The exciting, and bizarre, conclusion (I think, because ya never know with some of these internet headcases) to the story I began last Thursday. (LINK!) Briefly: Rogue apps to our guild and is denied, he forms his own guild for the Unguildables. EbayRogue, former guild member, joins the Unguildables after I torched his app to a rival guild. IWannaBeTheRaidLeaderTank, guildmember, helps out the Unguildables on a run in Le Molten Core. He gets Le Boot from our guild for his trouble and joins the Unguildables. That’s three people in the Unguildables who we should not count among our admirers.
So, there we were off the coast of Theramore Isle, on some godforsaken island, killing some quest mob for, what I have named, That Stupid Sceptor Quest. Here’s my issue with the TSSQ: we always call these fights right before the loot raids, the fights are mostly in remote areas or, at the least, in some area I haven’t visited in over 30 levels, and we usually are doing this mob for one guild guy. I say, if I’m hauling my lazy ass all the way out to Theramore, let’s run the bitch a few times, for everyone with TSSQ, so I won’t be bothered EVER AGAIN. But that’s just me, some people may enjoy leisurely flights to remote areas for a five-minute fight.
We were clearing the surrounding trash while our current Emo Tank was breathlessly describing exactly how he wanted us to off this bad guy, when our Raid Leader interrupted the Vent spam with “this is fucking unbelievable”. Thought I, this should be good. He’s seen it all, if he thinks it fucking unbelievable, it’s GOT to be good.
He explained — seems that each member of the Unguildables, one by one, was /telling him for a guild invite into our guild. I used the stalking magic of the /who command, and noted that the Unguildables guild was no more. No members, former members are now guildless and the officers are nowhere to be found. A gen-u-ine mystery!
Some of our more “connected” guildmembers sent out /tells to see if anyone knew the deal with the Unguildables and their officers. Our guildleader started talking with the other guildleaders. Everywhere across Azeroth, in all the raid zones of the world, entire raids were momentarily halted while we performed a little CSI on this crime scene.
Our raidleader, still dealing with “pls invite to guild” tells, tried to add the Unguildables guildleader to his friends list and discovered an important clue: Invalid. Player. Name. (Warcraft noobs: no such player exists on our server … anymore.)
He asked a few of the Unguildables, directly, why in the world they would ask for (read: expect to ever get) a guild invite. Oh, the Unguildables leadership had told them they were disbanding, they had arranged a merger with us, and, all members should send a tell to our raidleader for a guild invite. (Err, say what? Come again?)
I know most of the Warcraft player base is new to online multiplayer gaming … gaming CSI rookies … so I’ll outline the relevant clues: a dead guild, a missing guildleader, a diversion made for the former membership. We’re not dealing with a simple guild murder here, or a kidnapping, this is grand theft. (Cmon, who do you think held the guild bank?)
Realizing he was talking to innocent victims, our raidleader explained that guild invites would not be forthcoming … they had been duped. (Although all healers would be welcome to apply to our guild! heh) The time to petition was now, but don’t expect any satisfaction. There is no court system in online gaming — there is no justice, there are no reparations, there is only revenge.
As the server pooled its information, the entire scheme came to light: the Unguildables leadership had planned this for a few days … they had applied for server transfers, told the membership the guild was being disbanded, thanks for stopping, they had arranged a merger with us (how nice of them), please contact *RaidLeader’sGameName* for the invite, then they took the money and ran to a different server.
Of all the guild thefts I’ve witnessed over the years, this was a pretty good one — well planned, well executed. Almost professional, in fact.
I camped our realm forums for a few days, hoping a huge flamefest would spawn. All that came out of it was one feeble thread, which was only interesting because one of the motherfuckers posted that there was almost no money or items in the guild bank (Hail, A_Lie!) and he only kept that as payment for services rendered (Hail, A_Rationalization!) and he wished his former members well (Hail, A_Douchebag!).
The Unguildables membership was picked over by the raiding guilds — most joined another Guild for the Unguildables, a few remain guildless to this day. Poorer, but wiser, one could say.
That’s not what I would say. I’d say: Know thy Guild Banker’s phone number and address. I think you know where I’m going with that.
Foton, If I guessed what realm you are on, would you tell me if I was right? =)
Obviously not.
EDIT: But you’re welcome to guess in an email and I can lie to you there. 🙂 Any guesses about my secret identity made in comments here will be, and have always been, deleted. I understand completely that the punishment for telling tales out of school will be: guildremoval and exposure of my WoW accounts to “reprisals”.
The cross server transfers have added so much to the game in terms of drama possibilities. I know of a former guild leader with a huge guild bank who was going to transfer to a guild that he had been dreaming of joining since he played EQ. He promised to distribute it to the members but didn’t do so. When a thread was made on the general forums listing the guild’s assets (HUGE), he transferred most of it to a reformed guild which contained a handful of the former members. The fact that he was in a high profile guild put some pressure on the situation.
Before the anonymous server transfers, a person would be unable to make use of a character that had stolen a guild bank. I think we can see much more of this type of behavior in the future. I can’t think of a great way to safeguard against it. My guild has banks on several accounts, and several people have access to the information. I hope it doesn’t ever happen in my guild, but there is an entertainment factor to reading about such happenings elsewhere. Nice detective work. =)
Also, I had to laugh about telling the guild members there was a merger and having them /w your guild. That was a nice touch.
hmm was this recent? and alliance side?
because last week someone posted a warning in our server forums that a guild banker who had stolen everything from his guild was transferring, but didn’t give the name, just that it was an anime-like name. So most of the “top” raiding guilds are on the lookout now when going over thir applicants. The server he’s transferring from is there … well I don’t remember it now.
Unless this is more common than we thought.
Well from looking at some more replies I guess this does happen.
Ahh the drama. Ahh the misery. Ahh the innocence lost.
Nice detective work. And please, do keep up the soap opera tales. This is great reading. I hope you do other writing as well besides blogging–you have a really strong style.
I saw a similar post yunk.