Xaryu Reacts to World of Warcraft's Most Crazy & Unhinged Moments (By MadSeasonShow)

[00:03] popped up in my recommended yesterday. Let's go down here and watch it. Or do I should I watch it up here? What am I feeling today? Bottom left or top right? We'll stay top right. We'll go top right. World of Warcraft's most crazy

[00:17] and unhinged moments. Number five from Mad Season. We've seen the other four. to cover because now it's like a bunch of them. Mad C give it to us.

[00:37] being the most intense genre of game and for good reason. They're competitive, easily the most time-conuming, the most grindy, and combine this with the fact that they never end. It's not uncommon these days for players to have several

[00:50] substantial portion of their time dedicated to items or rewards that would leave most rational people mystified of their obsessiveness. World of Warcraft being a staple of the genre is no different, and today we continue our

[01:05] series of videos covering the most unhinged, craziest, obsessed, spectacular, and maybe even the most toxic moments in its history. Before we get into it, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video,

[01:18] boot.dev. Boot.dev is a learning platform that teaches you how to code. >> season sponsor, Bootdev. There we go. W >> slowly being executed by man. It was brutal. >> You start with Python and you learn by

[01:31] beginning. >> We've seen a couple boot.dev ads these uh by now. Um >> they look solid to be honest. I've never >> I mean, if you're trying to learn how to code, I I don't know.

[01:43] All right. >> Fighting bosses while at the same time. Someone in the chat, I'm sure, has it. Yeah. >> DevOps and data analysis. It's super friendly for beginners. If you ever get

[01:56] stuck, they have this active Discord community, as well as an AI tutor named Boots who doesn't just give you the answers, but instead nudges you in the right direction and helps you figure it out yourself to enhance the learning

[02:08] experience. You can create an account for free and demo the interactive parts of every course, and all of the course content is free to read forever. A paid account unlocks the interactive features, and they also have a 30-day no

[02:21] questions asked refund policy. So scan my QR code on the screen.dev and use my code, >> bro. The QR code thing like

[02:34] >> it's just a Q like imagine you're watching this on your phone. How do you is it possible when you when you're playing a YouTube video on your phone to playing a YouTube video on your phone to scan a QR code on the screen?

[02:53] didn't know that worked. Oh, I'm just a boomer. You just touch it on a YouTube video. Wouldn't that just pause the video?

[03:07] touch it probably or something? I didn't know that either. Anyway, yeah, every why not just put like whatever? >> Mad season show to get 25% off your entire first year on the annual plan. Bots have certainly been a frequent

[03:21] subject in this series. Whether that be about the bots themselves or the gold buyers who fund their existence or even the multi-million dollar botting empires that threaten to feed people's fingers to their family members. Descriptive

[03:35] texts about wanting to kill me, wanting to cut off my fingers and feed my hands and stuff like this. >> Certainly been a few crazy moments tied in the game. And next we have yet another, and that's the Black Lotus

[03:50] controversy. Some bots will farm mobs over and over. Some will farm away from prying eyes in the confines of a dungeon, and some go around the world collecting various resource nodes. The most lucrative which being the Black

[04:04] Lotus. >> And the other one is Holy B. maybe they're not as coveted in World of Warcraft, but they are pretty valuable. The reason for that, we mentioned in the

[04:18] previous episode, is that they're needed to create powerful, unique flasks, which endgame rating, becoming so staple to the game that in its following expansions for many years to come, they would return in a different form of

[04:32] >> I'm going to pause real quick. Sai Baby in the chat says, "Why put a QR code when you can just put a link? QR codes are for IRL." That's my take. Like if you want to do a QR code menu or something or a QR code IRL so you can

[04:46] can't click something IRL. But when you're on the phone just just click the link, man. We're on a computer. Just click the link. The QR codes on tech like like I mean maybe I'm old here, man, but like I just don't get it. Just

[05:00] old. >> Rare and highly valuable herb to create endgame consumables. They spawn rarely around the world in various highle zones and are immediate route changers for any herbalists. And if multiple people see

[05:14] them at once, it's like the doors opening on Black Friday and a few people get trampled to death. It gets competitive. And at this point, there have been plenty of less than polite whispers archived on the internet.

[05:26] That's not even considering PvP servers, which is this entire different beast. which is this entire different beast. >> Yes. Nice. that of course makes them the target of bots or those who use various cheating

[05:42] software to get an edge. And if you haven't figured it out by now, 2019 Classic was one of the most competitive things on Earth with so many people learned with how much money was waiting to be made from players who

[05:55] >> the game so much that they do everything within their power to not play it. The small indie game developer Blizzard was just powerless to stop it. botting, fly hacks, teleport hacks, even multibboxers got in on the fun next to the rich

[06:10] thorium veins and their valuable arcane crystals. Black Lotus was one of the most sought-after resources within the world. And the average player just cheating. There wasn't a worse feeling than seeing a Black Lotus and sprinting

[06:24] to it only to see a [\h__\h] bot teleport on top of it and grab it in front of your very eyes. It got so bad that Blizzard had to actually increase their spawn rate, much to the dismay of the no changes crowd. And even then, it was

[06:37] we know, >> they were completely ineffective in their effort >> or lack of effort, some would say, in controlling the massive amount of cheating, infesting their game. To some

[06:50] players, this change in the spawn rate was them essentially waving the white flag as it showed that in order to preserve the experience of their game, instead of removing those disrupting it, they would instead change the game in

[07:04] order to dampen their immediately noticeable effect. I mean, my take is they they're fighting the problem from two but they're spinning up quicker than they can ban them. They do a bandwave

[07:18] ready to go. They do the bandwidth, there's thousands more. So, it's like, okay, let's let's keep fighting the bots, but let's also increase the spawn people. To me, it's not a white flag. It's fighting the problem from two ends.

[07:32] But yeah, that's just my take from going to school for cyber security. >> But what's a small indie game developer >> But what's a small indie game developer to do?

[08:14] >> Wow. Will be the worst game ever. >> Next up, we're going to cover the original Hive of Scum and Villain, and that's the vanilla World of Warcraft forums. When World of Warcraft launched in 2004, Blizzard was unprepared for how

[08:29] popular it had become with the MMO genre at the time being so niche. maybe a moderate amount of fans of their RTS series to maybe come check it out, maybe tell a few friends, hopefully grow from there, and at least

[08:43] >> the reigning champion at the time, which was its direct inspiration in many ways, EverQuest. However, when November of 2004 rolled around and the game hit store shelves, they were quite flabbergasted to see how virally popular

[08:58] it would become. >> Whoops. We made the best game ever. Oh. Oh. Oh. Servers. >> And also a problem was introduced. They simply did not have the capability to serve that many players. The launch of

[09:14] the game is remembered today as disastrous to say the least and fans eager to experience the world in this new and exciting format. We're quite disappointed to be greeted with maintenance and downtime. And when I say

[09:28] >> you know, this is interesting because when new MMOs come out and the launch is really bad, a lot of the times people will say something along the lines of like, "Oh, this game would have done really well if they handled the launch

[09:41] better," which is like maybe partially true, but the reality is is like if the game is good enough and you have a shaky launch, but then you fix things within a few weeks or whatever and the game is good enough, the players will stick

[09:54] around, right? If the game sucks and it has a crappy launch, then yeah, that's not doing you any favors at all. But yeah, in a case like this, like WoW was like the best game in 2004 by a mile, I would say. I'm

[10:09] it's the best game in 2026. So, I'm very biased here. Um, people are going to stick around. It's a great game. You know,

[10:21] >> I actually mean that they were really, really mad, which they politely expressed on the forums. Yeah, this is the true dinosaur era. So, people are people have more options and people aren't as patient. I mean, both of those

[10:36] things I think are true, but let's just close our eyes for a second here and and close our eyes for a second here and and put my example to the test. Say Riot comes out with, you know, the eventual League MMO and

[10:48] say you basically can't play for the first 3 weeks because it's so laggy. It's so much server downtime. It's brutal. You can't play, but it's like amazing. Like classic WoW amazing. Like it's so

[11:03] just just, you know, bear with me. It's an example. Say it's amazing. You really think a a shaky three weeks or shaky month and a half would would kill it? Or by and people like, "Let me get on this amazing game that I haven't been able to

[11:17] play." My point is the game itself is more important and people like to blame this like first couple days or whatever. And when when to me it's like no, is the game good? Right? Is the game good? Before Discord wiped out every other

[11:31] form of communication, people would post on their specific servers community class forums, PvP forums to complain why their class sucks and everyone else is overpowered. And of course, general chat >> warriors are overowered in particular

[11:45] were extra spicy because the game had a pretty brutal scheduled 8 to 12 hour maintenance period once a week on this day. And so due to these unforeseen levels of popularity and the technical limitations at the time, it wasn't

[12:00] uncommon for these 8-hour maintenances to turn into 10, then 12, then 16. And in the most extreme cases, the game would be down for days at a time. Things were also amplified by the fact that Tuesday is unique in the sense because

[12:15] that's of course when all of the raids reset. So players were very eager to get back into it for raid night and to get their loot. So, >> it got >> we might try this guy today. Gnome only

[12:28] >> we might try this guy today. Gnome only >> or tomorrow or sometime, but >> Crazy. People were so utterly obsessed with the game at this point that even into withdrawal and fending for their next fix like a crackhead. They would

[12:43] band together and create threads threatening lawsuits, demand refunds. >> So, I've made a crazy crazy take before. I think I was playing Dune or something. I can't remember, but I I made a crazy take before. I don't know if you guys

[12:58] will agree with me here. It's better for a game to have server outages. And just hear me out. It's better for a game to have server outages and lag on day one

[13:13] have server outages and lag on day one than a game to have to feel dead on day one. And my analogy is like when you log in and you don't see anyone on day one.

[13:25] That's really bad. It's kind of like if you go to a store and they're launching a new product or whatever and there's a massive line and you can't actually get in. It's almost like in a way it's a it's a bad thing

[13:39] because you can't get what you wanted, but it's a good thing for the store cuz means there's so many people trying to log in that the servers break. Let me give you a few examples. New World, right? New World those first few days

[13:52] like people couldn't play. Classic era, right? Um New World might actually not term it failed, but it did really well for a few months, right? And those first few days people literally couldn't play at all. Um classic era 2019, classic era

[14:06] 2004. Um you know, they had to just people couldn't play, so they had to everything's on fire. But what I'm trying to say is it's an indication that a lot of people are trying to play, right? Servers going down, lag, lots of

[14:23] people trying to log in is the digital equivalent of lining up in a store and just means there's lots of hype and attention. So what I my take is I think it's actually, weirdly enough, better than having an empty store and having no

[14:38] one in. It's an indication that you made a problem to have, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. >> Which Blizzard did actually hand out quite regularly in the cases of the

[14:50] extended maintenance. It would quite often abuse the poor customer service representatives who had the unfortunate job of being the bearer of bad news and updating angry forumgoers of extended extended maintenances. Or, god forbid,

[15:03] that you were a moderator of a class forum. Or on a daily basis, you would read threads of people who played that class saying that they sucked and were underpowered and others who didn't play the class saying that they're

[15:15] overpowered and they require no skill. It got so bad that one moderator named Serak actually had a mental breakdown during the height of Vanilla's popularity. People [\h__\h] with him so much that he started creating ambiguous

[15:28] threads laced with angsty poetry as a way to lash back at the rowdy community. Sign showed that he was fired the very next day after his meltdown. The CSRs would be pretty ruthlessly trolled and messed with in general, which would

[15:43] continue on far past vanilla. But this frothing at the mouth fervor during vanilla, particularly in regards to class balance and the extended Tuesday maintenance debacles always made for quite an amusing way to pass the time

[15:55] while you constantly refresh the game in the background. Cuz remember this was before everybody had dual monitors. Yeah, >> good old days. This >> is tough.

[16:19] popular pastime for kids and adults, but a new generation of games is taking happening right now. >> Next, I wanted to go over something a little more meta and just touch on the general fervor and craze when the game

[16:32] was first taking off in popularity. As time has passed and the digital world continues to evolve, there's been a certain desensitization to it. However, if we were to rewind to the past in 2004, some of you may remember just how

[16:47] interacting with others over the internet was still a relatively new concept. Websites and programs that are considered to be quite staple today, such as YouTube, Twitch, Discord X, Instagram, and so on, simply didn't

[17:00] exist yet. And the internet in terms of gaming as people knew it was a collection of fan sites and third party discussion boards to gather around the biggest social media website at the time would probably space. So with MMORPG

[17:15] being such a social genre where players could form these in-game communities and guilds and friendships and not just that but to work together to overcome these monumental challenges was such an intriguing and unique concept at the

[17:30] time. It wasn't the first, but it was one of the first widely used forms of social media and many people's first experience in sharing in online environment. It was a virtual world in every sense and due to its timeconuming.

[17:43] >> For me, my first experience with this was Runescape. And I don't I don't even know what like how old I was. When did I play Runescape? Like 2002, I guess, 2001 or something around there. So I must have been

[17:56] have been like nine or Yeah. born in 93. Bro, Runescape was just so mind-boggling to me how I could sit in Lumbridge and like buy and sell things. Like, it was just like, whoa, this is way better than

[18:09] anything else ever. Yeah. And that's when I got 99 wood cutting. >> Nature of getting around and leveling and gearing up. It was something of a second life for many of its players. And with this constant stream of updates

[18:22] being rolled out, it was also a journey that never ended and still hasn't to this day. It seemed as if everyone played it. Your friends, co-workers, family members, classmates, teachers. It was all over the news, depicted in

[18:36] either a positive or a negative light. >> He says children or adults who become obsessed with video games often have a history of struggling with depression or anxiety. The game, she says, is simply a catalyst, similar to drugs, alcohol, or

[18:49] gambling. And ever since its rise in popularity, the race was on for hundreds and hundreds of clones that were attempting to bask in its glow. It became front and center in discussions of video game addiction as stories of

[19:03] people doing crazy [\h__\h] for the sake of the game would slowly come out. Friendships ended, over raid loot, some people stabbed each other, people sold their bodies for in-game gold, as we've seen. Multi-million dollar botting

[19:16] industries have formed around it. Funerals have been crashed. It was a veritable online theme park that only grew. And combining this with the fervor and intrigue of social media as a whole, it got crazy. It would be referenced in

[19:30] every corner of pop culture. Lions span blocks at midnight launches for the world was still in the physical media age. The internet and social media has undoubtedly changed the world and how people interact with each other in

[19:45] remarkable ways. And for many, it all started with the rise of World of Warcraft as it lied in one of the beginning chapters in this worldwide adoption of the digital age. And it was certainly one of the most crazy and

[19:57] certainly one of the most crazy and memorable moments in gaming history. Jeez. Jeez,

[20:10] Runescape. As usual, we're going to end the video with a nonw World of Warcraft item to mix things up. And today, we're going to be taking a little trip to the >> Ah, I love this game >> of Gillanor. This one was a little

[20:23] something of a challenge series to complete every quest in the game blind, but luckily with some help, I'm able to cover it in a spoiler-free way. The year is 2006 and it's quite an exciting time for the game as they just had a new

[20:37] skill added called construction, a non-combat skill. It allowed players to build and decorate homes to add some aesthetic and functional gameplay to the everexpanding world. And as was custom with any skill release, players raced

[20:51] each other to be the first to max it out at level 99, which was something that required millions of XP, a lot of gold time, and very little sleep. They competed against each other for many days until finally the person to claim

[21:06] the first 99 was found. A player named Cursedio, who also happened to be one of the richest players in the game, having earned billions of gold to his name. >> And to celebrate, he decided to host a party in his house, inviting pretty much

[21:18] anyone and everyone to go check out all of the new features. >> just to hang out and have fun. However, as you would guess, things eventually got out of hand. That must have been a crazy party swarmed into the festivities

[21:31] which resulted in him having to manually kick them out. One of these attendees is quite important to the story. He was a player named Dural 321 who is an avid PvPer in the game. PvP Runescape as was the case with many older MMOR RPGs was

[21:47] quite intense. It did operate on a consensual basis in the game. There are wilderness where players can attack each other with most other areas being a safe haven designed for questing and leveling. However, as a trade-off for

[22:01] being optional, it was also incredibly high stakes as other players could actually loot you if they killed you and take all of your equipment no matter how hard or long you worked for it. While for some players, it's quite an alluring

[22:15] way to play. For others, it's a little too much and it's enough for them to never set foot into these PvP areas. So, this was all well and good, and these their own categories and play all they

[22:28] want, just like any other MMO. However, quite appropriately on the morning of 6606 through a glitch, PvP was no longer a choice as when Cursed 2 kicked out the partygoers, something bugged out and it

[22:43] caused some of the players, including Dural 321, to have the ability to attack anyone, anywhere. What >> yes, he could also take all of their >> Luckily, I never heard about the game's rules. They laid down their arms and

[22:58] they promptly alerted Jagex of what was going on. Nah, just kidding. I mean, come on. This is the internet. Of course, what happened next was that they went straight to their bank. They armed themselves with the best gear that they

[23:10] had and slaughtered everyone in sight. And to make matters worse is that fortunately for them, but unfortunate for, you know, little Timmy getting ready to kill some goblins, it happened to be the early morning in the UK when

[23:23] all of this was going on, which is where Jagex is based. So there was no one even awake to go that was >> essentially the equivalent of a little baby animal being left behind the pack as the hyenas close in on it. And so

[23:37] they ran across the world massacring everyone in their path. Some of them were lone wolves, others banded together, forming these gang squads with Dural 3:1 being the most well-known out of all of these players as he was

[23:50] particularly effective in his killing spree. People reacted in interesting ways naturally. Some ran away in terror, some logged off, others tried to warn people to bank their items before they were killed. Some tried fighting back

[24:04] and the rest were certified S-grade goblins who just followed the gang squad around and simply looted the drops because it was first come first serve. racking up the most kills >> during 3:1 kind of struggled to get the

[24:17] loot. But he did make out with some extremely valuable items including a party hat which is now a mythic item within the game worth thousands of real life dollars as it was only obtainable during a onetime Christmas event.

[24:31] trading it to a friend to hold on to as he knew his account was pretty much developers rolled out of bed in their underwear and sprinted to the offices on. Yeah, >> it went on for quite a while until Jagex

[24:44] actually figured out what was happening. A moderator named Murdoch teleported around and banned anybody he saw abusing the glitch. While another mod named Ash worked overtime on figuring out and solving what act Bro, call me old

[24:58] school, but I feel like yeah, may maybe this is a dumb take, but having GMs flying around manually banning people seems like it would actually be somewhat effective. You just look around and be like, hm, yeah, that's that's against

[25:15] Let's get this guy out of here. You know, it seems like it would actually I it's like grunt work, right? You're just like sitting there on your computer, but having a couple of these people seems like it would actually

[25:29] kind of be a good thing cuz you can just see it happening, you know, >> caused the chaos to begin with. Eventually, all of the stragglers were found, their accounts were permanently closed. The bug ended up being fixed and

[25:44] the players were furious, especially those who lost insanely valuable items in the chaos. They would of course make tickets appealing for return for their items. But unfortunately for them, it was about to get worse as Jagex soon

[25:58] made a statement saying that they couldn't return anything as too many fake requests were being made for the quite small team to handle. back. This is why we can't have nice things, guys. Unbelievable. Oh, yeah. I

[26:11] lost my party hat. >> Would also affect those who weren't affected by the glitch, which would be unfair to them. Dural and many others were banned for abusing the glitch, including even the first 99 construction

[26:24] cursed steel. But it wasn't for unintentionally causing the glitch. He ended up catching a stray as in the investigation of figuring out what happened, Jagex found out that he was heavily involved in RMT and banned him.

[26:37] One of the richest players in the game and the first 99 construction lost his account on complete bad luck and chance. >> The massacre today goes down as one of the most historical events in the history of the MMORPG.

[26:53] Even celebrating its 10y year anniversary in 2016. world PvP everywhere for a day or something.

[27:11] seen, the world of the MMORPG is quite wild and crazy, but as I always say, we're just getting started. So check back soon for another episode. Mad season. There we go. I have to say my favorite one out of all of these for

[27:26] one. The Runescape one was kind of fire, it. That's probably why. I knew about all this WoW stuff for the most part. Um yeah.