I'm going to assume that many of you all reading this play World of Warcraft. Last I heard it had a couple of subscribers. Anyway, chances are, you're aware of the massive drama following the game's last patch -- servers on the fritz, crazy bugs all over the place, the whole nine. Simply put, it's a disaster. At press time, the issues are starting to get resolved, albeit little by little. Servers appear to alternate between being functional and completely tanked, and the players are completely pissed off. Understandably so, in my opinion -- they love them some WoW, and there's little worse than jonesing for the game all day at work or school, and coming home to tanked servers. It's a good thing I haven't had time to play for the past two weeks, what with Matrix Online to review, and a massive MMO article to put together next week, or I'd be pissed, too.

But that hasn't prevented me from taking in the sheer pandemonium that ensued on the message boards last night (Tuesday, March 29th). Oh. My. God. Here's what happened: the period of "scheduled maintenance" morphed into an indefinite "extended maintenance," with many (if not most) of the game's servers completely down. Some of the more severely affected servers were down for upwards of 24 hours, by this point, and you could imagine what this did to the playerbase. They went bonkers, to put it lightly, and apart from making alts on low-population (read: RP) servers, all they could was post irate messages on the boards.

As you could imagine, there were more trolls present than at a Witherbark encampment. What's more, the forum's moderators had apparently checked out for most of the night. What ensued was truly magnificent to behold: a completely unhinged playerbase indulging its most trollish instincts. Hundreds, if not thousands of nonsensical, inflammatory, and downright antisocial posts appeared on the boards till the wee hours of the night. It was hilarious, sad, and scary at the same time. Donning my documentarian's pith had (and, occasionally, my asylum worker's labcoat), I did my best to capture snapshots of this mess. Please, enjoy them ASAP, as I'm sure Blizzard will soon enough see to it to wipe them from existence. So without further ado...

Drunk With Power
The moment in which realizes that he is truly free is something wondrous to behold. Let's hope this young gnome doesn't squander his freedom.

Meeting of the Minds
"Warriors can like, do damage, and wear plate at the same time?? I say replace warriors with big steel blocks."


Johnny Cochrane Love
It's good to see that during this tragic moment of downtime, WoW's playerbase saw fit to give a shout out to the late legendary defense attorney. R.I.P., Mr. Cochrane.

Best Idea I've Heard All Night
"Please post constructively."
gg, Blue.

Apocalypse = now. Blizzard am cry.

File Under "Double Ewe Tee Eff"
"...have fun in the euro server, we will miss ya! /lick ^_^, keep in touch if possible."


Catharsis
They do it because they can.

The Second Post is What Did it For Me
nt

The Real Enemy
"The bartender noticed my horror and told me that that troll was wanted for being what the people of Goldshire call a "forumaticTroll", I was appalled and I was so full of anger that it had become a new quest for I. To hunt this troll down and end it's life to prevent harm to the residents of Goldshire no more."