Excuses. I love excuses. One of my favorite parts of being a raid leader are the constant stream of bullshit excuses I get to hear when someone screws up:
- My Internet is down! – And yet, you’re still on Ventrilo.
- I don’t know what happened! I was watching my aggro! – I was watching it too, as it shot right past the Tank’s.
- I jumped in the water! – You died to Spout. Just stop talking, seriously.
Some of the excuses don’t even make sense. I’ve had people blame their screw ups on everything from addons, to family emergencies, to acts of God. I wish I’d screen shot or recorded every lame excuse I’ve ever heard. I could make an addon that would generate a random excuse every time you cock up a raid. It would be hugely popular. People that suck would be comparing versions before each raid to make sure they had the most up to date excuses.
- “Dude you’ve got to download version 2.31. They added pet sounds so you can blame shit on your hamster!”
As funny as they can be, excuses create a real problem where raiding is concerned. I firmly believe that when people screw up, unless they face their failure and own up to it, it’s unlikely that they will improve. It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is for some people to simply say, “I screwed up. Sorry. I’ll try harder next time.” Those are words I rarely hear when leading raids. Instead it’s a long litany of excuses, and I think some of you actually believe your own bullshit. It’s weird how attached you get to your little lies. I’ve had raid members that were so self delusional, that even after I had explained exactly what happened, since I’d seen exactly how they fucked up, they would continue to cling to their bullshit story, which was of course changing with every telling since they’re bad liars as well as bad raiders.
So do me a favor. If your going to blow smoke up my ass, at least make it interesting smoke. Don’t say you went afk right as we pulled the boss because you had to get the door. Say the heroin you ordered from Afghanistan just arrived and you had to make sure that shit was good before you signed for it. Don’t tell me you were healing yourself instead of the tank because you were on the phone. Tell me that you’re suffering from dementia and thought you ‘were’ the tank. I don’t want to hear that you died in the fire because you were busy telling your girlfriend how much you love her before she left for work. Tell me the bitch just hit you with a plunger because you forgot to flush!
So what are you’re favorite excuses you’ve heard? Send me some and maybe I’ll make a top ten list.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Magatone // Sep 12, 2008 at 1:29 pm
We had a raider disappear right before a Hydross pull once. When he came back, he informed us that he had to go because the FBI was at the door and he needed to sign off immediately to go with them.
2 Phoenix // Sep 20, 2008 at 4:59 am
While on archimonde in hyjal, this group of friends were all at the same house, a good 6-7 of them. 1-2 healers and the rest dps. Archi does his air burst and all of them crater into the dirt. When we ask them what happened, there was a long pause and them someone said there dog was chewing on the LAN cable. Later after the raid one of them whispers me that one of them had put themselves on auto attack, alt+tabbed out, and decided downloading porn. This took out all their bandwidth and they all lagged. To this day we still rip on him for it. We even gave him his own guild rank of “Porn Crater”.
3 Cj // Sep 21, 2008 at 8:03 pm
i have a couple of interesting excuses I’ve heard in instances/raids, but my personal favorites are:
1. “hey guys, ive got to go, it turns out the police are here to arrest me. who knew murder was a CRIME?”
2. “BRB guys, house on fire”
3. my personal favorite, said over vent, with a girl crying just loud enough to be heard, and lots of yelling in the background. “gotta go, cat on fire”
4 Deamon // Sep 22, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Best one i heard, Paly healer in MC says over vent in the calmest voice ever: “BRB Kitchen is on fire.”
Comes back 30 minutes later, we think nothing of it.
Next day on the guild website he’s posted pictures. His kitchen really was on fire.
5 Ty // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:06 pm
My GF pulled the dementia thing on us, bringing alts through Strat UD. Sitting at Baron, I charge in on my new warrior tank and wait for her new healing priest to fling health my way. 5 seconds later, You Die. She whispered to me “Ohshi…I thought I was on my hunter! I forgot I was supposed to heal lol”. She does not get to live it down. Ever.
6 Acherontia // Sep 25, 2008 at 7:51 am
Back in the days of MC (this was before I even joined the guild, but we still hear about it), one of our rogues had to leave because a pickup truck had just hit her house.
7 Orchid // May 19, 2009 at 12:27 am
the part about the hamster made me spit Dr. Pepper all over my monitor and keyboard.
8 ihateyou // May 21, 2010 at 3:05 am
ToGC 10, Beasts of Northrend
Ready check: Green Board
Vent check. All clear.
Pull.
30 seconds in we lose a hunter. Zero DPS, he died standing in fire with a snobold on his back.
His excuse, “I wasn’t ready.”
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