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Behind the scenes as a [REDACTED] Game Master
Once upon a time, I worked as a game master for a very popular MMORPG. My duties were relatively simple: help players out of sticky situations and enforce the rules of the game when it came to cheating, harassment, and general player behavior. A game master's role is to protect the player from any and all potential game dangers, up to and including the player himself. In my work as a GM, I saw many amazing things. I saw guild members contact support staff because they were worried about another player's real-life wellbeing. I saw incredibly complex scams across multiple players and accounts that, while infuriating and exceptionally against the rules, were astonishing in their genius. And of course, I saw lots and lots of cybering.
Save your chat logs; they're being deleted in patch 5.0.4
If you're diligent in your record keeping where WoW is concerned, you probably have a bunch of saved chat or combat logs in your Logs folder. Well, back those suckers up, because when 5.0.4 hits, all of the data in that folder is being deleted. Nethaera provided this helpful notification on the official forums: Save Your Chat Logs With the upcoming release of patch 5.0.4, all items within the Logs Directory for World of Warcraft will be deleted. It is advised that if you have WoW Combat Logs or WoW Chat Logs that you would like to save, that you do so prior to the release of the patch. source It's not like saving them is a big deal, of course -- you can just move them to a new folder and you're fine. Good on Blizzard for letting us know, at least; now everyone can save their combat logs from Molten Core and their extended ERP sessions in Goldshire or whatever.
Teenage killer confesses crime in World of Warcraft chat, sentenced to life in prison
Two teenage boys who raped and murdered a fellow classmate in Victoria, British Columbia recently received a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for 10 years. They weren't very smart about covering it up, however, as one of the killers confessed his crime to a guildmate in World of Warcraft chat. He did so because he assumed that those chat logs were less likely to be saved. Kruse Wellwood and Cameron Moffat spent time planning the assault beforehand, and Wellwood even mentioned his desire to do the crime to a guild friend in WoW. Following the 2010 crime, Wellwood logged back in World of Warcraft to talk about the murder to his online girlfriend in Halifax, sending her links of the news reports as proof of his story. Amazingly, his girlfriend mildly chided him to "just don't do it again." The in-game chat logs were part of the mountain of evidence collected by the police. The pair pleaded guilty to the crime.
Forum Post of the Day: Player tries to scam GM for epic flight training, gets shut down
I actually considered asking my boss if this post could be the first in a new series called "Stupid WoW Criminals," but honestly, I'd prefer to think that this guy is one of kind. So, here's the deal: A young Warlock named Kiranth of the Aman'thul server (Who has since deleted his post, but you find it quoted a couple posts down from the top in the thread) came to the customer service forums, and in this thread here, claimed that he somehow lost his epic flying skill after buying it on a Monday and playing until Tuesday morning maintenance. He claimed that he'd been trying to contact the GMs for months in order to get the skill back, and that he was incredibly frustrated and about to cancel his 3 accounts if he didn't get the skill. Luckily, the ever vigilant GMs are always willing to please, and Auryk soon chimed in with an answer to his problem. I'll summarize what he said after the break, but you really should read it for yourself. It's amazing.
