Jethro! I’m Gonna Whup Yoo IfinYa Don’t Stop Botherin’ Me.

In Lord of the Rings Online, guilds are called kinships. Peeps invariably shorten that to “kin” which is great because the abbreviated version reminds me of straw-in-mouth hillbillies sitting on their porches picking their banjos in Tennessee. Or hunting ‘gators in the bayous of Louisiana. Or having carnal knowledge of their “kin” in Arkansas.

The other night I logged into LotRO. A good chunk of my kin was knee-deep in the Rift, a raid instance; I’m picturing LotRO’s version of WoW’s Molten Core. The cool thing about the Rift is that its end-boss is a Balrog. That’s tiiiiiigggght.

It just so happens I logged in right when Rockclaw (the name has been changed to protect the clueless), a kin member in good standing, was asking if there was a Rift spot open. The members in the instance quickly responded that the raid was full.

Not five minutes went by when Rockclaw typed in kin chat, “Looking for opening in Rift.”

He was greeted with a chorus of crickets.

Undeterred, a minute later he wrote, “Are we going to run Rift again tonight.”

Response? None. It’s now painfully obvious that this guy is pissing people off. No one is answering him.

Time passed and Rockclaw logged off. He logged back in ten minutes later and declared, “Sorry, had to log off for a sec.” I guess he thought people cared. Not long after, he asked, “Is there an opening in Rift yet?”

More crickets. Windfury must have felt sorry for him because he wrote, “I pm’d them 4 u and they said there isn’t an opening.”

By this time, I’m peeing myself at this spectacle. It’s a social train wreck in the making but I can’t peel my eyes from the carnage. I stare at the screen without blinking waiting for someone to lower the boom and /gkick the poor slob. At one point it occurs to me that I should pm Rockclaw and advise him to relax before he pisses people off further. I don't though, mostly because I'm not paying enough attention in-game and I've managed to aggro an entire den of hungry wolves all at once (Using my lute as a club, I successfully bludgeon the puppies to death, but not before they tear a massive chunk out of my ass).

Kin chat goes quite for a time. Theed logs off. Rockclaw quickly chimes in: “Was Theed in Rift? Is there an opening now?”

Rockclaw doesn’t get a response. He’s got balls of steel though because he immediately follows up with, “Is the Balrog dead yet?”

Gordon actually responds at this point, surprisingly polite, “We’re still on the first boss.”

Wifezilla jars me from the Jerry Springer freak show. Unfortunately, it’s time to cuddle and watch Mad About You. Disappointed I didn’t get to see the axe fall, I reluctantly log off. I feel quite confident that Rockclaw won’t see the inside of the Rift with my kin anytime soon. Which is as tragic as it is avoidable. Being the reasonable, normal people they are, if he had just relaxed, he would have eventually been able to run it. Maybe not right then and there, but one day certainly. I’m not sure why he was so annoyingly persistent, but the very fact that he kept asking tells me he likely has no clue the bridge he was lighting on fire. It made for some good entertainment though.

I talked to Gordon the next day and he told me they eventually relented and let Rocklaw into the raid. He said they immediately and catastrophically wiped and ended up stopping for the night.

I sensed Gordon smiling through chat.