When Blizzard added the Ahn'Qiraj content to World of Warcraft in the recent 1.9 patch, most everyone got excited at the prospect of all the new adventures they'd have. Everyone, that is, except some entrepreneurial members of the Imperial Order guild playing on the Detheroc server. They saw a golden opportunity to cash-in -- or did they? In a story that continues to get more convoluted with time, their initial ransom demands made to the other residents on the server are now being played off as only an elaborate prank.
At the heart of the matter lies the server-wide war effort required to open the gates leading to Ahn'Qiraj. It required both Horde and Alliance to gather an enormous number of resources to prepare for the war and then the creation, through another long process, of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands to ring a mighty gong and open the gates. (For the curious you can check out each server's progress towards opening the gates right here). On Detheroc that Scepter was finished up Sunday by the Imperial Order. But instead of immediately opening the gates, a post appeared on the official WoW forums for the server that it was the guild's intention not to open the gates until it was paid a ransom of 5000 gold.
Considering that the first server to complete all the necessary elements and open the gates pulled that feat off almost a month ago -- January 22 on Medivh -- there's no doubt players are starting to get a little anxious. Those emotions quickly spilled over in the ransom thread with everything from threats to other guilds rallying support for a quick farming of the materials needed to make another Scepter and get the gates open. Back and forth the arguments went, some 30 pages, until this morning when the thread was summarily deleted from the forum by Blizzard. Almost immediately after that a new post appeared from the same member of the Imperial Order that had issued the original demands stating that it had all been a prank and the joke was on you.
Whether it all was a big joke, or Imperial Order backed down from facing the fury of an entire server turned against its members (Detheroc just happens to be PvP server by the way) may never be completely clear. What is, though, is that the line between the world-within-a-world gameplay of MMORPGs continues to get less distinct. And, that the companies running these games face increasingly difficult challenges as they try to balance having happy consumers and active participants genuinely immersed in a living world. Given their removal of the original post, Blizzard obviously takes the matter seriously. Seriously enough to take further action or ban accounts? Our attempts to contact them for comment have come up empty so far, but most likely that's due to the holiday. We'll let you know when we hear.
