Win At All Costs?
There was some interesting drama on my server recently that I want to share with you. It’s an intriguing story and I think the issues it raises should be discussed more frequently. Here’s what went down. (Note: I have only heard everything secondhand, and so I am changing the names of the parties involved so as not to cast aspersions on anyone’s good character.)
Once upon a time, there was this dude. We’ll call him Jim the Thief. Jim is a level 70 undead warrior. He used to be in a guild that we’ll call Poor Unlucky Peeps. As I understand things, the guild master of Poor Unlucky Peeps went on an extended WoW vacation for some reason or other and, knowing that he was going to be gone for a while, made Jim the interim GM.
Everything went fine, as far as I know, until one day in mid-December when the Shandris realm forums absolutely lit up. It turned out that Jim the Thief had stripped the Poor Unlucky Peeps guild bank clean, left the guild, and was now selling everything he had stolen in the AH and on the trade channel. One of the other members of his ex-guild started a couple of threads on the realm forums to let people know what he had done (and posted some screenshots of the bank records as proof).
Now, that seems like a rather grievous offense to me. There is virtually no doubt as to what occurred. Poor Unlucky Peeps let everyone on the server know what Jim had done, and Jim never tried to refute anything or even get his side of the story out there. We’ve probably all had a bad experience or two with ninjas in PUGs, but people who steal from their own guildies deserve a special level in Hell. I figured that all of Shandris would shun Jim and make him an outcast, and he would eventually have to transfer to a new server in order to find a guild or even a PUG that would take him in.
Well, OK, maybe we wouldn’t need to take things that far, but the least we could hope for would be an apology, restitution, and a public caning, right?
So imagine my surprise a couple of weeks later when I see Jim in Shattrath with a guild tag under his name. We’ll call it Jim’s New Guild. I actually busted out laughing when I saw that, assuming that this new guild leader had somehow missed the furor just a couple of weeks ago, and had let Jim into his guild unknowingly. Then, as I thought about it, I realized that there was no way the entire guild could have missed the uproar, and so they had decided to let Jim in despite his thievery.
Things got even more interesting yesterday when I saw a recruiting thread from Jim’s New Guild on our realm forums. I stopped by to ask them exactly why they allowed a known thief into their ranks. The reply I got (from an officer in the guild) basically boiled down to:
Sure, we knew about Jim’s actions before we let him join. But we decided that raid progression is more important than personal conduct. At least so long as the personal conduct in question is not directed towards any of us. If he causes problems in our guild, we’ll kick him (because that would stand in the way of raid progression). But we don’t care what he did in the past because none of us were hurt by those actions.
Besides, all of that is ancient history and if I made a mistake, I would want to be able to find a group of people that would look past that mistake and give me a new start.
So apparently, to the leaders of Jim’s New Guild, a mistake is defined as “a deliberate act of thievery designed to betray people that trusted you, and for which no apology, restitution or punishment has been effected.” And ancient history is two weeks ago.
So that brings me to the main subject of this post: Is raid progression so important that we are willing to condone outright theft if it brings us closer to our endgame goals?
Obviously, for many people, the answer is clearly Yes. But I wonder what will happen if Jim steals something from his new guildies? Will they decide to overlook this new transgression? Since it happened all of 5 minutes ago, it has to be history, if not quite yet ancient history, right?
So what do you think? Should Jim have been shunned by the entire server? Was Jim’s New Guild justified in letting him into their ranks? Should I lighten up and not worry about it since it didn’t happen to me?
Subscribe to DrainingSouls.net.
We had a similar problem where one guild member “borrowed” the money for his epic mount, cleaned out his max guild bank allowance and immediately switched guilds. We got the gold back, but his name is in bad odure with the rest of us.
It sounds like Blizz took the money from that guy and gave it back to your guild? That was good of them to do. I don’t know if Poor Unucky Peeps ever contacted a GM about their problem, but they didn’t ever get their stuff back.
in my guild we had someone do the same thing, after a 4 day investigation in ex-member, the GM’s decided to lock this ex-members account indefenetly, serves them right for looting over 3000g worth of gold and epics, guild vault items that were intended to help those who were up and coming in our family.
Let’s face it, the people (I’d say kids, but unfortunately it is not only those technically under 16) in WoW who are really oriented towards “progression” are quite usually so at the expense of any qualities, such as fair play and justice (I don’t put will to “progression” as a quality, since it is too often an ego trip). If Jim is a reasonably skilled player, he will be quite able to go to most endgame raiding guilds who have need for players of his class, no matter what; until he soils his reputation there, which is when guild leaders will act “shocked” and “betrayed”.
Yup, SPOOTYMAN cleaned out FOCUS and joined TEMPEST.
spooty is currently in my guild and let me tell you a nicer ninjar you will not find anywhere else babycakes!!1!
It makes me feeling that anything is possible !
That appears to be fine but i’m still not too certain that I prefer it. At any rate will look a lot more into it and decide for myself!