The curious case of Ferarro
by Adam Holisky 
May 31st 2009 at 2:30PM
We, along with many of you, have been monitoring the curious case surrounding one of the most prominent Paladin bloggers, Ferarro. We originally did a 15 Minutes of Fame with Ferarro on May 26th. The article was about her life as a blogger, a paladin, and a game tester for Blizzard.
After the article was written, a few things happened.
First, Jagoex posted a story on Ferarro's use of pictures from the website TechDarling. Ferarro was claiming she was the person pictured, when in fact she wasn't. Sarah Townsend, the author of TechDarling, has stated she doesn't know who Ferarro is.
Secondly, Ferraro's blog, Paladin Schmaladin, suddenly switched over to privacy mode blocking anyone from reading it who didn't have an invitation directly from Ferraro. Her Twitter account had the message "Stalkers are cool," and was then locked until it was deleted completely a day later. Her WoW character disappeared via a likely server transfer, and her contributions at RetPaladin.com were removed completely. Update: After this article was posted, Ferarro has once again made her blog, and thus her statement, private. However you can view a google cache of the page.
This began raising many eyebrows and brought on a lot of speculation. All of which ended today when she posted claiming herself as multiple persons, which after investigation is now brought into question as well.
Initially Ferarro announced she was being stalked and something got serious enough that warranted removing herself from the internet. That would be understandable since someone's life and safety is much more important than a World of Warcraft blog.
But others in various forum posts thought that she felt the heavy hand of Blizzard come down on her for potentially lying about her involvement with the company.
Still others thought that is was just a way of clamping up and removing herself after embarrassing facts were revealed that more or less permanently tarnished her credibility.
All this speculation played out on the official WoW forums (most threads have now been deleted), and via the comments section over at Jagoex's site. That speculation continued until this morning when Ferarro posted a response.
She basically says that the person we've come to know as Ferarro has been used by seven different people. Only one of these people writes as Ferarro at a time and only one uses Twitter. Each time a new person takes over Ferarro everything is handed over. With one exception: the Ferarro WoW account has been passed around "early on", although it's currently being played by "Ferarro #3." Note that the sharing of WoW accounts like this is in direct violation of the Terms of Service and you're subject to severe penalties, including an outright and immediate ban.
As for the TechDarling pictures, those were used without TechDarling's permission and do not represent the real Ferarro.
What's true and what's not?
We've investigated, and have determined based on IP address records of comments left by Ferarro on WoW.com between July of 2008 and May of 2009 that the comments all came from the same small subnet of IPs, and are all geographically very local to one another. This means that unless "Ferarro #1" through "Ferarro #7" live within a few miles of each other, they're the same person.
An IP address is a unique address that your internet provider gives to you when you use the internet. It used to change a lot back in the day, but now if you have a cable modem it'll only change once in a while. All internet service providers have a group of IPs they use to give out to their customers.
The same small ISP gave out the same couple IP numbers to Ferraro during the time that she claims to have been different people. In particular Ferarro claims that her current personality took over the blog in January of 2009. However our IP records directly contradict this statement. They directly indicate that it is the exact same Ferarro commenting here before and after this period.
It's possible that "Ferarro #7" has been the only one commenting here over the past couple years, but that's unlikely given her statements on the post made via her blog today. According to the blog post, the email address associated with Ferarro is turned over completely to the new Ferarro owner each time, and the new Ferarro even goes to great lengths to forward emails to previous Ferarros when appropriate.
Given all comments are associated with this email address, we have a clear continuity of IP and email addresses that directly refute her story.
What about the 15-minutes of Fame Article we posted?
It's a shame things have turned out about this. Lisa Poisso gave Ferarro multiple opportunities to clarify, refute, and expand upon things in the article, and Ferarro never took her up on those opportunities. In particular the photos were directly questioned, and Ferarro brushed aside questions concerning them.
We've since taken down the TechDarling photos and have placed a disclaimer at the beginning of the article.
What's happening to Paladin Schmaladin?
We'll have to wait and see.
It's unfortunate things have turned out like this. Paladin Schmaladin is an excellent resource for Paladin and WoW players in general, and it's sad to see the authors' actions tarnish this otherwise reputable source of information.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 12)
hammy May 31st 2009 2:34PM
WOW, just WOW.
Prettycake May 31st 2009 3:49PM
i love the internet.
artifex May 31st 2009 9:58PM
In a very literal since, it is WoW.
What's WoW without drama and people claiming to be things they are not, and stealing and drama?
And we love it. (Did I mention there's drama?)
artifex May 31st 2009 9:59PM
SENSE and sensibility have both deserted me. :(
klink-o Jun 2nd 2009 12:32AM
I concur artifex. It's like, is there a grown up present we can get to put things back in line?
Rin Nov 1st 2009 9:42PM
This intrigues me so much. Ferraro, it looks like, is obviously someone will severe mental and identity problems for him/her to EVER think it was OK to do something like this and be able to get away with it.
I actually pity Ferraro, because they are obviously a very confused individual who probably assumed that the only way to get fast attention was to be a "OMG HAWT GAMER GURL!!!!1!!!!111"
Kylenne May 31st 2009 4:21PM
Whomever Ferraro actually is, "identity problems" really have nothing to do with this. Some people are just pathological attention whores and the anonymous nature of the internet feeds their pathology.
It happens all the time in capital-F fandom, particularly on Livejournal. To the point where entire sites have popped up mocking the phenomenon.
Rin May 31st 2009 6:09PM
Too true. I understand that people do this all the time, but for something to happen like this on such a grand scale is ridiculous and I think it's safe to say that it has grown past the usual "LOOKIT IM A HAWT CHICK PAY ATENSHUN 2 ME".
Admittedly, I didn't read the whole of the article when I made my first post and I only have recently read about the multiple Ferraros. I must say I am shocked at the gall of these people. Not so much in them pretending to be something they're not on the internet (we all do that, don't we? ;D) , but that fact that the first person basically stole an existing person's identity without their knowledge, and the ones who took up the reigns after that saw nothing wrong with it. How could any of them have possibly thought that stealing pictures and claiming them to be their own is alright? I stand by my opinion that the first Ferraro had some very real identity/mental problems and the next one's shared in that at least a little bit.
I was on this blog not long before this happened and I noticed they had a short post about them getting a baggage claim ticket that said "1337" on it. They posted a picture and a short, humorous comment, and that was it. Well, that post was also on Techdarling, meaning not only were the Ferraros, the current one included, who spent so long trying to rationally explain all this in her post, were not only just stealing pictures of this girl, they were stealing entire posts and ideas. This is scary in that it seems like the Ferraros were slowly taking this girl's entire life. Had this never come to light, who knows how far these Ferraros would have taken this.
TL;DR I really don't think any of these people who did this were mentally sound. There is no way someone would try and rationalize the using of someone else's identity like that.
West May 31st 2009 7:13PM
i do love the answer to this question in the context of all this:
http://www.wow.com/2009/05/26/15-minutes-of-fame-ferarro-revs-up-part-2/
"We'll bet not many readers miss noticing your profile picture, which appears on your blog and on your comments here at WoW.com. Do you feel you get a certain amount of **attention** from the **very real-life image** that you put on out on the 'net?
Ah, the pictures: the double-edged sword. It's funny: if I post my picture next to articles -- you know, the way millions of other authors do in magazines, newspapers and blogs around the world -- some people yell and scream that **I'm an attention whore**." (emphasis added)
Delicious.
Christoffer May 31st 2009 9:09PM
Big words scare me...
How about we just put it down as he/she is a lier.. simple? Plus the site shouldn't be hindered because of its user.. the site itself is very useful... so what the person told a lie/is still lying? Should it matter if all that person is doing is giving you tips and tricks about WoW?
Thorie May 31st 2009 2:37PM
Ferarro stated she knew what the next expansion pack was during an interview with Blizzard. She said "I know what the next expansion will be, but not whats on patch 3.2".
This made me raise an eyebrow from the beginning, because its completely unlike Blizzard to just give out details about an expansion months before anyone else hears about it.
Arguljesus May 31st 2009 2:46PM
That wasn't Ferarro if I remember correctly it was Invisusira who twittered it.
Ryan May 31st 2009 3:26PM
rofl Invisusira
VoLiTioN May 31st 2009 7:52PM
smh @ David... I mean, Invis.
Cuth May 31st 2009 2:40PM
Good piece of investigative work. I'm sure more digging and uncovering can be done but I'm glad you guys have taken it upon you to find out the truth. Honestly I don't think its that big of a deal considering there are plenty of resources out there. Nevertheless, it still seems to be quite the scandal out there in the WoW world, which means that WoW isn't as "unimportant" as some people claim...
Basically, Ferarro has failed us all.
soatari May 31st 2009 2:39PM
What is this, a tabloid? One of those trashy newstand rags?
Cuth May 31st 2009 2:42PM
How is this trashy? Obviously they've done some investigative work. They aren't putting down Ferarro, just stating the finds they've made in the past few days of research. This is a decent piece of journalism, not a tabloid...
Niomi May 31st 2009 2:59PM
Tabloids do investigative journalism also. They're still trashy, because the stories are irrelevant at best. Just like this story.
havitech May 31st 2009 3:05PM
@Niomi
Seeing as how this person was a regular commenter on this site, and even participated in an interview for one of its articles, I think it is completely relevant. Personally, I would be surprised if WoWInsider didn't write something concerning these events.
Gryph667 May 31st 2009 3:08PM
Considering they just did an extensive interview with F, doing this follow up is very relevant, especially to them. If you personally don't find it relevant, that's fine.