Traumatic WoW Stories
Juggynaut on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - 37 Comments Tags: Guild, christmas, contest, guild bank, hacked, topless robot, traumatic stories 
The folks over at Topless Robot recently held a contest for their readers asking people to give their most traumatic video game related stories. Before I give you the link, it does contain some spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and some content on the racy side, but fair warning has been given, so here is Topless Robot's contest.There were a couple of WoW related stories in the comments, which is quite understandable. World of Warcraft takes internet anonymity, combines it with social interaction and great value placed on in-game goods, which creates opportunities ripe for emotional trauma. The most interesting WoW story was one by a person named Jason. He wrote:
My video game of choice for the past seven years has been World of Warcraft. To say i play a lot would be an understatement. At level 60, and that was several years ago, i had two chars that were both at over 100 days of active playtime. As of today I have 3 level 80's with one of them haveing over 300 days played. For those of you that do not play wow that means i had spent over 300 days logged into the game on that char.Now for my story.
I go to bed Christmas eve with my char wishing all my guildies a merry Christmas. I logged out In Dalaran wearing my full Christmas costume. Fast froward 14 hour. I get back from my grandparents where i just spent all morning acting like was excited about a new sweater vest. Now i go to log in, and i notice something is wrong. My char has no clothes on. A sense of dread floods over me. I go to log in as my main, a prot warrior just recently 80 and almost in full heroic epics. The zone loads and here i am standing in Westfall. Thats when it hit me, i had been hacked. Later my wife will tell me i kept muttering oh no oh no oh no.... Sometime in the middle of all of it i get sick and throw up... also my fist ends up going through a wall.
When everything is tallied up, gone is all my gear, gone is all my gold on all my toons. 9k of my own hard saved gold, gone. Gone was hundreds of days of gear. Then it really hits me, i am GM of my guild. I run to the flight master, the bastards even deleted my hearth stone. I get to the flight master with no gold to buy a flight home. So now i mount up and run to stormwind. I get into the bank to see it empty. 5 Tabs full of mats and boe gear gone, the 12k in guild bank funds gone. I become sick again. I get back to my computer and then the worst part of all of it hits me. I get a whisper from one of my guilds officers asking why i kicked him. The thief kicked everyone from the guild, leaving myself alone in a shell that once held 200+ members.
At the total cost the thief stole close to 50k gold worth of gold and mats and left me alone in my guild, all on Christmas day. 5 years worth of effort undone in mere hours. Traumatic doesn't begin to describe the loss of 7 years.
This is a very sad story. Losing everything in the World (of Warcraft) on Christmas Day? It doesn't get much worse. Unfortunately, it was also posted on the internet in hopes of winning a contest. The cynic in me, which is a very big part of me, wants to ask how true Jason's story is (and just did). It's hard to lose seven or even five years of work when WoW has only been released for four. There is no real way of knowing how true this story is, but this type of thing happens all too often. How many of you have similar stories? I've talked about mine, so tell us about yours!
Reader Comments (37)
Just happened to my guild this morning... ( we are just a friends' guild, so only 8 people, "what's mine is your's" attitude)... And I wake up to see all 4 tabs of high end mats gone, and a log that says "unknown has withdrew" Talk about a shocker. One of our friends got hacked, they withdrawl all our mats, I'm talking thousands of gold worth of stuff, and transfer his toon off the server... We've already opened a GM ticket, because we have the logs for "unknown" but I doubt we'll get any resolution... :(
The always Sexy,
Svenofnine
Realm: Boulderfist
Guild: Legion of Epic Raiders
I was in a guild about Spring last year when not only was the GM hacked, but two of the officers were with in the same week. I think the Key Loggers came out not to long after that. It was odd though. Only half the items in the GB were gone, None of the mats, just low level blue gear for when people were lvling alts or bringing in a friend. All their epic gear was stolen and half the guild got kicked. So the person did a pretty shoddy job of the hack IMO. The guild disbanded from there as the officers (both hacked and not) decided it was best for the safety of all. *Ponders* wonder what they're doing now?
Another story, and I blame the person who did this to the kid, not the kid. Guy says he doesn't want to play anymore but willing to give up the account to a friend of his sisters (that would be the kid I don't blame) with one condition, don't leave the guild w/o my permission. (Which he got, fyi)
Two years later, the guy has another account and we've been working on getting the kid's character pretty well geared, when all of a sudden, the kid leaves the guild. (not in the middle of a raid thank god!) We all become concerned, did someone say something bad? Did the kid perhaps find a guild more his style? What's going on?
So our officers talk to the kid and some of us who made friends with the kid and find out... it's not him. The guy who gave up the account somehow got access to it, was in the process of auctioning off all the items in his bags, and selling his epics to fund some lvl 4 character he wanted to make on that account. He wasn't paying for it anymore, and the password had changed since, so it was basically a hack, but an odd one for sure.
Sad to say, I haven't seen the kid on WoW since then. He made another account, but I don't think he's on the same server any more. Having to re-level a character just sucks.
@ ben way up ur mount as of wotlk is a spell learned from the item u by
similar thing happened to me... i logged on and only my toon was naked and i had no gold... bu at least the guy who hacked my account raised my mining from 390 to 450 ^^... so you see every bad thing for something good :D
The story this article covers is total bull. The guy just thought up the worst that he could and started storytelling. The very first thing he says marks the whole tale as a lie. Not to mention the rest of it reads like a really, really bad book.
i got hacked by some1 at the end of last year, they took about 17k gold and about another 1k from my chars from other realms and then the hacker had the cheek to put me at the bottom of lakes and in the middle of deep water and one of my chars waas inside heroic UB by the hydra boss which pats so i logged on and it killed me.
after i consulted a GM i got my gear back for all my chars within 2-3 hours. but about my gold i lost it all. my fellow guildmates decided that they would be helpful and they would lend me about 500g between about 3 guilds and with this i was able to buy some gear to do some qs and instances for loot.
i have recently bought a blizzard authenticator and they are great i just type in the code and and voila im in and no hackers have been. i have just repayed the loans and have some ok loot but i cannot do any heroics until i get way better loot because atm im using a lvl 49 2h sword
Yea i hate those damn hackers, theyre just too lazy to grind all the stuff and gear themselves and dont care if someone loses evrything.oh yea i once got "hacked" i dont remember when it was but i came home from school one day and i log in it says something like "your account may have been hacked,check your Email for more info" so i checked my Email and blizz had noticed the hack and told me to change pass and had shut down my account for 3 hours.luckily blizz was fast enough to notice bfore any of my stuff was stolen...gues im very lucky. and Jasons story tootally bull****.hope you dont win cuz you dont deserve it with LIES!
My worst experience would be with a resto druid who was in guild with us. She got hacked once, got everything restored, then got nailed again. Her armory profile shows that her gear didn't get removed, probably because she logged in on her husband's account and told us, and we got a GM involved. Nothing was stolen, but she decided it wasn't worth the trouble any more and quit the game. Items, gear, etc. could have been replaced, re-farmed, etc, but we lost a good friend because of it.
I got hacked myself pre-BC, back when I played my Orc Shaman. Typical hacker, stripped me naked in the middle of nowhere (Silithus, I think. The bastards picked the most remote place they could think of >.<) with no gold or hearthstone. It caused me to give up on the game for a while. Eventually, I came back, but decided to go with a Night Elf rogue instead. I got myself an authenticator, too, and haven't had a problem since (personally, that is. The above resto druid issue was near the end of BC).
I've never been literaly hacked. I gave my information to a guildie. VERY BAD IDEA! I didn't have much, a 37 hunter, 30 warlock and other assorted characters. It was all gone in the three hours I logged off. I'm, ever going to give my info to anyone ever again for any reason fathomable.
Feel free to call me an imbucile, it's what I deserve...
Also, the MMO itself has only been out for five years, and this person says he's been playing it for seven. Just thought I'd point that out.
Don't get me wrong, I feel horrible for this guy and know what it's like to log on to nothing.
Fortunately I've never been hacked, althought about a year ago one of my friends did, he was about 55 at the time, he started acting funny one day in guild and I asked him about something he had mentioned the night before, and he simply tried to avoid the question, then about 10 minutes later he starts whispering gold spam messages to the guild...so we pretty much all open up tickets and it was able to be resolved w/o trouble.
Ah man that just suxx
I've hacked a friend of mine... (it was on a buggy private server)
Didn't do anything that is un reverseble. Mailed myself all his mony and un soulbound stuff...
Made a guild. Stored all his stuff there... I was guild master in my old guild and kicked him. All his soulbound stuff did i mail to his own main. (Yes that could there becouse of all the bugs) Than i said the next day i was by him. Let's play WoW. When he logged in.... Oh you had to see his face.... WAHAHA, And a hour later i told him what i did... Oh he could hit me....
yes it happend
no i don't know the adress any more
no you can't know the server. Becouse it went down 3year ago.
Ah screw this
see ya ingame