Once upon a time, before the release of World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade, we had this guildmate … paladin.

No wait. His original main was a paladin. After he quit Warcraft for the third time, he switched main characters to his mage. He also had a level 60 priest as an alt character that was reasonably equipped for raiding. He had a nice stable of raid characters to choose from, based on our needs, and other than the frequent “I’m quitting” announcements, he was a valuable member.

Well … after about the fifth or sixth “I’m quitting” routines, he began a rapid descent into insanity. I still don’t have any idea what his problem was, probably game burnout or some real life issue, who knows, but he was a bitch to get along with towards the end there. All this “I quit” “I’m back” “I hate you all” “Love! Love!” came to a head one weekend when there was an issue with a guild applicant and the app’s e-friend.

Let’s call my guildmate Iquit and the applicant Flakey … because he kinda was. Flakey was a level 60 priest (OMG, TAG HIM NOW!) with acceptable priestly skeelz, which in the raiding endgame of World of Warcraft means A. he had his Flash Heal spell hotkeyed and B. he occasionally paid attention during raids. Ya, a primo app EXCEPT he would withdraw his application every other day.

Flakey expected an immediate guild tag — ye ole priest entitlement attitude you sometimes see — and our guild doesn’t work that way. Priests might have to wait a few days for a tag. Hunters have to wait 18 months. (I kid. But they wait much longer because, well, they’re hunters. And probably night elves. Ya dig?)

Anyways, Iquit is PVPing in the battlegrounds on a Friday night and he makes a disparaging remark in /say to one of the server known-assholes, who just happens to be bestest friends ever with Flakey. Iquit and Flakey exchange words in /tells and eventually the argument moves to our guild message boards.

In hindsight, this was hilarious: the two of them were scorching the earth over some server dirtbag, who was probably enjoying every minute of it.

Soooo, our Guild Leader tells the two knuckleheads, Iquit and Flakey, to knock it off and play past it. They both take offense and the argument continues for another day with each firing sly shots at each other in raid chat and /say.

Guild Leader has enough and kills Flakey’s app. Guild Leader tries to talk to Iquit, however, Iquit is now upset that it took so long to kill Flakey’s app and starts tossing around threats.

From my rather extensive guild experience, I know that guild leaders don’t take kindly to threats. And this was no exception — Guild Leader boots Iquit out of the guild.

Guild life returned to something resembling tranquility and we made our preparations for The Burning Crusade launch.

About a week before launch, someone mentioned that Iquit had formed his own guild, and using the magic of the /who command, I could see that was indeed true. Interesting. Very interesting.

Burning Crusade launches and I’m running around in Hellfire, desperately seeking orcs, when Emo Tank sends me a /tell out of the blue. Emo Tank has bounced around from guild to guild, possibly disatisfied that other guilds aren’t as entertained with his unmedicated antics as we were. Big surprise, he wants to come back. Before I get a chance to explain fully why that’s probably not going to (EVER) happen, he mentioned that he’s been approached by Iquit’s guild to join.

Jesus, I forgot about those guys … wonder what’s up with them … and I /who and stop dead in my tracks.

What madness is this?? Twenty members online, a dozen of which are sworn Foton and Foton’s Guild haters, including Iquit, the priest who would be queen, this one dude whose guild assassination I personally ordered, two guys on my /ignore list (and I’ll assume that I’m on theirs), two former guildmates who /gquit over raid attendance “issues” (i.e. they didn’t attend), some alt level 60-ish character of another AFK Gamer celebrity and about three former applicants we passed over.

There were a few other former guildmates in the guild also, who I didn’t think had a problem with us, but I have to figure after they read the /guildchat, they will.

If Warcraft was real life, this would be a public relations disaster.

Since it’s not, I’m flattered: an entire guild, united in hate.

Oh the stories they must tell! I’ll bet my guild and I grow more evil with each retelling. We burned orphanages! We crushed their dreams! Slept with their wives! Public drunkenness! Debauchery!

I really hope they start a blog.