Instant karma's gonna get you
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jul 10th 2007 at 11:19AM
Today's story comes from the realm of Smolderthorn, home of one of the U.S.'s top Horde guilds, Nightmares Asylum (obligatory note: Blizzard apparently doesn't let you use apostrophes in guild names.)
Our tale begins in Karazhan this weekend, where the guild Clockwise was just learning the instance. They didn't have enough people for a full group, so they invited in some puggers to help them down some bosses. Unfortunately, they weren't able to kill too many bosses, so they left half of the instance for the next day. One of their puggers, who was a member of the medium-level guild Dies Irae, invited in some of his guildmates' alts to clear the rest. Dies Irae claimed they didn't know it was another guild's instance at first, but only decided to kill Prince after Clockwise's guild leader got angry at them and told them to get the bleep out. Whatever the cause, no one disputes that it ended with Dies Irae's alts clearing Karazhan on Clockwise's raid ID.
Now it gets interesting. Apparently Nightmares Asylum decided it was time to stand up for the little guy and get Dies Irae back. So Monday night, they asked one of Dies Irae's members to help them on a quest. Suddenly, the DI member was promoted to leader and kicked out of the group as Nightmares Asylum members ran inside their Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern instances. (SSC, by the way, was completely clear except for Lady Vashj, who Dies Irae was planning on working on -- Nightmares Asylum apparently no longer runs SSC.) Nightmares Asylum then proceeded to kill Vashj, made a screenshot of her dead with their raid members forming the letters DI, and -- this is the best part -- tracked down various Dies Irae members and disenchanted the Vashj loot they would have gotten in front of them. Man, I feel bad for that rogue who watched the Fang of Vashj dissolve. DI claimed not to care, since it "gave them another day to PVP", but the attempts to report Nightmares Asylum say otherwise.
So who's in the wrong here? We don't know the full situation, but both sides have given their account. Dies Irae says they didn't intentionally steal the Kara ID and only cleared it after being provoked by the other guild's leader, while Nightmares Asylum was malicious in their thievery. Nightmares Asylum defends their actions as karma and standing up for the little guy, and it's pretty obvious they didn't do it to get the phat loots. Ethically, they're both probably wrong, since stealing raid IDs is pretty nasty, but I can't help but feel a soft spot for Nightmares Asylum after this. They may have done a vicious, petty thing, but they did it with style.
What do you think about this situation? Should there be a way to remedy the "stealing" of raid IDs, or should people just be careful who they accept raid invites from?
Filed under: Realm News, Guilds, Humor, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Arnold Jul 10th 2007 11:28AM
Please forgive my noobness, as I have not done a lot of raiding--but how exactly does a raid ID work? Is it tied to a guild? To the party leader who starts the group/raid into that instance? Do the people who are doing a instance clear have to remain in a raid party each time they log on for the instance to remain at the level it was at when they left it? Explain please, and thanks in advance.
khaosworks Jul 10th 2007 11:29AM
As they say, two wrongs don't make a right (but three lefts do), but my sympathies here are with NA. If DI had no intention to steal the Kara ID, they should have said their mea culpas and gotten out as soon as it was brought to their attention. To proceed to continue and clear it because "they were provoked" is simply petty.
Yes, what NA did was deliberate, but the moment DI continued to clear the instance, they stopped being accidental ID stealers and became deliberate ones themselves. I'd say that they got what was coming to them.
nigelesellman Jul 10th 2007 11:39AM
Now that is amusing. DE the items in front of the members of Dies Ira memebers and the Screen shot are excellent.
Sacktacular Jul 10th 2007 11:33AM
I'm a strong believe in Karma, Stranding up for people, and peanut butter & banana sandwiches.
DI had it coming to them :]
/clap Nightmares Asylum
Razhlok Jul 10th 2007 11:39AM
@1 When you kill the first boss in any raid instance or heroic mode dungeon everyone in the raid receives the same raid id. If you start another raid (before the raid id resets) then everyone in that raid group either needs to have no raid ID for that instance or the same raid ID as everyone else in the raid.
So what the guys in NA did was they invited someone to their group from DI and formed a raid. Since no one in the raid, except the DI member, had a raid ID for SSC they were able to enter SSC with DI's raid ID and kill Vashj.
I lol'd @ it.
Tridus Jul 10th 2007 11:43AM
@1
Any time you're in a raid, if you kill a boss, you get "tied" to that raid instance (the raid ID just tells you which particular instance is yours). That means that if you re-enter the instance on the same character before the instance resets, you go back into the one you were already in, even if your group is in another instance within the same raid dungeon. (IE: You can't clear Karazhan, then join another group and clear Karazhan again. You'll appear in your already cleared one.)
The trick is that other people joining the instance who *aren't* tied to a raid ID yet will join whichever on the leader is tied to. So for example, if my group kills Moroes, then quits for the night, I could become leader, invite nine new people, and they'd all join my instance with Moroes already cleared.
In both of these cases, thats what happened. In the first case, one person knowingly invited a bunch of others to clear a Karazhan instance (those people may not have realized at first what was going on, but it would have become obvious once they saw bosses already down). In the second case, they invited then leadered someone so when they entered, they got the instance he was tied to.
Fun catch: If you enter an instance that already has a boss down, you get tied to it even if you weren't there for the kill. So once Nightmare Asylum was in SSC, there was no way to remove them, even if the leader kicked them. Hell, they could just drop group and reform again without that guy once they're inside.
Hope that helps. :)
Corrodias Jul 10th 2007 11:43AM
I'm a little shaky on how ID's work myself, but in this example, they promoted that DI member to leader then entered the instance. This put them in DI's raid ID (they had to have no ID before this).
What i'm shaky on is when you're saved to an ID. I know that if you're in the instance when a boss is killed, you're saved, but are you also saved if -any- of your members are inside? Are you saved if any of your members are saved and you enter the instance?
Budo Jul 10th 2007 11:48AM
Most hilarious story ever.
Hat's off to NA.
token Jul 10th 2007 11:50AM
Well, I don't really believe in raid ID stealing, but here is the thing with this story.
They invited some outside folks to help clear the place because they couldn't field a 10 man raid that night. It seems to me that as soon as they did they did that, it became as much the PUGers raid as the the guild that invited them.
Why should they have less of a right to get another gorup the next night to try and clear it? Likely, the guild members would have replaced the PUGers with their own guildies and aced them out.
Rule of thumb, don't PUG a raid. It's just bad news.
ubergrendle Jul 10th 2007 11:51AM
The lengths at which Nightmare's Aslyum went to exact revenge show them to be the truly pathetic losers in this case. DI should have left the instance in the first place after their mistake was made clear, but what NA did required advance planning and a malicious follow through...then they deliberately publicized it with screenshots and an attempt at notoriety. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks they are the most contemptible in this case? Nightmares Aslyum members should get a life.
Tridus Jul 10th 2007 11:51AM
Now to comment on the story itself, I see this as justice. Brutal, swift, vigilante style justice, but justice nontheless. Dies Irae's leader is an idiot. Had they simply left when told what was going on (how could they not know in the first place, really?), none of this would have happened. Now his guilds poor behaviour is going to spread all over the community, and bad reputations are extremely hard to get rid of.
I have to say that I'm very impressed with Nightmare Asylum here. Not only did they use their status as a powerful guild to stand up for the little guy, but they got bonus points for style.
robodex Jul 10th 2007 11:53AM
I don't think anything needs to be done to "fix" raid-ID stealing. The problem is so rare that Blizzard would be wasting their time in order to fix a very minor issue.
Also, it's Nightmare Asylum's own fault for pugging Kara in the first place; if they didn't want random people clearing their instance then they shouldn't have invited random people in the first place.
Donton Jul 10th 2007 12:01PM
HAH! GJ Nightmares Asylum. Thank you for standing for the little guys/girls.
p.s. DE'ing the items in front of them...PRICELESS...Brilliant idea
GG DI
ringu0 Jul 10th 2007 12:04PM
> Also, it's Nightmare Asylum's own fault for pugging Kara in the first place
They didn't pug Kara. Clockwise did.
Rubeus Jul 10th 2007 12:16PM
I stand behind NA on this one. It's always nice to see a giant stand up for the littles out there. DI seems to have been asking for it. Pretty cheap for them to steal the raid like that, pug or not. It seemed pretty clear whose raid it was to begin with and why can't guilds band together to help a friend out? Why can't people imagine their server as an alliance unto itself and help each other out? Imagine if it were a battle between horde and alliance and then there are all the petty squabbles within the horde side itself. seems likely they would fall because of the inability to help out one another.
john Jul 10th 2007 12:11PM
standing up for the little guy?
i see this as those that can clear ssc stomping on those that have yet to.
i have brought in puggers for a kara run after our guild got the loot we needed out of it. one huntard that had only been in the guild for a week threw a hissy fit, caused drama and about 12 of our best dpser ended up hopping guilds. because he didn't get invited. after the 500 tells i got for it i still have like all of those people on ignore.
not justices just vin[b]dic[b/]tiveness
Dahlaine Jul 10th 2007 12:17PM
Dies Irae was easily in the wrong here. They are a guild who could easily clear Kara and have likely just stopped doing so to save raid time for further progression. So they decided that they would abuse another much weaker guild so they could get loot from the better part of the zone without having to go through the first 1.5-2 hours of mindless trash. Not all the guys in that guild are bad, but the one's responsible here clearly pulled a dick move.
And whether NA did this for purely ideological reasons or just to get under DI's skin or whatever, in the end revenge was served.
Oh and as someone who raids horde side on that server and knows some of those guys, I'm pretty sure not ALL the Vashj loot was sharded. I'm fairly positive there's a warlock running around with a shiny new caster ring(http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30109), courtesy of that kill.
markeen Jul 10th 2007 5:32PM
Does anyone know what addon they were using that shows the +/- on the stats compared to what you have?
Freehugz Jul 10th 2007 12:26PM
High five to NA
#10 loosen up, its a game it's supposed to be fun. I'm sure they had a blast
superbeef Jul 10th 2007 12:42PM
For those with reading imperiments (I'll give you a minute to mull that one over):
Nightmares Asylum wasn't raiding kara. If you read, they prolly have no interest in kara. Clockwork was the guild raiding Kara.
Nightmare stepped in, and stood up for Clockwork. Clockwork, a guild not far in progression, invited the DI member into kara.
Anyways, this is hilarious. I don't believe in karma, what happened was good old vigilante justice. DI thought they could get away with slapping the new guys, and then the sheriff came in and slapped them.