We’re on a code red drama alert, people! Maybe. Hell if I know, I’m still sorting out the dozens of Warcraft threads.
I do know this: miss a day of commentary, miss a lot.
You think you know what’s going on, you tell me.
What I’ve sorted out … an entire Warcraft guild on the Uther server was transfered to one of the newer realms, Eldre’Thalas. (Not on the list of authorized realm transfers, by the way.) Allegedly! Because the most info I saw from the Blizzard Collective was via Caydiem (post #124, locking it down), and I quoteth:
What took place was a result of disciplinary action, and by policy we do not discuss disciplinary actions on the forums, as such information should remain confidential.
Our apologies for the confusion.
And this (post#11) from Ordinn, again I quote:
You all must understand that this was a disciplinary action, which is getting blown out of proportion by the members of our community. There is no conspiracy, and the two issues are unrelated.
Complete bullshit. They had no fucking problem with privacy when it was accusing a raid guild of exploiting line of sight, but now it’s a privacy concern when it comes to dumping a level 60 guild on a hapless server.
(And is it just me, or is Ordinn always about two days behind everyone else on the planet? Really. I’ll read his answers and think, wtf, that doesn’t even address the meat of the question. Is this some technique they’re teaching at the colleges nowadays? Kinda like this link. Oops, how’d that one get in here?)
Additional reading material (there may be overlap — you’ve been warned).
Again, you figure it out, you tell me. Was there a transfer? Did this guild get transfered to their alt server? (!!!) If the answers are “yes” and “yes”, then answer this: what the fuck?
Extra credit reading … a WTH screenshot and a player-created summary of the drama.
Well it looks like “yes” and “yes”…the same character names that were in the old guild are in the new one. linky.
No one still has posted what exactly happened that caused the guild to get transfered and why it was so unique the GM’s had to transfer them.
To be fair Foton, looks like the drama started late Tuesday, so you’re not far behind.
Anywho, this drama is delicious, like the sweet, sweet tears of children.
Still find it odd that the Crusaders of Apathy’s site http://apathy.brokentoys.org/ is on the same domain as Lum the Mad’s http://www.brokentoys.org/ – aka Scott Jennings, Mythic Entertainment employee.
It’s not odd. My wife’s in the guild, and my webspace is her webspace, so I gave them a board. Thanks to all the drama that a-sploded while I was on DAOC last night, I asked them to take their guild stuff elsewhere this morning.
I can’t comment on anything else for obvious reasons, save that I have about as much influence on the Blizzard GMs as Foton does.
I once got a response from the bot GM. I felt special for days.
Good to hear it Scott – sucks that you folks got pulled into the dramalation. My initial thought was that the guild was being harassed due to your relation to Mythic, but Magic 8-Ball is showing “not likely” now.
Ever time I look at the WoW forums you link to, Foton (I’ve never looked there directly), all I see is abject fear from Blizz forum mods. Ordering people to stop posting on a game-related question?! I inch closer to unscription everytime I see Blizz’ behavior.
I just enjoy all the contradictions.
“They got moved as a disciplinary action.”
“The ones that got moved were not the ones disciplined.”
“We got moved as a way to test the process.”
It’s a soap opera for geeks.
It appears all the complaining has had an effect as Caydiem wrote:
“The guild Displaced was moved from Uther to Eldre’Thalas due to a harassment issue. However, due to the reactions of various groups, the action taken has come under further review. We will be releasing more information on the subject later today, including the resolution.”
When all this went down I noticed this post by ordinn: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2953671&tmp=1#post2953671
This caught me a little off track. With the massive success of WoW, why NOT hire an extra 100 or so CSRs? I mean WoW DID sell so fast that VU had to stop shipping boxes out so that Blizz could catch up (or atleast I assume it was VU). And Blizz DID announce 1.5 million subscribers pretty damn early after release, easily shattering any existing major north american MMO yet. So concidering the rather pathetic state of petition qeues and the 5 CMs trying to work across 9 class boards along with a REALLY fast and REALLY nasty general forum that would make most moderators break down and cry, why NOT hire more CSRs? Aside from every member of the Blizzard team having a crippling heroin addiction, I really can’t figure it out. But then again, if that were the case it would explain some things. Still, that’s all a side issue.
When it comes to what everyone’s talking about, I have a question I want (and probably will not get) answered: Why not just ban the offenders? I can’t find any reason to go down the path they did. Were they banned AND the victim guild moved? If so isn’t that redundant? And if the entire server or a force too large to just ban was harassing the guild then maybe the guild deserved it. Something probably should have been done but unleashing them onto an oblivious and unsuspecting server as and low as this one is definitly wrong. Heck, I bet most of the players on that server don’t even master loot yet.
All told I think players are just confused as hell why such action is nessicary. I can’t think of a single scenario that fits what information we have on this that couldn’t have been solved with traditional methods. Regardless, the damage has yet to surface. If anything, people are a little TOO nutty about this. For all we know the effect could be as passing as the elune AH thing a while back.
For those not in the know, a pair of players bought ought all the low/mid priced items in the Elune server AH and jacked up the cost. People went a little wacko and after 2 days things were pretty much back to normal. So far, people claim that the server affected by this secret transfer has been lagged up. I don’t know if that’s just paranoia. Also, many claim that the sudden induction of high level and well equiped players with gear tht doesn’t even yet exist on the new server could cause problems too. Maybe with the honor system yes but otherwise I doubt it. Even if it was a large guild and not just a couple people as ordinn claims, I can’t really see it having massive debilitating effects on the server economy but to be honest, I really don’t know too much about that stuff. Heck, even people who know a lot about it admit it’s somewhat challenging to predict.
I think that in the end this is mainly just drama. Can’t say I don’t enjoy a nice drama bomb every now and again. I’m more concerned with the bizzare ineptitude shown by these events than the actually effects they will have on the server and it’s players.
Exactly! That’s the real meat of the story right there.
While I do not envy the CMs their job, or the GMs or anyone trying to manage a group of 1.5 million people, why not try THE TRUTH? We moved this entire guild because bla bla, it was a special situation because bla bla.
Although I am hard pressed to think of any situation that would require moving a guild wholesale to another server when so many other guilds have been begging to be moved.
There was an acrimonous guild split from what I understand? Maybe that lead to the issues? Kinda old school, but that’s what we call a TSRR. The ole Tough Shit, Reroll.
There’s 2 reasons they can’t tell the truth.
1.) They have a policy which means they have a precedent to keep up.
2.) It could cause an even bigger shit storm. If they release personal information that is vital to understanding the conflict, they could get in serious trouble. If they act vague but explain the misdeeds of the offending guild, then some might take up the vigilanty torch and more harassment would ensue. Since blizz has less than 100 GMs working for them and they refuse to give up their $6000 shower curtains for more, that’s probably the last thing they need.
I suspect that if they DID tell us what happened, we’d be all over them for airing dirty laundry just like we’re all over them for this. I’d settle for knowing that whatever the hell happened won’t happen again. I’m too deadlocked to hope for anything else as I’m not allowed to know what happened and I don’t know if I should be allowed. I’m sure that if I was involved in all this that I wouldn’t want my private actions and words known to the rather vast player base.
That kinda brings up a point though: why shouldn’t they disclose information about offenses that are bad enough to warrent a ban? I don’t mean wave them out there like a cheap pop up add but why protect an account that isn’t active anymore?
And the resolution from Ordinn:
Earlier this week, characters belonging to a guild on Uther were moved to Eldre’Thalas to protect them from harassment. Understandably, members of the Eldre’Thalas community were very concerned about this and contacted us through the proper channels, so we investigated the matter internally. After reviewing the steps that were taken, we’ve determined that the appropriate procedure for addressing harassment was not followed.
The person responsible for making this decision saw this case as a good way to test the complex realm-to-realm transfer functionality that we would like to make available to players, while at the same time addressing the harassment concerns in a positive way for everyone involved. Unfortunately, the action caused confusion for both the community and the characters moved to Eldre’Thalas.
We have decided that in order to correct this situation and put the resolution in line with our current policy, all characters transferred to Eldre’Thalas will be moved back to Uther. Furthermore, the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken in regard to the harassment that took place on Uther. In addition to this, we will be reevaluating our communication procedure as it relates to enforcing policy, in order to avoid similar situations in the future.
We apologize for the confusion caused by this matter, and we want to reaffirm that the complex procedure of transferring characters between realms is in no way appropriate for addressing harassment concerns or other policy violations. We also apologize to the players on Eldre’Thalas for having disrupted the current state of their realm with this issue.
The one thing that still surprises me is that people think it was a “GM” that moved us. I have to admit though, it was quite a fun experience dealing with all the hate.