By ANNA FIORENTINO, Portland Press Herald Staff Writer Monday, May 14, 2007

Last week, though, Coulston, 24, found himself in central China amid a screaming, streaming crowd of ogling locals requesting autographs. He and his four-person famed computer gaming team, Pandenic, were now answering to their fans.

They had just become world-class performers at the keyboard.

Hunched over a table in front of a screen, face to face with his Chinese opponents, Coulston had shouted plays to his teammates. To his advantage, his competitors couldn't understand a word of it, or any English for that matter, and before long, Pandemic had won the best-of-five match 3-1, the next 3-0, and the next, and the next.

"Like soccer or football, the in World of Warcraft you have to be good at coming up with plays and working as a team," said Coulston.

The teamwork. The fireballs. The magic spells. That was what made Pandemic the newest virtual Chinese superstars.

American Team Pandemic, comprising Coulston and his three U.S. teammates, took home the title of International World of Warcraft Video Game champions in Wuhan China May 4-8. At the first tournament of this year's World Series of Video Games, they also took home a $12,000 prize for playing a video game.

This tournament hosted more than 80,000 excited local Chinese fans and 64 teams from Europe, North America and Asia who competed in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne; Counter-Strike 1.6; and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the newest game in the tournament and the one for which Team Pandemic now holds No. 1 standing.

The competition in Wuban was the first of six in the World Series of Video Games, which is in its second season. Now, if Team Pandemic places in the top 10 percent at the remaining tournaments, it will have a guaranteed spot in the World Series Video Game finals in Sweden in December.

"Pandemic made eSports history as the winners of the first World of Warcraft tournament," said Matthew Ringel, president of the World Series of Video Games.

"We were amazed to see such a turnout to watch a video game competition -- there were 2,000 people in line outside who we could not let in," he said. "Last year's event in China was the biggest stop on the 2006 tour with 17,000, and this year's attendance of 80,000 is an incredibly promising beginning for our second season. Next year, we may have to find a stadium."

Coulston, who went to Scarborough High School, found out he'd be attending the World Series of Video Games just last month.

That was OK, though. He'd been training his entire life. From the time he was young, he played Nintendo, then PlayStation, X-Box and so forth. But it was his fascination with computers that encouraged him to major in computer programming at the University of Maine, begin computer programming for Hannaford Bros., and break into something called Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.

GETTING HOOKED

In 2002, Coulston's affair began with MMORPGs, a brand of online role-playing games in which large numbers of players compete and interact with one another in an online virtual world, called Ultima Online. In 2004, Coulston was introduced to World of Warcraft for the first time -- before it even hit the market.

"I had a friend who worked for Blizzard, which owns World of Warcraft. So he let me try it," he said. That opened up worlds for him. Immediately, he was hooked.

"I liked the bright fluid graphics, 3D images, and the way you could go from zone to zone -- from the forest you could take a few steps into the desert and from the desert you could go right into the beach," he said. "It's also very social. You can talk to other players in guilds (or clans) right on the screen like instant messenger."

Before long, he'd completed every level of the game. But that didn't mean it was time to move on to the next game -- MMORPG's are never-ending. Completing the basic worlds just enables players to create their own characters and fight against each other within the worlds they've beaten.

He played against others from across the country and even around the world for a few hours nearly every day, until this past February when Blizzard began an online World of Warcraft tournament.

Coulston teamed up with three players from various locations along the West Coast he'd met online, and began competing with thousands of other teams. Week after week, Coulston's team maintained the No. 1 slot.

Then his virtual reality, which his family members and friends had just rolled their eyes at, spilled over into real life.

Coulston received word the World Series of Video Games would be picking up World of Warcraft as one of four main games and -- this was the exciting part -- qualification would be based on Blizzard's online standings.

It wasn't a surprise when Coulston opened up his e-mail inbox and read his team had been chosen as one of only two U.S. teams to compete in the World Series of Video Games.

The four signed a year-long contract to be sponsored by Pandemic, an existing video game team comprising top MMORPG game players in the U.S. Team Pandemic had support from companies like Subway, Plantronics and Que-pad, which gave Coulston and the others a free ride to all the World Series of Video Games events.

"From what everyone was talking about online, it sounded like these guys were serious," said Coulston. "I was excited to hear they wanted us to be on their team."

FOUR-DAY WHIRLWIND

When he told his friends his team would be one of two designated World of Warcraft American teams, Coulston's friends and family began to take him seriously.

On May 3, Coulston left North America for the first time in his life, and finally met in person the three guys he'd been playing World of Warcraft with for the past few months.

"It wasn't awkward or anything meeting the team," he said. "We had been talking online for so long."

They'd been talking strategy and plays across the country online through Ventrilo, a voice communication program on their home computers.

But in China, decked out in navy blue Team Pandemic T-shirts lettered with their online character names, Pandemic entered its first-ever physical video gaming abyss. And so the four-day whirlwind began.

Coulston quickly came to understand gaming was an entirely different, much more aggressive, animal in China than in the U.S.

In the arena, he saw thousands of fans ravaging the Dutch World of Warcraft III champ named "Grubby," who Coulston had only read about online and seen in video clips on YouTube. A river of teenagers, dark-haired and wide-eyed, rolled up to the 20-year-old superstar, whose name is actually Manuel Schenkhuizen.

But what was really startling was the fans recognized Coulston from his online character too.

"One guy came up to us who couldn't speak English well and said 'I want to you win,'" Coulston recalled. The man then motioned toward his head and heart.

Then they did.

The strangers turned Internet friends had taken the championship of the first World of Warcraft Video Game World Series due largely to their teamwork.

Now Coulston is $3,000 richer ($12,000 winnings divided by four players) with an added bonus of superstar status among Asian video gamers, leaving Grubby in the dust, and preparing for his next tournament in Kentucky, June 21-24.