These screenshots are worth a *ban*!

Here’s a “visual” reportage of the protest that took place about two hours ago on the Argent Dawn server of World of Warcraft. The subject of this protest was the problems of the warrior class, the purpose of the protest was to draw the attention over those issues and ‘to awaken’ both the playerbase and Blizzard.

In general I do not care about classes discussions, in fact I rarely rant about nerfs or direct unbalances of the classes. But I was there, of course. These type of “happenings” are way too fun and interesting from an “observer” point of view. They are something unique that has its roots directly in the very potential of the genre.

You can read in detail about what happened and find more proper and informative links here.

Instead if you follow the “read more” link on the right of this article you’ll see my visual reportage. From the beginning to its pitiful end ;p
(about 16 images and 4.8Mb in total)

My conclusions are unrelated: the client of the game is amazing. Everything remained perfectly smooth with no hiccups or freezes even when someone started spamming AOE spells. I could consider this as a preemptive test for the upcoming battlegrounds.

UPDATE: Pasted at the bottom the letter I received from Blizzard about the account suspension.














P.S.
My mailbox is still waiting an answer. So I don’t know if the account got suspended for a day, a week, a month or just forever. Voices say it’s three days.

I shouldn’t play around happily when my account isn’t even completely ‘legal’ considering I play from the Europe.

UPDATE:
This is the letter I received a minute ago about the account suspension:

Offense: Harassment – Zone Disruption

Details: Zone disruption for Ironforge during warrior protest, player would not disperse after many warnings

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. As a result, this account has received a warning and a 3 hour account suspension. Until the suspension has been lifted, the account will not be accessible. Please note that Blizzard Entertainment will be unable to provide further information regarding the specific time an account will be accessible again.

Be aware that additional inappropriate actions may result in further disciplinary action, including account closure. We thank you in advance for respecting our position and hope that you will continue to enjoy your gaming experience in World of Warcraft.

EDIT: Comments disabled for awhile.

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93 thoughts on “These screenshots are worth a *ban*!

  1. So, the assclowns at Blizzard, instead of fixing their goddamned awful, laggy servers to STILL BE PLAYABLE if/when every player on the server congregates in a single area (think: Blizzard’s long-term goals of having entire faction vs. faction raids) instead choose to ban accounts. Wake the fuck up, Blizz, and fix your lame, broken-down, ghetto servers to be able to handle the load! If they can’t handle the influx of hundreds of players from other servers creating lvl 1 accts. and logging into the server, re-instate the queues and server caps, and buy better hardware to accomodate the load. Enable migration of chars across servers to allow players to play with their chars on other servers if one comes under attack. But, for the love of God, accept responsibility here; if this simple an “attack” could DoS and crash an entire game server, then someone in the hardware design/architecture team deserves a good caning.

    /not a warrior, wasn’t on the server, but still adamantly anti-Blizz

  2. Maybe next time they will all sing Anarchy in the WoW and run around with flaming buttocks.
    This message brought to you by a stupid, gay terrorist bent on covering Bushie’s bottom with santorum. You may now go back to your panic about a sucky game by a capitalist company.

  3. Come on people its still a new game. The kinks need to be wrinkled out and I think Blizzard is trying hard to do so. Yes, sometimes I get upset. But, lagging down a server is not the answer. Blizzard has kept us in the loop by telling us they have problems (Did SOE ever do that with EQ…I think NoT !)

    Give them a chance, im sure that in the end you will be happy with the results….remember we are talking about this, because we love this game and care about it. Im sure that if a loved one had trouble walking…you wouldnt put them on a treadmill if they had to go to the bathroom !

    Bottom Line……Have Some Patience !

  4. I think that both the idea of the protest and Blizzards reaction were appropriate. I mean come on guys you were suspended for a piddly 3 hours. Get real, thats not skin off your back, and you can use the rest bonus. If this were a real protest or sit in, and the city, state, government said… OK you have made your point go home now, you too would have been arrested if you didn’t leave. In the 60’s College students were suspended from classes, lost scholorships, people were tear gassed, arrested. Sure they were back on the streets the next day, AND the administration heard what they had to say load and clear. Don’t assume Blizzard didn’t hear you becasue you were banned for three hours. Besides, for all you know they reacted this way, becasue perhaps they were reseaving 100’s of complains about slow servers or lag time. Maybe us whimpy hunter’s or mages didn;t even know about your protest, and was like.. WTF why is the AH lagging.. You voice was heard, and there reaction was appropriate, now lets see if they fix your class.

  5. I understand many people have an opinion and are loooking for change within the gameplay, but why in the hell would people spam message boards with idiotic chatter about terrorism. This kinda talk has nothing to do with the reason why the protest took place or oppinions on the suspension of accounts. This kind of talk will get no results and make people overlook your comments. Saddam, 911, what the hell.. Get a life.. Grow up..

    As for the protest, I think they wanted to make thier voice heard… and I guess they did. Blizzard had the right to suspend accounts because they were observed and noted and continued to disrupt gameplay for other accounts. If they whine about the suspension, all I have to say is, you didn’t have to participate in the protest and you were given fair warning. Your voice was heard, the suspension you got was only temporary.

  6. I love how people ( especially Americans ) like to force there laws and ideals on other countries and societies. How does the American constitution affect someone living in France or the French law in Yugoslavia. I would hate to live in America they have the largest rate of murders of any of the so called Civilized countries and even rivals some of the countries that are as poor as dirt and have constant Civil wars. WTF is with you people. First off you have a bunch of cry babies losers who should re roll there characters and play Paladins or Rouges or which ever class they see as better than there own. Give me a break FFS so what if your class needs a little bit of work so do a lot of other classes. The game is not that old class balance is still settling in if u don’t like it Fuck off and go back to EQ, EQ2, SWG, DAoC, CoH, Uo, or the hundred other on line games. It was selfish of these losers to go to a place they new was always laggy as hell with a lot of people in the area and protest. There was no reason to be there we all pay money to play this game and to take that service off of other people is stealing. So fuck all warriors and sheep that participated in this protest.

  7. Why didn’t Blizzard just release a giant deamon or a bunch of NPC guards on the crowd? It would have been much funnier than just suspending accounts. They wouldnt have come off so High and Mighty.

  8. Submitted by zweeperd (not verified) on February 4, 2005 – 17:49.

    To all: Get a life…

    ALL WITH YOU ZWEEPER

    people this is supposed to be a game related article and discission

  9. I think this is absolutely HILARIOUS and I think the fact that Blizzard suspended you is crap. I was thinking about getting the game, but frankly, if Blizzard is a bunch of Nazi’s who can’t take a joke (and I think this is a great one), then F them.

  10. Good for blizzard suspending the players — although if I was them, I would have just took the server offline for a few days, saying the warriors had crashed it and blaming it on them. Then the hate mail to the warriors comes flooding in !! :D :D :D :D :D

  11. I popped into this tread by accident and I find it completly dumb that immediatly the terms “terrorism” and the such installed themselves inside. However, I’m not here to talk about that. I believe the gnome warrior rassembly was a nice idea, never tried before, and let’s face it, I bet Blizzard noticed it more than a puny thread amongst all the others inside their forums.

    In my point of view, the punishment for causing disturbances in the servers was fair. They were suspended for 3 lousy hours.

    “but frankly, if Blizzard is a bunch of Nazi’s who can’t take a joke (and I think this is a great one), then F them.” Excuse me, but I doubt you really know the meaning of “nazi” given the context in which you used it “random dude”. Do you people evenr read the terms of use when signing up for wow? And as a last point, not getting a (imo great) game because the company banned some people for 3 hours is lame, the game is relatively new and pretty safe server wise given it’s age, even if a server has trouble with a reunion such as this one. The customer is not always right.

  12. just read the e-mail damnit, its not terrorism, its griefing, GRIEFING!!!! they already have a name for it, GRIEFING!! no need to start yapping about terrorism, its GRIEFING!!!! and yes, griefing isnt allowed by the EULA (which is a worthless piece of crap where you have to click a box, that’s all i know about it anyway) and you’ll get kicked for it, and you did.

    besides that, if the game is out for two months and you’re already spending your day sitting on a bridge, i’d say im just gonna play Baldur’s Gate again instead of buying this…

  13. This has strengthen my opinion… All gnomes must die… For the horde!!!

    Gathering ALOT of naked gnomes is NOT trerrorism… its just perfect for a Rain of fire…
    Mua ha ha ha ha

  14. Yes, the goggles do nothing. Also, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Nobody should be complaining about being suspended. If you plan to protest, also be aware about the consequences one would receive. If you can’t take the flying shit, stop blowing it out of your ass. Also that long .txt file that nobody reads called an EULA? Yeah, it proves that bitching won’t work, playing WoW is a privilege, not a right and they can summon many expensive lawyers and automatically get a natural 20 for their saving throw. Be nice and you won’t get the ban stick or at the worst circumstances, soap on a rope.

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