Bullies

A strange thing happened last night on the game. It caused quite a stir in our guild and led to some interesting discussions, including quite a passionate rant by myself. (Hold on to your seats, dear readers!)

We were all just doing our own thing, when across our screen comes the announcement that a "guild challenge" with Aftershock will commence in 5 minutes. Right away, I wrote in chat,  "WTF!"
This very same thing had happened to us when we were in Medieval. Some random guild had declared war on us. I don't think I ever did find out if there was a reason for it. All I know is that I got killed over and over and over for the entire half hour of the war.
Immediately Medi started asking in chat if anyone in Aftershock could contact him about this "challenge". Bealz in TS and I in guild chat started explaining what would happen when the war started. Basically our entire guild would have their PvP status turned on and could be killed at any time, in any place, by a member of Aftershock.
What happened the last time with Medieval is that a few ubers from the opposing guild ran around and killed everyone, while a few others camped out all the respawn points and repeatedly killed any toons resurrecting. Not unexpectedly, Aftershock attempted to do the very same thing.

I avoided being killed for a short while as I ran towards Dalanis for a raid event. I even managed to kill one of theirs that attacked me first. (Self defense entirely.) But then I was killed and decided to quickly use my recall skill to get to Dalanis without having to run through any populated areas.
Several of our guildies were doing a quest in AV and were ambushed by a gang of Aftershock members. Heka and Shadowex fought back with gleeful viciousness. It was good to hear that someone thought it was fun! A few others simply avoided confrontation by logging off , hiding, or playing alts for the half hour.

In the meantime, I arrived at the raid event and was immediately greeted by Nanae from Aftershock, who killed me TWICE while I was standing in the raid. I said to her, "Seriously? How mature is that? We don't even know why you're warring us." She laughed and and ran away. Sheesh. (And a warm thank you to the priest who rezzed me in raid.)
Medi continued to talk to Aftershock members, and Heka too, until finally someone said that one of our members had KS'd from an Aftershock member in Bymorsh Marsh.
Really? That's it??
Ok KS-ing, kill stealing, is not cool. But sometimes it happens inadvertently, especially with ranged attackers. I am a mage and kill things from waaaaay far away sometimes! And sometimes I can't see that a melee attacker is approaching from a different angle. It happens. It's happened to me and I've caused it to happen to others. It's no big deal.
Well, apparently it was to Aftershock.
They camped the poor player who had allegedly KS'd and killed him immediately after every respawn. And they told us that they were warring our guild to "teach us a lesson" so that we would never KS again.
Honestly??
I was flabbergasted. (Good word. Thanks, Medi!) I still am actually. I'm sitting here shaking my head. I don't even know where to start with how plain ol' stupid that is.
But I think I'll stop my rant right there before this post becomes four pages long. Suffice to say, the only "lesson" that was given by Aftershock was that ignorant bullies are present everywhere, even in Taborea.