They always told me never to judge a book by its cover, and also not to be influenced by other’s opinions. I failed at both of those teachings miserably, and I also learned that these types of things can happen in a video game, such as Maple Story, too.

Once again, I managed to not like someone because of what I saw on the outside, which seemed to be a mean, cold-hearted person. I later learned that there was a nice person on the inside.

For those that play on Bera, I can describe this person as such: Some love her, some hate her, and everyone pretty much knows who she is… at least among my group of friends.

For those of you that are a bit new to Bera, or don’t play Bera at all, MeiLinge was the center of a lot of controversy back in April when she started leveling fast towards 120. One of her friends, which she said was a hacker himself though I can’t be 100% sure on that, put up a minigame titled “MeiLinge” is a hacker. That’s when the rumours started about her. A lot of people that I knew at the time seemed to know that she didn’t hack, but I, back in my 4x days, noticed she seemed to be quite a cruel and cold person. I just assumed at the time it was because of the rumours floating around her, because I know I’d feel the same as a fully legit player.

A couple months past and I hit 3rd job. The topic about MeiLinge was briefly brought up again. I mentioned that my encounters with the character weren’t all that nice before, and that’s when I heard about even more horror stories with her attitude.

One day on sleepywood.net, someone created a thread on the Bera forum named “most hated player.” I remember putting down the name MeiLinge, along with another person whose name I shall keep to myself. What I didn’t know is that she sometimes went there to lurk, and I guess in a way it kind of hit her.

This past Wednesday, I was hanging out with a few MaddCoolYo guys, mainly Zer0Plus, AngelicNiki, lethalThief, and my ex-guildmate xSincere, in Ludi ch1. It was getting really late and the conversation was starting to die down.

I was about to log out for the night when xSincere whispered me, “Moofs, my friend Mei wants to talk to you.” I asked, “Mei who?” and I nearly had a heart attack when he said, “MeiLinge.” For a second I thought that it couldn’t have been a good thing, because all I knew her as was a mean person who was probably going to tell me off big time. However, as other recent issues have played out, I learned that it was better to confront these problems, not run away from them. She was just over in Ludi skin care on my channel, so I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see what was up, even if it was to get my behind chewed out.

I went there, and it was absolutely nothing as I had expected.

Bera’s #15 ranked player wasn’t mad and being mean about it; In fact, she was sad and being humble about it. She asked me as to why I didn’t like her and I explained everything to her honestly. I told her that all my opinions were based off first impressions and influenced by my friends as well, both of those facts being true. That’s when she told me she respected me.

That sure caught me off guard. I sure wasn’t expecting to hear that from a level 137 DK. I felt bad about misjudging her, and so I stayed for a while. It turned out she was a really sweet person, and she had a knack for video games much like myself. That pretty much turned everything around as much as my opinion of her was concerned. I eventually lost track of time as we were talking, and the MaddCoolYo people that I was talking to also came up. (Mainly because xSincere was checking up on us and the others followed.)

The next day we went down to MM, and I got to see for myself just the amount of ownage she can lay down. She also had a whole lot of friends much lower than she was, too, ranging from about 7x to around 11x. Later that night we “officially” befriended each other as well.

Of course, my BL was in shock, seeing how many people have dealt with her, or at least the person using MeiLinge in the past, but my opinion couldn’t be wavered. Once you see something for yourself your opinion changes, and I learned that she was an awesome person, and in some cases a very respectable player on Bera.

MeiLinge has gotten me a bit outside of my Maple comfort zone, as well. Most of my friends know that I’m kinda skeptic about going into areas with a risk of dying. Over the past while I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff, much of which I’ve attached as screens below. My favorite out of all of those still has to be taking on pirates naked with a war bow. Just yesterday I went down to grims with Mei and krixylily just for kicks. I managed to live to tell the tale and gain 8% in the process, though that wouldn’t have been possible without a priest, seeing as I would’ve had can’t leech grims just yet, being only level 76.

It’s funny what can happen when you just learn about someone a bit, and in this case I’m kinda happy I did. It’s only just a game, but it doesn’t mean whatever happens won’t spill over into reality.