Hey, Whatever Happened to that One Dude?

Why don’t I just tell you?

Remember that one dude who was guildleader of (yet another) guild that hates my guild and he claimed he got hacked and/or keylogged and, what a world! what a world!, their phat guildbank is gone and they might have to start whoring themselves for a living to survive in Le World of Warcraft? Well … whoring more, if that were at all possible. (Link if you need a refresher.)

So, he had tried for a few weeks to prop up his “I’ve been HACKED! and/or KEYLOGGED!” story for a week or two on my realm forums, and of course all of us were doing the “uh huh, sure”, and his guildmates were licking ass and telling us haters to stfu. And then, suddenly, he dropped off the face of the Earth.

A month went by without a word from him to his guildmates. We know this because we’d politely inquire of his guildmates and they said they hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

(That’s not suspicious at all. No way.)

And so, after weeks of no communication, his guildmates scattered to the winds and transferred to different servers or joined other raiding guilds, like mine, and that one dude became just a story we told our younger members who, often times, take every game character at face value.

Last week, some of our members got tells from “That One Dude” and he explained that he did get his account back from Blizzard after an EXHAUSTIVE investigation and he had server transferred and changed his character name. (As you do.) Despite several direct inquiries, he refused to disclose his new name or server … because “he didn’t want all that drama to follow him”, and he wished everyone well or something ridiculous like that.

Are these the actions of an innocent character? Several of his former guildmates think thought so.

So. Being the fucking guerilla master that I am, I resolve to get to the bottom of this cuz I’m tired of being labeled a hater cuz I won’t swallow bullshit.

Fortunately for me, some of his friends ratted out the thieving bastard and named the new server, and again fortunately for me, he’s as stupid as he is dishonest and he renamed his character similarly, although not quite searchable without more info, thereby saving me several hours (days) of fruitless hunting. Ba da bing, I have the server, I have the name, and now, thanks armory!, I have the guild.

And with the guild, which has forums, and a searchable member list with join dates, I now have the date he first expressed an interest in this other guild on a server far, far away from his own guild — a date one week prior to the day he claimed that he was HACKED! and/or KEYLOGGED! Why … it’s almost as if he planned the whole thing.

Ya’know, it’s almost not fair how smart I am compared to the average gamer. It’s like I’m that Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and I can frighten the superstitious populace with my superior knowledge of a solar eclipse. It’s magic, be afraid!

It’s interesting to me how otherwise (mostly) honest people assume a fake name in a game, and sometimes a fake personality, and their dishonest, thieving nature comes to light. It’s doubly interesting that there’s always apologists and hive minds to defend them. His original story didn’t even make sense and yet, there they were, buzzing around his level one posting alt calling the rest of us jealous haters.

The things some players will do, the things they will believe, all for loot — future loot, the hope of loot, the fond memory of past loot — that’s the magic.

Tomorrow: Meh, I ran out of time to tell you about the continuing woes of hunter sister and our man-whore paladin. I’ll save that one for tomorrow, plus … BabbleOn is back!! She’s still not speaking to us. Yet.

Patch 2.2

I took a short blog vacation while I was traveling, as I’m wont to do, plus, there’s always a million things to do when a monster patch falls from the sky, like updating addons from traffic-challenged sites and laughing at the emo warrior who logs off in disgust on patch day because he can’t even get Omen installed properly (true story) or how about dealing with the new sound system that screws Ventrilo quality if you don’t follow the now-proper sequence of loading and connecting to Ventrilo FIRST and then World of Warcraft.

How can I stealth log in on a super secret alt if I connect to Ventrilo first??? Ya, I can’t. Which is yet another reason why I hate this new sound system.

I’m not sure I can think of a single thing I like about Patch 2.2.0. Wait a minute, I’ll go read the notes again. (You can read along here.)

I like 30 minute paladin buffs. And I LOVE the afk-reporting system in the battlegrounds. So much potential for abuse, which is really appealing to me. (Here’s the story of someone who appreciates the art of abuse more than I do.)

Patch 2.3 seems like a brighter world, but I’ve noticed that Blizzard doesn’t give with the one hand unless it takes away with the other. I think it has to do with formulas. Y’know math. Can’t argue with math. (Excellent 2.3 thread here, with citations for quoted material.)

In light of recent class “balancing” (or lack thereof), this thread is amusing: DEV LIST of toons/class played

The setup:

I would love to see a list of DEVS and the race/class of toon they play. Just curious.
I am assuming I will never see that though.

And the punchline:

Warlock
Warlock
Paladin
Warlock
Warlock
Mace Spec MS Warrior
Warlock
Warlock
Warlock
Resto Druid
Warlock
Warlock
Warlock

Which can’t be that far from the truth. Either that, or the dude playing a warlock is one helluva persuasive sonuvagun.

Later: Drama updates, because I know you’re dying to hear whatever became of that crazy hunter chick who was dating the paladin in our guild, who dumped her then started seeing that paladin chick in another guild and it was shortly after that when we realized it might not be the chicks who are crazy and emo and My Chemical Romance all over the place.