Griefing

For once, I'm making a serious post. It won't be funny, but it's something I bumped into on Youtube and it really needs to be mentioned, if not just to shame hundreds of jackasses who use the internet.

As some people know, I occasionally play World of Warcraft in order to pass the time, and because I have a few friends on there that I like to play with. This is normal for the ten million or so people that play the game, even if it's frowned upon for being "antisocial" - despite the fact so many people play. Sorry for the geekery, but I need to explain a few things about the game first. There are two "factions" in the game that players can join, to fight each other - Alliance and Horde. Alliance are your typical fairytale humans, dwarves etc, while Horde is made up of undead people, orcs and strange bull like creatures. This story is an example of what happens when people, even if not obsessed with online gaming, think that they're safe behind their keyboard and can get away with anything.

On one of the US servers, a girl was well known in the game and had a lot of friends. She died (outside of the game, to be absolutely clear) and through a family member or friend, they found out. Out of respect, they decided to hold an in-game funeral, lots of her friends' characters meeting together to pay their respects and talk about the girl. It might seem a little bit strange to people to do this, but their hearts were in the right place so I can't see any reason why anyone should blame them for it. So they posted about it on the forums, informed the girl's friends, gathered a few people together - about thirty-ish, all Horde due to the fact that was the girl's faction in-game.

Occasionally in-game, people organise "raids" against the other faction, to kill everyone and gain honour. A group of Alliance players got together, organised a huge attack party, and proceeded to track down the funeral in-game, killing everyone present. This is just the start of the train of disrespect. The culprits of the attacking party made a video covering the event - which was accompanied by comedic music. This could be interpreted as disrepect to the idea of an in-game funeral...but it gets worse. On the page for the video on youtube, as linked in this post, the comments...well, look for yourself:

"Well i dont feel bad for the horde their. Its fucking payback for all the bullshit in Quel'Danas. They called alliance pussy Bassicly. for those horde who knew her im glad that bitch died, so why dont you go make a raid group and camp people in Quel'Danas some more then bitch, Peace out"

"....looks like they got ALOT more funerals to line up now.."

"Who gives a fuck if some girl died irl. Lots of people die. fucking bastards I woulda raided that "funeral" also."

This has to be one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. As my friend Luke says - and I totally agree: it's a shame that these sort of people weren't the ones who died.

My condolences go to the girl's family and friends.