One of the most famous guilds in Azeroth is Method, on the server ‘Sylvanas’ – that was the case then, and it is now. Over the years, they’ve been the first to take down a number of final raid bosses. During Burning Crusade, their best Rogue was a player called Zeuzo. He was perfectly kitted out from head to foot, and even had the Warglaives of Azzinoth – the best melee weapons in the game (and the most iconic for the expansion) They were one of only four ‘Legendary’ weapons available at the time, and Zeuzo was the first person on his server to get them.
Every other player looked at him with seething envy. And one decided it wasn’t worth working to get the glaives himself, when he could simply buy them. But the glaives were bound to Zeuzo – he couldn’t give them away even if he wanted to. This mysterious buyer could only get his hands on the glaives and the gear by convincing Zeuzo to sell his entire account.
So what’s what he did.
Zeuzo began to receive whispers offering money in exchange for his account. He said no, so the whispers came back with an even greater offer. Zeuzo persisted, and as he did, the offers grew and grew. By September 2007, the sum was 7000 Euros - $9500 at the time. Zeuzo was encountering financial difficult times in life, and found himself unable to resist.
The sale went ahead. Zeuzo’s account changed hands, and the character was renamed to Shaks.
Buying and selling accounts is nothing new. It happens all the time, with accounts going for about $300 on average. It’s often easy to spot a bought account, because their skill doesn’t match the gear they’re wearing.
“The problem is,” said Ms Vaughan, “you have no idea how to play the character properly.”
“Within a short space of time, you would be subject to the embarrassment of other players noticing your lack of skills, and it would be very apparent that you had either bought your account, or had paid to have your character levelled,” she said.
It became immediately obvious to everyone on the server what had happened. It was obvious to Blizzard, too. The best-geared Rogue on the server had spontaneously changed his name, left his guild, moved to another server, and become astonishingly bad at his class. Word spread like wildfire. After a paltry five days, Shaks was banned.
In a panic, he turned to Zeuzo in hope of a refund, with no luck. He stated he had plans on suing both Blizzard and Zeuzo (who had just created a new Rogue and re-joined Method), but nothing came of that either. I suppose if their goal was to headline on the BBC News, they achieved it.
But at what cost?
The Misled Moose
This isn’t really a drama, but I wanted to include it just because I thought it was cool.
World of Warcraft once again hit the headlines in December 2007, and for once it wasn’t due terrible reasons. According to the Norwegian news site ‘Nettavisen’, 12 year old Norwegian player named Hans Jørgen Olsen was saved from a life or death scenario due to his knowledge of WoW. Hans and his sister enraged a local moose during a walk near their home, and after using the ability taunt to attract the moose’s attention away from his sister, Hans did what his Hunter would do – he used feign death.
In World of Warcraft, feign death causes the hunter to appear to die, dropping their health bar to zero, and all non-player enemies instantly lose all aggression toward them. Apparently it works in real life too, because the moose decided he wasn’t worth pursuing, and both siblings were able to get away safely.
For once, World of Warcraft had done something good.