The School of Hard Knocks In Session

Sometimes, I enjoy watching the optimism of youth. Y’know, when I’ll warn someone in game to watch him or herself (and their virtual money) around the server jagoff and youth will tell me that I “just don’t know the server jagoff, he really is a nice person and a good player.” Or, that “Server jagoff USED to be a jagoff but now he’s changed.”

Ya. I love optimism like that because it means they’re about to get a lesson from the school of hard knocks.

Like this lesson. Remember several months ago I told you about the World of Warcraft rogue that stole the bank from the Unguildables guild? (Parts I and II) Briefly, this rogue kept applying to join our guild and we kept denying him, so he formed his own guild out of the server’s unguildable players — those prone to drama or ninja’ing — then he did a late-night server transfer with the guild bank and told the Unguildables he had cut a deal with my guild for all of the them to join all of us in happy raid land.

I may have also told you (maybe I didn’t though), he returned to our server on a level one noobie rogue WITH THE SAME NAME as his thief character and was chatting it up with the crowd in Ironforge.

This is how that night went down. A few of us are sitting around in Ironforge after the night’s 40-man raid, marveling that our guild can kill anything with some of the “talent” we have, and I see in /say his noobie rogue chatting with a couple of our guild (ALLEGEDLY) female players. Let’s say his rogue is named Beneful.

Me: /officer wtf. is that fucking beneful?
Officer channel: He transferred. Remember?? He stole that guild bank.
Me: /officer Well I’m looking right at him in Ironforge. Who the fuck else would name their character with that dumass name?
Officer channel: Wow. That’s ballsy.
Me: (to one of the females chatting with him) Is that fucking beneful?
Her: teehee ya. He made a level 1 to chat with people. He’s lonely on his new server.
Me thinks: Musta run out of money.

Ordinarily, in this situation I’d be on high alert to carefully scour any rogue applicant to keep his thieving ass out of the guild, but as we hadn’t tagged a new rogue since 2005, high alert seemed unwarranted.

Fast forward a few months and we’re several weeks into the Burning Crusade content. Remember, I got the tip that Dr. Cyber, one of our warlocks, had given his guild site login credentials to a former guildmate and I don’t know why — maybe he was sleeping with a married woman, maybe he wasn’t, maybe they were “just good friends” — but, I called Dr. C on it and he tried to deny, then I oh snapped him and everyone yelled at me for being mean and I was the bad guy for a few weeks there. (the Dr. C adventure)

Part of the information I received along with the tip about Dr. C was that Beneful (thieving rogue) had applied to, AND WAS ACCEPTED INTO, our guild as a level 70 warrior a few days earlier. I had passed on that info to the other guild officers while I was working on trapping Dr. C. Nothing was really done about Beneful’s warrior, but it all became a moot issue when Beneful-warrior left the guild along with Dr. C and joined one of the many Guilds That Hate Our Guild.

In a rare moment of altruism, I even warned the guildleader of the Guild That Hates Our Guild. His response: Ya, I know. He bought a warrior character off one of those auction sites, but he learned his lesson and is really quite a good raider and officer. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

OFFICER??? They made him an OFFICER??? Ya, they made him an officer. Cue the School of Hard Knocks.

A few more weeks passed and the one night in World of Warcraft, Raster, fearless raid leader/occasional AFK blogger, got an angry tell from a former guildmate asking him wtf is his problem. Raster responded, the former guildie responded back, bla bla, Raster asked around and got some more wtf’s, bla bla, and here’s what was going on: the prior week, some asshat had made a level one mule named Rasterbank and was asking former guildmates for loans and current guildmates for material and gold donations. Not so coincidentally, the guildleader of the Guild That Hates Our Guild also was victim, via name-posing, of the same bank alt scam. Hmmm.

They both petitioned GMs, who responded and said an investigation would be launched! I don’t know whatever happened with that investigation but I know both Raster and the rival guildleader got ALOT of tells from angry players.

When the scam broke, immediately my guild suspected Beneful. A. He’s a thief. and B. He has a hardon for our guild.

Eventually the angry tells died down and game life returned to … something resembling normal.

Then, just last week, I found out that the School of Hard Knocks had been in session and there were some new graduates.

Beneful had spent a couple of weeks fattening his virtual bank account by begging for loans from guildmates and loans from server friends. He had improved his gear by spending all his DKP, and then some! Apparently, they fronted him a lot of tank gear because he was the main tank, plus he whined alot.

Then, when he had all he could eat (and carry), he posted on the Guild That Hates Our Guild’s boards that they were all idiots who couldn’t kill jack or shit and he was server transferring to get away from their noobete. Ouch.

And I shake my head sadly. Not because I feel sorry for the Guild That Hates My Guild — better they learn this lesson in a game rather than out in real life where we play for keeps.

No, I feel sorry for me, because now I have to scour every goddamn guild application for subtle personality clues that may, or may not, tip me off that he’s applying for the 12th time to my guild. He won’t come at me with a rogue. He knows we haven’t tagged a rogue in two years. He’s going to come at me with a druid or a warlock. Maybe a mage or a shaman, but druid is my best guess. Every app is a suspect, every player is a “person of interest”. Nobody is cleared until they pass my IP and Ventrilo check.

IT’S HIGH ALERT!! We’re on GUILD LOCK DOWN.

16 thoughts on “The School of Hard Knocks In Session

  1. Look through the IP logs for the forums….

    Find his range… this is how you will know 🙂

  2. Excellent drama post as usual. It makes me think someone could make some money starting a company that does “Virtual Background Checks” for applicants. How they would accomplish such a task, I have no idea. But a feedback system of some sort would definitly be appreciated to make that job easier.

    And on another note, check this article out for a good summary and forum links for some of the juiciest drama from my server as of late. Smolderthorn hordeside has always been an excellent bastion of troubled souls.
    http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/10/instant-karmas-gonna-get-you/

  3. MWAHAHA!

    *ahem*

    *hehehehe*

    Okay, breathing…

    Daaaaamn, Foton. I’d wish you better luck, but then you wouldn’t have such great blogging material. 😉

  4. Wow, and to think I stopped raiding with my semi casual, adult, non drama guild coalition that had fun and had a raid leader that muted people that even started telling too many dirty jokes, let alone yelled.

    I guess maybe that was too boring, that was the problem.

  5. looooooooooooool

    😀

    Been awhile since you’ve posted another guild drama, but when you do, it sure as hell makes my day 🙂

  6. When I see one of these drama posts I always get so happy. I know it’s always going ot be funny, and I know exactly how foton feels about some of these types of players (Emo tanks especially..why that class seems to breed them I don’t know).

  7. No not really. Oddly enough it was reports of some of the more infamous WoW drama a year or two back that eventually got me to try the trial.

  8. Well, we play the games for entertainment, and drama is entertaining… at least when it’s not happening to you, and even then it can be, usually after some time has passed.

  9. Gold as always. I also smile when I see the guild drama posts. It’s not just that they are funny and leave you wondering if these people walk and chew gum in real life, it’s Foton’s telling of the tale that tips the scale to hilarious!

    I always smile and it makes my night, since that’s when I visit my favorite blogs. Even when my WOW life was good it was boring in comparison.

  10. Funny you should ask, we’re looking to turn over guildbank control to a fresh recruit. Any experience with that?

  11. Must … not … answer … trick …. question …. must … resist … temptation … guildbank …

    *pop*

    Oh sure I have a great deal of experience in …

    GOD DAMN, I felt for it !

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