Yesterday, I mentioned in passing that there was a minor incident, a week or two ago, involving a Warcraft item auction of mine. Actually, the surrounding mayhem over this auction grew to such proportions, it was like I had looted a national treasure instead of an epic weapon.

Unlike a lot of epic items in this game, this bitch was the real deal: nice stats, great DPS, a vicious proc and hella fast. Ohh, if only my toon could have used it, I’d be a god now.

The setup: Running through one of the higher zones, on my way to somewhere else, I ran into this named mob. By that, I mean I actually ran over him and his four goons. Since I know well enough the pain of killing a named, only to die seconds later and lose out on any possible phatness, as soon as Mr. Named hit the dirt, I power-looted him — the ole shift+right-click, which autodrains a corpse of all its items.

It’s kind of my specialty, loot whore that I am.

In the text box, I see a purple name fly by. (Weeeee, phatness tonight!!) Eventually, I killed the remaining goons, and began hunting around in my bags to see if the phat was hot or not. And goddamn, I said GODDAMN, that bitch was hot.

Naturally, I boasted in /guildchat … we oooed and ahhhed … we raced to thottbot to see how it stacked up against other weapons … more oooo’s, more ahhh’s. A couple of the guildies tried to lay claim, announcing their intention to respec weapon skills to accommodate this virtual fineness. As if.

“And no, you can’t roll up a tank alt right now and lay claim either.” Fuckers.

So, we finished up our hunting for the night, I stoned back to Ironforge, and slapped the newfound phatness up in an auction: 24 hours, high minimum bid, no buyout. Read it and weep, losers. Gotta want it.

I logged. I slept. I worked. I logged in … with 10 plus emails in my game mailbox. What. the. fuck.

Y’see, I had never done an auction of this magnitude before and I foolishly listed the auction with my main character instead of an alt, which means I was to have no peace and quiet until the auction was done. Lesson learned.

Some of the emails asked where I had looted the weapon. (*Delete* Ya, I’m going to tell people where I got it. I don’t think so.) Others offered 150 gold to 250 gold if I’d pull the auction. ??? The fucking bid was at 500 gold within minutes of listing, so unless these people were illiterate, they might want to stop smoking so much crack.

And I said as much in my replies — more politely, of course.

Moments after sending out those replies, the guildleader of the farm guild sends a tell something like, “oh, I thought you were Chinese. hehe.” Because only the Chinese get purple loot? What the hell was that? My toon name isn’t even remotely Chinese-like, so who knows what the fuck he was thinking. Anyway.

Again, he offered 250 gold. Again, I explained that the bid was at 600 gold-plus and if he wanted the item, use … the … Auction … House, and I moved on to answering other tells and accepting congratulations on such a fine score.

He persisted, claiming the weapon wasn’t worth NEARLY 600 gold. What-fucking-ever, at least three bidders disagreed with him on that point, so why wasn’t he shutting up already.

I tired of watching the bid spiral upward so I griffed the hell away from Ironforge and worked on some quests. Well, as best I could, as I continued to get tells for the next four hours with various offers and questions.

About an hour before auction close, Farm Guild leader and his minions started sending tells again in earnest. They’ve pooled their gold, their main tank really needs this to be viable (I care?), everybody knows it’s overpriced, I should take this lower offer and run, Ironforge is abuzz with what a ripoff that auction is (again, I care?), blah blah.

I figured they were getting downright insulting, so I told the guildleader it was just this simple: put up or shut up. And if he couldn’t shut up, I could make him shut up. So I did. With /ignore.

The auction closed soon thereafter, at 750 gold (ka-ching!), and as I learned in tell from the buyer, it went to a 60 paladin from a tiny guild, not unlike my own. He was only able to afford it because everyone pooled their gold so he could have the uber. Which was nice. I’m glad it found a nice home where it will be treasured as it should. So to speak.

The next night, a guildie said that Farm Guild leader wanted off my ignore because he was curious how much the uber had gone for and to whom.

Various evil replies sprang to mind: “I disenchanted it”, “I gave it to a noob pally in Goldshire”, “I had to sell privately for 100 gold to a hunter”, and the classic … “fuck off.”

Ultimately, I declined to respond; I’d had enough of his bullshit to last me quite a while.

I did answer one of his guildmates, however, when they asked where I had looted the big score. I almost felt a little guilty about lying, when I saw that a group of them was scouring Badlands the next night.

I wonder how that worked out for them.