It’s anecdote time again! In this special, MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz reveals why he met his wife through a competition for Guild Wars 2 and why it is still considered the best consolation prize of all time.
The last time I wrote a little secret, I talked about my freelance days before MeinMMO and stories about raunchy superheroes. Today I’m going back a little further, to my beginnings in the video game industry.
In the summer of 2009, I ended up as an intern in the buffed editorial team, which grew and prospered thanks to the ongoing success of World of Warcraft. In the six months in Nuremberg and Fürth, I not only learned a lot, I also met a lot of great people who became friends.
From intern to ninja
Among them were four other interns, Imke, Lars, Benny and Ramon, who were looking for their way into the industry with great passion and motivation. The five of us got on so well that Imke invited us to work together after the internship to expand her existing blog Ninjalooter.de (which is no longer maintained due to lack of time, but is still online).
When Karsten Scholz dipped his toe into the video game industry, Wrath of the Lich King was rocking the WoW servers – here is a particularly iconic scene from that time:
WOW WotLK Classic: The Gate of Wrath
More videos
Autoplay
The creative alliance quickly showed initial results. In April 2010, for example, the first NinjaCast went live, and its popularity grew with each new episode. There were also many articles, but also special projects such as an interactive talent planner for Guild Wars 2, a 109-page online guide to the datacrons from SWTOR, and downloadable templates for the Gwent card game from The Witcher 3.
The site was doing great. At the same time, the team was growing, thanks to veterans of the buffed community like Haggy and Cala, but also to former buffed editor Florian, who is now Head of PR at THQ Nordic. If Patreon and Steady had existed back then, we would probably have gone “all in” with Ninjalooter and the NinjaCast.
As life goes
Ninjalooter.de was not just a small blog that a few people stumbled across by chance every month. We made a name for ourselves, including with one or two MMORPG developers. This explains why, for example, ArenaNet provided us with three versions of the upcoming online role-playing game before the launch of Guild Wars 2, which we were allowed to give away in our community.
The highlight was of course the main prize: the fully packed Collector’s Edition of Guild Wars 2. The task for everyone who wanted to take part in the competition: “Send a photo of yourself completing the sentence ‘I deserve the Collector’s Edition because . . . ‘”
Normally, Imke would have received the submissions and collected them for evaluation. However, as she was on vacation at the time, I stepped in. So, up until the deadline, new works from the community trickled in almost every minute, each picture more creative than the next.
A competition changes everything
A really nicely staged collage of pictures about three pets and their owners particularly caught my eye. Since I knew the email address, I plucked up the courage and thanked the participant for her contribution. I wanted to know what life was like with the animal rascals and whether the dog got along with the two cats. I myself also had a pair of feline siblings.
A friendly response and new questions were followed by more emails. A few days later we were together on Skype for the first time. “What, you live in Leipzig? I’m in Berlin!” We had to meet. We fell in love. We’ve been together for almost twelve years now and have two great kids.
In the end, it wasn’t enough for the Collector’s Edition of Guild Wars 2 or the two normal versions. So I was something of a consolation prize, which of course she still rubs in my face with a smile to this day. If you want to know more about me, take a look here: Our new MMORPG expert introduces himself: “Hello, I’m Karsten”