It’s definitely a combination of insensitivity, immaturity, and a large helping of asshat-ness, for sure. What gives? What’s with this angry generation?

Yeah, I should stop reading the official WoW forums, lol. I feel so dirty and tainted with negativity. Maybe I’m just a big old carebear–I’m not cut out for this world of leetcraft. *grin*

Keep writing, and don’t feel obligated to only write about Druid stuff! I always enjoy reading your blog. All the best.

I’ve had a lot of problems finding the right guild – being a 35yr old female I don’t want to play with kids. The guild I am in now has about 40 active people – about 25 active 70s and it’s brilliant. We have 5 guild masters – yes 5! 2 are female and the other 3 are male all over 30. We only recruit friends and have slowly gotten a really nice group of people together who respect each other – no kids allowed – we have one guy who is 18 soon but everyone else is prettty much over 25 and it makes a huge difference to only allow 25+ people in the guild.

It makes it a lot slower to grow but we are finding that people are starting to want to join us as they play with the people in the guild and find a place where we can have some adult fun! Yes Friday nights can get crazy when ppl start to unwind and have a few drinks, but its the kind of crazy chat that 25+ people have w respect for both sexes.. we’ve had our fair share of almost naked raids etc etc but TBH it is usually the women that start that kind of stuff! I think we actually have more women than men and sometimes I think the guys get a little scared by our guild chat!

Anyway… the point of all my rambling is that I think its ideal to have a guild made up of friends of friends all 25+. Our most active GM /gicked a guy the other day cause he just didnt fit in – you have to be a bit ruthless and stick to what it is you want the guild to be… we have grandparents in our guild and they are soooooooo much fun to play with – more so than a 16yr old!!!

In any case, if you ever do find some extra time for some Poxin’ fun, just drop us a line in the blog. We’d love to have you. :)

I guess the dream is to find a guild big enough to do all the fun stuff but small enough to stay like minded when it comes to these issues. You may not throw out all the Bananas but you sure take a closer look at the rest of the them once you throw out the one bad one.

And on a side note I learned a valuable lesson today. Never choose a banana for breakfast in the dark and then get in a dark car and eat it. Life lesson #567

a) Make 18+ servers, and

b) Have not only an “ignore” button, but “ostracize” where if enough folks click it, the person is muted in general, trade, receives the deserter debuff and is unable to group.

Aluc, your point on text sucking to communicate meaning is dead on.

Sadly, the person I cited uses the word in text a lot, but I never said anything… until I was in kara with him and he used it in off topic BG discussion on the teamspeak server during the run. That’s when I just had to stop and say, “Jeez, c’mon man….”

Hey, there are some folks in my guild I simply love playing with. But can anyone out there truly tell me they are in a guild with more than 15 people, and they like every single other person in the guild all the time?

Sometimes, I think it’s only realistic that in order to play with the people you really like, you’re going to have to be mature and ignore the chatter from the one or two that you don’t like.

But I have never been shy about telling someone that they are going over the line of my comfort zone when it’s just over the top.

We had a Kara run over a month ago, where one of the players was a 13 year old warrior. I normally am not ageist (unlike Cassie, who keeps telling me how I’m old enough to be most of the other guildies’ dad. She just recently discovered the guild forum ‘about the player’ thread… with names, ages and pictures. She is horrified. lol, she is SO going to kick my ass for saying that.), and the kid was NOT a bad player.

Wild and unfocused, sure, excitable, yeah, but those are NOT negatives. Being young is not a fricken’ crime. I think if you’re young, run with it, revel in it, go nuts.

But he got into a heated discussion with another guildie in teamspeak during the run, talking in the most vulgar terms about… well, things that they were too damn young and ignorant to have first hand knowledge of. We told them both repeatedly to stop using that language on teamspeak, and they ignored us. And then one of the players in the group simply left TS. They said in text that they’d stay in the run, but they refused to listen for one more minute to that talk.

Yeah, when that happens, you know there is a serious problem. It is a game, and if someone playing the game is uncomfortable at THAT level, you are failing as an officer. Especially when you have ten people on a raid in a chat room as a ‘captive’ audience who can’t reasonably leave without trashing the run.

I was all for /gkicking them, but I was swiftly over-ruled.

But I did make the personal decision that I would never run a raid with either of them again. I respect myself too much to deal with that kind of drama in my funtime, the same as so many of you have said.

Since then, well, guess who ain’t in the guild anymore. Others finally had enough.

But the point remains… just cause that one guy in the guild is an asshat, does not mean you leave the guild full of people you like playing with and respect as damn good people.

Right? You don’t throw out a whole bunch of bananas cause you found one with some brown spots all over it. Right?

We don’t really have one at the moment – we’re a pretty casual bunch – brought together through a similar set of capabilities originally…

But recently, we’ve been trying to recruit – and have been advertising in-game for members.

As a result, we’ve had.a bunch of new members who haven’t really been “vetted”… And these have generally been getting me down.

Our original members were all “Adult” – some university friends and others who had gathered online – I’m probably one of the oldest, though.

The new members include a fair few “youngsters”, ubclifing at least one 13 year old… His recent annoying habit is telling GRIFFIN TIME in Guild Chat every time he uses a Flight Master…

I know that’s not a bad thing, as things go, but the Fifth time in an hour got to me…

Our Guild Chat is now peppered with a variety or expletives and L33T Speek, and it annoys me! Hey – on a bad day bad grammar in Guild Chat can abbot me!

So I’m currently wondering whether it’s just my advancing years, or a valid opinion, that we should have an age limit for members…

Your comments reinforce my opinion – I use WOW as an alternative environment to real life and don’t want the rubbish parts of society (probably a bit of a strong description, Stobs, he’s just young!) in there spoiling it!

Rant over! And thanks for listening!

I’ve been in 4 guilds since I started playing, the last 3 all with women GLs. I find that putting myself in that environment helps minimize the kind of conversations you’re talking about. There’s been other drama in the middle 2 guilds, but not that kind.

The guild I’m currently in is a casual adult guild/alliance that is co-led by a female and male team (online, not RL, friends) and I have never seen anything like that in almost a year in either our alliance or guild channels. Every once in a while one of the younger “adult” guys will get drunk and start talking about the sex he wishes he had, but that’s about it.

So I guess what I’m saying is that there is no reason to put yourself in that environment, ever. If I see it in general or trade, I leave the channel. If I see it in a PUG, I voice my feelings and if needed ditch the group. I admit, I don’t BG regularly … may be no escape there.

I play this game for fun … there is no reason I should have to put myself in any situation that makes me uncomfortable when I’m trying to relax and get away.