MMO Drama Storytime featuring DAoC

Oh RP stories now, well.
*legit sat here for over an hour thinking*

So, curiously delighted because yay other likemindeds! Huzzah~!
Also, yeaaaaah, that's precisely the kind of approach I've used. >.>

I will laugh if you're actually my bro-troll.

Haha, I'm only just flattered to be linked to such awesomeness. ☆⌒(＞。≪)

I honestly didn't get to computers til much much later and uh, at that stage wouldn't have had the skills to operate well enough to play an MMO.

Silly Sjofn, that which cannot be gotten is the most attractive of all.

That said what happens in party chat stays in party chat. I always find folk making out on the bar to be a bit tasteless. If I want to have a extreme romance between a tauren and an undead , you don't want to know. I don't want to know.. we all don't want to know.

So it stays in party or behind black curtains if need be. Still I think there is a time and place for romance in stories , with clearly spoken limits and much talking with everyone involved. Saves drama, thus I am actively foiling this thread.
Muhahaha..

ahem

Or he could casually mention some kink that he & his wife share. We'll go ahead and pretend to be OK with it, but then we'll proceed to talk shit about them behind their back. Then he'll find out about our true feelings thanks to a mistell, and the shit will hit the fan. There will be hurt feelings all around, and every party will feel like the victim. *Then* they can get a divorce because his wife will feel betrayed by his sharing their kink.

Oh... and of course, she'll publically deny having that kink, and start calling him "that weirdo". But I guess that last part goes without saying.

Hilarious drama. During my (fairly brief) raiding career I didn't really have any. A couple of my friends were in a reasonably large guild (maybe thirty active players), while the rest of my friends and I were in our personal guild (the Thunder Bluff Royal Navy; turns out that despite being landlocked, Mulgore has quite the naval budget). Anyway the two guilds were able to put together a pair of ten mans that we took from Naxx through ToC, with middling success. The problem was that our friends group never got to play together; we were split between the two. So we rejiggered the raid rosters such that we could play together in ICC (a few of us had plans to retire after WoTLK and we wanted to raid together before that). Well, the raid ended up with two tanks (my Death Knight and my friend's Paladin), and another player was asked to bring his Shaman to heal (his main was a Paladin tank). He got all bent out of shape because his Paladin's gearscore was slightly higher than mine which meant - in his mind - that he should be the second tank because this was MEGA RAID which of course translated into high gearscore. Dumb.

AaronSofaer will remember his wife because he ended up teaching me how to teach her to play her class; she played a shadow priest that was utterly backwards. She had no conception of how to play a shadow priest and ended up doing super sub-standard DPS while decked out in spirit gear because - to hear her explain it - she'd go OOM otherwise. Because she refused to take some key talent for mana regen or something. That was actually par for the course with that other guild; they sort of refused to acknowledge that if you wanted to raid you really did have to play each class the way they were designed; which meant cookie cutter builds. Our DPS was always sub-par; we managed to muddle through everything up to ICC despite it but hit a pretty hard wall in ICC. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the BS and transferred my warrior over to Moonrunner, where I joined the Drop Bears and happily tanked for them for a few months.

It was back in 1997, and this internet thingie was still pretty new-fangled in the German speaking world. To go online, most of us still had to listen to the sweet song of the dial-up.

Now there was an online game called Meridan59 I more or less stumbled upon. One of the early more-or-less-3D worlds, had several German servers, with only a couple hundred players on each, so pretty much all the regulars knew each other on their world. That, combined with the fact that it was one of the old school games where there was not only anything even resembling a PVP switch, but a whole skill tree devoted to PKing, caused pretty hot server politics, intense relationships between players, and drama galore. Pretty much everybody was RPing because it never occurred to us not to - this was a roleplaying game, it said so on the tin, didn't it?

jeffb, mind telling me your WoW name? I lost track of who all is on here. I imagine you know from context, but this is Vallia :D

In this thread, we eventually tell embarrassing stories about old guildies, and then find out they all post here.

I was Laphroaig, warrior tank. And it's jeffd. :)

Ohhhh do I ever know that feel bro. I should have mentioned that in my long rambling post about my casual guild's venture into raiding - one of our precepts was "play the way you want." We originally meant that the guild wasn't going to try to push you into something you didn't want to do, but it evolved into this weird idea that any and every class / spec can play any role if that's what you want to do. Which lead to asinine problems like the ones you're describing - god forbid an officer suggest that maybe your tankadin should take a specific Prot talent, or that your druid healer's gear have more of a certain stat.

"B-b-but I'm allowed to play the way I want! The guild rules say so!" Errr, okay but if you want to raid you likely need to make some concessions to the realities of the content. That was, for some reason, the hardest pill to swallow for some members - the idea that you can't just flounce your way through all the game's content with your homebrewed talent build or second-hand patchwork approach to gear.

Holy shit, Caya, I can't imagine how awful that must've been. I get the close-knit thing, our MUD had a little over 100 people on it at once during PRIME TIME. Nothing as crazy as that happened, though. That I know of, anyway.

Oh hey Laphroaig, I think I did know that back in the mists of a few months ago. And sorry about the "d"! I need more coffee!

In another universe jeffb and brettmcb are best pals.

Heh, I forgot you were Laphroaig!

I have had more than my share of fellow guildmates fucking, but everyone knows those stories so I won't bore you with them except to note that on one occasion one of the two was married to someone else and there were some issues with meds and it became A Whole Thing. I will instead tell two other WoW stories.

WoW Story The First:

________________________________

WoW story the second:

That was pretty much the end of WoW for me. I had already given Blizzard quite a lot of money in character transfers. I had also transferred a few people to play with a goon guild on another realm, and that was fine and good, but I was increasingly dissatisfied with Cataclysm and WoW in general for the reasons I enumerated in the "What Made You Quit WoW?" thread and I ended up sending whatever I thought would be useful to the guild -- gems, flasks, etc. -- to the guild leader there and canceling my account.


The goon guild I was in was actually quite pleasant. There isn't enough money in the world to convince me to play with the main Goon Squad on Mal'ganis, but the guild I joined was drama-free, friendly and competent. It's a pity I didn't commit more to it at the time instead of going where I did.

Wow. It's like we were all in the same guilds. I swear WoW is a breeding ground for this kind of shit.

Hey Athryn/MrsWidget!

From what I recall the Drop Bears were pretty much drama free. Maybe there was stuff behind the scenes but I never saw any of it. Other than that one time Tom Chick joined for a few days and then threw a hissy fit because when he wanted his friend to join up as well, he was told sure just have his friend post to the forums like every other prospective member ever. For some reason Tom took this as a huge affront, argued about it a bit, and then gquit.

Haha, I forgot about that. At the time it was puzzling.

Drop Bears (Beargirl, here. Hola!) drama: I once posted a joke in WoW guild chat that wiped a guild group in Naxx. I only know it happened because the GM sent me a nastygram PM and then tried to make light of it in guild chat. Our relationship was like that, though. I'm pretty sure he's on the Autism spectrum somewhere.

I'd stopped playing when my son joined the group and really started playing seriously. I got a note via Facebook that said something to the effect of: "Your son is playing his class wrong, and I want to make sure to talk to you before I tell him."

I responded: "Uh, he's 20 years old. I'm pretty sure he can handle constructive criticism. However, you and I both know you have an issue with that, so if he reacts badly, you've been warned."

Raid guilds were pretty drama free until the minute they hit a progression wall. Once you hit something you just couldn't manage to beat, the knives came out with regards to who was holding the group back and such. At least that was my experience as a temporary hardcore raider. Awesome folks, ton of fun, HORRIBLE DRAMA the minute we reached beyond our ability.

This thread has convinced me that we did our blizzcon gatherings wrong, because we had no drunken drama. Mostly drunken story telling about VN antics and guild group hilarity. Obviously I should have hooked up with Zam on the sly so we'd have fun stories.

I never joined an RP guild or played much on RP servers, but in my experience, casual guilds were far more prone to interpersonal drama than raiding guilds, which is basically the opposite of what most casual players assume to be the case. The raiding guilds I was in across various MMOs were generally less likely to play host to things like extramarital affairs and the like, but there were of course arguments over loot, rosters, roles and assignments, strategies, and so forth. Less "Days of Our Lives" and more "Crossfire."

One time I was griping to a friend from our old casual guild about the high degree of drama in that guild, and he said "That's what casual guilds are for."

But in general, I think drama happens anywhere that people are overly invested in an MMO to an unhealthy degree. Participating in a virtual world every day - often for hours at a time, sometimes for all the hours when they're not asleep or at work/school - can distort anyone's perception of reality. When people get to the point where the colored pixels are more important than real-life friends and family, when they're taking the game so seriously that events within that game take on a ridiculously exaggerated significance, drama is going to happen no matter what kind of guild they're in.

As a counter-point to all the drama stories going around, I will just say that I genuinely like the people who I raid with. Hell, in November of 2011 I flew down to Austin (I live in Ontario-land) where I got to attend a wedding for one of the couples in the guild and meet a whole bunch of the guildies in person! It was great fun and I'm pretty sure that when I get the chance, I will fly down to California next time to visit the guild founders. They are yet another married couple who I got to hang out with in Austin, but I've never been to California before so YAY!

This is the DRAMA thread, dude. You're doing it wrong.

I liked plenty of the people in various guilds, met lots of them in person, and formed friendships that have endured to this day; these stories aren't representative of the entire experience playing MMOs. Just the drama because that's what the thread's about. :)

Oceanside.

I think sometimes when people hear about other people's children being in a guild, they automatically assume that they're little kids, as opposed to adults -- which is why things like that happen.

Right -- my point was to show how he reacts to situations: "Your son is playing his class wrong." *rolleyes*

Pretty much this. That, and my impression is that most guilds lack actual leadership. They might have a GM, raid leaders, officers, etc but the actual task of taking ten (or twenty-five or however many) people and directing them toward a common goal is surprisingly difficult; it requires a broad skill set that people actually go to school to learn. Telling people they're not performing well is hard, it's even harder to communicate it in such a way as to get them to want to perform better.

Secondary consideration (can you tell I've thought about this at great length?): often there's a distinctly individualistic approach to raiding. E.g., people insisting on using sub-optimal specs because it's "more fun." One of the things people need to realize in raiding is that they've got nine (or twenty-four or however many) other people's fun at least somewhat depending on them. If using your "more fun" spec reduces your damage such that the raid can't generate enough DPS to beat a boss then your "more fun" just became everyone else's frustration. If everyone in the raid took responsibility for everyone else's fun, then the raid as a whole would be much better off!

Hear, hear. I shudder to recall how many times I had that exact conversation with unwieldy guildmates.

run your "fun" style in old content! if you MUST!

hehe.

Sadly this also means "read the spoilers" if they are out there. I like seeing things unspoiled, but it's not fair to the raid.

This is why it's so very necessary to have a thick-skinned raid leader if you want to raid seriously (as in, progress rapidly, kill hardmode bosses, etc). "No. A DPS must perform at X level over the course of an encounter. If you can't, you are not welcome in the raid group. That's not up for discussion. If you need help doing that, talk to [person of the same class who performs well]."

My solution of choice for Wrath and Cataclysm was to do unspoiled fights the first week, because the fight strats / spoiers would be pretty inadequate anyway. :)

Oh, Drop Bears. I had a ton of fun playing Cataclysm with them up until we started raiding and I had to deal with the, erm, challenged players (the one priest who I swear probably never completed a heroic without a, well, heroic tank to make up for her badness, you are not missed) in a more progression-focused environment that I couldn't pull them through by virtue of being a competent tank that knew the fights. Quit the game before I caused any serious drama, though I did totally take a 2H sword that could well have gone to someone else.

The thing with RP servers is if the server itself is a community you can get drama that not only lingers, but is dead laying there in the road stinking up the place for fucking YEARS MAN YEARS.

I got involved in what would be considered an extra marital affair if you know, I was actually legally married to Loon (that is a whole nother ball of wax). I assure you that Loon and I had some heart to hearts after the whole thing, and per my normal life strategy I would not have gotten back down to florida in time if I had NOT gotten involved with this other dude.
Suppose that says something, never actually did anything physically.. but he drove me , my kid, my cats, and my Loon from florida to georgia. I paid for the gas/food but it was his time he used.
That isn't the drama. I can hear the , what .. -that- isn't drama? Yes folks that isn't drama.
The drama was that in the infancy of wow I got mixed up with this person. Great rper, bit of a manipulator generally an ok guy. What I didn't know is at the time he was actively seeing someone else, and continued to do so both icly and occly. Shouldn't be an issue, but I was dumb and other stupid things in my life at the time had me pretty messed up in the head.
Yeah you heard me , I am at fault to.
I look back at the whole thing now and wonder if I was played the -entire- time. She was a rather dominating person, he liked to pull strings. I could have ended up as the third wheel without knowing how I got there. I already was effectively in the game. Both theses folks were part of -the- Rp guild horde side. When the inevitable e-breakup happened between me and dude, other lady decided to drag my name through every bit of dirt she could. It was implied I was trying to break them up, that I went out of my way to solicit this relationship with him. That I was lying and scheming in all my rp. I was a defacto guild lead of a tiny rp guild at the time. I still to this day find places where his writing so on was left alone, but my connecting stories were deleted.
I have to explain that ER was so tight knit that we had a huge meet up in Atlanta that first year. There was community on either side of the fence. We embraced our trolls, some of them became defacto server personalities. It was ..well rather like some of you describe the muds. There was a critical mass of folk who knew each other.
So when I was supposedly seen as the instigator, everyone turned their back on me. I left to another server for a bit. Played other games, established much better friends and rules for my rp.
After I left, the scheming didn't stop. The other lady seems to have targeted others, trying to break up other relationships just for the hell of it. Generally being a pain. I come back after there has been a recent and major upheaval against her. He left with her.

And what in the end fixed it all for me, I got apologies from many of the same people who turned their back on me. After spending quality time with the situation without me, it became apparent that it wasn't me that was causing the trouble.
Sometimes Karma does turn back around. Still this whole thing made it so I am extremely flighty in public rp, and becoming close to me as a ooc friend can be a bit .. disconcerting. I treat everyone online as a figment of my imagination. Even those that I care about, because I never really know.

Being a MMO newbie, I didn't realize how rare a well-run, drama-free raid group is until I tried raiding elsewhere. Mrs. and Mr. Widget's raids were my first raiding experience and so far the only raids with an environment that I enjoyed nearly all aspects of. Unfortunately, I had to cut back my schedule due to work and eventually disappear.

A year later, a friend convinced me to try something else and pick up a different game. I ended up in a progression raid group there for a while, and it wasn't until the raid leader left that I realized he had an incredible talent for being able to hold together our ragtag group of disparate personalities and how well he insulated us all from each other's eccentricities. Sometimes it really can be that one person frantically applying dabs of superglue everywhere who holds the whole stack of cards up, and I get the feeling that all guild/raid officers do this to some degree. After reading these stories, I'm lucky that I haven't heard of any crazy relationship drama while I was there, but the officers were probably keeping a lot of things from our eyes and ears for the sake of appearances.

Within a couple weeks after he left, the entire raid group had split apart. Up to that point, all my raiding experience had been drama-free, so I thought I'd give another group a try. It was even worse, since it was an amalgamation of two different groups: the one I was in, and remnants of another raiding group. We combined two zombie raid fragments in the hopes of getting a superzombie, but all we got was two zombies smashed together and our raid performed as such. A certain amount of tension built up and each faction wanted to point fingers at the other. After that died, I took a break from MMOs.

You know, now that I think about it, I'm sort of boggled that after playing MMOs pretty much regularly for the last 14 years I've never been involved in serious drama. Or even really seen it. I think it's because I play regularly but casually. Hell my first serious guild was a mapping/exploration allegiance in Asheron's Call.

Best I can do is drudge up junior high school dial-up Trade Wars drama. Which is really always the same thing -- someone either has a hissy fit or decides to be a dick and robs their corporation (read: guild) of all assets, kills all the other members, and quits. (Spoiler: One time it was me.)

Get's even more fun when your friend and dad run the BBS, and much board outcry over the potential cheating by the dad because he could watch other people take their turns in TW2002 or other games on the computer the board ran on, and then use that information when he played his. He eventually had to step back from playing some of the games to get people to calm down.

I wish I had taken notes when I was a MUD admin, man, there was all kinds of crazy shit happening constantly, and I never really knew about any of it until I was made an admin and suddenly had access to all the records of everyone's complaints, rule breaking, etc. People are fucking nuts. I don't have any of my old email from those days or anything sadly, I'll have to see if I can reconstruct any coherent stories, right now all I'm remembering are bits and pieces.