#0 - July 18, 2008, 6:37 p.m.
The details of this paragraph are convoluted, and I put them together as well as I could using the sources I had available. Yesterday (Thursday, July 18) at approximately 7 pm a member of my guild recieved an invite from someone he did not know. The inviter was a member of another guild on my server. My guildmate was then promoted to Raid Leader, at which point a number of members of this other guild zoned into Black Temple. They then disbanded the existing raid and formed a new one, consisting entirely of members of their guild.
Back to things that I personally witnessed:
They killed our Illidari Council, and then hearthed out leaving several people behind who consistently griefed our attempts on Illidan Stormrage. The techniques they used included attempting to spread parasites onto the raid, standing a great distance away from the Flames of Azzinoth causing them to enrage, and starting the boss event repeatedly while we tried to ressurect fallen people. When occasionally all of them were dead for the duration of an attempt, they would not release spirit and therefore prohibited us from using more than 22 people on any attempt. Our top 22 people could almost certainly have killed the boss, but by the time we got a decent attempt in our official raid time was over and we had to rely on new people. The members of this other guild that were not inside spent hours repeatedly jumping at the instance portal to get in in the event that someone would disconnect. We still have not killed Illidan, and they have had members of their guild standing in our instance all night (presumably using auto clicker software) and seem to have no intention of leaving. It is now 1:15 on Friday, July 18. It appears that they will prevent us from killing Illidan this week.
We contacted GMs almost immediately after we found out our raid ID had been compromised. Many GMs stated that there was nothing they could do, and that managing our raid ID was our own responsibility. We of course pointed out that even if they were allowed to zone into our instance, griefing bosses of the same faction is considered a serious offense. At least one GM physically zoned his character into the instance, where he personally observed members of this other guild enraging flames. The GM took minimal action against them. He occasionally put some kind of debuff on them that caused them to be frozen in place and unable to act. This was ineffective, as our griefers still caused the flames to enrage simply do to their location in the room. The GM also tried repeatedly staring the event to kill the griefers as they rezzed, but when this was happening the griefers left a paladin outside the boss room to run in and rez the others every time the boss reset.
Everyone in this guild pays to play this game. My understanding is that Blizzard considers same-faction griefing to be against the spirit of the game and a serious offense. I would think, therefore, that it would be appropriate for Blizzard's Customer Service Representatives to tale action against same-faction griefers. Had the GM who zoned into the instance inflicted even a one hour ban on those involved at the point that he first witnessed griefing, we could have zoned in an additional 3 people and probably killed the boss. The GM instead repeatedly slept the players and repeatedly started the boss event, both of which accomplished nothing and the second of which we could have done by ourselves anyway.
Furthermore, placing the protection of the raid ID in the hands of raiders has an enormous effect on our ability to play the game. Here, one person taking an invite from someone they did not know resulted in us losing our most important farm boss for the week. Our entire guild has been instructed to refuse invites from any player who is not a member of the guild. Even an inviter who is not a member of the guild that has been systematically sabotaging our raid could potentially be an alt or a friend of this guild, and could by themself hijack and sell our raid ID to this other guild. Under the current system, any person who can zone into a raid instance can sabotage an entire guild with minimal effort on their own. The consequence of this is that I cannot accept group invitations from anyone outside my guild, which is detrimental to my ability to play the game.
Even if Blizzard is unable to discipline the people who have killed on of our bosses, griefed us and wasted hours of our time, and even if Blizzard cannot remove these people from our raid instance and prevent them from coming back inside at raid time tonight, it would provide an enormous sense of security for every raider tha plays this game if the existing system for the management of Raid IDs is changed to prevent a single group invitation from sabotaging an entire raid until reset.
