An item from the GMs accidentally hit the player

Information from here, translation by user smarttrack, I'm just posting the news.

The player's account was permanently banned, and their entire guild was banned for 24 hours.

The offending item.

The sensational story of the gnome warrior named Karatechop, who received a GM armor shirt “Martin's Fury” in the mail, has become a part of the annals of the World of Warcraft world. Perhaps not so much because the unique item gave him the opportunity to rack up several World First Kills. The reason is banal again - yet again, players are harshly punished for the blunders of Blizzard employees. This is not the first, and probably not the last case in history. To be fair, it should be noted that the gnome himself did not behave in the best way either. Perhaps a sincere confession after the first raids might have softened the player's punishment. But still, it seems a bit unfair to blame him alone.

Be that as it may, in recent days, a real hunt has begun for the gnome - interview enthusiasts have simply plagued Karatechop. Naturally, the guy was initially reluctant to talk about his adventures. But eventually, he agreed to give interviews to the portals wowinsider and gamona…

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Karatechop, the leader of the guild ‘The Marvel Family’ on the Vek’nilash-US server.

Rumors have emerged that gnome Karatechop works at Blizzard. Is this true or not?

No, I do not work for Blizzard. I am not a hacker or a hardcore professional. I am just a person who happily plays the game World of Warcraft like anyone else.

How did all this chaos begin?

One of my guildmates named Leroyspeltz had his account hacked in December. At that time, he was already an officer in the guild, so the person who hacked his account had a great opportunity to loot the guild bank. And so it happened. After Blizzard restored my friend's account, we discovered that a bunch of characters had gone missing..

Gone? Were they deleted or transferred?

According to him, some characters were deleted and some were transferred, but at that time he assumed that all had been deleted. In December, he wrote an open letter to Blizzard, to which he never received a response.

The situation did not change until around mid-March. During this time, we made a mistake while distributing loot after killing Malygos in a 25-man raid. I mistakenly gave Leroy an item that was intended for another player. My friend immediately informed the GMs asking for the item to be given to the correct player. Blizzard employees resolved the issue and then asked for information about the long-gone days - about the hacked account. After the GM found out that the problem was still unresolved, some strange actions began to occur. Leroy received some mail from Blizzard, and when he logged in on April 19, all his characters were in place.

What happened next?

All his characters received mail from Blizzard, and the mailbox was crammed with a ton of various items. My friend was in shock - he did not understand why all this was sent to him. Most of the packages were supposedly related to stolen things - tons of low-level armor and weapons, herb packs, and more. As far as I know, Blizzard almost never restores hacked accounts, so I was no less surprised. Nevertheless, it turned out that Blizzard employees often picked random items and simply sent them to his characters. And so, in the mailbox of a level 13 warlock, there was the armor shirt “Martin Fury” (the GM item).

When he realized you had received “Martin Fury”, why weren't the corresponding Blizzard employees informed immediately?

We didn’t really understand what it was. Of course, we read the stats, but informing Blizzard didn't even cross our minds.

Why not?

Because it was mail from Blizzard. We just thought it was meant to be, and that this shirt was a compensation for the moral damage caused by the long story with the account.

When did you use the armor shirt for the first time?

On April 20, our guild went to raid 10-man Ulduar. Leroyspeltz was not in our group at that time. We were frankly stuck in a fight with Ignis, and I invited Leroy to the group. It was then that we tried the shirt for the first time, and it worked...

And you didn’t consider it cheating at the time? Didn’t it occur to you that you could be harshly punished for this?

It didn’t occur to me because the shirt came in the mail from Blizzard. We even laughed about it, and then, after we took down Ignis, we exited the instance and switched the option to ‘heroic’. Then we went back in and killed the Fire Leviathan.

How many charges were on the shirt?

When we received Martin Fury, it had 100 charges. We used it 14 times.

When did everything go wrong?

The next week we used the shirt twice - on Malygos and in a 25-man Sartharion, and I state again that we were not aiming to “profit” in terms of achievements or gear and weapons. To me, it all seemed just funny. It was entertaining and enjoyable. Then we headed to Ulduar with a group of 22 and tried several times to take down the Fire Leviathan without using the shirt. That's when I felt something was off. Some players in our group had no idea that we had “Martin's Fury”. Then I used the shirt during the fight and everything started going downhill!

I didn’t have time to log in during the weekend, nor was I able to talk to my friends. When I wanted to log in on Tuesday, it turned out that my account had been banned. I was told that my guild had achieved many World First Kills, but I reiterate that those achievements were never our goal.

So you didn't achieve a single World First?

Some people maliciously claim that we cleared instances unfairly, but frankly, I didn’t want to ruin the lives of real professional guilds who honestly worked for those achievements. I don’t think we got any World Firsts, but everyone around believes that’s exactly what we did. And I didn’t try to keep our successes a secret - after all, I was 100% sure that the item received from Blizzard was a legitimate weapon in our hands.

Did Blizzard ever contact you? Did GMs message you during raid runs?

No. They say they sent me an email with information right after they closed my account, but that’s a lie. I had to contact Blizzard through the official website.

Is your account still closed?

Absolutely.

And during the fights, you didn’t take a single screenshot?

I’m not the kind of player who gladly takes screenshots or video recordings from the game. I’ve mentioned this before. We are just a group of friends who enjoy playing World of Warcraft. Not professionals. But this game belongs to Blizzard, and they set the tone and decide how to act in each situation. It’s quite fair, in principle. Before the ban, I honestly didn’t think I was ruining the game of World of Warcraft.

But didn’t you ever think that such a thing could not be legal? Despite the fact that it was sent by Blizzard employees.

The most I thought was “weird”. But based on the limited number of charges on the shirt, I concluded that this was more likely compensation for damages rather than a mistake.

Do you expect to get your account back?

No.

Will the loss of your account affect your desire to keep playing WoW?

I loved this game. After all, I spent a wonderful 159 days of my life in it. I don’t know yet.

Will you play a new character?

Probably not. I think I’ll try to play something else. I believe that Blizzard has been way too harsh on me - after all, it’s my first rule violation. Moreover, I think that the ban of all my guildmates who were with me is complete madness and highlights nothing but the karma of a loser. This means not just the people who were with me in raids but all of them.

Did many players on your server know what was happening?

No. In fact, not everyone in my guild knew, only the select few who participated in raids. Frankly, as I think about it now, not all those people even knew. As I said before, I simply considered my actions fun.

So what's the conclusion? Were you and Leeroy the only ones banned?

All guild members who were online at that time received a 24-hour ban. Regardless of whether they were with me in the raid or not.

And how did your guildmates react?

Of course, there is not much joy here. Some are angry with me, but most are on my side. Personally, I didn't hack anything. I just received the so-called “winner's talent” and made use of it.

Thank you for the conversation.

Thank you as well for listening to me.