Much agreed. I missed any news of this "event" and would like more info on what it was, what it tried to do, and what it ended up doing.

+1. This post is a great example of non-journalism, after reading it i haven't got the slightest clue what it's talking about.

Shame not to see more realistic and balanced "report" regarding this incident.
I followed this early on and can say that you wont find the same "evidence" now you could earlier. Videos/sound have been edited. The actions were done to more than one server, you can hear and see the Swifty character laughing. The actions went from one server, then after crash to a second then a THIRD. One doesn't have to have many brain cells functioning to realize after the first or second time the consequences.
Was he treated differently? Would you or I be banned? Sure we would be banned and it would be reconsidered.
Many more unfair things of importance in the world than some pseudo-celebrity of a internet game getting his account banned for being frankly a jerk. Those that continue to proclaim his actions were unintentional wont be convinced otherwise. Its easier for Blizz to unban him than to deal with the manufactured fall out. Blizz is taking the path of least resistance, sure they caved. This was going to be a pain for them. Unfortunately those frenzied by his live stream to follow and spam will probably be the ones who's bans stay. Ban the mindless follower not the person encouraging it......makes sense to me, yep. (note that was sarcastic)
This is one of those things about gaming that is good for a rofl till you realize it only highlights that our "fantasy" world suffers from all the same unfairness and character flaws as our real world.
I'm sure he is a "nice guy" but oh my if he is half the person that people are making him out to be he would NOT be editing videos/sound to make himself look more "innocent" - he would be stepping up saying "Oh my did I mess up, I'm stupid please forgive me".
How about it Swifty - time to man up?
Just keep him off my server!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS Razor not impressed at all....

I haven't followed it very much but I *think* Swifty is some sort of WoW semi-celeb (i.e. he's not famous outside of WoW?) and had some sort of giveaway event sponsored by his sponsor (whoever it is). He hid a level 1 toon in some capitol on some server and it was a giant game of hide-n-seek.

Apparently, once he was found, tons and tons of his fans converged on that one server - and either crashed it or almost crashed it. Some idiot ringleader took over and, against Swifty's wishes, got people to jump from server to server, spamming emotes, etc, crashing those servers as well.

Swift was just running a fun community event and his ban was undone/reversed as a result. The idiots who intentionally spammed emotes to try to crash servers are gone and good riddance to them.

(some of this may be inaccurate; please correct me if it is)

ya, I have no idea wtf this article is about.

Yup, no idea who this chap is.

Yes, swifty is a WoW 'celeb' and is usually a nice guy in his youtube (i.e. NOT a jerk like TotalBisctuit).

What he did was host a livestream, and so many people were there that they crashed the server. In his livestream, he joked about it, and told people to go onto another server to crash it too. This got a Blizzard response, where immediately after he said that crashing the server wasn't his intention.

Whether this deserves a ban, I'm undecided.

I suppose it comes down to who is responsible for the servers being purposefully taken down. It says that he was unbanned, but it should also say who WAS banned, IMO. Otherwise it's easy to take it as Blizz-Caved.

From what I read, orchestrators (his guild, if not him) were encouraging members to make hunters/warlocks so that the pets would add to the server load.

You can't tell now due to all the video's of the time being edited at this point, and the heresay is back and forth one when and what Swifty actually knew/did. But someone should be banned for crashing three servers.

Seperate from that, Razor should drop the guy, if he wants to rep their products with guildmates like this, then it reflects on them.

Abbi: While I agree with most of your comments, it should be noted that Razor is most definitely NOT unhappy with Swifty. Look how much attention he got! And now everyone gets to hear the name Razor.

Fragments: LOL I meant I am not impressed by Razor. Actually I saw their infantile responses while looking for a b-day present for my son. Given their obvious corporate maturity of about 8 yoa.... I will do the only protest that counts...buy another brand.

Alright, I have no idea who this guy is. I don't know what he did. This article is all I've seen or heard about him.

Who: "Swifty livestreams events with his guild on occasion and even hosts parts of the stream himself. Being the WoW gamer celebrity that he is, his stream attracts a good number of viewers."

Swifty is a WoW celebrity that livestreams events that attract viewers.


What: "Swifty, along with numerous other players, were banned due to server disruption violations"

"Over the course of the day, Blizzard reviewed the information and decided to unban Swifty."

Swifty and a lot of other folks were banned, but the ban decision was later reversed.

Why: "Just to clarify, the decision to change some of the bans to suspensions was actually a correction, not an exception. We reviewed the activity and felt that based on the evidence, the original decision to roll out the ban hammer was incorrect, and the appropriate action, for those bans that were undone, would have been to issue a suspension."

The ban decision was reversed because the evidence proved it was unwarranted.

When: Recently is implied. It ouldn't be news otherwise.

How: Magic. Blizzard magic. as to the How of the server crashes: "the emote spamming and influx of players brought down many servers."

What exactly are you expecting? When I read an article in the news about a celebrity getting arrested I don't expect to get a full filmography and rap sheet in the article.

Just because you do not like the decision that was made does not make the story poorly written. All the information you need to know was presented. Also, it does not mean the story, which is a presentation of facts, is unbalanced because it did not insert any ideological snippets condemning one side or glorifying the other. In fact, the lack of such snippets shows quite the opposite.

"Shame not to see more realistic and balanced "report" regarding this incident."

@Abbi

Wonderful post. But, honestly, WoWInsider is known for slanting its articles any which way it wants. They don't write from a neutral perspective in the slightest. Just keep that in mind.