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Amazed

World of Wankcraft: Wrath of the Bitch King
This is an epic, epic tale of guild wank and the seedy world of e-sports, my friends. A tale of weeping e-peens and betrayal, pay-for-play and Arab sheiks (no, rly.). I'll attempt to do it justice without a flowchart. It's long, but I swear to Baby Thrall, it's worth it.

Our Cast:

-Nihilum. An infamous Horde guild on Magtheridon EU. Suffice it to say this guild was considered by a lot of people to be the best ZOMG HARDK0R3 guild in the world. They were best known for a streak in which they got all the world firsts in PvE content, starting from Gruul's Lair, including being the first guild to clear Black Temple. They were also world champions in PvP at this year's Blizzcon. Nihilum is extremely Srs Bzns, in a scene full of much Srs Bzns, and have been no stranger to wank in the past. Previous kerfluffles involved them allegedly not allowing female players in the guild, an April Fool's flounce that left their many fanboys crying into their Mountain Dews, and allegations of intentional bug exploitation in their world first kill of Lady Vashj. They've also been dogged for years by rumors of gold buying, and that their guild leader, Kungen, has made guildies pay his RL bills (keep this in mind for later). To put it bluntly, wank wafts around these guys like funk in the air of your local con.

-Curse/SK Gaming. Another uber hardkore EU guild, Curse started on a different server. I won't get into all the wanktabulous history of this guild, except to say that back in the day, somewhat hilariously, they accused Nihilum of stealing credit for the world first downing of Archimonde. At some point down the line, they got invited into SK Gaming, a German team somewhat notorious in the European e-sports scene, and accepted, becoming known simply as SK Gaming. SK has had similarly scandalous rumors swirling around it; theirs involved a Mysterious Benefactor acting as sugar daddy to its leaders with real life money (again, keep this in mind for later).

Fast forward to the fall of '08, when members of Nihilum and Curse-now-SK merged to form the super-guild Ensidia. Ensidia's founding mission was to get all the world firsts for raid content in Wrath of the Lich King when it came out. Given the respective histories of these two guilds, it couldn't have possibly gone wrong, hmm?



Enter one SerbAndSteel. He's a former member of Nihilum who left days before the SK merger. He wrote an truly epic tell-all airing all of Ensidia's dirty laundry. And when I mean all of it, I mean all of it. Starting from the revelation that SK had several prospective guilds it wanted to merge with, and Nihilum was at the dead bottom of the list, largely because of Kungen. And why did SK not want Kungen, he with the rep for making his guildies pay his rl bills, in on their sweet, sweet action? Read on!

Eventually, they HAD to go to the ONE guild they did not want to go to - Nihilum and Kungen. You see, they knew for a fact that a merge would not be hard to set up. They knew Kungen would instantly sell out once he got to know the identity of their ”patron”, and the many benefefits the merge would result in.

Their benefactor and fan is noone else but the mysterious guy who kept buying pimped characters from all the top guilds. He is in possesion of Rulah (Nihilum druid), Zeuzonita(Method rogue) and a number of other characters that simply "vanished" from their guilds. This very same person has played in a number of well known high-end guilds and eventually ended up "playing" in SK Gaming.

This person also covered Mackzter`s rent of an apartment in Stockholm, Mackzter’s and Mek`s traveling expenses, among many other things.

Who is this Mysterious Masked Pimp taking care of the SK stable? The Crown Prince of Dubai!

The person behind Ensidia, Kungen, Mackzter and Meka is no less than the Crown Prince of Dubai, son of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. As I mentioned earlier, he’s been in the "scene" for years, he was a member of a number of top guilds with his brother and eventually ended up in SK-Gaming.

Let that sink in for a minute. The Crown Prince of Motherfucking Dubai is paying nerds to play World of Warcraft. They never tell you that on those Travel Channel specials. Sadly, our dear Serb refuses to reveal his sources for this bombshell in the post, but the LOLWTF doesn't stop there.

Next is some grudgey talk of being promised what amounted to a bench spot raiding the new content, which SaS never got, because of nepotism. He goes on to explain that despite SK's misgivings about giving Kungen their daddy's beeper number, the merger did go forward, on 11/25/08 (with the especially obnoxious tagline, "remember, remember, the 25th of November"). Needless to say, the honeymoon was extremely short-lived.

The first thing to be done in order to ensure that the merge succeeded was to "elliminate" all the players that were not wanted. A few players from SK were left out because Kungen, due to his ego, either ”never wanted to see them again”, and others because they "sucked". What really happened here was that people who had dedicated the past three to four years (less in some cases) were ditched like garbage, despite the fact that they had helped the "leaders" and guilds to get where are today. The biggest shame is that these players, who played to be the best, got screwed over without even knowing it themselves. Not a word. Nothing.

Yes, according to our poor Serb, the first act of this new Arab-prince-funded super-guild was to effectively gut it of the people who made the success happen. And it gets better. Oh, does it. Ensidia leaders were sent on paid junkets to various e-sport events and grabbed any and all swag for themselves. And those aforementioned bags of cash? Some was promised to members migrating to Ensidia's home server, Magtheridon. But they never saw it, according to SaS:

Also, as far as I know, all SK members who migrated should have gotten 250 euros each (cut down from 300 as originally promised), and Nihilum members who joined the merge should have gotten 100 euros each. Ok, that is not a lot of money, but if you take into consideration that only a few, SPECIFIC Nihilum members got the cash under the "excuse" from Kungen that only veterans would get compensated, while at the same time quite a number of REROLLERS who joined Nihilum during the last couple of months got the money as well. I doubt that the Sheikh would run low on money if he payed everyone 250/transfer (if not 300 and you took the difference?), so WHERE did the money from Nihilum members who got screwed go? If you calculate how many people got fucked over, the figure would reach at least a few a thousand euros. Straight down Kungen’s pocket?

Yes, a classic pyramid scam. SaS ends his expose in classic WoW wank fashion, posting a screenshot of his damage meter to prove his worth, "fanart" of the Ensidia leaders, and a hilariously misused music video as a tribute to the people who were screwed over. I know when I see Rage Against the Machine's video "Freedom", I don't think of politics or civil rights, I think of hardcore raiders pumping their sweaty fists in the air over guild wank.

So, is all this true? Or is it grudge on the part of Herr SaS, bitter at being jilted by the guild he poured his e-life into? Fortunately for us, the commenters can't decide. Marvel as e-peens are waved with abandon, accusations of noobitude and grudgewank fly. Thrill as exhortations of LRN2RAID are made, and SaS' friends duke it out with the Ensidia fanboys and random rubberneckers. There are way too many gems in there to pick any out, so have at it. Everyone fails here.

Be sure to check out #52, though, in which an escapee of Ensidia's ponzi raiding scheme relates how he was forbidden to go to a family funeral the day of Wrath's release. I'm not making this shit up.