Online Game Funeral...crashed!

[Rouisu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJVolaC8pw

Although this happened months ago, I stumbled upon it just now and I thought I'd share.

Backstory: This occurred in World of Warcraft, the most popular Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) to date. Anyways, a girl who played the game died and her guild mates decided to hold an in game funeral at a lake she like to hang out in (chances are most of the girl's guildmates are from all over the world). Guild leader posts a message on the server forums about the proposed funeral, and asks no-one to crash it.

Anyways, a guild of the opposing faction (Serenity Now) hears about it. During the funeral, they amassed a raid (that's 40 players), ran over to the funeral spot and killed every last of the funeral celebrates. They were in special in-game clothes, not their usual armour so they were caught off guard and killed quickly.

Naturally, this caused a lot of controversy, and I daresay this has become a World of Warcraft urban legend. Dead girl's guildmates get pissed off naturally, calling Serenity Now bastards and the like. Other people condemns that the raid was uncalled for and inhumane, the memorial shouldn't have been attacked. Rumour has it that the dead girl's parents were watching the event. Serenity Now (and people who support them) maintain that it was a game, they were in a spot that allowed PvP (player vs player combat), that they shouldn't have advertised over forums and were also fair game.

What do you think? Disgusting act? It's just a game? They had it coming? They play too much?

EDIT: The first couple of minutes contains some of the responses of people who witnessed the event. The actions starts around the middle

[rottunpunk]

it is just a game, and ive sat in the pub bored out of my skull listening to purple maji spells and cobbler skill talk.
but it was a act of rememberance for a real person, by people who cared about her even though theyd probably never met.
yes it was a perfect oppertunity to wipe out a guild, but they had posted their reason for the gathering before hand.
so i think the attacking guild, though quite clever in taking such initiative, were out of order due to the circumstances.
:p

[The great I AM]

You missed out "Who gives a f@ck?".

An online funeral....please.....if this girl had really meant anything to these people then they might have done something a little more tasteful, like ask to be allowed to the real funeral. I think the whole idea of an online game funeral to quite tasteless actually, and almost trivialising the passing of this person, to such an extent that they thought it would be a good idea to recreate it in a game.

In almost all cases a funeral is a private occaision for close friends, family and other loved ones to mourn a passing and celebrate a persons life. I find it quite amazing that these people who more than likely had never even met this girl thought it was a good idea.

I reckon that the guys crashing it were quite right to do so, because by rampaging in and "killing" all the "funeral goers" they exposed it for the ridiculous farse that an in-game online funeral for someone you've never met and evidently doesn't mean enough to you to go the real funeral is.

What a load of tosh. To me an insensitive step too far.

[rottunpunk]

but you must remember that most people who play world of warcraft end up believeing it is real life.
tacky though it was, it was a nice gesture, and they did specifically request not to be attacked.
if that serenity group had waited till just after the funeral and then attacked, it would have had slightly less repercussions me thinks
:p

[The great I AM]

I've just done a little reading on this, and the more I read it the more I am totally mystified by the whole thing. The fact that people can't seperate this from real life is just alarming. The fact they they can't get over the fact that this happened in a game, and not in real life is just amusing. I'd also read that this girl had flamed a bunch of these opposite side people on some board somewhere too, and wasn't so popular with them anyway. So she was an unpopular troll! Great!

Mayeb when I die, the people on KWF can organise a forum-keiko in the Lounge section of KWF (you can all line up to e-tsuki me), and mad-god and Issac Ru can come and troll it and call me a c-nt.

Its a load of old balls.

[Usagi San]

Call me old fashioned but I find all of this stupid, to say the least.

There's a bunch of sh!theads who think a ridiculous game is lifelike so they make a "serious" online funeral, and then another bunch of rival sh!theads who crash in... come on...:spchless:

How do you say it in english... heu... f****ing wankers? Is that the expression?

Get a life, man. A real one...

[The great I AM]

How do you say it in english... heu... f****ing wankers? Is that the expression?

Get a life, man. A real one...Close, one too many *'s.

[Rouisu]

Though I have to say, the music used for the clip was bloody good and the actual raid itself was downright hilarious (If you've played the game for a while, you'd understand what I meant). And yes, I do agree that this thing has been blown way out of proportion, and this is coming from a regular WoW player. Did you know that PC Gamer (or a magazine with a name along the lines of that) even featured this event in an article?

One word: DAYUHM!

[Awooga Guy]

This thread is about to hit 88mph... (http://flyingcars.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/1985_delorean_b.jpg.w180h129.jpg)

And yes the music is cool - it's "Where Eagles Dare" by The Misfits.







That is all.

[Lounge]

Oh my god... just to add my 10p worth...

Gibbo... bang on!!! the only thing that you forgot to mention is that the majority of people at the funeral probably only knew her by her character name!! real close!!!

It's D&D for the new era, and the people have just as much difficulty adjusting their mind set between fantasy and reallity as ever, I agree with the statement if you really care that much, go to the real funeral for a real person not some sham of a joke for a fictitious character that was created by that person.

Sorry if this seems harsh, I'm not normally this blunt, but I feel if you really care you make the effort...

[D'Artagnan]

'I'm a Scat man' what an ace song!!

Thats one for the keikogi gibbo!

ps. Online funeral, what a load of crap...

[emitbrownne]

Online funeral = Weird.

If the girl who passed away was an ardent gamer, and the other gamers wanted to remember/honour her, then perhaps devote a game/games to her rather than the grim weirdness of an online funeral.

Celebrate her gaming life by playing what she loved??

[xvikingx]

What do you think?

I think geeks are easily upset.

[KhawMengLee]

I saw this ages ago..and it cracked me up...almost on par with Leeroy Jenkins.

My thoughts are that the game is Warcraft...you wouldn't see any army in history that would host a funeral in a warzone without posting a sentry or a picket line.

Gosh...King Aggy would have loved it if all the Trojans(including guards) went off to Hector's funeral in their finest gowns n robes and left the front door open.

All is fair in Love and War.

[David]

I can sympathise with both parties. The people throwing the funeral were just doing what they could for a dead team mate. While I personally don't play WOW, I know that it's an extremely popular game that's played world wide. It makes sense that people who don't live in the same country (and possibly not even the same hemisphere) who couldn't visit the actual funeral would want to pay their respects in some way. And even for those people who did live in the same region, what were they gonna say at the service huh?

"Oh, how did you know her?"
"We used to kill dragons and stuff together."

I'm sure the family would understand that. But, like KML pointed out, the game is called "World of Warcraft". It's an RPG were you role-play as a warrior. If you role-play having a huge group gathering with no armor or weaponry, then obviously someone who's role-playing as your enemy is going to take advantage of it to strike you down. So I really can't penalize the people who raided the funeral either. They were just playing the game as it was meant to be played. If the players didn't want to get attacked, they should've kept it a private affair, instead of a public one.

[Galo]

To say it shortly.
It is plain insane to make a fuzz(sp?) out of this :puzzled: