The Queue: Quelling subversion
by Alex Ziebart 
Apr 14th 2010 at 2:00PM
You may or may not remember my poll from the other day. You know, Taco Bell vs. KFC? I was impressed with how many people yelled at me to learn how to cook so I don't need to eat fast food. Come on, guys. Give me some credit here! I know how to cook. I cook all the time. Sometimes you just want some fast food! Seriously, I can cook. I promise. Tell you what, if any of you magically fall down my chimney one day, I'll whip up a nice spinach quiche for dinner. Unless you'd prefer a pot of chili or some shrimp scampi? Maybe even potato pancakes if you're that kind of guy or gal. We can have a piece of old-fashioned slab apple cake for dessert. Family recipe!
Zulix asked ...
"Just rolled a BE, and In Silvermoon City by the entrance, there is a 'harassed citizen' surrounded by guards, and you talk to the guards they say it doesn't concern you. What's the lore behind that?"
The government of Silvermoon is stifling dissension by force and mind control. Not everybody supports the current leadership, not everybody agrees with the direction their race is taking. Free speech is not a right the citizens of Silvermoon have, and "troublemakers" are put down in rather harsh ways.
Look around the city, there's more things like that. The Arcane Guardians spread propaganda, things like that.
Zayd asked ...
"Have any of the WoW.com team ever deleted a max level character?"
I can't speak for the entire team, but I don't think I've ever deleted a max-level character. I've come close, though. I deleted a level 65 warrior in the Burning Crusade because he was a night elf male, which I'm pretty sure is the most hideous race/gender combination possible in the game. I got tired of seeing his flipper/oar hands and watching him slap monsters with his one-handed swords rather than cutting or stabbing them. It was so bad I could not play the character anymore, and they didn't have race changes implemented yet. I just got rid of him.
I only just recently decided to get a new warrior up to the level cap, and I'm glad I did. I think protection warriors are incredibly fun, moreso than almost any other class/spec combination in the game.
MaDaBr14 asked ...
"Why is Highlord Tirion Fordring almost twice the size of players inside of ICC? I don't believe he was this large in the Light's Hope Chapel event. He has to be at least 11 feet tall!"
Notable NPCs in raid zones are always significantly larger than player characters so they can be picked out easily. Not only does it give them a clear vibe of importance, it makes sure they don't blend in with the 10 or 25 players in the room with them. In the case of Tirion Fordring, it's also the matter that he goes toe to toe with the Lich King briefly at the end of Icecrown Citadel. The Lich King needs to be raid boss size. Tirion facing him down as a regularly sized human would be visually laughable.
Tom asked ...
"My account was recently hacked, but in the restoration process 12 Eternal Earths became 6 Primordial Saronites. I submitted a ticket about it and the reply I received was a short message saying, 'Sorry we weren't able to talk to you personally - we're trying to cut down the wait time.' The message didn't address the Primordial Saronite but it did say that sometimes during the item restoration process things don't get updated until you zone or log out.
My ticket was responded to but didn't specifically address the issue. I've zoned plenty of times and logged several times as well, and yet the Saronites remain. Am I free to do what I will with them? If not, what might happen to me if I were to sell them?"
I recommend that you do not use them or sell them, and try filing a ticket again. Blizzard is perfectly capable of banning you for their errors if you take advantage of it. That might seem strange/unfair, but it's perfectly within their power. Chances that they'll care about something like Primordial Saronite are low, but you'd much rather be safe than sorry. There's also a chance a GM will just tell you can keep them because they were a crazy gift from an account thief, so just ticket again.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
devilsei Apr 14th 2010 2:06PM
Damn, wish when my account was hacked I got a bunch of primordial saronite...
instead I got 3 stacks of adamantium/tite bars...
oh... and a primordial nether too...
yay...
tatsumasa Apr 14th 2010 2:35PM
do the right thing. file another ticket and wait.
i once saw a lvl 80 selling stacks of stuff at good (not incredible) deals. i bought a couple things, said thanks, and thought i was done. then he whispered me to ask if i wanted to buy some more stuff, stuff that was mats for a completely different profession than the first. i became suspicious and jokingly asked if he had robbed his guild bank. he didn't respond at all except to ask a few minutes later if i wanted to buy something else completely different. i then looked him up.
he had just left his guild a few minutes earlier. turns out he didn't rob his guild bank, but he was selling all his stuff. i filed a ticket and actually got to talk to a gm about it the next day (or few days, i forget.) the account owner had reported his account as being hacked. i asked the gm what i should do with the stuff i bought. i didn't want stolen goods, but i didn't want to be out the few hundred gold i'd forked out either. the gm told me they'd investigate and if i hadn't heard anything by a certain date, only then could i do with the items what i wanted. i stuck them in my bank and waited. the gms never took them so i was able to sell them about two months later.
Narshe Apr 14th 2010 2:22PM
I got 5 primordial saronite, but i think the hacker had used my frost emblems to purchase them. Even though i got all my emblems and items restored i ended up with extra ore, epic gems, gold and eternals. I sold it all.
I never want to get hacked, but at least i got something in return (thanks to Blizz too for a "no questions asked" restoration, they went out of their way to help me).
Arkkis Apr 14th 2010 2:36PM
After I was hacked, I had 5k gold more than before i had been hacked (I'm assuming all money made by selling my stuff). I reported it along with everything else, but blizz never did anything about it, so I saw it as a little gift for dealing with my hacked account :)
trefpoid Apr 14th 2010 2:59PM
my girlfriend got hacked and the nice chinese thief obviously used any emblems she had to buy whatever he could. After restoration she had 2 primodial saronite and that pet u buy with you faction in the argent tournament. She sold everything. Thanks chinese thief!
DeathByPie Apr 14th 2010 3:30PM
Speaking of "lucky" hacks: one of my guildies got hacked a few months ago. He was able to reset his password and regain control, and found that all of his characters except a midlevel mage had been deleted. But once he checked his inventory, hooo boy.
Stacks and stacks of primordial saronite. Uncut epic gems of every color. Some 20-odd bikes, and a ton of BoE ICC epics. The hackers had obviosuly been using his character as a mule, and he had interrupted them before they sent off all of their goods.
He did face a dilemma. Report the hack to Blizzard and restore his characters (and potentially lose the valuables), or keep the loot and have a zillion gold.
Well. I guess he didn't much care for his deleted toons (mainly a level 80 death knight in heroic gear), so now he's gold-capped across two toons and has more cash than he knows what to do with. I get the impression that being rich isn't all that it's cracked up to be, since he seems pretty bored, but hey.
mtsadowski Apr 14th 2010 3:42PM
I got a rock.
/obscure?
Zombiemold Apr 14th 2010 3:55PM
When I was hacked I also received TONS of primordial saronite, yet I g ot all my badges back. I bought my girl a traveler's mammoth XD
http://felfire.com/
Mystur Apr 14th 2010 4:12PM
@mtsadowski
Hahahahaha! Stupid Blockhead...
JC_Icefox Apr 14th 2010 5:11PM
Of all the Mtsadowskis in the world, you're the Mtsadowskiest...
Biskit333 Apr 14th 2010 6:54PM
When I was hacked I logged back in to an inventory full of saronite ore and eternals. I filed a ticked, but the GM's response was just to wait for the account specialist who was handling the restoration to see what to do with it. A day or so later all of my things showed up in the mail with no mention of the ore, so I sold it all. I only made a few hundred gold, the real boon was that the hacker had leveled my mining from the mid 200s to max in the process, a grind that I had been putting off for some time.
Matthew Apr 14th 2010 9:47PM
@tatsumasa:
I think you were speaking to the guy who robbed my guild bank!
Gothia Apr 15th 2010 3:00AM
While some of these stories have a happy ending I believe the theme of this should be to buy an authenticator so you do not have to go through this ordeal again. Btw, there are many more sad stories of people being hacked than their are happy endings. Get an authenticator and protect your account from thieves.
Memo to the racist above - Then economy is China has grown in the 5 year that Wow has been out and while some of these thieves may have been from there does not deserve a blanket statement against all of the Chinese people.
Kilseker Apr 15th 2010 9:47AM
I got hacked over a month ago and managed to change my battle.net account info before the hacker was done that same morning... I know because my rogue's mining skill which was lvl 1 had been powerleveled to almost 400. It was ironic because I was in the middle of grinding rep for netherwing and mining opened up an extra rep daily lol. I was pretty lucky, all the hacker did was sell everything my chars had on them that COULD be sold and left the emblem bought stuff. He even moved my pvp gear into my bank lol. Guild bank left practically untouched cause I had very little access. Blizz restored everything in a day. I love it when hackers fail. Wish they were all more like my guy or better yet cease to exist. :)
Ebylon Apr 14th 2010 2:09PM
The last question also smatters of what happened with the Martin Thunder fiasco last year. If you get something questionable, don't ever ever ever suspect it's a gift from on high until a GM says to you 'This is a gift from on high'.
erknost Apr 14th 2010 3:03PM
Do you think that Highlord Tirion Fordring can take down King Varian Wrynn? Because in ICC Tirion it is a lot bigger then Varian, and in a Raid environment the size usually represent the power of the character.
Ostentaneous Apr 14th 2010 3:37PM
So what happened last year? I looked it up and it appears to be a GM weapon. Was somebody given one of those on accident or what?
Ostentaneous Apr 14th 2010 3:39PM
Guess I should read the comment after this one. /facepalm
trefpoid Apr 14th 2010 3:43PM
He claims he got it in his mail, but that's way too fishy.. he got a shirt that killed anything in a 30 yard radius if I recall correctly. So he just went to Ulduar (when it was he newest and most awesome raid) and pretty much oneshoted everything, scoring every achievement u can imagine. He and his guild got banned and all the loot deleted. That was one dangerous gnome.
Skrotus Apr 14th 2010 10:24PM
He wasn't lying, he did get it in his mail, a GM accidentally mailed it when restoring an item for him. Items are all identified by a simple number code so it's a fairly easy mistake to make. But there's no other way he could have received such an item.