The content of this article is not part of official Warcraft lore, but has nevertheless become part of the World of Warcraft culture or community.
The Sylvan Exiles are an Alliance guild on the Stormrage-EU server. Having originally formed as Sylvex Industries on Star Wars Galaxies Eclipse server they moved over at the start of the European closed beta of World of Warcraft.
Posted by Taelan on the original Stormrage Europe forums, this thread made the WoW Europe frontpage and gathered a lot of cross-realm answers, becoming famous very quickly.
The original post has since been deleted but the text, and its responses, were recreated on the guild's site for posterity. It can be viewed at http://sylvex.co.uk/wdwy1.html
The original text is as follows;
I'm the second in command of a medium sized guild on this server and one of my responsibilties is recruitment. Now we're just breaking our way through Zul Gurub and we've killed Venoxis, Jeklik, Marli and Mando'Kir and we've also downed Kurinnaxx in AQ20 but it's getting to the point where we want to start thinking about Molten Core. So we've started recruiting so that we can move on. As a result I speak to between ten and twenty people a week all looking to join up, or just get some more information and although I can't confess to being inundated I reckon that I can find a way to stop many of the needless inquiries and applications I get each week. The truth is that for every twenty tells I get, nineteen make me want to bang my head against my desk.
So here's my plan and I'm going to start slowly.
If your application talks about how you'd like to join us till you find a BWL guild, we don't need you. If your application includes the word "PLZ" we don't need you. I take an instant dislike to these people because I feel it saves time. If your first tell asks if you can have the next epic weapon to drop, we don't need you, in fact, if your application centers on loot you want, we don't need you.
Taking a breath here......here we go again.
If your application has no vowels in it or it looks like your typing abilities have all the artistic grace of someone who just collapsed spastically on their keyboard we don't need you.
There is a school of thought which suggests that if you take a dozen monkeys and trap them in a room with a typewriter for eternity that they'll eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare. The news for those of you following that experiment is that they've made some good progress and have already come up with some choice applications to my guild.
And if you're one of those unfortunate people whose keyboard has tourette's you probably shouldn't ?$"%ing apply either you $%?^ faced !^?%$. We think there's a self help group for you but if that doesn't work out you could always create a charter for the guild " We can't stop f&*cking swearing". Trust me, there are other people like you out there and you'll have no trouble getting nine more signatures.
"Lol, just kidding, teehee" get stuffed, don't need you freaks either! I mean, seriously, do you think I want someone in the guild whose evey second word is ROLFMAO ( their misspelling not mine ) or keke, wuwu, la~ wtfbbq? I just don't hate myself enough to share the same guildchannel as you.
If your name is Gandalf, Gandallf, Ganddalf, Frodo, Arragorn, Darfader, Imarogue, Ikillpeople, Davincicode, Depechemode, Kingoftheroad, Youreachode, or Onyxiasmymum, Rouge, Preist, Drood, anything that contains dude, Moonshy, or anything on a similar theme then just save me the hassle.
If you're application hints that you're doing me a favour by joining we don't need you. Your ego needn't apply either, we doubt we have room for it anyway. We don't need lessons on how to raid from people who suffer from delusions of adequacy and if you're joining with your level 48 main we'll be interested but if you think that gives you license on how to tell us how to play our classes, guess what? We don't need you! I apologize if I seemed interested when you told me how you single handedly killed Hakkar, it was accidental.
If you can't handle a wipe on a boss, we don't need you. Take your application to Orion or Genesis instead, because you're clearly of the opinion that they never wipe. However, please make it clear that you won't tolerate wipes in the first paragraph of your application so that whichever unlucky sod responsible for recruitment for their guild can tell you "We don't need you" without having to read the rest of your inane utterings!
If you're looking to raid MC and BWL every night in a guild of people you don't know, don't like and don't care about, or you get upset if you only kill one new boss a fortnight....we don't need you. If you're looking to join a guild and kill Ragnaros and Onyxia on night one with a guild who have been doing it for the past six months then we don't need you but if you're happy to start in ZG and want to hear Ventrilo erupt as each new guild first gets ticked off the list then you might have a future with us.
On that note. if you're only joining to get the address of our vent server for your leet counterstrike crew you can get stuffed, you don't need us and we don't need you and we don't like wallhacking little muppets anyway. Oh yes, you know who you are but more importantly we know who you are too.
If you're looking to tap us up for silver or gold then we really don't need you, you probably haven't managed to read this far anyway and it really doesn't matter since we most likely caught you out with "plz" ages ago.
In case you're interested, the females in our guild don't need you either. Could we get a sign please? "Please do not ask for sexual favours during your trial period as a swift "f&*? off", /guildremove Tosser_001, petition to a GM often offends."
To the person that responded to my advert last week with the words "ME JOIN OK?" ...No it's not OK. I don't want you to join, I don't want you to play, in fact if you could just save us all a lot of heartache, hit escape, hit logout, and then just uninstall World of Warcraft, we'd appreciate it. If this is beyond you then you should know that software can be unistalled by taking a large jug of water and pouring it into the coolant intake at the back of your PC, perferably whilst the machine is on. ( It's the one near the top with the water turbine spinning around )
If you don't like our DKP system or our whole guild charter don't apply. What is it with you people who read the charter, check out the looting system, apply, and then spend the next four weeks #@%$!ing about how you don't like the guilds rules? Since you're here though, can I ask; do you go into ASDA and complain to Customer Services that the bread you bought last week didn't taste like ice-cream and didn't scoop well?
Rest assured that my guild and I know all about you people, we worry about you all and we feel sorry for you. We just don't want to associate with you. It's nothing personal and if I said anything to offend it was purely intentional.
But, if you're reading this and you know where I'm coming from and you can't stand these people either then let me know. It isn't wrong to want to garrote someone with your mouse cable, it happens to all of us from time to time but at least you won't suffer from it as much in our guild. That is unless you do really well and we put you in charge of recruitment.
Keke
Taelan
Taelan since then left the Sylvan Exiles to form his own guild, November.