View Single Post
Old 12-20-2009, 05:05 PM   #1 (permalink)
Shauk
Confused Adult
 
Shauk's Avatar
 
Location: Spokane, WA
MMO Society, Guild Politics, vs gaming. My personal issues right now....

Ok so after much "hate" towards wow, my neighbor has finally convinced me to play with him a bit more, it's the winter months, i'm not a fan of the cold weather and I usually spend my time watching movies or gaming anyway so, I do this hesitantly with little desire to turn it in to a serious pasttime or lifestyle (no raid scheduling)


That said, this guild he roped me in to seems to be a very diverse mix. Some disabled individuals, military discharged, 60+ "guildfatha" types, and their entire families, a few mid aged couples, single moms and single dads, the whole gamut pretty much.


Some of these people are very bad at this game, some of them are decent/pretty good.

Problem is, the mediocre amongst the shitty players they compare themselves to start to think they're god's gift to wow and I want to punch them through the goddamn screen sometimes.

Maybe I'm spoiled by my hardcore experience of 5+days a week 5+ hours a day raiding mentality, best of the best, no nonsense, do your job or get the fuck out, don't waste our time with your incompetence, know your class, know what is and is not an upgrade for your class, don't hold everyone up going "is this good for me?" if you don't know, don't come to the raid, etc... Don't clutter up vent with idle chatter about stuff that has nothing to do with the task at hand.

yes the above was a semi incoherent mess of mindsets that I just plucked out of the stream of consciousness that represents my prior experience and background in this game.


Of course I know I have to reel it in and just play nice with people who could learn a thing or 2, and I try my best not to come across as arrogant when I'm actually playing the game because it's just not that kind of environment for me.



Anyways I'm not sure what I should be doing at this point, I've advanced incredibly quickly since I hit 80 on this server less than a week ago, I already outgear 2/3rds of their raiding crew thanks to the random lfg system + triumph2T9 welfare epics.


I've become kind of a guilt scapegoat now for every little thing that goes wrong due to the most convoluted series of events ever at this point.


1st, read this comic.



ok so after one particular bad string of pugging experiences I simply said "wow, this tank is so bad it makes me want to flip off a box of kittens and punch a baby"


So out of nowhere this person starts whispering me telling me that it wasn't funny and not to talk about babies like that because she claims she told me this before.

Never talked to this girl before, yet she claims to know me, and claims to have told me not to say stuff like this in the past yet i never made mention of anything baby related before that day. I mean it's not exactly an every day use of my vocabulary.


I tell her OK, not wanting to have some crazy bitch up in my chat window trying to ruin my gameplay experience just because she's oversensitive.

She then persists on the issue, telling me that she had a stillborn last month and thats why she's upset.

Again, I tell her, sorry, and that I wont mention it again.

now, this doesn't mean i turned in to a bleeding heart about it. I play wow to connect with my friend or just waste time, i'm not here to deal with emotionally disturbed individuals, i'm not a licensed therapist, and I'm not your friend.

I just remained neutral and backed off.

end of story?

nah, she went to an officer with it, claiming that it was something I had done repeatedly (yet it being the 1st)

of course the story then gets twisted and it's no longer a fact that I said "punch a baby" no, according to her, I said I wanted to strangle babies.

ok so now i'm pissed off at this stupid cunt. She's just trying to stir up drama and support for her emotional shithole. I can understand being upset and sensitive to the issue, but to go an fucking lie about what I said, and the number of times I said it, simply to garner support to your cause, to gain sympathy and use these people as your free therapy is just sick and disgusting.


he sends me a few whispers about it, I tell him he is misinformed, that I said no such thing, and he drops it right there since he had no proof.



week goes by, I'm pretty geared at this point, i'm talking in gchat trying to get some runs going, and some help on my tradeskills, offering to buy mats since the AH is dry.

She just randomly interjects with how she's upset and crying and feels like shit.

thats it.

completely out of context, destroying whatever gameplay me and the guild had going on with our convo, of course, knight in shining armor syndrome takes place and guys leap to her comfort. She didn't even say what she was upset over, again, this has been a week since I last even registered that she existed....


I just imparted my advice: Sorry to hear that, I generally try to avoid social gaming when I'm upset or in a bad mood, since it's contagious and I wind up dragging people down with me. Feel better soon.


at which point she launches at me in all caps and profanity condemning me for even daring to take away the one thing that takes her mind off the issue of her stillborn.

ok wtf, I didn't even know it was about the kid, for all I know she had a rough day at work, or relationship issues. But no, i'm reminded once again, it's THAT girl.

I simply say "ok, wasn't intended to be me telling you what to do, just ignore that I said it then, sorry" at which point, 2 "white knight" assholes decided to chime in and also call me names, including the previous "officer" who simply asked "are you really that inconsiderate?"

at this point I just snapped, what the hell did I do exactly? I said I don't play wow when i'm upset because it causes stuff like this to happen? does this not prove my point? this is bullshit. I"m not calling anyone names are accusing them of being inconsiderate jerks you know? back off, ignore what I said, move on. Stop with the drama, ffs act your age.


we all agree to stfu and move along past the issue.

Of course it's unresolved and now I have people who think i'm a baby strangling psychopath.

*roll eyes*



and the very next day i caused a bunch of people who lack reading comprehension to gquit apparently.

Me and my friend are "retired" hardcore raiders, we know how to lead raids and kill the good shit, we put together an uld25 run but were 7 shy... all dps, so easily filled with pugs.

My friend was leading the run and stated up front that if any tradeskill drops come up for grabs they were staying in the guild, and that all loot was open rolls for MS > OS to stay fair to the pugs.

well 1st boss down, blade ward enchant drops, friend ML's it to a guildy, pugs go "wtf" and my friend says "we told you up front, if you dont like it, feel free to leave" so 2 people left

then heres where it turns to shit

3 of our own guild members start bitching in vent about it, how it was something that a douchey guild would do, that it was a douche baggy move, etc...

I respond saying "you know, you should probably check what you're saying there, you're basically calling the officers a bunch of douche bags for trying to help the guild" then of course, since I'm the baby strangling asshole, people who had no beef with the loot situation start piping up to tell me to shut the fuck up etc.... including the person who had my friend ML the enchant to them.

needless to say, I was highly amused at this point. Had I just had the enchant ML'd to me, I would have been very quiet if I were in their shoes.

They then start saying they didn't know we were one of those douchey kind of guilds and were thinking of looking elsewhere.

My response: I think it's kind of stupid idea for people to get angry at the guild when the guild is doing things to help them, it's called biting the hand that feeds you."

of course, this is what caused people to gquit, these thin skinned sissies literally voiced their complaint that I directly called them stupid and gquit. Because I said I disagree with the intelligence behind that conclusion, behind that idea, that somehow, I directly called them stupid? right.

It's clear to me that I'm not going to get along with these people, but it's also clear to me that there isn't shit they can do since my friend is also an officer.

So the raid dissolved after flame leviathan, pretty hilarious.

Obviously this is a sticky situation and there isn't really any clear way to "unsticky" it

Myself, I blame poor leadership, the conversations that took place shouldn't have made it that far before an iron fist choked the life out of that drama fire..
or at least told the girl to stop talking about her RL issues in gchat because it's non-condusive to a gaming environment, and personal interactions should remain in tells, private social channels, or guild forums.


Honestly I write this from a cynical/pissed off yet highly amused point of view at this point. But be assured, I was certainly willing to bend my vocab to avoid offending this woman for the 1st couple of weeks, thing is, when people make up their minds to be bitches to you, they'll always be bitches to you, and at that point... who knows how to handle it?



Have any of you ever run a guild or run in to a drama-whore situation like this? did you ever have it dealt with entirely or did it just fester?
What kind of rules would you agree on to keep a truly neutral, gaming focused community in check?

Last edited by Shauk; 12-20-2009 at 05:12 PM..
Shauk is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360