Twenty Things Foton Did on Holiday

Here’s the quick version of what I’ve been up to the past month, besides taking some time off to sharpen my axe:

1. Holidays. Duh.
2. Traveling for the holidays.
3. Finished a major project at work. Ka-ching!
4. Traveling for work. Bleh.
5. Updated the blog software and ruined the site … on New Year’s Day while VERY hung over. That was fun.
6. Told 1/3 of our World of Warcraft guild membership to GTFO of our guild. We realized it was more efficient to have them type /gquit then go down the list and /gkick. Really saved a lot of time.
7. Explained on Vent that we really did mean it.
8. No. Seriously. GTFO.

Here’s the thing. Every goddamn year around Christmas time, raiding guilds go through this period where people are traveling or spending time with their families or both, cuz THAT’S WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO. So, of course, the raiding (read: the loot train) slows down or grinds to a halt, only to pick up again after the holidays have passed. And every goddamn year, there’s a group of players who begin to panic when the loot train isn’t chugging down the tracks. “Are we disbanding?” “Will we raid again?” “This guild is dead!!”

Fercrissakes, it’s two weeks out of the year and these losers can’t wait for people to get back to their computers.

So our officers told the losers not to panic, and, after the holidays, they’d see, everything would be back to normal.

Apparently, losers don’t have access to calendars, and in their world, the holidays are over December 26th. Therefore, they had been more than patient by waiting until January 1st to start issuing ultimatums like … replacing our long-serving officers and giving King Loser the guildleader rank. (Riiight.)

See #5 above. I was trying to put out a fire on Ye Olde Blog while alt-tabbed at the PVP lounge and those sonuvabitches are complaining because we’re not in Serpentshrine Cavern and goddammit, turn over that guildleader tag and give them admin rights to all the web resources and the Ventrilo server so they can get to it.

The officers said, “So go raid SSC, nothing stopping you.” And indeed, they were welcome to raid SSC, there was nothing stopping them.

Not good enough. They wanted the raid leader to stop playing his alt and lead the raid; they wanted me to stop screwing around at the PVP battlemasters and heal the raid on my priest alt; and pretty much everyone to stop what they’re doing for a good old-fashioned New Year’s Day raid in Serpentshrine Cavern.

It was one of those super-rare moments when everyone’s temper blows at once. In short, every single officer online issued a “GTFO” (or some variation thereof), and me, late to the party, added my GTFO on Ventrilo … y’know, for the illiterate in the audience.

Those that GTFO are now on their third post-Foton guild.

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WoW Guild Form Letters

Actual response to a (former) World of Warcraft guild member’s inquiry on why he was /gbooted. MIND YOU, this was his third inquiry and we thought we were pretty clear the first and second times.

Dear *Former Member*,

You’re a great player and any guild would be lucky to have you.

Unfortunately, there was a ruckus on the public realm forums (which you initiated?). Insult to injury, the ruckus was about your application to another guild. Something about they denied your application … and also your app was a complete surprise to us?

You see our point.

While we do appreciate functional alcoholism (and who among us hasn’t applied to a rival guild while drunk? — we all have!), we’d like to move on.

Best Wishes Always,

*Foton’s Guild*

Feel free to use this template for your own guild. You wouldn’t think you’d need this kind of administration for gaming guilds, but you really do.

My AV Weekend

So this was probably the last holiday weekend for World of Warcraft’s Alterac Valley battleground, as we recently knew it. Version 3, we may come to call the current AV. (Version 1, the long-queue long-battles. Version 2, the removal of 2908902 NPCs. And Version 3, the post-cross-server post-honor-nerf Drek/Vann race we have now — PRE-honor nerf of patch 2.3.)

Anyways. They may pump up the honor of the 2.3 AVs, but I’m getting while the getting’s good.

So. I spent a bajillion hours in AV this weekend, making friends … no, actually, I didn’t make any friends, but I did get some laughs and I made it to at least one new /ignore list (that’s confirmed, people), and, oh ya, I met a horde warlock I hope to never cross paths with again.

One of the first interesting interactions came from this druid on my server. He wasn’t in AV, but he sent me a tell asking if my guild was recruiting boomkins. (That’s moonkin druids, for you non-WoW people. They boom boom, mostly.) Said me, I’ll ask. His name sounded familiar, I remember /who’ing him a few weeks back because some guildmates were in an awful heroic instance with him. Asked me in /gu, Isn’t *LilBoomkin* the druid who was gawdawful in heroic few weeks back?

No one knew, but before I could respond to LilBoomkin, he sent a mistell to me “I asked the guild”, and then, not realizing his mistake, “When we go?”. I was momentarily flummoxed. I /replied, “mt?” (that’s gamer-speak for mistell). He replied, “Hi. Yes? Who are you?” I “umm”-ed. He asked, “what they say recruiting?”

“Sorry, we’re full up on crazy in this guild.”

Later, I was in this scrappy AV where each side is fighting tooth and nail over every tower and graveyard. I’m on duty at Tower Point when the Iceblood Graveyard people ask for assistance. You might not know, but IBGY (that’s gamer-speak for Iceblood Graveyard — you’re catching on!) is just down the road from Tower Point, so I told my tower partners that I was gonna head over there and help them out, WHICH MEANS: Stay here and watch this. If I hadn’t said anything, I could see where a person could be confused if anyone was going and those graveyards sure are important.

I mounted up to ride over to IBGY, with all the other tower defenders behind me (/sigh), and when we arrived, we saw that the two IBGY defenders were fighting the Wing Commander. This was their IBGY emergency, the will-not-aggro-you-unless-you’re-really-trying bitch-to-kill horde NPC Wing Commander.

And of course, as you probably guessed already, we lost Tower Point in the meantime. GOD I LOVE ALLIANCE!

Before I returned to Tower Point to recapture, I did explain to the IBGY defenders that the Wing Commander IS NOT AN EMERGENCY. Don’t you be calling Foton over there to help you kill an optional mob. Or that beast of a warlock. No thank you!

It was kind of funny about the time I met that warlock beast, who I will call Beastie. Shortly before, I had just finished another AV where this one Alliance dude asked in /bg chat for some help with a warlock out in the middle of nowhere. I had told him, /bg I’m sorry, we can’t spare 15 people right now to go kill a warlock. Yuk yuk, warlocks are so OP, which I didn’t use to believe very much as I only had troubles here and there with them. But brother, now I’m a believer.

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