For the past week, the stalwart guilds of World of Warcraft Classic have been competing to be the first to open the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj and unleash the horde of insectoids that lurk within. Behind those ancient doors is WoW Classic’s latest 40-person raid, where top-tier players can challenge nightmarish bosses like C’thun and win even more powerful gear. In revenge, hundreds of players banded together to wage war against that guild, denying them a chance to win one of Warcraft’s most prestigious awards.
Enemy at the gates
Opening the gates of Ahn’Qiraj is not for the faint of heart. A thousand years earlier, the Qiraji were imprisoned within their realm 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 was one of WoW’s most ambitious world events, requiring entire communities of servers to work together. At the same time, the hardcore guilds rushed to complete a daunting series of quests to rebuild the mystical scepter from the quicksand and sound an ancient gong that would break the seals of the Gates and unleash the qiraji armies on Azeroth.
The first part of the event is called War effort. It requires the Horde and the Alliance to cooperate, each gathering an enormous amount of crafting resources to prepare for conflict with the Qiraji. Alliance players need to craft 800,000 linen bandages, while Horde players must accumulate 250,000 of the rarer mageweave bandages, and that’s just the beginning. With cooking ingredients, herbs, hides, and minerals, players are looking at around 3,850,000 individual items that must become quest givers.
Sulfuras Server
When the doors first opened 15 years ago, the fastest servers took 19 days to harvest, but WoW Classic players were prepared. The Sulfuras server was the first to complete the War Effort requirements and it only took them 14 hours. That’s thanks to a great guild called Grizzly From Reddit, which orchestrated a massive effort and was responsible for 98 percent of the resources delivered, according to Wowhead.
However, that’s the easy part. As the servers worked to gather the necessary resources, WoW Classic’s staunch guilds raced to complete a series of epic 31-part missions to build the Quicksand Scepter. Doing this would involve completing several of Classic’s toughest raids for 40 people, as well as killing enough bugs in Silithus, the area where the Gates are located, to deliver a whopping 42,000 of their shells.
One of the defendants on the Sulfuras server was the Alliance Grizzly From reddit wow classic guild. Despite completing the War Effort almost singlehandedly, Reddit’s Grizzly had allegedly betrayed other guilds on the server and was now trying to make sure potential Beetle Lords couldn’t touch the gong and win the mount.
In one part of the associated quest line, at least 40 players must work together to kill a boss known as Corrupting Twilight. Here Grizzly From Reddit made a concerted effort to block other players’ progress by taunting the boss and making it nearly impossible to kill. Because Twilight Corrupter fights in the open world, anyone can join in or interrupt the fight, which is exactly what Grizzly From Reddit was doing to sabotage any attempt to kill him.
kill Twilight Corrupter
One of the possible Scarab Lords trying to kill Twilight Corrupter was a player named Souffle from the Amnesty guild. Because building the scepter is such an enormous task, only a few players per server are willing to put in the time and effort to play almost non-stop to complete each mission. But dozens of other players will often join them to help complete group activities like killing bosses or completing raids. On the WoW Classic subreddit, one of Souffle’s allies explained that his only option was to amass an army of 200 Horde players to break through the Grizzly front lines and kill Twilight Corrupter as quickly as possible.
Blizzard Community Manager
The incident sparked mass outrage from gamers on all sides, who felt that Grizzly From Reddit had crossed a line. “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. “While investigating the accounts involved, we discovered evidence of some players attempting to submit false reports with malicious intent and have prosecuted those accounts for abuse of 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 for many on the Sulfuras server to turn against him.
On August 4, an army of nearly 600 Horde players mobilized to prevent Reddit’s Grizzly and his allies from completing the final stage of the quest to build the Quicksand Scepter. Anachronos grants players the full scepter that they can use to sound the gong immediately. If Anachronos is in combat, other players cannot talk to him.
Variety Of Horde Guilds
For ten hours on Tuesday, nearly 600 players from a variety of Horde guilds worked to blockade the area surrounding Anachronos. Players would take turns attacking him, keeping him locked in combat, intentionally avoiding dealing enough damage to kill him. Meanwhile, hundreds of people surrounded the area and attacked anyone who came near, especially if they belonged to Grizzly From Reddit.
“To all other Alliance players in Sulfuras – I’m really sorry it came to this,” wrote another player. “I’m sorry that Grizzly chose our previously amazing server to come over and screw it up for everyone. I’m sorry that a single guild in your faction managed to bring the entire server to the brink of disaster. But I’m not sorry that the horde finally did something to the You have the power to make those bastards pay, make sure they’re not welcome anywhere anymore, and we can go back to the way it was – fun. “
Scarab Lord
Even days later, the Classic subreddit 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. However, so far, Sulfuras appears to be the only server to have been the victim of violent backstabbing and wars, although most of the more popular servers have already completed the event. Although there has been drama on other servers when the guilds reached under-the-table deals to win the title, the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj world event seems to have passed without much fanfare. But it’s fascinating to see how WoW Classic is rewriting history by reliving a moment that shaped World of Warcraft nearly 15 years ago.
