For the past week, the hardcore World of Warcraft Classic guilds have been rushing to be the first to open the gates of Ahn’Qiraj and unleash the horde of insectoids lurking within. Behind those ancient gates is the latest 40-person raid in WoW Classic, where high-level players can challenge nightmarish bosses like C’thun and earn even more powerful gear. But as the guilds rushed to open the doors and begin the next phase of the WoW Classic Endgame, one guild resorted to dirty tactics by abusing the in-game reporting tool to try and get a player banned. . In revenge, hundreds of players banded together to wage war against this guild, denying them a chance to win one of Warcraft’s most prestigious awards.
Enemy at the Gates
As the servers worked to muster the necessary resources, WoW Classic’s most die-hard guilds rushed to complete an epic 31-part questline to build the Quicksand Scepter.
Opening the gates of Ahn’Qiraj is not for the faint of heart. A thousand years earlier, the Qiraji were imprisoned in their kingdom after attempting to destroy the continent of Kalimdor, and they have spent those long years building their strength with the help of their god, C’thun. Opening the Doors has been one of WoW’s most ambitious global events, requiring entire server communities to work together. At the same time, hardcore guilds rushed in to complete a disheartening quest line to rebuild the Mystical Quicksand Scepter to sound an ancient gong that would break the seals on the gates and free the Qiraji armies on Azeroth.
The first part of the event is called the war effort. The Horde and Alliance need to cooperate and each gather an enormous number of crafting resources in order to prepare for conflict with the Qiraji. Alliance players must craft 800,000 Linen Bandages, while Horde players must amass 250,000 of the rarest Mageweave Bandages – and that’s just the beginning. With cooking ingredients, herbs, hides, and ore, players research approximately 3,850,000 individual items that need to be turned into quest givers.
Back when the doors were first opened 15 years ago, it took 19 days for the fastest servers to collect, but Classic WoW players were prepared. The Sulfuras server was the first to qualify for the war effort and it only took them 14 hours. This is thanks to a large guild called Grizzly From Reddit, which orchestrated a massive effort and was responsible for 98% of the resources returned, according to Wowhead.
This is the easiest part, however. As the servers worked to muster the necessary resources, WoW Classic’s most die-hard guilds rushed to complete an epic 31-part questline to build the Quicksand Scepter. This would involve completing several of Classic’s more difficult 40-man raids as well as killing enough bugs in Silithus – the area where the gates are – to return 42,000 of their shells.
The first player to craft the quicksand scepter and ring the gong to open the gates of Ahn’Qiraj will unleash the Ten Hour War, unleashing hundreds of monsters on Azeroth for – you guessed it – 10 hours. At the end of this war, the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj will be officially open (with an easier raid of 20 people) for everyone. But that lucky player who rang the bell will be rewarded with a one-of-a-kind Silithid mount, called the Black Qiraji Battle Tank, and receiving the honorary in-game title of Scarab Lord, perhaps the most prestigious title of all. History of Warcraft. Anyone who has also completed the Scepter of Quicksand can also ring the gong during the Ten Hour War and earn the mount and the title, but once the war is over both become unavailable. Ultimately, only a handful of players will achieve this achievement per server.
Bloody betrayal
This is where things started to go wrong on Sulfuras. With so much at stake, tensions were high and the guilds were looking to gain an advantage in the race. Three days ago, Blizzard issued reports that the guilds were using exploits to grief their competitors and slow their progress as they worked on building the Quicksand Scepter and the Gong.
One of the defendants on the Sulfuras server was the Grizzly From Reddit Alliance guild. Despite accomplishing the war effort almost on his own, Grizzly From Reddit is said to have betrayed other guilds on the server and is now trying to make sure future Scarab Lords can’t ring the bell and win the mount.
In one part of the associated questline, at least 40 players must work together to kill a boss known as Twilight Corrupter. Here, Grizzly From Reddit made a concerted effort to block the progress of other players by chewing on the boss and making it nearly impossible to kill. Because Twilight Corrupter is fought in the open world, anyone can join or interrupt the fight – which is exactly what Grizzly From Reddit was doing in order to sabotage any attempt to kill him.
One of the potential Scarab Lords trying to kill Twilight Corrupter was a player named Blast from the Amnesty Guild. Because building the Scepter is such a huge task, only a few players per server are willing to put in the time and effort playing almost non-stop to complete each quest. But dozens of other players will often rally behind them to help complete group activities like killing bosses or completing raids. On the WoW Classic subroutine, one of Breath’s allies explained that their only option was to muster an army of 200 Horde players to break through Grizzly’s frontlines and kill Twilight Corrupter as quickly as possible. But as Amnesty and his allies prepared to break through Grizzly From Reddit’s defenses, Breath was suddenly disconnected from the game and received a message that his account had been banned.
In his post on Saturday, redditor Jpo shared a video from Breath’s perspective showing what happened. It was a devastating loss and, in the confusion, players began accusing Grizzly From Reddit members of filing false in-game reports against Breath to get him banned. The claim was that if enough reports were filed in a short period of time, it could trigger World of Warcraft’s automated reporting system and result in the automatic ban of Breath without human supervision. It’s unclear if this exploit actually works, but WoW streamer Asmongold demonstrated that it may be possible years ago after asking his audience to file a massive volume of reports against him, causing him to temporarily muted on public chat channels.
“Due to the time constraints of the grind, it is extremely important to us that this ban be lifted as quickly as possible,” Jpo wrote. “We have devoted countless hours to this work and it is amazing that it could all be completely torn from us because of it. We were even worried about what was going on and tried to hide who our Lord Scarab was. news reports are a serious problem especially. in the time of closed events. “
The incident sparked massive outrage from gamers on all sides, who felt Grizzly From Reddit had crossed a line. Later that day, Blizzard Community Manager Glaxigrav said they had completed a full investigation into the event and determined that the Blast ban was not the result of mass reporting – although the real reason for their ban has not been revealed. “After reviewing the accounts in question, we can confirm that the actions did not occur as a result of abuse of the reporting system,” Glaxigrav explained. “By investigating the accounts involved, we discovered evidence of some players who attempted to file false reports with bad intentions and sued those accounts for abusing gaming systems.”
Although Grizzly From Reddit was unsuccessful, many of its key members received three-day bans for attempting to exploit the reporting system. The fact that the guild even tried to do so was enough that many on the Sulfuras server turned on them. Earlier this week (it’s unclear when exactly), Souffle’s ban was lifted. There has been no comment from Blizzard as to exactly why it was banned in the first place, leaving the whole situation unsolved.
Despite the delay, Breath was able to complete the Quicksand Scepter and be the first Sulfuras player to ring the gong. Because so many Grizzly From Reddit members had been suspended, the guild found itself far behind the competition. With the Ten Hour War in full swing, they would have to rush to complete the final stages to ring the gong themselves. But after resorting to such underhanded tactics, several of Sulfuras’ larger guilds were determined not to let this happen.
It means war
One of the original Scarab Lords from 15 years ago is actually Luke Smith, Game Director of Destiny 2. Long before working at Bungie, Smith was a hardcore WoW player who played day and night with his guild to complete all the steps necessary for construction. the scepter of quicksand. Learn about his own journey to becoming a Scarab Lord in our interview.
On August 4, an army of nearly 600 Horde players mobilized to prevent Grizzly From Reddit and its allies from completing the final stage of the Quicksand Scepter building quest. In the deserts of Tanaris is a bronze dragon named Anachronos who players can talk to after completing the previous 31 parts of the questline. Anachronos offers players the full scepter they can use to immediately strike the gong. But there is a catch: Anachronos is a neutral NPC who can be attacked by Horde or Alliance players. If Anachronos is in combat, other players cannot speak to him.
For ten hours on Tuesday, nearly 600 players from various Horde guilds worked to lock down the area surrounding Anachronos. Players took turns attacking him, keeping him locked in combat, intentionally avoiding dealing enough damage to kill him. Meanwhile, hundreds of other people surrounded the area and attacked anyone who approached – especially if they were from Grizzly From Reddit.
After alienating so many other guilds, Grizzly From Reddit could only muster 300 Alliance players to attempt to break through enemy lines so that his future Scarab Lord could speak to Anachronos. Several WoW Classic streamers documented the fight, which spanned the duration of the Ten Hour War. Despite several attempts, Grizzly From Reddit was unable to break through and complete the quest, denying them the title of Scarab Lord and the Black Qiraji Battle Tank forever.
Naturally, the WoW Classic community exploded with this turn of events. “Karma, Grizzly. Eat it. As the principal of the Horde of Sulfuras, all I have to say to you guys… L O L,” one player wrote on the subreddit. “
“To all the other Alliance players on Sulfuras: I’m so sorry it has come to this,” wrote another player. “I’m sorry Grizzly chose our previously awesome server to come in and royally screw everyone up. I’m sorry that one guild in your faction managed to drive the entire server to the brink of disaster. But I’m sorry. sorry the horde is finally doing something about this. You have the power to make these motherfuckers pay, make sure they’re never welcome anywhere again and we can get back to how it was – fun. “
Even days later, the Classic subdirectory is full of memes poking fun at Grizzly From Reddit and praising the Horde guilds who successfully denied their players the title of Scarab Lord. So far, however, Sulfuras appears to be the only server that has fallen victim to vicious stabbing and warfare – although most of the popular servers have already completed the event. While there has been some drama on other servers as the guilds make deals under the table to win the title, the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj global event appears to have gone without much fanfare. But it’s fascinating to see how WoW Classic rewrites history as it relives a moment that shaped World of Warcraft almost 15 years ago.
