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Top 6 Bizarre Online Gaming Incidents

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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

legendofmir3.jpg 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

gunboundplayerkidnap.jpgEarlier 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

girldiesplayingworldofwarcraft.jpgBack 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

habbohotelarrested.jpgA 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

secondliferape.jpgThe 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

worldofwarcraftplague.jpg 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!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. WOW had a real epidemic I think that was adding a great real life event. I enjoyed this post I laughed at most of them then my roomate had to see what I was laughing about.

  3. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. There are virtual nations that have higher net worth than many actual countries. I’m sure that WoW and Everquest are right up there.

    Human beings are an odd bunch. Even odder when we cannot separate fantasy from reality.

  5. Brick, I am not sure. The event generated a lot of negative feedback from the angry players that were dieing all over the place. I think they wanted to add a new element, but it went beyond their control.

  7. Paul, that was a good one, but it happened in the Beta Test version of the game, and it did not generate that much buzz.

    The mentioned incidents all appeared in mainstream media over the world.

    Thanks for adding this one though.

  9. Belgian police patrol second life for a virtual rape!? If I was a tax payer in Belgium I’d be ticked off!

    I know games are the future of entertainment, but how far does it have to go where people take virtual reality for a real reality?

    I guess it’s easy to control people when they’re at home 24/7 distracted by something that doesn’t even exist.

    Diana

  10. 1) Can’t believe they missed the assassination of Lord British in Ultima Online.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British#Assassination_of_Lord_British

    2) The WoW plague was an accident. Once you caught it, you slowly lost health til you died, and anyone who got near you caught it. But it also affected pets. And what Blizzard didn’t realize is that putting a pet away would stop the effects, but the pet would keep the disease. So folks would go to the boss, infect their pet, put the pet away, then go into heavily populated cities and pull their pet out again.

  12. Strikes me that the easiest way for Blizzard to fix the plague thing, once they knew it was a problem, would be to disable the effects of whatever secret “Infected” attribute they were using, instead of trying to quarantine it.

  13. @Matt:
    Something like that would require at least a serverside patch, if not a client hotfix. The first option would require realm restarts that would take place at the peak hours of the game, and the second option would be hard to implement and in the end would probably require a serverside patching anyway.

    The reason they were quarantining was probably because they thought they could handle the problem without resorting to either of the two aforementioned optioned which would further aggravate the disgruntled players.

  14. Nathaniel wrote: “Human beings are an odd bunch. Even odder when we cannot separate fantasy from reality.”

    This is nothing new. People believe in God for thousands of years.

  15. actually, the epidemic in WoW was part of a sociological study on how the masses would react to such an outbreak. blizzard though that it would be a wonderful idea, when approached by the study group. it was all well planned and closely observed.

  16. I can’t believe that they didn’t include the incredible heist in Eve online.

    A guild spent months infiltrating the largest company on the game and ended up stealing $16,500 USD worth of virtual items, as well as assassinate the head of the company.

    http://eve.klaki.net/heist/

  18. I love how people ridicule ose who spend “real” money on virtual stuff… what the hell is real about money? If you’ve got enough to pay for food and shelter, and you decide to spend what’s left over on something that will enhance your experience of a computer game rather than buying, for example, expensive clothes, what’s wrong with that?

    But killing someone… yeah, get a life. (get it? a *life*, ahaha…)

  21. Haha, I remember logging onto that epidemic, right after Zul’Gurub was introduced into the game. Couldn’t see the ground of the auction house, littered with skeleton’s and corpse’s

  23. The epidemic was caused by animals carrying the disease but not dying from it. They spread it to the towns. Do your research.

  25. HHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
    and i thought i was weird for canceling a date with my gf for Subspace Continuum

  27. Not only did the girl die playing Wow, the in-game funeral was held in a pvp zone and crashed by a guild of the opposing faction. The guild had to disband because they were deemed “kill on sight” lol

    There’s a great video of the funeral crash on YouTube:
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=M_og14JAlBk

    For the Alliance! 😀

  28. Can you cite your source for the Belgian one? As Belgian (and some kind of news nerd) I didn’t read, hear or watch anything about this in our national media.
    Thanx!
    Ice 😉

  31. phew, I am glad to see, that Blizzard’s Diablo2 isn’t mentioned in the above list of bizarre incidents 🙂 seems to be safe there, all the crazy kiddies are logged into the world of warcraft 😉

  32. My guild (Blood and Tears) threatened to /gkick any guild members who even went to the region where the funeral was held. There was a lot of talk about crashing it, but the whole idea of an online funeral was a little creepy.

  33. Louisiana resident has heart attack fighting Albion in DAoC RvR. (May 2007)

    He was so dedicated to his heritage and fellow Hibernians, he played in RVR for several hours, while having a heart attack, before deciding he might need to go to the hospital. He ended up having a triple bypass, and was later spotted playing DAoC from a laptop in the hospital bed.

  34. About the Tainted Blood plague in WoW. The problem was that the plague spread to the city NPCs (non player characters) and they regenerate health at a very fast rate when they aren’t in combat. So the NPCs got the plague, but didn’t die from it, because they healed too fast. And players walking by caught the plague, and spread it to other NPCs before they died.

  35. Virtually raped!?!? what the CRAP!
    Everyonce in a while I’ll log into some online game and if I’m not enjoying it.. then.. well….. I log off. (what a novle idea)..
    So like what happens in a virtual rape.. you just sit there staring at your computer monitor thinking (‘OMG I can’t do anything about this’)
    What the CRAP!

  36. of course not what the crap! first you fight back and say i dont like this, dad no stop. Then if they keep going you start to scream until they punch you in the face so many times your mom cant recognize you. then you sit there quietly accept the fact that life is exactly what youre going through then the rest of your life isnt the same! im glad the cops are on top of this…. all of society should be monitored and checked by the man

  37. haha!

    And besides that’s pretty much all there is in Second Life.. I logged in when it was fairly new and it was all just sex shops, nude characters etc.. it’s an interactive virtual porn palace.

    Maybe I’ll log in and create a girl character named ‘PleaseR8peMe’ just to see how emotionally scared I become when I’m held down by my virtual captors… Then maybe I’ll call the police (for real though) and actually try and file a ‘real’ report.. haha

  38. Virtual rape?? I can’t stop laughing. And to all you poor ‘victims’ of this pretend crime, get off your computers and take a step outside to reintroduce your warped mind to the real world.

    People love to get attention by pretending to be victims. It is a power trip for them. How sad.

  40. 6/6/06 The “Runescape Massacre”.
    A player (Duriel) was the first to obtain 99 construction and was throwing a party in his player owned house,A glitch allowed him and only him to go anywhere in the RS world and PK other players in non PK zones..such as the city of falador.
    Funny as hell-the guy would attack and kill other players wearing rare holiday drops no longer obtainable besides buying for ALOT of in game gold.

    Player was banned from the game..sad..anyone would have done the same.

  47. virtually raped? i dont really understand since ive never played the game, what constitutes a rape in this game? is it possible to stick your virtual penis in another characters virtual orifice or what?

  48. I’ve been virtually murdered thousands of times. I hope the police get on that, it’s a serious crime.

  49. Perfect example of why MMORG’s and RPG’s are so dangerous they build a false reality that people cannot get out of. They will do and say almost anything… The fix is simple get back to playing First person shooter games they are over in 10 -15 minutes and get back to real life. I have played games now starting with Pong and saw gaming evolve from Wolfenstein to doom and up; its simple don’t get involved with them period.. Diablo was a great example of the beginning of addiction, I played Diablo straight for days on end to beat the Devil for what? Its just a replacement for real life go to a club go to the movies ride a freaking dirt bike or better else buy someone a gift do not pay 15.00 a month to squawk like a chicken and get pumpkins from a virtual farmer its pure insanity.

  52. She died off excaustion damn thats fuckin sick……………. i totaly agreee wit the guy enjoying a game is one thing but dieing playing it is Patheticccccccccccccc

  55. At number 6: Bullshit.

    This wasn’t unplanned. That was a carefully planned experiment to observe how the virus will spread depending on people behavior. Kind of controlled virtual plague monitoring for some institute. They even wrote about it in the Newsweek. Duh.

  56. #4, “It would be a perfect crime, except that the police (the real one) was called”
    it…[s]was[/s] were called

  57. I think the questions should be- Why is the possibility of being raped even programed into the game?
    I think the problem of so many people becoming desensitized to this abusive crime is really getting out of control. This issue is not on the table for laughter and discussions about “whether or not virtual rape is damaging”- what should be examined here should be people’s flippant attitude towards a violent act that is forced upon so many more individuals than most people are aware of.
    Including all types of sex offenses and forcible rapes reported in Pennsylvania alone, during 2002, there were:
    * 9,700 female victims (1, 539 were ten years old or younger)
    * 1,895 male victims (744 were ten years old or younger) (www.pcar.org)

    Just in case people want to learn….this is pretty important

  58. It looks like reality is expanding into virtual reality, so people are experiencing all kinds of things there. It’s kind of crazy to confuse it with real life, as I see it as a place to experience all kinds of things that probably don’t belong in our civilised realities. We seem to be re-living all the kinds of stuff that our ancestors had to deal with, only this time as entertainment.

  62. God, I’m glad I’m not hooked on any online games. I used to play on one a fair bit and I thought that was a bad habit. The amount of time, effort and money players put into these games is ridiculous. Gaming can be a fun, social activity. It’s the sort of people hooked on these games who give gaming a bad image. It doesn’t have to be this nerdy.
    Mind you, I understand how it’s easy to get hooked. But I’d much rather be filthy rich in real life than in a virtual world.
    And think about how much good the money pouring into these pointless games could do if it were chanelled into charity work? Like the post that mentioned the net worth of these virtual worlds. That could solve some countries’ problems for good! But instead it’s going to some very smug looking designers.
    Shameful.
    Buy a Wii – one off payment – and get three friends over. You will have fun for hours WHILST talking to people and generally being much less socially retarded.

  64. yeah..buy a wii and get some friends if u can’t live without gaming..i can’t

    (yeah i got a wii..go buy one too)

    but besides the greatness of the wii..i really enjoed reading these articles and in fact i think the EVE 16.500 is very impressive..and shows how blurry the line between reality and virtual reality has become. This much planning, time and effort from like 6 or 10 ppl just to make this big scam work (it took them nearly a year to infiltrate the other corporation)..kinda astonishing, kinda sad, but really really wierd xD

  65. One time in UO my virtual guy was wandering down a virtual path and another virtual player attacked my virtual gorilla. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. The virtual asshole killed my virtual gorilla friend. Then he turned gray, so I virtually whacked the virtual bastard with my virtual axe and then the virtual scumsucker whacked my virtual guy with his virtual sword! My virtual guy wisely turned his virtual tail and ran like the virtual wind. But as soon as my virtual guy got back to the virtual town, some other virtual player saw my virtual guy, and attacked. My virtual guy started to fight back, but the virtual guards came and chopped him all up. Where’s the justice in that? The virtual guards didn’t help my virutal guy out when his virtual gorilla was killed.

    This really happened. What a joke… I can’t believe I even cared.

    Some of you guys may be too young to remember all the stuff that was in the news about Dungeons and Dragons players back in the day. My brother lost a favorite character and didn’t eat for four days. He wanted to kill the guy who killed his character. We used to hear stories all the time about groups of kids who went off to the mountains and got lost or killed in caves pretending to play D&D. How sad is that? Somebody predending to play a pretend game and dying.

  67. You cannot blame the video game. There are far more people that play responsibly and have well adjusted productive lives. Blaming the game is like blaming rock music, dancing, or chewing gum for the crimes that people comit while partaking in those activities.
    People who are unstable enough to kill someone, or commit suicide are likely to do it while heavily infuenced by something. They will find a fuel for their fury whether it be a high school sports game, a house party, or a dope deal gone bad.
    The real blame for violent anti-social behavior is the parents. Now days, young parents are playing virtual games instead of paying attention to their babies, but it’s still not the game’s fault.

    Just thought no one had touched on that point. 😉

  71. Oh dear. I mean, I like games, but it just shows how sad some people are.
    As for the Second Life rape thing, thats weird. But some contradict each other, I mean the guy who got arrested for stabbing that other guy for selling a virtual item got life for it, because the police said that virtual items aren’t protected by law. And yet the boy who stole from Habbo Hotel got arrested for stealing virtual items.

    Some things are just weird.

  74. I remember being told about the WoW plague, I wasn’t on by that time, but started my account after it. One of my friends witnessed someone intentionally infecting themselves and then running over to the Stormwind king/boy and infecting him, evidently when he died, he crashed the server lol. Sadly I was told the kid who was brilliant enough to perform this stunt was punished either banned or suspended, not sure which.

  75. On a follow up of my earlier comment, WoW in game funerals are not unheard of, if the player was popular in the guild or the server, there is usually an organized and planned funeral several days after the news is released of the players death. We care that much about what my friend dubs the “imaginary friends” or just your everyday online vents as he calls them, kinda sad and kinda touching about what WoW does to people

  76. lol second life rape? wtf just log off the game it’s a game fake… lol hit the lovely little red x and go do something else.

  77. He forgot to mention the massacre at the WoW funeral. I was party to it and it happens. Stupid ass for playing 3 days straight. Don’t care how addicted you are. Came in, bum rushed and attempted to kill all. Few survived. Funny ass crap.

  78. See this is why I don’t get involved in this stuff. Because honestly, people that do MMO’s are mostly stupid. I’m sorry, but it’s true. My advice is go outside, have a little fun and make some friends.

  79. That picture of the WoW plague was actually taken by my friend on his lock when it was just a toon he played for kicks time to time years ago

  81. These incidents aren’t exactly indicative of MMO players in general. Stop being self-righteous jackasses and saying that MMO players need a life or are losers. There’s an entire spectrum of players, and most are perfectly healthy individuals with social lives. But a couple of screwballs do stupid stuff and suddenly it’s the game’s fault. Of course playing WoW for 3 days straight is stupid and unhealthy, and most people know that. Stop suggesting that all MMO players are as messed up as that (this is directed to some of the comments by the way, not the article itself). Besides, you guys are spending your time reading articles like this online, how exactly is that a better use of your time?

Trackbacks

  22. Los 6 incidentes más extraños de los juegos on-line [ENG]…

    Desde la actuación de la policia belga en un caso de violación virtual en Second Life al asesinato de un jugador chino por vender el Sable del Dragón en el Legend of Mir 3 o la plaga que asoló el World of Warcraft….

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