For the last few days we have had an issue in the guild and its getting right on my ass now . Im an easy going sort of guy but when you give my wife grief then I tend to get a bit pissy .

We have had two guild member with us for some weeks who were brought into the guild by two of our officers .

One never talked in guild , never asked for help and caused a few complaints about being ignorant when guildies tried speaking to them and were out and out ignored . The second member was fine and chatty and generally a good laugh to have around .

We asked the officers who invited them to have a word with the member who wasnt getting involved and see if they could get the player to at the very least say hello to people .

The answer we got was the person is just antisocial and ignore it . Well as the days went on this began to annoy us more and more . Then lo an behold they talk in /g to say they are having a problem with their addons and did any of us know what was causing it . Both me and my wife gave them a couple of things to try . They logged sayingthey needed a break as it was driving them crazy and would be back later .

Some hours later they log in and say "Time to move on , guess I'll see you all around" and quit the guild . We tried sending tells to find out what was going on and didnt get a reply so we threw it back to the officers and they got pretty much the same thing .

Next day the now ex members friend quits as well and both my wife and I got a curious mail from him .

" don't like to leave loose ends. My interpetation of what a guild is suppose to be is friendship, mutual respect and belonging to something greater than one's self. while I met some really good people I consider friends, I never felt as if I was fully part of the guild...we were never included in any guild activities and no matter how well we progressed it was never good enough to be included. with you both it seemed that if you weren't level 70 then you just didn't warrant being noticed. Also the degrading "low level" run that was set up seemed to be more of a burden and out of convienance than anything else. the snide remarks and lack of respect displayed were also surely not qualities displayed from good leaders. The ridicule that X received from you two when she needed help on the day we left was unacceptable and realizing that even when we reached level 70 you would still not treat us as equals prompted our departure. "

This sort of knocked me sideways a fair bit as its so far out of left field as to be pretty surreal.

The fact that they never asked for help ingame from the guild and didnt try overly hard to get involved is now our fault how ?

The low level run is response to a post on our forum saying "lets go bash some low lvl dungeons for fun , deadmines - scholo" This was echoed in the Gmotd as low level runs - see forum .

How is this degrading ?

I also fail to see how "sounds like a rep addon gone wrong Id try turning those off first" can be construed as either snide or classed as ridicule .

I dont play with a crystal ball next to me so I freely admit Im not omnipotent so if your having a problem then tell us so we can fix it .

I sent him a couple of mails back asking him to clarify whats going on as we dont have a clue what he's on about .

I got one yesterday all very polite apologising for the original mails as he was "upset and angry" so ok fair do's . I ask him to email me or msn me so we can discuss the problems he had with the guild . He's going to stick with his friend and I admire him for that .

So I go about my business levelling my rogue and chatting away .

Wife gets in from work and logs in and theres a mail in her box from him which she opens expecting he's going to apologise to her as well .

No such luck she gets a venomous personal attack . I include a snippet

"you simply take and never give...and trust me when I say those aren't my words. look a little closer at the guild "

The whole mail left my wife in tears and highly upset . The guilds my wifes baby she created it and made it what it is today . Now she doesnt feel like playing and I for one am damn right pissed off .

From the mail it would appear that someone has said something to him . Whether this is true or its him trying to shake the guild up I dont know .

The guilds officers know my stance on this . If someone has told the member this pack of crap then I dont expect them to apologise Id rather they got the hell out of our guild . Preferably when Im not there as If I find out who it is and they are still in the guild I will quite happily kick the snivelling wretch out and publically humiliate them .

People can say what they want about me but if you make my wife cry youd better get the hell out of dodge .

If your reading this the commands /gquit .

And as for the originator of the mail . Dude I liked you a lot but you way overstepped your boundary on this one . My wife has reported the mail to the Gms under the abuse policies . Have fun explaining yourself .

The forums are still awash with posts of how to stop gold sellers advertising ingame .

The simple answer is you cant . Whatever measures Blizz implements they find a way round it . Selling gold is worth big money so it cant be stopped .

Every mmorpg has gold sellers they seem to go hand in glove .

All you can do as a player is limit the impact they have on your game .

There are Addons available that can combat the rubbish and help in other situations as well .

AutoDecline available from where other than Curse . Fab little addon that lets you stop group invites,duels,random trades etc .

SpamSentry - Available from wowace stops the garbage appearing on your screen .

SpamMeNot - Similar to above but with configurable filters . Available on curse and wowace .

Using your addons when set up right should stop your gold spam dead in it's tracks .

Just ever so slightly more proactive than moaning on the forum its ruining your game .

Overall I like 2.3 except for what I can only term as a dumbing down of the game .

You removed the elites to make it easier to lvl . Bashing elites was fun and yes I got jumped by a few and had my ass handed to me a lot but it added to the ambience of the zone you were in . Whilst questing you kept an eye out for the wandering elite that jumped you a few minutes earlier . It added depth and tension to the game .

So a few people complain they cant level without a group . Come on get real . If that many people cant get groups then why arent they grouping with each other ? . This is why we have guilds, I mean hello in there , your in a guild with lots of members how hard can it be ? . If they wont help you then move guild as its obviously not right for you .

This time Blizz didnt nerf a class or ability they nerfed the darn game from 1-60 . Levelling wasnt that hard to begin with . Now its rediculously easy . I put 3 levels on my rogue (now 59) in 2 days without breaking sweat and plenty of breaks and coffee. Yay fantastic ... problem is Im now nearly broke as yes you increased the xp and lowered the lvl bracket but you didnt up the rewards to take this into account or lower training costs.

The game really isnt that hard , but as ever we have a stupid "I want it now" society . Fine and dandy you will get to 70 faster but dont you dare come asking me how to play your character because you levelled too fast and didnt get time to hone your skills up .

My favorite player gaffs

Lvl 55 Pally - Why cant I res ? Its not trainable . Lvl 62 Rogue - Woah poisons neat where can I buy those ? Lvl 40 warrior - how does rage work ? Lvl 50 Pally - whats blessing of wisdom ? Lvl 47 Rogue - whats sap ?

Im by no means perfect but hell some people need shooting .

Most quests if you play them at the right level can be done solo .

The problem - Boosting , The easiest way to self nerf .

I will boost guildies on runs only for specific items . Anything else you do at the right level and we help you find other guildies to lend a hand , end of story . If you want your hand held 1-70 go find another guild .

For anyone that thinks boosting is an easy way to get thorugh the levels it isnt , you will get there quicker playing properly . The more you get boosted the harder the game becomes .

I'd wager 90% of people that complain they cant get groups are the same bunch of imbeciles that bug me to drag them through Deadmines at lvl 12 every time Im in stormwind.

/afk The only boosting I do is people like you into a lake

Thank you very much my names Ardman and Im here all week .

Im lucky the Gm is my wife ,

Now a whiles ago our guild being a small friendly bunch formed an alliance with another small friendly guild so we could have a decent stab at some of the 10-25 man content . And all was well with the world .

Sadly the guild we were running with imploded so we extended an open door policy to them all . They decided to go with a larger guild that had more raid experience and was gearing for kara so we wished them well and told them to say hi whenever and they were all welcome on runs with us .

So far so good you may think .

Well it turns out that a few of them were not very happy with the new guild and didnt feel they fitted in and were being left out of things .

So again we extended the open door policy to them as they really are a great group of people to play with .

One of them came over and is now very happy with us and others are also considering moving over . This is where the fun starts ....

I logs in to find our new guildy rather upset saying that this guild has booted one of the other people out as they said they were thinking of moving to us and now this guild is demanding to speak to our Gm . So I kicks the wifey out of bed and she logs in .

This bloke starts ranting at her with a load of absolute twaddle about how his guild is very upset and feels used by us to get these guys a few steps down the kara chain etc . And how they were settled in the guild for over two weeks with no trouble .

I was standing next to her watching this unfold chuckling as I know they only joined them less than a week earlier and so far have been on one quest run then largely ignored . Wifey bless her keeps her temper and tells him not to take it personally its a game and *** happens .

Everyone goes back to enjoying to their game .

Im a bit miffed and check this guild out and the moron who demanded to talk to our gm isnt even the gm of the guild he's an officer . Sort of shows the guilds mentality really .

They havent been around overly long and I remember sitting in stormwind and seeing their badly spelled guild spam . *Note to self* line by line macros annoy people , badly spelt ones really annoy people .

It still surprises me how personally some guilds take things .

I play on an EU server but I imagine stateside forums are much the same .

/rant mode on

Why in the name of all that is holy do people bang on and on about things that are never going to get changed .

Watch your suggestions forums and you will see what I mean .

You have the usual half dozen nerf this now and omg imba <insert class> plz nerf threads and another half dozen neurotic whines from the self obsessed about why this has to be changed before Wow dies a painful death threads .

Add to this the multiple posts from idiots that just dont read the damned boards and repeatedly ask for the same things 25 ever so slightly different ways .

Then we have my favorite gripe .

Posting under alt names . If you dont want to post on your main which frankly if your man enough to click to submit your drivel then you should do it on your main and to hell with what people think. Stop hiding you bloody cowards.

The sum of this tidal wave of what is frankly crap drowns out the decent suggestions . Devs and Blues dont comment in there because they dont want a migraine reading the dross .

The suggestions forum like many others needs a moderator team with itchy permaban sticks .

Forum trolls drive me crazy .

/rant mode off

Im done for now :p