Blizzard takes banned player's suicide threat seriously
ClassifiedPeon (who has an awesome name) posts on her LJ about hearing a story on the radio about a kid who got banned from WoW, and then decided to try and bribe his way back into the game. At first, he pleaded Blizz to let him back in, and even offered them money ($3,000 via Paypal, supposedly, though how a kid like this gets money like that who knows). Blue, of course, declined the offer, which is when he sent them an email threatening to end his life if they didn't let him back into the game.
And that's when Blizzard got serious. According to the original messageboard where the story was posted, not only did they send the kid an email with phone numbers for depression crisis centers, but a few hours later, the cops reportedly showed up at his door. Blizzard had apparently identified the kid from his IP address, and called the cops on his suicide threat. The story's been posted on Fark.com as well (and Digg also got their say), and the (hilarious) consensus there is that Blizzard did exactly the right thing in calling this little punk out on the stupid stuff he said. If the kid is really suicidal, he does need more help than Blizzard can offer him, and if he was just trying to lie his way back into his account (which is more than likely considering the kid was not only outright cheating, he was also supposedly using a "stolen serial"), he deserves to have the cops show up at his door.
Unfortunately, apart from the messageboard post I can't find any actual news source on the story, so for all we know the whole thing is made up by the guy who posted it (and who posted it last January, you'll note). But it's an interesting tale, and it supports my thoughts from the other day: while there are probably some false positives floating around Blizzard's ban list, most of the people they give the heave-ho probably deserve it.
