Once upon a time, before the release of World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade, we had this guildmate … paladin.

No wait. His original main was a paladin. After he quit Warcraft for the third time, he switched main characters to his mage. He also had a level 60 priest as an alt character that was reasonably equipped for raiding. He had a nice stable of raid characters to choose from, based on our needs, and other than the frequent “I’m quitting” announcements, he was a valuable member.

Well … after about the fifth or sixth “I’m quitting” routines, he began a rapid descent into insanity. I still don’t have any idea what his problem was, probably game burnout or some real life issue, who knows, but he was a bitch to get along with towards the end there. All this “I quit” “I’m back” “I hate you all” “Love! Love!” came to a head one weekend when there was an issue with a guild applicant and the app’s e-friend.

Let’s call my guildmate Iquit and the applicant Flakey … because he kinda was. Flakey was a level 60 priest (OMG, TAG HIM NOW!) with acceptable priestly skeelz, which in the raiding endgame of World of Warcraft means A. he had his Flash Heal spell hotkeyed and B. he occasionally paid attention during raids. Ya, a primo app EXCEPT he would withdraw his application every other day.

Flakey expected an immediate guild tag — ye ole priest entitlement attitude you sometimes see — and our guild doesn’t work that way. Priests might have to wait a few days for a tag. Hunters have to wait 18 months. (I kid. But they wait much longer because, well, they’re hunters. And probably night elves. Ya dig?)

Anyways, Iquit is PVPing in the battlegrounds on a Friday night and he makes a disparaging remark in /say to one of the server known-assholes, who just happens to be bestest friends ever with Flakey. Iquit and Flakey exchange words in /tells and eventually the argument moves to our guild message boards.

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