This is the last official statement from Blizzard. It doesn’t add much to what we already know.

My reconstruction is that the guild was able to build a bad reputation on the Uther server, it doesn’t matter if well-deserved or not. That brought to a direct collision with the other guilds in the server and the involvement of GMs. The problem is that this guild probably defended itself from the badmouthing, stating that they were victims of it. For sure there was a split at some point. Some member could have taken the offense more seriously and started to blame each other till the point where a GM intervention was required.

From a side there were peoples blaming this guild, from the other the guild itself self-proclaimed victim of the drama-conspiration. When the reputation of a guild is ruined (it doesn’t matter if the rumors are true or false, that’s part of the drama) there isn’t anymore a lot to save. This is why the GM probably decided to give the supposed innocent part of the guild (not the whole guild was moved) a “second chance”. On a brand new server they could have demonstrated their innocence and that all that happened wasn’t their responsibility.

But, you know, it’s not that hard to spot a big group of strangers coming in your hometown. In particular when so badly disguised. And now their reputation is ruined even more ;p

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.

I guess… it makes sense?

*goes back to snicker at Lum*

EDIT: Terra Nova is all over this. Timothy Burke wrote a very good analysis of the two important aspects. The importance of the reputation within the game between the players and the reputation of the company itself.

EDIT-2: Ahahahah, oh my god. Comedy Gold on the Vault boards:

– Scott Jennings, How’s WoW treating you?
– Isn’t he the guy that won all that money on Jeopardy?
– That’s Ken Jennings
– Isn’t he the guy that did all those text based adventures back in the 70’s and 80’s?
– That’s Scott Adams
– Then who the hell is Scott Jennings and why is he playing WOW?