Reading through Blizzard’s recent Lord Kazzak Crimes and Punishments post reminded me of a recent dragon raid on my server and my guild’s near participation in same.
This was almost a month ago and involved Azurgeos, the Azshara dragon. This other guild that we’ve been kinda sorta hanging with, co-oping on a few instances, sharing crafting skills, bla bla, asked if we wanted to do a joint raid on Azurgeos about an hour later when they expected to have the force, combined with ours, to take him down.
After confirming that they had covered the basics … dragon was up, there was adequate DPS, tanking and healing power available … we agreed. What the hell, should be interesting if nothing else. This allied guild has some good people — no obvious loot whores, no bitching when things go south, they keep their drama queens in check, and most importantly, they’re not drooling morons like 90 percent of the level 60s around these parts. However! They are still a little naive, as you shall see in a moment.
So, we sent an unguilded alt out to Azshara to watch the zone for any snoopy level 60s that might be scouting for something to do, and I was assigned the task of discreetly inquiring what some of the other level 60 guilds were up to that night. Fortunately, most of the other guilds in Warcraft are naive also and aren’t suspicious when an outsider politely asks after their plans. Heh.
I talked to the one dude in The Zerg Guild who told me that they were working in Blackrock that night and then I asked another dude in The Zerg Guild to confirm, because I’m not so naive. I already knew they had been in Blackrock for a while from my handy dandy stalker /who list, but I needed to know they were going to stay tucked in for at least another hour.
We did all this without asking our allies because, frankly, if we told them that this sort of prep had to be done in today’s online gaming world, they wouldn’t believe us. They still think that outsiders won’t go out of their way to fuck people over. Well … maybe they understand that now.
About 40 minutes before go time, we were browsing the Auction House and gathering potions, fixing equipment, making poisons, bla bla, when our scout sent out the alarm that some level 60s had just flown into Azshara. From the Zerg Guild, no less. This was an interesting development. And indeed, I saw from the /who list that the fuckers were emptying out of Blackrock.
This could only mean one thing: someone had actually TOLD them not only that the dragon was up, but also the planned raid time. We further knew that none of us was drunk enough to make such a critical error — this could have only come from the allied guild. Not that they were drunk, but y’know, naive and about to learn a hard lesson.
So it was decision time. Mobilize and pull the bitch before the requisite 50 players from Clan Zerg gather, or go do something else. I voted to do something else, but our involuntarily-elected guildleader was livid that the allies had shot their mouths off. He quizzed each of them in turn until he found the guilty party, one of their chatty druids, and unloaded on her.
I’m not sure what was said in /tells, but she was quiet the rest of the night. Fat lot of good it did us then.
The allies wanted to salvage the raid and flew a summons team to Az, just in case the Zergites crashed and burned; few of us went along to watch the festivities, although our GL stayed in Ironforge for the principal of the thing. He had a point. He had warned them a few times to keep this on the down low.
I dunno. Until you’ve been steamrolled and done some steamrolling yourself, these are lessons that have to be learned the hard way: When asked, don’t answer. When asked again, lie. When accused, deny.
This is the credo of the online raider.
WoW seems to have attracted a HUGE amount of MMORPG Noobs. And in this RARE instance I don’t mean Noob as a bad thing. These are just unexperienced gamers. In a way I like the innocence. Yet in another way I find it frustrating.
It’s clear that Allied_Guild_01 never played EQ. I have been in guilds that have both gotten and given steamrollings and I know the pain. I appreciate your GLs position. Did ZergGuild get the beast? Don’t leave the story hanging like that!
Agreed Mannox – WoW is the intro to MMOs for many folks now, from the looks of it. Many don’t realize how they can royally screw themselves over by committing social gaffes early in their “career”, and end up unwittingly get themselves blacklisted, ignored, etc. Leaves ’em quite lonely at the level cap.
afk – please regale us with the exciting conclusion! Did they kill Azuregos?
Oh, it probably dropped some purple item that he’ll refuse to link to…
Gays of our lives.
Ya, they got the W on the dragon … wasn’t pretty, but a W nonetheless. Don’t remember what it dropped, was a handful of rare+ items. Although, dropped loot is another thing players lie about. 😉 Not judging! I lie about dropped loot too when I’m hoping to throw someone off the scent.
A few months in VT taught most EQ guilds (The ones who hadn’t learned earlier from Velious, that is) to spy, lie, KS and train – or at least, to expect other people to.
Ain’t human nature wonderful?
I wish they’d fix Azuregos so that the graveyard zerg tactic didn’t work. Azuregos was supposed to be a tough fight right? Trivilized by being able to throw infinite fodder at her until she goes down.
Greenmarine of SWG-dev fame? Fix smugglers already ;P
On topic: I quit WoW for the very reason that our server is entirely filled with those kinds of people.
This is part of the reason why I cannot stand guilds. They act like bitchy women at the slightest infraction. I must admit that it’s fun to make fun of the MMO nerds in IF while camping auctions. Tell a lvl 60 uberguild priest that he wasted his money on an epic mount and watch the sparks fly. They are so easy to flame that it’s amazing.
The whole blacklisting thing is silly. I act like a total jerk sometimes and still get 3+ guild invites a day. In fact, being the only unguilded lvl 56 character on the server makes you quite annoyingly popular.
I have been flirting with the thought of creating a guild of outcasts, jerks, griefers, ninja looters, trollers and flamers – providing no leadership and see what happens. At this point, being banned would be more exciting than Blizzard’s end game content.
Sounds like something from Papillon.
Wow Chef – a fellow unguilded high level player (holy shit!)
I can also vouch for this “popular unguilded dood” phenomenon – as long as you’re not a total jackass/douchebag, the /tells come fast and furious. Where are their guildmates, and why aren’t they helping them with their instance runs?
And no kidding about the dramaqueen bullshit – any surprise that some of us want nothing to do with guilds? Though if you’re serious about the evil guild, call it “The Pariahs” or something like that. It’d be wonderful to see how large of an implosion such a guild would be (make sure they post to multiple gaming message boards for maximum drama). 🙂
Jeeze, was high school so bad for you that you have to go to these lengths to re-engineer the experience with you on top?
drooling morons, eh? Because they can’t kill an imaginary foozits in some ‘escape from reality’ waste of time?
Let me ask you… how’s your kids college fund coming? Is your wife happy with you sitting at the 21st century boob tube for 20 hours at a time?
If none of these apply, then… what have you done to improve yourself lately? (and no, the purple legendary weapon you looted doesn’t count)
whatdoesitmatter spake:
How far are you prepared to take that moniker?
Even tho I am not the one you are asking..
With no due respect what so ever, mr griefer, you’r such a reet I am speechless.
“Let me ask you: how’s your kids college fund coming?”
I don’t got any kids, but believe you me, when the day comes
there wont be an issue about providing or not
“Is your wife happy with you sitting at the 21st century boob tube for 20 hours at a time?”
I don’t got a wife at the time of being, but I have a habit of finding female aquintances
with the same interests as me.. thats right.. boob tube.
“What have you done to improve yourself lately? (and no, the purple legendary weapon you looted doesn’t count)”
I work out every day, earn quite a lot more money than other people my age, doing a job I love doing, and am good at doing it. Oh, even tho it doesn’t count, I also got loads of purple epixx, but no purple legendary weapons(?). And I think it does count, since imho. life is about having fun, I have a great irl life and have fun raiding with both irl and wow-friends. And you know, some of the encounters can be quite challenging, so of all the things I have done to improve myself lately, I am by far most happy with the raiding accomplishments.
I feel kinda moronic answering these stupid questions, but your narrow minded head
deserves answers..