Pictured: my priest alt, screwing around by the Tinker-dudes mailbox in Ironforge. I had to abandon my regular tile in Ironforge, too many noobs hanging out begging for gold, asking where I got suchandsuch piece of gear, or, can they join my guild. (No, Blackwing Lair, and no.)

Updates, because everyone wants to know how the story ends: Recall the lying “I’m ebaying/IGEing” rogue that left our guild a few weeks back, immediately after the departure of two insurgents who tried to grab lasting guild power and failed. Whatever happened with all of that? Well, the rogue’s application to a rival guild was closed and denied that same day, as I wrote previously, and he eventually landed in a guild that we call, affectionately, the Guild for the Unguildables. Every member is a former member of a raiding guild and has … let’s say, baggage … in other words, a tattered reputation.

Recall that as the rogue was trying to salvage his application to the rival guild, he claimed that the two insurgents could vouch for him and his avatar. That was one of the tipping points for the two jackasses’ applications — they were also denied and shown the exit. From my super-leet sleuthing, I found out that subpar DPS and subpar tanking were also issues in their guild auditions. Hey! That’s exactly the problem we noticed, too!

Don’t feel badly for them. They landed in a raiding guild only a few rungs down the progression ladder. When I say “a few rungs down”, I mean they get to endure Nefarian learning all over again. Welcome to early 2006.

They’ve put some effort into maintaining friendships within our guild — y’know, testing out whether a reconciliation might be possible — one of them PVPs alot on his mage alt and he’ll buff my rogue with intelligence whenever we cross paths (???), but whatever, that bridge was burned. Have a nice life.

I had semi-sorta promised the story about the PVPing, former guildmember, won’t-speak-to-either-me-or-our-raidleader, chick. Here’s how that all happened: about six months ago this chick and her husband (that’s real life spouse) were raiding guildmates of ours. Good raiders, excellent attendance, some of the best gear in our guild. The chick was an officer in our guild, too, although she was a bit prone to quitting the officer position with regularity. She was given One More Chance at the officer position, with the understanding that if she quit this time, she would never be offered officer again, because hell, enough is enough.

Everything went along just fine for a few weeks with the One More Chance. Then, one night, I don’t even know what the hell happened, but this is what I witnessed. She made a post on our boards about new plans she had for recruiting and new ideas she had for easing the integration of new members into the raiding core, etc. etc. It all sounded great — she really was one of our best officers when she wasn’t quitting or threatening to quit. A few hours after that post, she announced that she and her husband were quitting Warcraft for good, they were going to focus on family life with no more gaming, and she wished us all well.

What in the …

Here’s my theory: something happened that night in those few hours that forced a game-quit. 7:00 pm, everybody’s happy. 11:00 pm, they’re outta here. Doesn’t make sense otherwise. I also have a theory of what that something was, but it’s only speculation from knowing her personality and *cough* behaviors. Nevertheless, they’re out and we wished them well in return. And meant it.

Over the following weeks, she would occasionally email or IM me and our raidleader, as we were good friends with her in the guild. We were, in fact, among her few supporters because she had a tendency to be short with guildmates which was not endearing. And I’ll say here, this was because she is a woman. We have male officers that are similarly terse and demanding, but they don’t get the bad rap that she did. Ya, it’s unfair, but this is life.

Well, she must have been getting bored at work and with no game in her free time, because she gradually stepped up the emailing and IM’ing to the point of nuisance. She reinstalled Warcraft solely to chat with us during raids. (Hi? I’m in Blackwing Lair? Kinda busy here.) She’d log into the guild’s Ventrilo server and chat with the guild there, too. I think you can imagine how out of control this was becoming.

The raidleader and I talked about how we could solve this without being complete assholes about it. That’s me rationalizing. Remember, we didn’t START OUT intending to be complete assholes. That’s me clinging to a fine line as I rationalize.

Next week … we are complete assholes about it.