Blizzard breaks their own ToU

[danielns13]

Right and wrong are irrelevant, the money says unban Swifty.

This from someone with Rorschach as their avatar?

Anyway, I'm don't really know enough about this sort of thing to make a make an informed opinion, but i kinda think swifty was in the wrong.

 

[Xalmgrey]

So those of us that pay the 15 bucks a month to keep that game running and click "I agree" to the very same ToU that is renewed every patch and in effect every time we log on should be treated with different regard? Really this kind of double standard is alright?

Blizzard made the ToU, I'm sure it's in there that they can do what they please and if not, it's their game, they can do what they want.

Hm i guess i expected people to actually look the evidence over here before posting. When you have the meek response of "uh well its their own TOU they can do what they want" you basically set the precedent of allowing those with resources you don't have the ability to do whatever they want. The whole idea of brining this here to the escapist ( a site that claims journalistic integrity ) was to see what people that actually look at the evidence think.

"you basically set the precedent of allowing those with resources you don't have the ability to do whatever they want."

It happens all the time in real life, famous and super rich people can get away with many things that the average person can't.

And nothing can be done to change it? Amazing. We the general people have more power than we think when we actually work together to change things. But when you take the stance of "oh well they are rich and can do what they want" nothing changes and nothing will because people think its pointless to try. And the cycle keeps going on and on. That is one of the problems with society at large today is no one is willing to take any form of responsibility anymore and its starting to become apparent the the public at large is too apathetic to care about their own rights.

One of the main problems that you're currently running into is just how little this site actually cares. It is well known here that a good majority of people hate WoW and hate hearing news about it. You'd do much better to take this to MMO-Champ forums or even the WoW forums themselves. At least then you'd get people who care enough to do something, and maybe even find people with the power to do something.

You're comparing WoW to society, but not all of society takes part in WoW. Just like trying to rally troops here for a march on Washington wouldn't do much good due to the high traffic of British users. You have to look for support in places where it can be found without scrounging. You want to make a difference and petition this? Go ahead and start it yourself. You've gotten our answers, we think that Blizzard deciding to keep their asses out of the fire is the right decision. I mean hell, if I ran the company I'd have done the exact same thing. Might not even have banned him to begin with.

I respect what you are saying. The only problem i have with it is we are if not only close to 20 posts here and there's actually got to be more than 10 or so people on this site. Not to mention this site covers WoW almost all the time. It's a pretty legitimate place to discuss this no? I could understand if this site never covered WoW at all but i've read one a many pieces here about it.

 

[Robert Ewing]

I agree with Blizzards decision, it saves them from having to replace the servers if they actually get corrupted from the spamming crashes, as last time that happened, it sucked eggs.

And If Razer has managed to get this much public support, whats the harm in letting him back? I say it's pretty touching that an entire server rallies to his cause.

 

[godofslack]

Right and wrong are irrelevant, the money says unban Swifty.

This from someone with Rorschach as their avatar?

Anyway, I'm don't really know enough about this sort of thing to make a make an informed opinion, but i kinda think swifty was in the wrong.

Well, it's because he's a badass.

And I don't blame you, I don't talk about if it's right or wrong. Too much misinformation.

 

[Xalmgrey]

I respect what you are saying. The only problem i have with it is we are if not only close to 20 posts here and there's actually got to be more than 10 or so people on this site. Not to mention this site covers WoW almost all the time. It's a pretty legitimate place to discuss this no? I could understand if this site never covered WoW at all but i've read one a many pieces here about it.

Just because the site covers WoW it doesn't mean all the users care.

I'm not looking for all of the users input. You are here though, you clicked the link, clicked respond. You cared enough to post that not all the users cared. Somewhere you cared enough to do that little.

 

[Gxas]

I respect what you are saying. The only problem i have with it is we are if not only close to 20 posts here and there's actually got to be more than 10 or so people on this site. Not to mention this site covers WoW almost all the time. It's a pretty legitimate place to discuss this no? I could understand if this site never covered WoW at all but i've read one a many pieces here about it.

The site covers games. Not just WoW. If it were a WoW dedicated site, you'd get a lot more response. The general opinion of WoW on this site, despite the coverage, is that it is satan in game form.

Sad, I know, as I had a lot of fun playing it when I did, but that's just how people here see it.

 

[Xalmgrey]

I respect what you are saying. The only problem i have with it is we are if not only close to 20 posts here and there's actually got to be more than 10 or so people on this site. Not to mention this site covers WoW almost all the time. It's a pretty legitimate place to discuss this no? I could understand if this site never covered WoW at all but i've read one a many pieces here about it.

The site covers games. Not just WoW. If it were a WoW dedicated site, you'd get a lot more response. The general opinion of WoW on this site, despite the coverage, is that it is satan in game form.

Sad, I know, as I had a lot of fun playing it when I did, but that's just how people here see it.

Really. Satan in game form? Why? The community?

 

[Gxas]

Really. Satan in game form? Why? The community?

Well, look at how the game is portrayed by the media. Look at the people who get in the news because of bad things that happen while they're playing. All of us know someone who has no sense of moderation, but people blame the games for taking their friends away from them. They never blame the player for not having control over themselves.

 

[Slycne]

snip

Well it's hard to parse a lot of biased information on all the conflicting sides, but I think a good compromise might have been to unban him but leave a slap on the wrist suspension. Even if you had the most noble of intentions, it's worth reinforcing that arranging massive cross server meet ups is going to cause issues and can quickly, be it intentionally or unintentionally, devolve into that kind of behavior.

I also don't think it's simply a case of Blizzard bending over backward because of fame, money, etc. His followers and such are a drop in the bucket compared to their total numbers and forum outrage dies out faster than frogger on the interstate. People tend to get a slightly inflated or lopsided view based on forums when you need to understand that it only represents the most vocal minority of a community.

 

[Xalmgrey]

Really. Satan in game form? Why? The community?

Well, look at how the game is portrayed by the media. Look at the people who get in the news because of bad things that happen while they're playing. All of us know someone who has no sense of moderation, but people blame the games for taking their friends away from them. They never blame the player for not having control over themselves.

Aye i see what you mean. It all comes around to people taking responsibility for their own actions. I've seen some of the coverage of which you speak, but i've seen the same coverage for games like counterstrike where people would leave children unfed, die from no rest for 50 hours and so on. To me its always seemed more like just games at large would be pinned rather than just one. But we do love to have a singular villain within which to blame our troubles. Grand Theft Auto is too old to pick on i suppose.

 

[MysticToast]

Why is everyone so quick to assume he did it on purpose? WoW is his thing and he makes a living playing it. It doesn't sound like his type of thing to purposely crash the server

 

[Xalmgrey]

snip

Well it's hard to parse a lot of biased information on all the conflicting sides, but I think a good compromise might have been to unban him but leave a slap on the wrist suspension. Even if you had the most noble of intentions, it's worth reinforcing that arranging massive cross server meet ups is going to cause issues and can quickly, be it intentionally or unintentionally, devolve into that kind of behavior.

I also don't think it's simply a case of Blizzard bending over backward because of fame, money, etc. His followers and such are a drop in the bucket compared to their total numbers and forum outrage dies out faster than frogger on the interstate. People tend to get a slightly inflated or lopsided view based on forums when you need to understand that it only represents the most vocal minority of a community.

I totally agree with you, the majority of WoW players do not use the forum only a small percentile do. My intention to bring this here was to put it into a forum that wasn't ruled by blizzard but an actual open forum where people could say exactly what they wanted rather than posts randomly being edited and disappearing, something out of Blizzard field of control. Whether or not anyone cares is up to them.

 

[Xannieros]

They did unban, but is on suspension. A Blue post on the WoW Forums announced it.

He did live-stream it, and if he was spamming emotes he should be rebanned. He knew what he was doing.

Razer should honor Blizzards decision to ban him.

 

[Xalmgrey]

They did unban, but is on suspension. A Blue post on the WoW Forums announced it.

He did live-stream it, and if he was spamming emotes he should be rebanned. He knew what he was doing.

Razer should honor Blizzards decision to ban him.

At any rate listen to the video before it gets loud and you can clearly hear that they were going to crash the server. He was there and party to the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtGZiG-Z_SM

However you decide to make your minds up after watching that is up to you, but its pretty hard to deny he wasn't party to it.

 

[dbdanny]

This entire story made me physically ill.
Not only does this asshole crash 3 F'ing servers "accidentally" (if after the first crash it was accidental he must be a bloody retard),and has the nerve to whine like a little ***** and act like the poor underdog the cruel corporate Blizzard banned,he also gets his account back?
WTF?!

And why? because of Razer?Blizzard is practically made of money I'm sure Razer needs Blizz more than the opposite,so it was probably because of his fanboy legion...
This makes me very sad,not to mention angry....

(sorry if my English is all messed up...I'm not a native speaker)

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Blizzard then placed him on the board of directors.

 

[Zing]

He got suspended. So they did punish him. He's never been warned before so going straight to perma-ban was a mistake anyway.

He's a bad warrior who spreads misinformation but he didn't deserve a perma-ban.

 

[Chibz]

I don't know about you and me, but if any one of us WoW players without corporate backing managed to crash not one, not two but three servers we wouldn't be getting our accounts back. Favoritism has got to stop. I'm posting this here rather than in the one contained neatly Blizzard forum to see what the public at large thinks.

You know, I'm shocked at how many problems my piracy solution can solve. Come on, large corporations. You can trust me.

 

[cookyy2k]

To basically sum it up, a guy named "Swifty" who apparently works for Razer and makes some warrior videos for the game went on a server crashing spree with this buddies from the guild Dara Mactire from the Darkspear server. They managed to crash three servers before Swifty was banned under Blizzards own TOU.

Sounds simple so far right?

Swifty made a Youtube video with soap opera music to say he was banned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-DFfBUA6vM

He claims server crashing wasn't his intention and that they were just trying to all have fun. Of course there's actually evidence to the contrary of his tear jerker video in the form of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtGZiG-Z_SM

His legion of followers then held Darkspear server hostage by crashing it en mass by spamming up to 30,000 emotes per person in major cities. The forums were a mess of thread after thread of "unban swifty"

Blizzard ended up caving to either Razer or the legion crashing the servers.

A good portion of the WoW community feels that he should not have gotten any special treatment in regards to getting unbanned as he and his guildies crashed not one but three servers before being stopped by his being banned. You can clearly hear them gloating over it in the second youtube video link. Bashiok one of the Blizzard CM's stated that the Razer CM contacted him via text "just as they were undoing the ban". Here is the forum where as we speak it's still a raging discussion:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2842767666?page=1


I don't know about you and me, but if any one of us WoW players without corporate backing managed to crash not one, not two but three servers we wouldn't be getting our accounts back. Favoritism has got to stop. I'm posting this here rather than in the one contained neatly Blizzard forum to see what the public at large thinks.

I think this falls within the olde "pick your battles".

1) You ain't going to win against blizzard.
2) User apathy will prevent you taking real action, those loud complainers wont stand up and be counted should the time come
and perhapse most importantly
3)it's a game, is it really worth all your time and effort to try and arrange something? Surely that time could be better spent in your real life?