March 14th, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh
Last weekend were big days for Korean WoW(World of Warcraft) players. In many servers, the Alliance and the Horde, all-time conflicting races, were equally anticipating for ‘Opening the Door Ahn'Qiraj(The Ahn'Qiraj)’ event. As you know, this event is one of drop-dead highlights in WoW. It requires full dedication of players regardless of their races. As this event is the epoch breaking moment in WoW, partisan interests of any small group is to be put aside.
But, the grand event intended by the developer, Blizzard, didn’t result in expected smooth outcome or well-driven emotional satisfaction. There were some happenings or others, but this one that I would introduce might be the most dramatic and interesting one that Korean players had experienced.
In the server named ‘Bloodhoof’, two powerful group were expected to do major roles in doing this event. One was a raid group named ‘Guardian’ and the other was a guild and/or raid group named ‘Good People(GP).’ They had previous meeting for the Ahn'Qiraj event and drew an agreement on many things like the time of inaugurating the event. This promise was communicated among most of players through their presumed focal point, an internet community site. Because the event needs tight co-operation of whole participants of a server, co-ordination among players is a key part in completing the mission. Players, also, were all aware of the time and other matters promised(e.g. the one who is to use the key to open Ahn'Qiraj).
According to Guardian’s notification, the time was 7 p.m. at March 11th. All appeared to be well arranged, but a surprising betrayal waited for them. At 1 p.m. of the D-day, the guild master of GP announced that GP was starting the Ahn'Qiraj event on 2 p.m.! Around 2 and half p.m., GP really started the event at its own decision, and skimmed off all the cream. At first, many players who had known the opening time at 7 p.m. were so embarrassed when they were in the game around 7 p.m. It didn’t take a long time for them to turn into the angry and furious.
At this point, all kinds of politics come in. the guild master of GP said that he and his guild didn’t make any promise on the time to start, so they had just judged the appropriate time to kick off the event. But, players who were excluded from participating in this historical moment in WoW gave suspicious eyes on the GP guild. Was there any juicy benefit of solely implementing the event? Wasn’t there truly any conspiracy to cut other players out? By the nature of things, the hostility against GP guild was increasingly heightened.
At last it burst out and the hardest to believe did happen at March 12th. A Horde player nicked “Rentotem” who was a Tauren Hunter Warlord visited IronForge to make a strong object to the guild master of GP. Just for a peaceful verbal argument? Absolutely not. He came to the heart of the enemy to revenge upon the man who was responsible for. While the ‘Alliance’ guild master was not given any buff from his own comrades and people, the ‘Horde’ protester had got all of supports from the very foes of his(even from Paladins!). BTW, how could the assassin approach guild master without being noticed? Actually, some of the Alliance had made secret moves to prevent this Horde hit man from running against defending guardians of IronForge.
It was a public execution mutually agreed between both races to condemn the betrayal.
* Following pictures are linked from WoW PlayForum(56K Warning!)
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