People stabbing each other (in real life) for magic swords (inside an online game); men kidnapping a top player to steal his game password; a girl that dies after playing her favorite multiplayer game for several days in a row….
It is a crazy (virtual) world, what can I say! Below you will find the 6 most bizarre online gaming incidents in history:
1. Lengend of Mir 3 player stabs fellow gamer to death
Back in 2005 Qiu Chengwei, a 41 years-old Shanghai resident, stabbed fellow gamer Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest, causing his death. The reason? Zhu sold the “dragon sabre,” a weapon that they won jointly in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).
According to the China Daily, Qiu Chengwei went to the police first, but after being told that virtual items were not protected by law, he decided to make “justice” with his own hands.
Qiu Chengwei received a life sentence.
2. Brazilian gang kidnap top GunBound player
Earlier this year four Brazilian men, with ages between 19 and 28, developed a plan to steal the game password of a GunBound (an online multiplayer game) top player. The objective was to sell the game account on the Internet for $8,000.
The first step was to get the girlfriend of Igor, head of the gang, in contact with the GunBound player. They accomplished that via Google’s social networking site Orkut, which is extremely popular in Brazil. After exchanging messages for a couple of days, the girl asked the boy to meet her at a shopping center.
He went, but instead of the girl he found Igor waiting for him, armed with a gun. They took the GunBound player away, and here comes the bizarre part. After five hours of interrogation at gun point, the boy was still determined to not reveal his password, so the four men released him.
The boy went to the police, who arrested all the gang members.
3. Girl dies playing World of Warcraft
Back in 2005 a Chinese girl nicknamed “Snowly” died of exhaustion after playing the MMORPG World of Warcraft for three days in a row. She was preparing to kill the Black Dragon Prince, other players explained, hence why she had no time to rest between the game sessions.
Interestingly enough, her fellow game players held a virtual funeral inside the game, as reported by Yahoo News China.
4. Teenager arrested for stealing virtual furniture
A couple of weeks ago a seventeen year-old boy stole almost $6000 worth of virtual furniture in the online game Habbo Hotel. Habbo is a virtual world where people can create houses and other scenarios, but the items need to be purchased with real money.
The company alleged that the boy, with the help of some friends, created a website to lure other players into revealing their passwords. After that it was just a matter of logging into the game and transferring the furniture into his own room.
It would be a perfect crime, except that the police (the real one) was called and the boy was arrested.
5. Belgian Police decides to patrol Second Life after virtual rape case
The details about the case were not revealed, but two Belgian newspapers reported early this year that the Belgian Police would setup an in-game patrol unit to investigate virtual rape incidents.
Absurd as it sounds, the event spurred a myriad of discussions around the web, from sexologists arguing that even virtual rape can be a traumatic experience to online gamers that wondered the technical details that enabled a virtual rape to occur in the first place (in fact it is hard to conceive how someone would not be able to simply turn the computer off…).
6. A plague ravages World of Warcraft
In the middle of 2005 Blizzard introduced a new area to its popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The boss of the area was able to cast a spell called Corrupted Blood, which was supposed to infect and cause damage to all the players nearby.
Contrary to what Blizzard planned, however, the players remained infected even when they returned to their towns, contaminating pretty much everyone around them. The plague spread through the game servers and thousands of players died.
Blizzard manage to create quarantine zones within the game, and shortly afterwards it introduced a “cure” for the infection. Despite the remedies the event created a lot of buzz in online forums and community websites.
In one word: bizarre!
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