With as long as World of Warcraft has been an MMO staple, it is bound to have a few events that players will never forget. Some are beloved community-building experiences like the opening of Ahn'Qiraj or your first Hallow's End. However, for something to be truly infamous there needs to be an element of controversy to it.
It's time to sit down and brush up on your World of Warcraft history. Whether a seasoned veteran or wide-eyed rookie, there are some things every play needs to know. Here are ten events that are infamous in the game's 15-year history.
10 Corrupted Blood Incident
Typically, debuffs applied by bosses are meant to fall off outside of instances. However, when programming the mechanics for Hakkar in Zul'Gurub, something was missed. Hunter and Warlock's pets were able to get infected with Corrupted Blood, a damaging AoE ability that spread to nearby players. When they were dismissed and resummoned inside of a capital city, the plague spread like wildfire.
Nobody was safe. The streets of every city were lined with skeletons. This is one of the few events in WoW history that garnered attention outside the world of gamers. It was used to study the spread of pandemics and human behavior in the real world.
9 Serenity Now Funeral Raid
In 2006 Fayejin, a beloved officer in a Horde guild on the Illidan, server passed away from a stroke. Her in-game friends organized a public funeral in Winterspring as a final farewell to their friend. However, their invitations were public and open to both factions. Illidan is a PvP server. You can probably see where this is going.
An Alliance guild named Serenity Now organized a raid on the funeral, ruthlessly slaughtering attendees. Not only did they crash a memorial for a dead woman, but they also filmed it and posted it to YouTube for everyone to see. Even worse? The Horde guild intended on filming it for her family. They wanted them to see how much she was loved.
8 Doomlord Kazzak in Stormwind
For some reason, it used to be possible to kite mobs infinitely as long as they were periodically attacked. Yes, even world bosses. This meant that across a variety of servers bosses would be dragged to the nearest city. Most of the time it was just a minor annoyance.
Doom Lord Kazzak, on the other hand, required Blizzard staff to step in and restart the server. Due to the combination of his abilities Capture Soul and Shadowbolt Volley, Kazzak could kill low-level players (even those he couldn't see) and regen almost infinite health from them. Stormwind, being the human capital city, saw many lowbies decimated by the fury of this demon lord.
7 The Zombie Infestation
The launch event for Wrath of the Lich King was every griefer's paradise. Within only a few days, a Zombie infestation threatened the safety of everyone in Azeroth. Almost every NPC and player could be infected. There were Conspicuous Crates that carried the disease. Plagued Roaches would infect anyone who attacked them. Plagued Residents appeared and would turn city guards into flesh-eating monsters.
Naturally, it was the player who created the most havoc. When players were turned into zombies, they gained special abilities mostly centered around turning others into zombies too. As a zombie, players could communicate with members of the other faction who were zombies too. The living would see only "...." and "brains."
6 Martin Fury Incident
If you were given the power to one-shot anything in-game, would you use it? Well, that's exactly what Karatechop did in 2009. He was the guild master of The Marvel Family, and one of his members had received a unique shirt in the mail. Martin Fury was a plate shirt with the ability to kill all enemies in a 30-yard radius. The player, who had just had his account restored after being hacked (four months prior), thought it was an apology token.
So the guild that had only just cleared Naxxramas began blasting through content. They garnered many realm firsts and even a world first. Well after they caught wind of this, Blizzard banned Karatechop permanently. Every other member of the guild was banned for 24 hours, even those who had no idea why. They also changed the on-use effect of the shit to cause the caster to commit suicide instead.
5 Saronite Bomb Heroic Lich King Kill
There was an interesting bug that occurred during the Lich King fight when it was first introduced. For some reason, the programming caused siege damage to respawn the platform the Lich King periodically destroyed during the fight. Saronite Bombs, which were a part of many rogue's DPS rotations, counted as siege damage. The world first Lich King kill was claimed by Ensidia at first, before being revoked due to this exploit.
According to the guild, the bug was caused by a single rogue and nobody understood why the platforms were reappearing. The ban caused quite a bit of controversy, as many claimed every DPS in the top guilds had Engineering for the additional DPS provided by bombs. After their ban, Ensidia did return to claim world 3rd without the use of the exploit.
4 Real ID Implementation
Before Blizzard banned Blitzchung for shouting pro-Hong Kong slogans during an interview, they got in similarly hot water for implementing Real ID. According to the company, they wanted to eliminate the toxicity present in the game's forums. What was their solution? Forcing players to have everything attached to their real name. How they didn't expect the angry reactions of their customers, we have no idea.
The idea of removing anonymity terrified a lot of people, rightly so. Many people want to live a fantasy. The avatar and their true self are separate entities. Plus, there's a genuine concern (particularly from women) about the potential floodgates this would have opened - understandably so, given the community's documented incidents of toxicity.
3 Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins isn't infamous per se, but his video put World of Warcraft on the map. It was a hilarious excerpt from a man refusing to listen that resonated even with those unfamiliar with the game.
He is so iconic, Blizzard created an achievement and an NPC in his honor. Even though the video was staged and not a genuine example of the impatient noob, every gamer has run into a real Leeroy Jenkins. If only they were all just in YouTube videos we could laugh at.
2 Ahn'Qiraj Exploit
Some members from the guild Overrated discovered by editing certain files, they could remove the walls in certain areas of the raid. By doing this, they could kill the first boss and then bypass everything else to fight C'Thun instead. We understand why they did it.
Ahn'Qiraj was a tediously long raid. Especially considering that the guild cleared Naxxramas regularly (and were the only US Horde guild to do so at that point) it makes sense that they didn't want to go through hours of killing bosses for loot they didn't need. Still, this is the cut and dry exploitation. They deserved what they got. Even some of the banned members said they knew they had it coming.
1 Introduction/Removal of Flight
To fly or not to fly, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler on the ground to suffer or take flight above a sea of troubles we cannot say. Some people argue that flying killed World PvP and make Azeroth seem smaller. Others think World of Warcraft is all about the endgame. Why pointlessly try and force players to sludge through its lesser content?
When Blizzard removed flying in Warlords of Draenor, the backlash was so severe they eventually added it in as a reward from a meta-achievement. They still follow that model today.