Stupid Questions Do Exist

When World of Warcraft’s next patch, 1.12, goes live, the corresponding update to CT-RaidAssist, the raiding UI mod of champions, will no longer be backwards compatible with previous versions. (Read: ctmod.net, news item dated 7/22/06) If your guild is anything like my guild, your typical raid is a patchwork of CT-RaidAssist versions because upgrading every once in a while is a huge chore for some people. I know it’s a chore for me answering the same upgrade question every week (/gu Christ Almighty, YOU DONT HAVE IT INSTALLED IN THE CORRECT PATH.) Anticipating that this will take an hour or more to straighten out on patch day, we’ve begun warning guildmates that everyone (Yes, even you Billy. You too, Mikey.) will need CT-RaidAssist version 1.54 by raid time. My favorite /gu followup question of the last couple weeks: When will they patch 1.12? Me: (fercrissakes) I don’t know, you’d have to ask one of the Blizzard developers in the guild. Followup #2: We have developers in the guild?

Heads Up

This weekend I will be updating blog code, again,
to the latest stable release of K2, the theme I whacked and hacked for the site.

Because it’s been months since I whacked and hacked theme code, this will take about 39 hours to complete and will involve much funkiness — madness to commence Saturday morning. Primarily, the updates will affect navigation and improved commenting code.

Come Hell, high water, and empty liquor bottles, I’ll have it completed by Monday morning.

UPDATE: Did I say Monday? I meant I was gonna get up off that bar stool just as soon as I could figure it out.

I Am The Master

Previously … a pair of guild jackasses fail to seize lasting political power and leave the guild. Their applications to a new guild contain some harsh shit-talking, prompting a rather canine-like response in our more submissive members — namely, asslicking. I use the absurdity of the shit-talk for new comedy material in guildchat and Ventrilo, for which I am labeled an ungrateful prick … and worse. Ok, ya, guilty, however, in my defense, what I left unsaid was … power-hungry, self-serving loot whores and good riddance. Although I am saying that here and now.

(If you’re just joining the story, don’t spoil the ending for yourself: Read Part I and Part II first.)

We scheduled Ahn’Qiraj 20 for the first off-raid night of the week purposely. The guild alts and recruits needed some of the upgraded books/spells in the zone and also, there’s nothing quite like free loot to shut people up when guildchat has become a bitchfest. To prove we were serious about shutting people up with free loot, the head raidleader volunteered to run the shindig, which is usually beneath him, but this was all about restoring the guild to order.

As I recall, the hunters and priests made out like bandits, and you know me, anytime I can please the raid priests, I’m all for it. (“Here’s some free loot, please don’t burn out.”) We had just swept through four of the bosses, including the big boy of the zone, and were clearing back to finish a couple of crap bosses when the raid paused momentarily while the head raidleader (aka Puppet #1) stopped to deal with guild shit.

You can always tell when an officer or raidleader is getting tell-bombed with guild shit — they’ll pause mid-sentence, stand right in the path of patrols and become unresponsive to text chat.

We cleared the patrols and waited. This is what we heard the raidleader say on Vent: Oh I don’t fucking believe this. This is what we saw the raidleader type in guildchat: You know what you did. This is what we saw next: Warrior28 has been removed from the guild. This is what I said on Ventrilo: Heh, what was that all about?

Here’s the deal. Raidleader got a tip that Warrior28 had applied to the same guild as the two jackasses who ripped our guild a new asshole. (“Oh I don’t fucking believe this.”) Raidleader alt-tabbed out to check that guild’s forums and confirmed that Warrior28 had indeed applied over there, and for extra fun, had listed the two jackasses as references. (Some guilds have an application that is eerily similar to a job application, which is really stupid in my opinion, but that’s material for another day.) Raidleader informed Warrior28 that he was about to get a boot to the curb. Warrior28, at that moment sitting outside THEIR raid zone with OUR guild tag, expressed surprise and asked why. (“You know what you did.”) Raidleader explained in a tell that Warrior28 had been busted. (“Warrior28 has been removed from the guild.”) And that’s what that was all about.

Raidleader had had about enough of the whole mess at this point and just unloaded in Vent … kinda like “f this, f’ing f’ers, f’ing do everything, f’ing never enough, f’ing loot whores, f’ing f that, if you f’ing think f’ing us is f’ing ok, then go f elsewhere, f’ing dirty *word I can’t even abbreviate on a family blog*, you get the idea. It was really quite spectacular. A few of us joined in, the asslickers did some licking, but eventually everyone calmed down and the raid went forward. Warrior28 had terrible attendance and was hugely negative DKP, so in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t a big deal in and of itself.

After a few minutes, we noticed that one of the rogues had gone linkdead. Hmm, thought we, could that be one of those on-purpose linkdeads? He never returned, we replaced him for the last fight and the night ended without further incident.

The next morning, I logged on early, 6:00 am-ish, to check raid supplies and equipment for that night’s raid. The lone guildmate online at the time told me that Linkdead-Rogue had just logged on a few minutes prior and had removed himself from the guild, along with all of his alt characters. There’s that damn 5:00 am guildremoval shit again. (why?? why??) I speculated to my guildmate that maybe Linkdead-Rogue was one of the asslickers and couldn’t stand that some of us refused to lick ass. Who knows.

I logged and sat to camp the guild message boards for a few minutes before work to see if this latest drama would begin. It did. Linkdead-Rogue posted that he left the guild because he sold his account and, as of that day, was turning over control to the new account owner. He added that it wouldn’t be fair to us to leave his characters in the guild when he wasn’t the owner anymore. Gee … ya think? Of course, that’s the least of the fairness issues involved, but whatever. Fucker had just gone on a DKP spending spree the week before too.

Immediately, some of us doubted his story. The timing, it was too coincidental. And no one admits to selling their account, ESPECIALLY to their guildmates. Selling one’s account is the biggest shame move of all — people don’t admit to that.

We arrived at raid time, with the usual flurry of raid prep: the invites, the waitlist, the flying, the summoning, the zoning, the buffing, the standing around waiting for that one asshole to /afk out of the PVP battleground, etc.

One of our mages announced in Vent that Linkdead-Rogue has just applied to the same guild as the two jackasses. (The mage had learned to watch rival guilds’ application forums from me. Aww, I’m so proud of him. He’ll make a fine game hag yet.) We alt-tabbed out to go read his application. One of our slower guildmates asked, “so then he didn’t sell his account?” Gee … ya think?

After some bitching and some mockery, the raid commenced … the bosses died, the loot flowed … the raid ended. If memory serves, and this was just two days ago, it was about halfway through the raid when I hatched my plan to deal with Linkdead-Rogue.

I know that we were ordered not to publically comment or take action on all the shit this week, but what can I say? I’m disobedient. I’m also a master at guerilla gaming tactics. I am the fucking guerilla master, have no doubt.

The next day, at the gaming witching hour (which we now know is between 5:00 and 6:00 am), I created a new persona. Let’s say I named him Koop, but I didn’t so don’t try googling that and thinking you found me. I gave Koop a fresh gmail account and registered a Koop account on the rival guild’s message boards. Koop made a screenshot of our own message boards, specifically the post where Linkdead-Rogue made his fond IGE/ebay/Player Auctions farewell. Koop carefully cropped out any identifying information of who screenshot the post (fucking. guerilla. master.) and uploaded same to one of those free image upload sites. Then, Koop posted the screenshot link on the rival guild’s forums as a reply to Linkdead-Rogue’s app and added some pithy commentary because I wanted to make the read worthwhile, but I kept it subtle and somewhat light-hearted. Y’know, just an FYI kind of thing, we’re all friends here.

The trap detonated within the hour and BOOM, just like that, Linkdead-Rogue’s application was killed. Oh sure, Linkdead-Rogue tried to explain himself, he even tried to drag the two jackasses into it with him, claiming they could vouch for him (I enjoyed that part immensely), but really, what could he say? He’d been caught, in either a lie or as a sold account, neither of which is any good. (Hint: His only option now is to server transfer. Au Revoir, asshole. Have a nice life.)

That night, a few of the guildmates had noticed that “Koop” had effectively killed Linkdead-Rogue’s app and asked in guild if anyone knew who Koop was. Fucker was obviously a guildmate, he had screenshots from the members-only boards, fercrissakes.

Raidleader (aka Puppet #1) sent me a tell, “heh”. He knew. He knows I’m the fucking guerilla master and he knows what I’m capable of. And now you do too.

So. That’s how my week went. And yours?