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.

Here’s just some of the possibilities:

The douchebag card line – congrats on avoiding a game ban, selling gold for $$$, making everyone’s /ignore list (except for the characters created in the last hour), pulling off a loot and scoot on UberGuild03. Plus, the classics: the loot ninja, the loot whore and turning cyber tricks for loot.

The whole imaginary love scene – congrats on imaginary girlfriend, imaginary fiance, imaginary wedding, the new cyber partner. Also, good luck on keeping it from the real wife (especially after she sees the greeting card in your email/guild boards.)

Just for your guildmates (or your rival guild’s members) – congrats on the promotion for no pay, repeated failing of a gear check (or intell check) mob, proving that human evolution is a myth, also, congrats on the /gkick, the guild hop, or guild poaching.

The key is authenticity. It’s not enough anymore to have a 1950s photo of a guy drinking a cup of shut the fuck up, the market needs authentic-looking flamebait with focused messages.

Even in my free time, I’m thinking of improved methods to best the internet other guy.

Now, the next time you think Foton is wrong about everyone on your server being a complete whackjob except for MAYBE ten, eleven people, I want you to return to this screenshot and remind yourself of the many flavors of stupid.

Meanwhile, back on my own server of stupid, remember the Guild That Hates My Guild who lost their guildbank to a two-time guildbank thief? (Here it is: The School of Hard Knocks in Session)

Well, they had been taking some heat lately for game drama and guild drama, and unfortunately for them, they’re too damn stupid to tell their own guildmates to keep their damn mouths shut so, of course, every last person knew of their troubles and was very entertained by it all. Including me.

And so, it is with some awe and mild surprise that I can report their guildbank has been stolen AGAIN, in another server-transfer and run scam — this time by the guildleader, whose e-friends and asslicking guild loyalists are trying to play this off as a hack job.

Hacked or fooled twice, which is the greater stupid?

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.

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)

2. Emo Tank #2 of 3. (Story: The Emo Tanks 1, 2 and 3) Our second Emo Tank tortured me for many, many, months. His whining was unrivaled (until the 3rd Emo Tank appeared), his excuses legendary, and his connection was the worst I’ve seen. Twenty or more crashes per Blackwing Lair was a good day, and I was bombarded with a minimum of 1-2 hours worth of tells somehow related to him. “Sorry Boss” was uttered about 40 times per raid night for his multitude of screw ups and it quickly turned into a guildwide joke. He was also one of the biggest loot whores in the history of gaming (only his girlfriend, also a guildmate, was worse). He’d harass other warriors until they would pass on things just to shut him up, always felt entitled to everything because he ran a couple of 20-man raids, and would roll on every single item to drop that wasn’t DKP-based whether he needed it or not. While reading the stories may be entertaining, it was truly hell at times for those of us who lived through it. I never want to forget that solely for the reason that I do not let it happen again. (Raster)

3. The Battleground Leader who couldn’t read a map to save his life. (Here’s the story!) Basically, the guy kept shouting at me to stop camping Honor Kills in the middle of the map. 1. I wasn’t camping HKs and 2. I wasn’t in the middle of the map. It’s not that it’s unusual to find an arguing dude in a Warcraft PVP battleground, it’s that he was so damn stupid, I made sure to get a screenshot of him so I would never forget. As I hoped, I did run into him in later battlegrounds, principally Alterac Valley. Believe me, I was excited the first few times. Oh to get a chance to stand next to him stealthed and /smile when a roving band of horde would challenge his flag position! Sadly, I never got that opportunity cuz the fucker was ALWAYS AFK up in the entrance cave. Well damn. We could have had a very special PVP relationship if he would just poke his head out of the cave every once in a while. (Foton)

4. The former guildmate who couldn’t move on until we shoved her out the door. (Story: Razing BabbleOn) Currently reigning as the biggest twat I have ever met in WoW. She has the insatiable need to be at the center of all things drama. When there was not enough floating about, she would simply create her own. She was also incapable of remaining quiet for more than 3 seconds and I was her second favorite /whisper target. Thankfully, most of the problem was removed when (I suspect) her husband caught her unable to keep her cyber legs shut, as they were out of the guild five minutes later. Now all I need is a bus to finish off the job. (Raster)

5. The guildbank thief. (Story: Part I and Part II) Briefly, this rogue had applied to our guild, we had passed on his application because of his shady history, he formed his own guild then walked away from our server with their guildbank. Other than being a dick, his theft didn’t affect us in any way, but here’s why I want to remember him forever: the moron keeps applying to our guild with different characters. He’s not very smart about it either (so far) — he’ll use a character whose Warcraft forum signature includes his other characters or he’ll TELL someone in our guild who he really is. Three times now, he’s app’d since the bank theft — WTF man, how many times do we have to say denied?? (Foton)

Friday, the finale: My Favorite Stories of 2006.

So, there we were off the coast of Theramore Isle, on some godforsaken island, killing some quest mob for, what I have named, That Stupid Sceptor Quest. Here’s my issue with the TSSQ: we always call these fights right before the loot raids, the fights are mostly in remote areas or, at the least, in some area I haven’t visited in over 30 levels, and we usually are doing this mob for one guild guy. I say, if I’m hauling my lazy ass all the way out to Theramore, let’s run the bitch a few times, for everyone with TSSQ, so I won’t be bothered EVER AGAIN. But that’s just me, some people may enjoy leisurely flights to remote areas for a five-minute fight.

We were clearing the surrounding trash while our current Emo Tank was breathlessly describing exactly how he wanted us to off this bad guy, when our Raid Leader interrupted the Vent spam with “this is fucking unbelievable”. Thought I, this should be good. He’s seen it all, if he thinks it fucking unbelievable, it’s GOT to be good.

He explained — seems that each member of the Unguildables, one by one, was /telling him for a guild invite into our guild. I used the stalking magic of the /who command, and noted that the Unguildables guild was no more. No members, former members are now guildless and the officers are nowhere to be found. A gen-u-ine mystery!

Some of our more “connected” guildmembers sent out /tells to see if anyone knew the deal with the Unguildables and their officers. Our guildleader started talking with the other guildleaders. Everywhere across Azeroth, in all the raid zones of the world, entire raids were momentarily halted while we performed a little CSI on this crime scene.

Our raidleader, still dealing with “pls invite to guild” tells, tried to add the Unguildables guildleader to his friends list and discovered an important clue: Invalid. Player. Name. (Warcraft noobs: no such player exists on our server … anymore.)

He asked a few of the Unguildables, directly, why in the world they would ask for (read: expect to ever get) a guild invite. Oh, the Unguildables leadership had told them they were disbanding, they had arranged a merger with us, and, all members should send a tell to our raidleader for a guild invite. (Err, say what? Come again?)

I know most of the Warcraft player base is new to online multiplayer gaming … gaming CSI rookies … so I’ll outline the relevant clues: a dead guild, a missing guildleader, a diversion made for the former membership. We’re not dealing with a simple guild murder here, or a kidnapping, this is grand theft. (Cmon, who do you think held the guild bank?)

Realizing he was talking to innocent victims, our raidleader explained that guild invites would not be forthcoming … they had been duped. (Although all healers would be welcome to apply to our guild! heh) The time to petition was now, but don’t expect any satisfaction. There is no court system in online gaming — there is no justice, there are no reparations, there is only revenge.

As the server pooled its information, the entire scheme came to light: the Unguildables leadership had planned this for a few days … they had applied for server transfers, told the membership the guild was being disbanded, thanks for stopping, they had arranged a merger with us (how nice of them), please contact *RaidLeader’sGameName* for the invite, then they took the money and ran to a different server.

Of all the guild thefts I’ve witnessed over the years, this was a pretty good one — well planned, well executed. Almost professional, in fact.

I camped our realm forums for a few days, hoping a huge flamefest would spawn. All that came out of it was one feeble thread, which was only interesting because one of the motherfuckers posted that there was almost no money or items in the guild bank (Hail, A_Lie!) and he only kept that as payment for services rendered (Hail, A_Rationalization!) and he wished his former members well (Hail, A_Douchebag!).

The Unguildables membership was picked over by the raiding guilds — most joined another Guild for the Unguildables, a few remain guildless to this day. Poorer, but wiser, one could say.

That’s not what I would say. I’d say: Know thy Guild Banker’s phone number and address. I think you know where I’m going with that.

It has come to our attention that several customers have received correspondence from people claiming to be affiliated with Blizzard. This has come under the guise of a rebate form. These emails appear to be an attempt to acquire account information from players.

If you receive any correspondence from Blizzard, you may contact any one of our support departments to verify the nature of any email which claims to be from us.

The most common way for an unauthorized person to acquire account access is by learning account names and passwords. Be advised that Blizzard employees will NEVER REQUEST YOUR PASSWORD when verifying your account status. The best step in security for your account is to keep your password secret.

Best response, #17 by Coringar of the Sargeras realm:

Do I still get the rebate?