The World of Warcraft Funeral Crashers – The Stuff of Legends

The funeral he was referring to took place in March of 2006. A beloved World of Warcraft fan had passed away in real life and her guild mates wanted to do something special in her memory. The plan for the event was to have her father log in on her character, Fayejin. He would lead a procession through Winterspring towards his daughter’s favorite fishing spot. Once there, he would place her character by the water and players could come forward to pay their final respects. Frostfire Hot Springs was chosen for its significance to the recently deceased. Everyone who knew Feyejin knew she loved traveling to the western end of Winterspring to spend hours upon hours fishing on its calming waters. Calming and reckless. For, you see, Frostfire Hot Springs is a contested zone in a player vs player server. Essentially that beautiful lake where the grieving players decided to hold a most impassioned send-off is in the middle of an active war zone. And this guild announced the day, the time, and the location of the ingame funeral on the public WoW forums for all to see. They finished off by stating they planned to make a video of it for the family to see and “…would appreciate it if nobody comes to mess things up.” The problem with open door invitations is the devil might show up with his plus one.

The devil in this instance was an Alliance guild known as Serenity Now. It would’ve been a shame if the guild known for griefing other players ruined the event, but to Serenity Now it would’ve been a shame if they didn’t. There’s a special currency in World of Warcraft called honor points you can spend to receive specific gear and materials. You earn these by killing enemies within a few levels of your own. They become harder to attain at higher levels because the enemies require more coordination to defeat and other players are better geared. So imagine their reaction when they found out there was a dress code for this funeral. This was before the days of transmogrification. Transmogging is a way to make your weapons and armor look like normal attire. You might accidentally attack a fella in his business casuals before realizing his flip flops are actually Infurious Warboots of Impunity, but transmogging wasn’t added until 2011. This was 2006, and these high level players were showing up in their Sunday best with no weapons and no armor. I’m not saying Serenity Now were justified in crashing the funeral. I’m just saying I’m not surprised. 

It was a lovely day for a memorial. The procession was led through the lavender hued snowy hills of Winterspring. A line was formed at the top of the hill, and down by the water was Fayejin in her white dress and blue cloak looking out towards the rippling waters. A guard looked on as players approached in small numbers to pay their respects. More guards maintained a watchful eye on the perimeter. There was quite the turn out, a crowd of at least fifty or so, maybe even a hundred. If any one of them took that moment to put on their detection goggles they might’ve had a better chance to notice three rogues standing a few feet away from Fayejin. No one was equipped to see through stealth and everyone had their eyes in different places. The guests were looking north towards the ceremony on the water. The guards were scanning the open and vulnerable lands to the east. The three rogues were looking to the west.

Cause, in that direction, 18 or so guild members of Serenity Now and a few other players had set off on a winding road through Felwood to the east of Winterspring. It was a long and arduous trek in narrow tunnels. Travelers have nowhere to go if they were spotted out. It was a horrible path cutting into contested zones. No one thought anyone would be stupid enough to attack from that direction. Ain’t stupid if it works. The malicious company made it to Winterspring without a hitch. One more left turn and it was a straight shot to Frostfire Hot Springs. There was the ceremony. There was Fayejin. And right behind her were three rogues waiting in stealth, waiting for this moment.

The rogues sprang forward and attacked Fayejin with cold blood. Metaphorically and literally, Cold Blood is a spell that does extra damage on the first strike to someone’s backside. By the time one of the guards made it over to fight off the attackers the rogues had slain Fayejin and were making moves to the hill. The long line of guests were paralyzed in shock– or perhaps a few had stepped away from their keyboard to grab a sandwich. The rogues took a chunk out of the front of the queue with almost no retaliation. The rear was being cut apart by Serenity Now. In only a matter of seconds, half of the procession was lying prone on the ground. The other half was doing their best to fight back, but they stood no chance without their weapons and armor. Some fled to the waters, but were struck down mid doggy paddle. The entire massacre took about two minutes, from the murder of the host to the final guest. The rogue that dealt the first blow ran over the bodies before stopping at Fayejin’s. It was their turn to give their final farewell. “She loved fishing. And snow. And PvP”

The funeral was over, but the wake was just getting started. Serenity Now had recorded the entire event and put together a video as a keepsake. The start of the video was a montage of embittered comments from the forums and the open invitation before the actual event. It was all there. The ceremony, the winding trek through the west, the rogues coming out of stealth to attack Fayejin, and the massacre on the hillside. It ended with a plug to their website, because Serenity Now uploaded the video to the internet with the intent of using it as a recruitment ad of sorts for their guild. The players met no consequences from on high. They had done nothing against the rules of the server, so Blizzard took no action against them. Morally though, well, that was up for debate. The event can not exist without bringing to question social ethos. Where do we draw the line as far as civility is concerned? Right or wrong, this was an opportunity to have a look into the human condition. The Guardian wrote on the event. The University of Sydney used it as a case study for boundary-work. Interviews were conducted with the players, but as far as the leader was concerned, he didn’t really stop to think about why or why not. It was all in good fun and for 15 minutes of attention. Whether the audience was horrified or delighted didn’t matter. Attention is what they got.

Since Blizzard took no action against the funeral crashers, retribution was left in the hands of the other members of the server. Bounties were placed on the entire guild of Serenity now and their co-conspirators. Each one of them was marked for K.O.S and C.C., a rather unusual punishment in World of Warcraft. What this entails is you kill a player on sight and then you camp their corpse. In the game, when you die you turn into a spirit and you need to either travel to your body to retrieve it or resurrect it at a nearby graveyard. Regardless of how you collect yourself you’re in a weakened state when you get back up. If someone were to wait over your corpse as you attempt to get your character back they could send you down again with the swiftness. Teleportation spells took too long to cast and you wouldn’t get far running. You’d be at the mercy of the camper’s attention span. The goal was to never permit the guild a normal day of gaming ever again, and a few of the members did leave. But some, like the raid leader, accepted this life on the run as the new World of Warcraft experience, undesirables being chased for honor or for sport.

I’d love to tell you there was a concise outcome to this event. Something clear, cut, and dry you could take away with you. I’m sorry, but the world ain’t that. Don’t raid funerals or don’t hold funerals in active war zones, I guess. Fayejin’s friends wanted to do something kind in her memory and now her memory lives on, albeit for other reasons. 

Act 3

That brings us back to where we began, three players surrounded by a group of twenty. The group were bounty hunters looking for revenge, fame, and riches. They marked their three targets in front of them. These three took part in the massacre at Winterspring. The head of the trio, the one who was doing all the talking, was the raid leader that organized the event and directed everyone through the winding paths west of Frostfire Hot Springs before laying siege to the guests of the funeral. If he died in this fight, the players would stand over his corpse and wait for him to try to reclaim his body before slaying him again. How long would they wait? Hours, days, weeks? A few of his former crew had given up on the game because they couldn’t reclaim their bodies from bounty hunters for a month…and they were just lackeys. What would the twenty be willing to do to the four most sought after bounties, his own and the three rogues who had struck down Fayejin by the waters? The same rogues who now sat waiting in the shadows, slowly approaching the twenty who were facing the wrong direction.