the trio of buttons that would launch my opening volley powerhouse attack, and sheathed my weapon. he did the same. he approached tentatively, talking a lot in orcish, and shrugging a lot. i laughed, and pulled out my hearthstone to teleport out of the cave to safety.
i saluted Reetardoh, level 31 troll rogue. he saluted me back. and with that, i was gone.
ultra-dorky? you bet. but i still feel a thrill thinking about it. what other entertainment allows you to briefly live an archetypal storyline, spontaneously created by two human beings, where for an hour or two, sworn enemies set aside their differences to work together for a common purpose?