Tell me your MMORPG guild and/or party horror story.

The Game Room
1

One of my very first partying experiences in WoW was in the contaminated gnome city (the name escapes me at the moment). I was a druid, it was my first character and I was pretty ignorant in the ways of WoW.

There I was, standing in front of the entrance to the instance, deciding if I should risk going in (I shouldn’t have) when two warriors 5 levels above me invited me to party with them.

Well-- those two guys just RAN. They would run ahead of me, not tell me where they were going, start whaling on mob leaving me behind to fight all the disturbed mob they ran by all the while yelling at me: “HEAL!” HEAL ME!!!"

I can’t heal you, MFer, because I’m dead.

After dying twice-- they left my body so that I could continue to die while they continued to yell at me-- they came back to my body so that they could yell at me some more. “Heal! Why don’t you HEAL!” I hearthed home and didn’t party again for weeks.
Then the guild I joined somewhat recently. It was on an RP server. I like RP servers because people leave you the hell alone mostly. I like guilds not for partying or raiding but just for chatting and joking around. Well, this guild seemed very good for just that. It was a ‘family’ and ‘helping’ guild. There was funny conversation and very light role-play. Or so I thought.

I noticed that, except for the guild leader (who was called Master something or other) all of the other characters where female. All of the other players were female also. The guild leader explained that men are not helpful and start fights.

Um, O.K. Still, the guild was fun and funny and I stayed around until one day I was joking around with a guildie when the guild leader whispered me. “She to ERP with you.”

“ERP?”

“Erotic role play.”

Holy crap! I joined an S&M guild! I bowed out as gracefully as possible.

2

Dear Og, this brings back both good and bad memories for me >< Back when I was playing Alliance, the Horde side of my guild had a very short-lived alliance with another guild on the server. While the alliance was short-lived, I met the other guild’s leader, Calm, in our TS server, he invited me over to their’s, and I wound up spending the next few months chatting with them, during which time I managed to level a Tauren druid and meet my now-husband.

The guild, FDK, was about an even mix of decent, if at times coarse, people and outright tools. It took me a while to figure out that Calm was in the latter category–Owls describes him as a used car salesman. He had this uncanny ability to talk you into doing things his way, and FDK was really nothing more than an extension of his ego. I should mention that at this time I was raiding with them part-time, as my own guild was overflowing with people trying to raid (we were half-way through MC). Between the general coarseness of some members, and the utter tools, I wound up deciding to leave. The last straw was when I had to leave the Vent channel during a raid because I couldn’t stand the conversation–I’d been planning one more raid with them but after that night I never talked to them again.

Around the same time, most of the decent people were also leaving. Owls was still with FDK but was also getting itchy feet, and when we talked (which was always) he often complained about what was going on in the guild now. We were for a little while playing a game of “Who Left the Guild Today?” Eventually he left and I got him into my guild, which has since left the server. FDK imploded about a year later, which was about a year longer than I expected them to last.

Of the things I saw while hanging out with FDK–

–Calm bought gold constantly. It became something I just didn’t talk about with him, while I was talking with him, because I didn’t like it and he wasn’t going to change. He also often played from work–something which later got him fired, I hear :smiley:

–Calm was levelling a tauren warrior to replace his undead one. We get ready for MC one night–“Oops, I forgot to get defensive stance.” So we had to wait around while he did the quest for it. Twice, because he forgot to drop raid the first time.

–After defeating Magmadar, Calm said he had to go AFK a while. Only we still weren’t finished looting Mags, which he had to be the one to do because he was ML when we killed him. People tried calling him to get him to come back–no go. Eventually we started clearing to the next boss, at which point Calm comes back–“I thought you guys would be farther than this. I’ve watched three figure skating routines.”

–And last, yet anything but least, there was the AQ gate opening fiasco, which I posted about in LJ but can’t find right now. Will come back with link.

edit–Here we go

3

My first WoW group instance was similar to your first example. Got invited to run Wailing Caverns with three other toons my level - a good mix with a tank, healer and me as the DPS (hunter). They neglected to tell me they were gonna pay a lvl 70 to run the dungeon, kill everything, and we’d divide the loot. I got no experience and just frantically chased them looting. At least I got some good armor… got killed twice when they left me behind with some mobs they “overlooked” but at least it’s not that far a run back. Overall not very helpful for a noob.

My other bad PUGs have always been with players that don’t understand their class (and I say this as a complete newbie) or how to pull. Getting swarmed by your adds gets old really quick - I find with a hunter it’s much better just to solo everything unless you’re grouped with someone you know. When I get my new PC built (next week hopefully) I’ll ask for an invite to the Burning Dog guild - maybe then I can get some more reliable group action.

4

Hrm. Many stories. Only one that came out okay in the end, in a schadenfreude sort-of way. Lowbie character is invited to go to VC (A low-level instance). I’m told we have a ringer- a very high level paladin who’s just going to run us all through it. Okay, says I.
We get to the first ‘big’ room, the pallie runs in, aggros everything, says, “So long, suckers!” and hearths out, letting us all die.
I was in guild-chat, and mentioned my disbelief at the behavior. Turns out the leader of the guild that the pallie belonged to was the brother of one of my guildies. I immediately got contacted, told my side of the story, and was told, “Not the first time she’s done this. She’s gone. thanks for the heads up.”
The guy was even decent enough to offer me repair gold. I was of a low enough level that it didn’t matter much, but I was glad to see that the guild leader cared about the rep of his guild.

5

Uh, I have Taunt. Why the hell do you think I’m under a pile of Mobs? Which, incidentally, prevents me from seeing where the hell you’ve run off to and Taunting whatever mob is attacking your sorry ass! What level 35 Blaster doesn’t know to attack mobs that the Tank has already aggroed?

Yeah, I can see you’re having fun with your newly-acquired AOE but you really should not be using it to pull. That’s why you keep getting face planted.

When I say “run” I mean run, as in now, because from up here I can see y’all are about to get whomped quicker than I can heal. Guess what happened?

Yeah, I know that. I also know that y’all are rolling through the ones that were and I was getting bored up here so I locked up those two with a hold and gave 'em an accuracy debuff.

6

From the tone of the OP (and I mean this as nicely as possible) there’s a very real chance that the dying in Gnomeregan was your fault. That doesn’t mean they had to be assholes about it, but I understand their frustration after having grouped with plenty of people who just don’t understand how to play well. Everyone sucked at some point, though, so just take it as a learning experience and try to figure out what went wrong without listening to their yelling.

MMORPGs all have really steep learning curves. Stuff just doesn’t make sense at first, especially group dynamics. People cause group wipes all the time and don’t even understand how or why or what they did wrong.

Anyway, back on topic, the worst groups are always with the inconsiderate players. The ones who take 45 minutes to get to the dungeon because they wanted to level their blacksmithing first, or that say “brb” and then go afk for 25 minutes. I can understand making mistakes, because nobody’s perfect and everyone has to learn somewhere, and its harder for some people to understand than others. What I can’t understand is why someone would get a group started for a dungeon that takes 45 minutes to an hour to complete, and then 30 minutes in say “sorry gotta go, time to go to work”. You KNEW you only had half an hour, so why did you waste everyone’s time getting this group together for a dungeon that’s impossible to finish in 30 minutes?!

I’d say something like that happens in about 1/3 of the pickup groups I’ve been in.

7

Really, though, assuming a random person knows what they’re doing is a bad assumption. Instead of tearing off through Gnomeregan, they should have gone cautiously until they saw that the OP could keep up with them. Or, you know, communicated and asked. If they didn’t want a newbie holding them back, they shouldn’t have taken a chance on a random pickup.

On the other hand, it’s always a good idea to let your group know when it’s your first time doing something, whether it be that particular instance, instances in general, even grouping. I solo a lot, so when I go into a PUG I warn them I tend to be rusty on group mechanics.

8

I don’t really have horror stories, just lots and lots of frustration stories.

There’s a room in The Nexus full of little plant things similar to the ones in Wailing Caverns, except they don’t die when you beat the crap out of them, they just curl into a little vine ball and then pop open and re-attack you a couple minutes later. Rather than kill these in a corner, or train them to a spot we’ve already cleared and don’t need to return to, we kill them right where we plan to make our stand against the next group of mobs. They pop open and re-attack us in the middle of the fight.

We get up to a ramp to a platform where one of the bosses is. This boss has a sort of knockback move, plus you need to stay at a distance to avoid his AOE attack. So what do we do? We kill the f*cking plant things right there, right near the boss, where of course they re-attack us when they pop open.

These are people with years of MMO experience.

They asked me to DPS that run. I’m a Healadin.

I’ve known my guildies for years; some are RL friends. So I can’t just up and /gquit

9

Man, I hate those buggers. I’ve healed the Nexus a couple of times and I always seem to get one of those on me during the boss fight. Half the time I don’t even notice because I’m watching the tank’s health bar, not mine.

10

Well, I don’t team up to much in WoW. Most of my annoyances in that game come from being in the starting areas and having some 13 year old beg me to duel them. I seriously don’t get it. If I’m level 5 or so and you’re level 10 or higher what is the point in dueling me? That’s not the part that bugs me…it’s the ones that berate you for saying “No thanks”. Little jerks.

I recently posted about a guy that asked me for help on the *Scarlet Monastery *but turned out to be a jackass. It only reinforced my inclination to not team up unless I can have some measure of assurance that the person asking isn’t a tool. I have met several players that are stand up guys and gals……but it’s the jerks you remember.

My worst teaming experiences come from City of Heroes/Villains. My first character that I seriously played there was/is Doctor Ghost, an emp/illusion controller. I can honestly tell you I soloed him to fifty by about 95%. (which is hard with that class). Why? Because even when teamed I got blamed by random children if they died. Yeah, forget the fact that I was being attacked and couldn’t heal you because I had to defend myself or I was dead. I even told one team leader that someone has to defend me if you want me to heal while you aggro every freaking mob in the zone.

I always hated teaming in CoX only because theres a chance you’ll get the “jumper”. That’s what I call the ones that can’t seem to sit still. If they have only 30 seconds of non-activity they’ll hit the space bar (jump) repeatedly, jumping around. They’re usually the ones that will aggro more mobs than you can handle as a group also. A jumper killed an entire team I was on once without us even entering the mission. We were all there, about 5 of us waiting for one other player at the mission door in Skyway City. We were seperated from a mob of trolls by a wall. But jumpy kept jumping around. I even asked him to stop because he might aggro the mob that was only just not seeing us. Well, ol’ jumpy screwed up on his hand eye coordination and landed on the other side of the fence. He jumped back to us but it attracted a HUGE mob of trolls. Some of the others were AFK too, which didn’t help. At the end of the slaughter it was only me and the team leader that didn’t faceplant. Jumpy got us killed later. As a blaster he didn’t realize that shooting at mobs that we weren’t engaged with while fighting another was a bad idea. I would have quit the team sooner, but the other players were pretty cool and I didn’t want to bail on them until we finished. I would have kicked Jumpy but the leader did not. He seemed to be a kid, but I don’t know….a lot of players are older….just immature. YMMV. As soon as the mission was done though I split.

I’m not against teaming, but I’m not willing to invest too much time if any on a bad team. I’ll have to look out for any dopers that play CoX/WoW. I’ve been playing WoW a lot more lately. A doper guild on Stormrage would be great!

11

Everything seems to happen in Felwood on my WoW server. One of my guildies was questing in Felwood (Horde, Kul Tiras) when a horde level 70 toon (pre Lich King) told her to leave because he was farming for mageweave. We thought that was pretty rude, so we flooded the area where he was farming. We had 10 guild members in that area slaughtering everything that moved. The guy got pissed off and challenged one of our guild members to a duel. It wasn’t pretty. He left with his tail between his legs.

I was leveling my demon 'lock in Felwood the other day when an ally toon started taunting me. I don’t duel. I don’t PvP, it’s a PvE server. We were in an area with all demon mobs. Once I figured out he was trying to quest there and kill the “boss” demon there, I enslaved the boss. That made him angry. It made me laugh.

12

Wow.

I play Saga of Ryzom and am a high officer in the Atys Ghosts. My guildies are way cool folks and I’ve had nothing but fun with them.

I’m also in City of Heros and have had nothing but fun with my guildies there as well.

I feel left out somehow.

13

I’m pretty self sufficient. I have a 73 frost mage, 73 shadow priest, 73 beastmaster hunter, 72 feral druid, 72 balance druid, 72 mutilate rogue. 72 affliction warlock, 72 enhancement shaman, etc etc etc.

I don’t have any REAL horror stories because of one thing. I can and will hearth out if I am stuck with morons or “loot ninjas”. I also don’t stay with people who act like little dictators.

I have done PUGs, so enough people know me. I’m in a big guild, so my own loot runs are taken care of. People know if they screw me, they are more screwed. This is because they generally need me more than I need them.
I don’t worry much about ganking or corpse camping either. Someone tries it too often, I can always come back with either a higher class toon, or their counterclass. The last time someone tried to really gank and camp me was long ago and they ended up destroyed. A mage hit my warlock while questing. I rezzed at the grave isntread of at my corpse (he was waiting), rested up, put the imp away, brought out the felhunter. Arcane torrent, howl, DOTs, deathcoil, drain, fear, dance, /point /lol
He didn’t have a chance.

14

Oh, another thing. PUGs. shudders Whenever I bitch about not being able to find a guild group to run something, people tell me to PUG it. No. Fucking. Way. Too many bad experiences, too little that ever got done that way, and since often the only role I can’t find is a healer, there is no WAY I’m trusting random people in a high end instance. It’s hard enough finding someone within the guild who can handle that sometimes, and I know who to look for!

(There’s one healer who just, well, sucks. I dread when he’s the only healer on, because instance runs with him just never go well. The aggravating thing is, he was good the one time I grouped with him on his priest, but he’s always on his druid now. ARGH!)

15

I’ve actually had mostly good luck with PUGs. Depending on what toon I’m using I may tank, or DPS, or heal. So, I have some idea what each class should be doing (that helps in avoiding “teh dumb”). But for some reason, Horde PUGs seem to go just a little more smoothly than Alliance PUGs. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.

16

I gotta say, it is extremely hard to heal anyone when you are dead. I was too low a level and aggro’d everything they ran past. Even with my first toon I realized I should not be fighting mob when two higher level warriors are partying with me.

17

How timely. I just had a bad grouping this morning. The highlights:

  • A huntard who wouldn’t want for the casters to re-mana and liked to aggro everything

  • someone forget and essential bit of quest item in the bank - but said nothing until we had run the entire lower black rock spire so we had to go back and do it again

  • we agreed beforehand about dividing up loot, but 3 of the raid kept saying “oops, I forgot”. OK, once I believe. EVERY mob I don’t.

  • Lack of comprehension that level 80 does not equal invulnerable or immortal. No, a level 80 should not die in LBRS, but on the other hand, a level 80 might expect competence on the part of the huntard and not “let’s aggro everything and see if anyone survives - LOL” Pile on enough mobs anyone is going down.

  • the asshat who Leeroy Jenkins’d the Leeroy achievement. Ah, yes, there must be one in every raid, right? Ran into the room, aggro’d everything, ran out, and left every to die.

  • then he did the exact same thing again. TWICE MORE.

18

Back when I still played WoW, the biggest horror was the revelation of how short your ignore list can be. Sure, you can extend it with an addon, but how can anyone not run out of space?

If they could make it hard to exploit, a rating system for players would be a great addition. “Hmm, this guy wants to join our group, but he only has a 12% approval rating and a bunch of negative comments for being a ninja. Let’s find someone else.”

19

Oh man, this one time we were trying to set up a raid, and this dude came out of nowhere and was like “LEROOOOOOOY JENKIIIIIIIIIINS!!!” and got our whole guild wiped out. It was awful.

20

I’m not sure, I think they do have something like that in CoX. I haven’t played for it since October. I wish that WoW had a way of autodeclining duels. Its not that big of a deal, but I never enjoyed dueling. I’ve never had an offer to duel that was a fair fight. It is always someone higher level and twinked out sending the request. Nowadays I just decline without even looking them over. Just an hour ago I was in Hillsbrad to turn in a quest and sell a few items on my dwarf hunter when another player literally followed me around for five minutes spamming me for a duel.