Tag Archives: drama

Week of Fives: My Favorite Stories of 2006

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In chronological order, these were my five favorite stories from 2006 — all from World of Warcraft, three from Le Guild (nothing like a raiding guild for putting out drama and angst!) and two from my travels near and far.

1. January 2006 – The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj are opened for the first time anywhere on the Medivh realm. Hundreds of well-wishers and curious observers from other realms flooded Medivh with level 1+ alts, created specifically to observe the gate-opening scripts — largest gathering of cows (tauren) anywhere, with bovine names such as Milkme, Gotmilk, and Mooyou. (Warcraft tutorial: the tauren starting area is the closest to the Ahn’Qiraj instance.) GMs eventually got involved and ported the cowlings to other areas so the natives could enjoy their gate party without being trampled.

I took some heat for running around AQ/Silithus with my own noob cow tourist, but there’s nothing like being there for mass chaos. I only wish there were more such events during the year, hopefully on my home server for once. Would save me the trouble of making a noob character and running him all the way out to the anarchy.

The series:

2. August 2006 – The “I Hate People” series. Notice how quiet my guild was for the first 8 months of the year? Ya, I notice it too. What in the hell happened Summer 2006 because it was just one shitstorm after the other.

Too many players involved in this shitstorm to name, but I enjoyed writing this series because I got a rare chance to toast someone’s ass who thought he got away with a lie. I didn’t necessarily enjoy LIVING through this drama, but all’s well that ends well.

The series:

3. September 2006 – THE EMO TANK!! I know you miss him. I’d say I do too, but that would be a lie. He’s trying his darndest to get back into our happy family so you might get your wish.

I’m voting “NO!” because I want to publish his tattoo pics and gang hand signs pic that I copied from our guild site a few months ago.

The series:

4. October 2006 – If This is Wednesday, This Must Be Naxxramas. I had wanted to try a live-blog chat-log type post of a guild raid for a while. Unless you are an online-gaming raider or have been one, you cannot know the craziness involved in organizing more than five people. Even thinking about it now, these are all adults, who can all follow directions (I used to think), why is meeting at a pre-arranged location at the pre-arranged time so difficult??

I still don’t know the answer to that, but maybe the log makes it clearer why “guild” is just another word for “nuthouse”.

5. October 2006 – No, I Won’t Dance Naked with You in Ironforge. I love these two nutballs (aka future guild members) I met in Westfall and Redridge Mountains; they taught me the true meaning of irony. I’m hiding from my nutcase guildmates on an anonymous alt, enjoying the peace and quiet, and somehow, like I’m a vortex for crazy, they found me.

The one guy did teach me an important technique for avoiding people. Whenever I don’t feel like talking, “SCUBA!!”

Bonuses after the jump, Other Favorites and My Five Favorite Screenshots of 2006

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Week of Fives: Five 2006 Assholes to Remember

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(Yanno. That title might end up in an interesting Google search too.)

Do enough multiplayer online gaming, say ten minutes or more, and you’re bound to run into assholes. These five, although entertaining in their own way, really went above and beyond the behavior of a typical jackass.

Five 2006 Assholes to Remember — so we can keep a close watch on them — three from me, two from Raster:

1. The Priest who would be queen. Of drama, that is. I haven’t told this story yet because it only wrapped up this week. (Months in the making, however.)

This woman was a long-time guildmember of ours — married, with small children, and a decent priest, truth be told. Over the past year, she’d been linked romantically with a few guildmembers — a couple several years her junior, and a couple around her age. (Not judging, just saying, how young before I step in and remind her that this might be approaching ILLEGAL? It was getting close to that point with a few of them.) At least one of these kids guys left the guild because she dumped him; the others just moped around as she frolicked with the new love interest. So far, not really any of my business … except for the possible legal ramifications of guild complicity.

Meanwhile, she’s denying a few priest applicants here and there, mostly for no reason at all. We’d ask the other priests, “what do you think?”, they’re all fine with the app’s she hated. But, what can ya do? Guildmember hates a new guy, that’s too bad for the new guy. I prefer the evil I know to the evil I don’t yet know.

Oh ya, did I mention she was an officer? Ummm yaaaa. That was another problem.

One week this summer she told the guild that she was sleeping with one of our mages who lived in a neighboring state. I didn’t really need quite that level of detail, “we’re in love”, “we’re a couple”, either of those would have been suitable, but there was no misunderstanding after her description of his particulars. They continued making the beast with two backs for about a month and then she announced that she had left her husband over the weekend, moved into an apartment and the happy couple would be living together soon, in paradise, as she sought a divorce.

Fucking great, cuz I knew that was doomed to fail. Eventually Mr. Mage is going to wake up and realize he signed on for a whole lot more than paradise and then there’s going to be trouble.

Another few weeks passed and she announced that she was stepping down from officership, and so was Mr. Mage. (Did I forget to mention that he was an officer too? Oops.) They were far too happy spending time together to retain their officer positions, or to raid or play Warcraft anymore.

No problem, our guildleader demoted her down to member and demoted her offline boyfriend to member also. We wished them well.

The next night, Mr. Mage logged on and All Emo broke loose when he saw he wasn’t an officer anymore. “YTF did we demote him???” “What were we thinking??” He was seriously ticked.

This was us: What. In. The. Fuck?

Someone explained that his girlfriend had told us they weren’t going to play anymore and please demote them. “WTF, she doesn’t speak for (him)!”

Ya, we should have known that. Somehow. I guess. All I knew was, there’s trouble in paradise. Maybe Mr. Mage had woken up and smelled the peanut butter on the Lil Tykes toys, I dunno.

Then this week, which is a month-ish since the “demotion incident”, she left the guild, after saying her goodbyes to a select few. She didn’t say goodbye to me, cuz I never respected their love or some shit, I forget the exact second-hand explanation. Whatever.

Someone asked Loverboy what was up with that and turns out, they had broken up that week (shocking!) and the guild wasn’t big enough for the two of them (equally shocking!)

FOR ONCE, we got the best part of a deal! Hallelujah, it’s gonna be a good week.

Hey, maybe she can sell her priest like she did her other character that we equipped in Tier 2 armor. Oops, did I forget to mention that too? (Foton)

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If This is Wednesday, This Must Be Naxxramas

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If I were to do live-blogging on a guild raid night in World of Warcraft — let’s say yesterday night — this is how it would have gone:

One hour before raid invites, 20 guildmates online: Log on, check my character for repaired equipment, combat supplies, and after all the ducks are in a row, zip down to the Stormwind Stockades to farm for some noob alt gear.

Guildmate Convo #1: This rival guild’s alts are sending our guys tells begging for gold, can I deal with this? I think wtf and suggest they /ignore the idiots and, errr, maybe don’t give them any gold?

Convo #2: Offtank_03, aka The Emo Tank, has a serious family issue at the moment but he’ll still be at the raid. I express sympathy and hope that won’t lead to a longer conversation where I’ll need to quote a little Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I suggest he take the night off, Emo Tank will have none of that. For the Guild!

Convo #3: One of our raiders with dwindling attendance was reclassified to our casual raider rank and wants clarification on that.

I’ll explain: we have two ranks for regular members, one is for those with over 50 percent raid attendance, the other for those with less than 50%. The only difference between the two ranks, other than the name, is that higher-attendance people get invited first to the 40-man raids, and the lower-attendance people are invited next, if there are spots available and based on what classes we need. Everyone on the waiting list earns DKP same as those in the raid, so the lower-attendance people aren’t penalized in that way because they can’t get into a raid. Both ranks bid on loot equally, earn DKP equally, receive guild assistance equally — the only difference is the order of the invites.

We instituted this change many months ago when we noticed the curious relationship between attendance and farm mobs. Once the learning was behind us and a boss mob moved to farm status, suddenly, ALMOST INEXPLICABLY, attendance for that mob and/or zone would skyrocket. (Apparently, real life obligations can go to hell when there’s loot to be had.) Since we used to fill raids first come, first served, you can imagine the ruckus when some yokel who never showed for the learning attempts (read: wipes) got into the farm raids ahead of those who had.

Enter our two-rank system, which has worked wonders to encourage stable attendance. Every evaluation period (about once a month), there’s fresh drama from those guildies that didn’t make the cut and get moved to the lower-attendance rank. I just don’t get that drama. It’s math. Attendance is under 50 percent, you’re not invited first. Big f’ing deal, you go on the wait list, get DKP anyways and you can do whatever the hell you want in game. You don’t like it, get on that wait list more than 50 percent of the time and in a few weeks, BOOM, you’re back to the higher-attendance rank.

So that’s what Tell #3 was about — guy was pissed he got bumped to the lower-attendance rank. We had just done an evaluation the week prior, so I’ve gotten a lot of these tells this week, and they all start off like this: The guild should make an exception because *fill in the blank*. (Y’know, blow me.)

Kinda went on a rant there, where was I? Oh ya, The Stockades. Finished that, flew to Eastern Plaguelands to do some Naxx turnin.

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