Are you like me? Do you like to read game message boards for entertainment and developing drama?

In the case of Warcraft, this is really all I can do with their perma-broken board system — rarely is the system operational for tasks such as SEARCH or POST or REPLY, which kind of is the point of a message board system. It’s not a freaking chat room, after all.

Anyways, a couple of good dramas have been playing out lately. First, we have the Chinese farmer invasion. The accused is Loly, et al, who has level 60 paladin characters on many of the servers. Or there is a huge coincidence with numerous non-English speaking Lolys that spend 24 hours a day in the same zones on multiple servers.

Maybe Loly means “Unshowered” in a foreign language, which would explain the name’s popularity. In any case, I have a Loly on my server, also. Level 60 paladin. Completely incoherent. We had a conversation once, as it were, when I was putting the beatdown on some pirates for fun and profit, and he said something like, “OK here when”, to which I replied, “huh? Dude, that made no sense.”

In hindsight, maybe that was his plea for political asylum and I displayed typical insensitivity by failing to direct him to the local United States embassy. Next time, I won’t be so callous. (ya.)

My other Loly encounter was back in the level 30s (he, a level 50, complete with a horse, the bastard!) when I was grinding exp and profit at some ravager camp. I was doing my methodical pull bit; he was diving in and wiping out dozens at a time. Which was cool, whatever. But, he would occasionally run over and whack my mobs. I assumed at the time he did this because he figured I WAS CERTAIN TO DIE from fighting a mob of appropriate level.

Then, too, I was unaware of his dissatisfaction with his government and kept telling him stuff like “Dude, I’m cool” or “Dude, trying to get some exp here.” He never replied, just kept diving in with his mobs, then running back to my area and “saving” me. We parted ways after an hour or so, and I never really got to know the real Loly. O GOD I MISS HIM!

Back to that thread, there’s a few choice responses.

Post #49: “i saw loly in my bedroom last night he touched me in funny places” (Skree of Archimonde) That reply is still funny hours after I first read it.

Post #108: Props to Syrec of Arthas for posting a language guide for English speakers to use when negotiating with Chinese farmers. “Wo zheng zai xue hua yu” (I am still learning Chinese) and “Yao shi wo yi zhi qiang ni de de ren, ni hui bu hui jie yi ba?” (Don’t mind if I steal your mobs too?)

Post #126: Orlangur of Ner’zhul tried to have a conversation with his Loly — screenshot included of the convo.

Bizzlo of Tichondrius did a search on several servers to track down the Lolys.

And, then there’s post #59, the first post to (jokingly) suggest that all the Lolys are Nebu of Blizzard’s farm accounts. You remember Nebu, right? The arrogant prick that has a disdain for “lol”. Get it? Loly? Doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, does it?

Which brings me to the other hot drama. Yet again, Nebu and his crack gang of “experienced and elite players” (his words, not mine) are in the news again. I would link the threads so you could read for yourself, but, umm, the threads aren’t there anymore. (Irony, why must you taunt me so?!?!) The topics were largely about the wholesale thread deletion and locking going on for any thread concerning the Neb-ster and/or his crack gang of “experienced and elite players” (his words, not mine).

(**UPDATE** Found some live threads still in progress! Post #472 in Part 2 by Brodie of Uther is a good summary of events to date. Get it while it’s hot — it may not last.)

The discussions swing into the wisdom of allowing a Blizzard employee to (repeatedly) reveal his player identity, because, (and I realize this is SHOCKING), people might wonder whether special favors were given to an insider and his crack gang. If they didn’t wonder before, they sure fucking do now with all the thread closures.

If you’ve a mind to watch currently-unfolding drama, the crack gang plays Alliance over on Tichondrius and you can camp posts on that forum. Be warned — the threads are nuked quickly so cache ’em while you got ’em.

I don’t play on that server so I’m having a hard time giving a shit. Nevertheless!

Obviously, we, as players, WANT developers and game employees to play their own game, if only so that when they have to put up with the same stupid design crap that we do, they can wander over to the responsible designer’s cubicle and beat him/her with a stapler. It would seem to be equally obvious that their identities should be kept SECRET … and that means from everyone.

If there ever would be a game employee in one of my guilds (and I don’t believe there ever was), I don’t want to know. There’s little chance I’d keep my mouth shut and allow them space to enjoy the game in peace. (I mean, dude, how fucking hard is it to keep your message boards operational??? Shouldn’t someone be fired for that shit?)

I’ve begun to suspect, however, that the Neb-ster’s continued lapses in judgement aren’t so much lapses as some creepy show-off of power for the preteens.

We used to have this guy at work. Tax attorney. So fucking incompetent that he was assigned to redo the filing system for the tax research files. He dove into that shit like it was a Supreme Court case. (Can we get this icon in cornflower blue?) There was a joke around the office that when he was bivouacked in his own office for hours on end that he was masturbating to his absolute power over the filing system.

I’m not saying that Nebu is power hungry. I’m just saying that his fellow employees should knock first before opening his door.