The ever-delightful authors of Righteous Orbs recently left their guild because they were unable to completely trust their duly (or not so duly as the case may be) appointed co-guild leader. When Tamarind originally made the post about his ex-guildie’s lying lying ways, I wasn’t so sure his lack of confidence in her was justified. I mean, who hasn’t told a self-aggrandizing story now and then? I know that I have in the past, and sometimes I’ve regretted it. I’ve regretted it often enough that I don’t do it anymore. So, I thought perhaps they were overreacting a little bit to someone who was just learning a necessary and inevitable life lesson.
Now I’m not so sure. An incident occurred in my guild today, the guild I just joined and have liked very much. We have a small core of players mostly in the 60-75 range (with a bunch of alts and lower players and a handful of 80s) that eventually could become a very respectable core of a raiding team. There’s a few of us who have become quite a close knit little group, and I’m sorry to say it, they’re the only few I trust anymore.
I was questing in Coldarra, just minding my own business when I got a whisper to join a PuG for Azjol Nerub. So I went along, despite a nagging thought that I might be underleveled. I shouldn’t have worried, since the group was led by a level 80 druid tank and his pet dps dk. There were two other dps too, a hunter and a rogue, and things went well. We cleared Azjol Nerub without any problems and moved on to Old Kingdom.
Old Kingdom was fine until the Elder Nadox fight. When the guardian adds spawned, they went everywhere. The tank seemed content just to tank the boss, letting the dps take care of the adds. Which would be fine, except the guardian targeted me. At the same time as a whole bunch of the little minispider mobs came swarming out of the next room and tagged me as well. Despite me crying for help, and burning my Divine Shield, the tank ignored me, and the rest of the DPS couldn’t be arsed to help me either. I died. Then the rest of the DPS went down one by one.
At the same time, a comment was made in our guild chat about a tank that couldn’t hold aggro… out of frustration, I threw in my own two cents: “think that’s bad, I just died from adds running regular OK with an 80 tank!” In guild chat. To all people who I know, and who are supposed to be part of some kind of larger effort with me. It’s a pretty harmless comment, and it’s true.
But ten seconds later, the tank’s pet DK asked me in party chat what aggro problems did I think we were having. I was kind of dumbstruck and didn’t answer. So she said again, “in your guild chat you were complaining about aggro problems, what are they?”
Nobody in that group was in my guild. Nobody in that group was the alt of someone in my guild. Someone in my own guild told on me! Someone actually bothered to whisper that tank or his pocket DK and tell them that I had complained about them in /g chat! The worst thing is, I didn’t tell anyone in the guild who I was running with. I wasn’t trying to slander the tank, just frustrated and making a passing remark at an appropriate point in the conversation – when I was already facedown on the floor! It certainly wasn’t a long involved whine session. Who doesn’t complain about PuGs when things go south? And there’s no reason for an 80 tank to ignore a dying healer, it was silly and unnecessary. But I wasn’t bitching in guild, just venting briefly out of irritation.
And I don’t know who it is who’s repeating what I say behind my back. And I don’t trust anyone in guild chat anymore. I don’t dare to open my mouth in there except to say something silly and frivolous like “grats”. And I don’t know if I can be comfortable running instances, knowing that someone out there deliberately backstabbed me to a group I was running with.
I completely ignored the pocket DK’s demands to know what had gone on in my guild chat. It wasn’t her business and I didn’t feel a need to tell her. I healed the rest of the instance without speaking, and I hearthed at the end of it without comment. I couldn’t think of anything to say except how angry I was, and that would have made the situation much worse.
I whispered the co-Guild Leader afterward about what had happened, and he understood my feeling betrayed completely. And he gave a stern warning in guild chat that what was said in guild chat was to remain in guild chat, and that if he heard about any sort of tattletale-ing going on, the tattler would be unceremoniously /kicked. That made me feel good. I know that they’re counting on me as a primary healer, so I know he doesn’t want me to get upset and leave. But I don’t think he understood how distrustful I felt though, as he advised me to just let it go and continue on. I’m having a really hard time getting over it though. I feel like I’m being watched, or like I have a unseen enemy somewhere in my own guild. It’s just… nasty.
So I totally understand the lingering discomfort of knowing that there’s an untrustworthy member of my guild, and if I found out who this member was, and if they became guild leader… I don’t know but I’d be off like a shot too.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm quite surprised at how shocked I feel at that! I think I'd have quite a hard time letting go of it it, internally at least, without knowing who was responsible. Without knowing that it would feel like everyone in the guild was suspect. It would be nice (if unlikely) if the person concerned would put their hand up to it.
Sadly very unlikely.
I kind of feel like I'm in a spy novel… someone's a mole, but I don't know who. Is it the frighteningly immature but amazingly hard-hitting boomkin druid? Is it the 80 frost mage who wants desperately to raid? Is it the run-begging rogue who's irritated because I turned him down for yet another SM run? I don't know?! The suspense is killing me!
Maybe you should visit Stormwind and hand the case over to SI:7
XD
I bet they'd know how to handle it… Sadly though, as a Blood Elf, I'm KOS in Stormwind!
Uff must be awful, to not know who you can trust and therefore mistrust everyone. I hope you will find out who the sneak is soon and feel comfortable in gchat again
Naelian pointed out the rather comforting thought that someone might have whispered the tank to say, "Hey, why aren't you taking good care of my guildie, Myrhani! She's a squishy healer and a special flower that you should tenderly protect!" Okay, Naelian didn't use exactly those words, but it was a good point. Someone in the guild *could* have been sticking up for me and the tank and his DK buddy might have just taken it badly.
I think it's unlikely, but I'm going to pretend it's true so that I feel better.
It's bad enough when you mt a rant into party chat.. I've done that a few times… but to have someone else repeat it.. well that's kind of sad.
Hopefully it was someone sticking up for you… hopefully
Hopefully next time they will ask if you want to be stuck up for.
You've got that right!
I'm boggling here. That's awful. I still can't believe a guildie would do that to someone. And, I mean, why – what were they hoping to get out of it, other than causing you trouble? Also the throw away remarks one makes in guild are, just that, throwaway remarks. I'm *always* groaning at the quality (or lack thereof) of PUGs, I thought it was generally accepted way to let off steam. I mean, often the Path of Sanity, between actually trying to address it (recipe for disaster) or quitting the group is a few lines of green text going "Got a loladin here, tanking in the wrong seal" and everybody else going "lol, poor you."
I'm wondering if, in some crazy way, they were trying to stick up for you – but if that was the case, surely they'd have spoken to you first.
*boggle* *gah*
I'm comforting myself with the thought that they might have been speaking in my defense, just with a funny result. I didn't like it much, either way.
I was going to add as well, my thought that perhaps someone was trying to stick up for you in a rather misguided way of doing so. Of course when it came back to you via the DK, it wouldn't have been put like that. Especially if it went to the Druid, who then told the DK, 'Lolz, Rhii's guild is bitching about my tanking in a normal instance'.
Of course, with the stern warning having gone out across gchat, it's unlikely even if the motivations of the original tell were pure, that you'll get someone willing to admit it to you if you're still new to them and thus they're a lil insecure about it all.
Gosh well that's a different way of looking at it. I mean, I had thought that someone might be perhaps trying to help out in an odd fashion, but I hadn't considered that the wristslap they got might have made them insecure about me just as much as it made me insecure about them.
You've given me something to ponder. My guild situation is at the moment the most promising and the most precarious it's ever been in my WoW career, so I'm doing a lot of pondering. I'll add this right on to the list.
I definitely agree that it's best to assume someone was trying to stick up for you. What makes me curious is, if you didn't mention who the tank in question was to your guild, how did they know who to send a tell to?
I know there are addons people can have that pass on guild chat to another guild's channel, used to link allied guilds I assume, or when the people involved have alts in both guilds, I'm not sure. My guild has had some problems with people using that before, to the point it's now an instant /gkick if the addon's being used. Maybe someone was using that in your guild, and was linked to the DK/tank's guild, and they just saw the message directly. Though, I think in the case of that addon it'd be feeding the other guild's chat back to yours too, which I'm sure you'd have noticed, so probably not.
Oof that's possible… our guild was considering a merger with another larger guild earlier this week (as newly formed guilds seem to do). I didn't know about it at the time, and I don't remember the name of the guild that the tank and the pocket DK were from… but if they were from that guild it's entirely possible that the chats could have been going back and forth that way. We didn't wind up merging with them (which was good) and we wound up with some bad blood as a result of it (which is bad), but I think at least we won't have a chat link there anymore… if we ever did.
I didn't know those addons were out there. Hmm.
Old Kingdom would be a fairly easy one to find out who you were talking about simply from a /who Zone, not too many people run OK (It's long, and for a heroic, hard). So locating the group that way would not have been difficult at all, so wasn't necessarily any sort of gchat hax addon (not even sure how that'd work.. Suppose it could work with someone in the guild also with the addon relaying it back to you through another channel).