After reading your post I don't really see why someone would want to flame it.

I can't talk for whomever you talked to and whatnot but I can at least give my thoughts on it. I still remember my first hero, was a dwarf lawful paladin who, after about 300 hours, thought that he wanted to join Maran. I remember praying to the imms about it and having Vynmylak come down to talk to me. Was a great time, and I learned alot from it, he turned me away because I was lawful, probably other reasons too, but at the time I still walked away happy. I guess the reason for me bringing this up is to say that you shouldn't take what happened as a knock on yourself, but try to take something from it and learn from it, so you can do better next time.

Now I will talk from my cabal leader experiance, granted not the hugest resevoir or knowledge but not a puddle either. First of all, if you want to join a cabal you should send a note to the respective cabal, basically this lets everyone in the cabal know what you want. If a lowbie comes to help defend I usually check my notes to see if they sent one, it is a good way to get in the door and you may find the cabal members are more receptive if they know for sure that you want to join rather then being someone just interested in finding out more about the cabal (alot of people think that if it isnt going to benefit them in some way, make the cabal stronger etc, then why bother wasting time) a little harsh but some people are like that.

In regards to interviewing I like to think that I could pick the newer players from the older ones just by talking to them, to be honest it really made no difference to me. As long as they were willing to learn and were enthusiastic then I would give them ago. In some ways the newer players are better then the "elite" because the newer players are much more willing to dust off their shoulders and go at it again after being pked and full looted. They cherish each char alot more then some of the players who power game (best race/align/cabal combo for pks/exploration/exploitation of exploitable things) and who delete after one mob/pk death and for that reason I enjoy talking to them. Granted there are some who are completely off in what they think a cabal is about, or who are on the right track but heading in the wrong direction. If this was the case I would try to help them out and point them in the right direction.

Basically to cut a long story short, don't take it to heart, take it on the chin and learn from it. What happened to you I would like to think is not the norm. My advice is to try again, write a note to the cabal (a good hint if you don't know the exact spelling of a cabal is 'help notes', it has a list of all the cabals in it from memory.) and just be persistant, if you bug people long enough then some of them are bound to give in.

Blobqirt