The real Griftah story
Griftah has now been exiled to the outskirts of Shattrath in Patch 2.2.
Players complained loudly on the forums after realizing they paid over 30 gold for an amulet that allowed them to resurrect when they died and were not mollified when informed that they should have shown a bit more caution before buying items from a character named after another word for con artist. Everyone (including me) assumed that Griftah was being exiled from Shattrath because of these complaints.
His creator, World Designer Kisirani, says otherwise. Though we don't know how the story is going to unfold, Kisirani says that Griftah is kind of a progressive content guinea pig. He explains:
It's a shame you're unwilling to believe what is, in essence, the truth -- that Griftah has been a small foray in progressive content as we gauge certain things.
I'm the person behind making the content. I've no reason to deceive you.
It's one of the goals of my job, at the heart of it, to make the world feel more alive. The larger parts of it primarily contain holiday content and world flavor; this was a small bit of the latter.
Griftah's story is incredibly small in the extensive lore of the Warcraft world, but many of us have grown fond of him and his delightfully redundant amulets. He began by selling his wares unmolested in the crafting area of the Lower City in Shattrath. Then Peacekeeper Jadaar started harrassing him and warning potential buyers of alleged fraudulent claims. And now, in patch 2.2, he is hanging outside of the Lower City, up the hill from where the Darkmoon Faire appears. He sells some of his former wares plus a couple of functionless offhands.
I hope to see a lot more significant progressive content in the future to make the world seem less stagnant. I particularly would like to see the older worlds change when expansions come out. I hope the moving of Naxxramas and Dalaran are just two examples of the kind of old world changes we'll see when WotLK is released.
In the meantime, if Griftah is supposed to be progressive content instead of a reaction to people spending a lot of gold on useless amulets, then I hope his story unfolds with each new major patch.
Did you get grifted by Griftah?
