Before Warcraft shut the doors, I was grinding quests and experience one night with some guildmates before PvP time. PvP time usually began, from my limited observations, when night elves would start pouring into Hordeville, usually the Crossroads.
We had an hour, plus or minus, before their expected arrival so we were cranking out a level or two, as a level or two never hurts when night elves are pouring out of the woodwork. I was also thinking a short grind session might keep my noob ass out of the graveyard for a few extra minutes. I was wrong, but hell, live and learn.
Grinding exp is grinding exp no matter what world or game it takes place in, so my groupmates asked for a story to pass the time. They’re not asking for epic tales of holy knights and damsels in distress; they’re looking for the dirt, usually involving skanks or jagbags, but probably they’d enjoy a lesbian story also. If I had any lesbian stories. Which I don’t.
Almost ten years in online gaming, you’d think I’d have at least one lesbian story. Odd.
I wasn’t in the mood to recount YET ANOTHER loot mishap, or the classic “my brother was playing my character and logged off with your ebay-able items in my backpacks” type tale, so I told them this one:
Few years back, in EverQuest (natch), around the time of the Velious expansion, there was a new guild on the horizon. Not my guild, but we were keeping our eyes on them nonetheless as they were quickly moving up the food chain, so to speak.
For the MMOG noobies that have grown up in an instanced world, this may not mean much. Back in the old days, grasshoppers, we had to race like bats outta hell to get to the “good” mobs first. No boss mobs = no loot tonight.
It was no coincidence that the best equipped guilds were the guilds that assembled quickly, and were willing to … let’s just say … “do what was necessary” to arrive first. Accordingly, more competition was not good news and this particular NewGuild had demonstrated a willingness to expand their ranks quickly, even picking up those of questionable reputations if their profession was a desirable one (read: warrior, cleric or enchanter).
NewGuild’s leader was actually a respected member of the server: good rep, had spent a year or two in a role-playing type guild, mature behavior and attitude, and, as we learned later, (and will be important to the story), in real life he owned and operated an internet cafe from which he and a few of his guildmates played EQ … seemingly all day and night.
His right-hand man was a real life friend of his that played from the cafe — maybe he was NewGuild’s raid leader (my memory has fogged on this point) — but his rep was considerably different from the leader (read: incredible asshole, ebayer, loot ninja … younameit, he was it.)
No one really understood the friendship, except that they knew each other in real life, and we just assumed that RightHandMan was an okay guy when he was out and about in the world … but come login time, he morphed into The Server Jagbag.
NewGuild had experienced quite a bit of success in equipping their members and their recruiting started to take off of its own volition. (damn!) We even lost some of our members to NewGuild (double damn!) and though they expressed regret at having to put up with Server Jagbag every night, NewGuild Leader’s calming presence was enough to keep them in the guild and happy, too.
One day, my guild was logging in for another night of primetime racing raiding — our raid leader was going over his spawn algorithms (or however he used to track that), our public relations guy was preparing his excuses for whatever misdeeds we might commit on our way to BossMob45 — you know, the typical machinations of an endgame guild with 50 mouths to feed, metaphorically.
As we were about to begin the “race to BossMob45” routine, we heard through chat some rumblings about NewGuild’s leadership changing hands in the equivalent of a MMOG coup d’etat. I was disappointed to learn it was a bloodless coup and that they weren’t disbanding (damn!), but I’m a jackass like that.
Apparently, the coup had gone down the night before like this.
After finishing a successful night of raiding, NewGuild leader tells the guild he has to go afk quick to take a piss. A few minutes pass and he gets back to keyboard only to discover he isn’t guildleader anymore.
The guild was confused, as was the former leader. A game bug? Server burp perhaps?
His good ole buddy, Server Jagbag, finally fesses up that while former leader was off taking his piss, Jag had transferred guild leadership over to his own account, and, by the way, he wasn’t giving it back. Ever.
Now catch this. Instead of ripping off the Jag’s arm and beating him with his own severed limb (as you would do), the former leader starts typing wildly to various guildmembers to try and organize a coalition of sorts to restore him to power. Meanwhile, Jag is typing wildly to the guild over guildchat, shoring up his own tenuous authority by pronouncing this a new era for NewGuild, an era of loot richness and phatness, probably l33tness too!
Seriously. In his bud’s internet cafe, Jag is ripping his bud a new one. (oh, the irony!)
To his credit, he did explain to the guild that he’d probably be offline for a few days while he made arrangements for internet access. (oh, the irony!)
Now, which do you think won in this little powerplay? Loot or Loyalty?
Hey, avarice isn’t one of the deadly sins for no reason. You know very well that loot won.
I’ve heard many tales of MMOG coups over the years — hell, I’ve even participated in a few — but that’s the only coup I’ve ever heard that was planned around a guy taking a piss.
Let that be a lesson to you guildleaders out there. An empty Snapple bottle is your friend.