Top 5 Most Memorable Events in MMORPG History

1) The Assassination of Lord British - Ultima Online - August 8, 1997

Lord British was killed during an in-game appearance on Ultima Online’s beta test on August 8, 1997. A royal visit was conducted as a part of server population stress test. A player character known as Rainz cast a spell called “fire field” on Lord British that, surprisingly, killed him. According to Starr Long, the whole thing was just a human error: Lord British’s character, like others, had been made invulnerable, but by design the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. Shortly before the incident, the server had crashed, and Richard Garriott had forgotten to set his invulnerability flag on when logging on again. Shortly afterwards, Rainz’s account was banned from the beta test for previously exploiting bugs rather than reporting them (infamously used by his character Aquaman to kill many player characters, a purported griefing incident). According to Origin, he was not banned for the assassination but rather for previous complaints against his account that were brought to light as a result of this attention. The massive amount of lag, caused by the stress test, was a factor in Lord British’s death, as well as the guards being deactivated in the area, which allowed Rainz to steal, avoiding immediate death. 99% of the players were at Lord British’s castle. Only the few at Lord Blackthorn’s castle were the lucky witnesses to this historic event. Those known to have been present besides Lords British and Blackthorn were their jesters Chuckles and Heckles and the following players; Rainz, Dr.Pepper, Mental, DemonSoth, Haaaaaach, Helios, Phobos, Gildoreal, Wind Lord and Kylan.

2) LEEEEROY JENKINS! - World of Warcraft
I don’t know any MMORPG player that hasn’t seen this, hell even my friends that have never played a MMORPG know about this.

3) The Epic Heist - EVE Online - November 2005″

This was published in September’s 2005 issue of PC Gamer UK. It is a detailed account of what has to be one of most beautifully executed in-game scams in a MMORPG ever pulled. It breaks all previous world records for ‘virtual crime’.

The game in question is Eve Online, where corporate espionage and political intrigue have become an integral part of the game.

The perpetrator of the heist was the Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC) corporation (a corporation being similar to a clan in Eve); a freelance mercenary outfit that offers their services (which usually involves corp infiltration, theft and assassination) to the highest bidder. Over a year in planning, the GHSC infilitrated their target’s corp with their own members and gained their trust, as well as access to the corp hangers, with time. It all concluded in a perfectly timed climax, with a massive theft in multiple corp hangars synchronized with the in-game killing of the corporation’s CEO, the primary target of the contract.

What’s most interesting and impressive about this operation is that it was entirely ‘legal’ and within the game’s own rules, and the mastermind and his agents pulled it off together flawlessly, all the while staying in character. The estimated real-life value of the items stolen is, according to PC Gamer, $16,500 US. The in-game value of course is much, much higher as the things stolen would take years and years to aquire.

4) Plague Outbreak - World of Warcraft - September 2005

The Corrupted Blood plague incident was one of the first events to affect entire servers. Patch 1.7 saw the opening of Zul’Gurub, the game’s first 20-player raid dungeon where players faced off against an ancient tribe of jungle trolls under the sway of the ancient Blood God, Hakkar the Soulflayer. Upon engaging Hakkar, players were stricken by a debuff (a spell that negatively affects a player) called “Corrupted Blood” which would periodically sap their life. The disease would also be passed on to other players who were simply standing in close proximity to an infected person. Originally this malady was confined within the Zul’Gurub instance but made its way into the outside world by way of hunter or warlock pets that contracted the disease.

Within hours Corrupted Blood had infected entire cities such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. Eventually Blizzard fixed the issue so that the plague could not exist outside of Zul’Gurub.

5) Death of the Sleeper - EverQuest - November 15-17, 2007

The guild Blood of the Spider on The Rathe server was the first guild system-wide to kill Ventani (the fourth warder) on July 28, 2001, and therefore wake the sleeper. The event caused a stir on the server when Kerafyrm went into multiple zones, including Skyshrine, killing everyone and everything in his path.

On November 15, 2003, on the Rallos Zek PvP server, the three top guilds (Ascending Dawn, Wudan, and Magus Imperialis Magicus) assembled over 180 players with the intent to wake and kill The Sleeper. This was in response to an attempt to wake The Sleeper by an Iksar monk named Stynkfyst, who partnered with the largest random-pk guild of the time. Having been a former member of uber-guild Ascending Dawn, he had the knowledge the random pk guild needed to wake The Sleeper. The top guilds did not assemble their forces until word of Stynkfyst’s intentions had spread, and it became clear that he intended to wake The Sleeper, forever preventing future guilds from farming the old loot table. Until this point, waking The Sleeper had not been seriously considered by any guilds, as it was believed that waking The Sleeper would make the offending guild’s players kill-on-sight to the other guilds of the server. After 3 hours and 15 minutes, at 26% health, Kerafyrm disappeared (despawned). The players talked with the EverQuest Game Masters, and there was a general consensus that a bug had caused the problem, although some suggested (backed by statements from one GM) that higher-ups at SOE had purposely despawned Kerafyrm, because it was not intended to be part of the story.

The following day, the players logged in to find that Kerafyrm was back in his “sleeping” state, ready to be triggered again. There was also an apology on the official EverQuest forums from SOE, explaining that they had stopped the encounter because they feared the players were engaging the boss in an unintended manner. Although annoyed (the players pointed out that the reasons SOE gave could not have occurred, and felt lied to), they attempted to battle Kerafyrm once again.

On November 17, 2003, after a nearly 3-hour battle, Kerafyrm was defeated. He had between 100 million and 400 million hit points, likely around 250 million (most EverQuest bosses have 2 million at most), was immune to all spells except wizard’s manaburn spell and Shadow Knight’s Harm Touch, possessed two death touch abilities (abilities that automatically killed players), and attacked players for 6999 damage per swing. By using the cleric’s epic weapon and other resurrection spells, the players were able to bring their dead characters back into the battle faster than Kerafyrm could kill them all.

102 Responses to “ Top 5 Most Memorable Events in MMORPG History ”

  1. Nice article as always….

  2. Pretty good article. Concerning Everquest, I was on The Rathe server, which was the server BOTS (Blood of the Spider, originally Brotherhood of the Spider) was on. I remember BOTS being the guild to do almost all of the “firsts” on our server. Along with BOTS were other great guilds like Tindi Losi, and one guild which I was one of the original ten of, Spirit of Tunare. EQ sucked almost five years out of my life. Sorry for my babbling… good article.

  3. the auction house bombing should definately replace the zul gurub bombing because it was when people could teleport to org with barron geddon’s bomb. This was all far before ZG was even created.

  4. What happened to FFXI: Online? That MMO don’t get no kind of publicity anymore does it?

  5. ULTIMATE ONLINE RULES ALL FOR LIFE, NO GAME WILL EVER BE AS GOOD…. NOS 4EVER!

    -SUN FLOW PLANTING PUPPY DOG CUDDLERS

  6. God, I remember most of these, though the killing of Kerafyrm was the most memorable for me. That was insane when it happened.

  7. #5 is crazy. That is one truly epic encounter right there. I wish stuff like that could happen in WoW.

  8. Apparently the group that tried to take on Kerafyrm had at least a .3333 (repeating) chance of success.

  9. Death of the Sleeper occurred in 2003 not 2007 as indicated in the title of that section.

  10. I would think that, thought early, the invasion of England in WWII Online would warrant some mention.

    While everyone was focused on the european mainland, nobody ever thought, and for a while you could not reach it, that London could actually be attacked. But some enterprising german troopers jumped into some of the boats that were not landlocked and sailed across the channel and took over several portions of England.

    I’m not finding record of it online, but it is out there somewhere.

  11. What about the slaughter of an in game funeral in WoW?

  12. Well, WWII online might not necessarily be considered a MMORPG, but a MMOG.

  13. How about the guild Serentiy Now raiding the funeral on Illidan…That is a true MMORPG moment.

  14. O….M…G
    someone killed Lord British, hats off to this Rianz guy, first time i’ve heard of the kill.

    i feel avenged after my deaths from Lord British during the Ulima 3(?) days.

    lord british was like a slap to my face in Ultima, F U Origin Systems, i’m glad he’s dead.

    Cheers Rainz, im forever in your debt.

  15. Here is the link for all that need it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJVolaC8pw

  16. solidus

  17. Pre-Patch UO was the best, absolute best, time period of any MMO ever. Anyone who was a PK, or PKK back in those days knows, and anyone who didn’t play will sadly never know :( one love

  18. Note that ) Death of the Sleeper - EverQuest - November 15-17, 2007 should read ) Death of the Sleeper - EverQuest - November 15-17, 2003

  19. Nice wikipedia article indeed.

  20. Hahahha…i was there when Rainz killed LB….it was funny as hell, but Rainz has always been a tool anyhow.

  21. #5 is pretty limp. Oh wow, bunch of guys kill big boss guy. I’m sure that’s never happened before, or since.

  22. What about Asheron’s Call Shard of the Herald?
    If you haven’t heard the story, google it. Server Divergence!

  23. Ahh good times, good times. I only directly particpated in the Tainted Blood event but all of them brought a smile to my face.

  24. Thanks for giving credit to wiki for copying and pasting the text into “your” article! Nice job!

  25. Amazing how nobody noticed Asheron’s Call

  26. One more: the infamous Ultima Online naked and drunk protest to rally players against a broken economy.

    http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/08/19feature2.html

  27. That is one FANTASTIC list. I was fortunate enough to be present at two of the events. Yeah, yeah. What a geek.

  28. This should be retitled “The 5 Most Memorable Carebear Events…”.

    Hands down the top PVP most memorable event was the war over Kara in Asheron’s Call between Blood and Black Rose.

  29. Really enjoyed the article, it is things like these that makes online gaming have a life of its own!

  30. Great Article. It’s odd to see the beginning of MMO history and to know you’re personally a witness. While I wasn’t there for the assassination of Lord British, or the death of the sleeper. I was playing EVE when the great heist occurred and couldn’t get away from seeing “Leeroy” or catching the plague. Good times.

  31. It looks like the Lord British and Death of the Sleeper sections are pulled verbatim from their respective Wikipedia articles. You should add credits, unless it turns out MMOCrunch writers authored those articles themselves.

  32. Great article and brings back many memories.

    I was in stynkfyst’s guild, Spirit of the Bamboo, when this all went down.

    The repercussions of the stynk’s actions forced Spirit of the Bamboo to disband or be perma-hunted by Wudan, AD, and MiM, making the game unplayable for its members.

    Stynkfyst was forced to leave the server or face the same fate.

    The members of Spirit of the Bamboo were forced to reform the guild as The Black Swordsmen.

    This type of server politics are what is missing from this generation of fantasy MMO, prevented by the lack of free-for-all pvp. Allowing a player regulated game world like this creates a gaming community like no other.

    Thanks for the memories.

  33. nice, but you forgot Fansy the Famous Bard

    http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm

  34. What about the Death of that lady that was an avid player of WOW. Upon her clan giving her a proper in game burial where one of her clan members logged her character in. After the burial a rival clan came and attacked them during the funeral. It was total chaos.

  35. […] a shot of random and if you’re into gaming as much as me and my friends:  MMORPG - Top 5 Most Memorable Events in MMORPG History a friend of mine sent me the link and I found quite a few laughs from reading […]

  36. This was great. Please post more like this!

  37. Typo on the last one. the date in the title says 2007, when the paragraph says 2003. I remember reading about this. SOE reset the creature, they say, because they thought a glych had occurred. Instead of setting it to be immortal, they simply gave it really high HP.

  38. Good article however Leeory Jenkins?? Its well known and funny but its clear it was a staged video. I don’t think it should qualify. If it does then you might as well as add “The Internet is for Porn” video.

  39. What, no WOW online funeral raid?

  40. Awesome article!

  41. some great moments there. That Leroy Jenkins one always cracks me up.

    Taking Over The Net

  42. Very cool. It was fun to be a part of 2 of the 5 most memorable events. For me the Sleeper kill will always be number one, but it was very cool to read about the heist in Eve and the assassination of Lord British.

  43. What about Lord Kazzak terrorizing Stormwind? That was an incredible moment in mmo history, and it’s definitely better than Leroy Jenkins.

  44. Here is another, the first appearance of the Juggernaut in Gemstone 3.

    but this was WAY back in the day when MMORPGs were text base.

  45. Great list, although I think you overlooked one incident:

    http://www.destructoid.com/no-r-i-p-in-w-o-w-27610.phtml

    An in-game funeral that was raided in WOW

  46. Pretty good list. You forgot the epic day when the Shadowbane servers were hacked and chaos reigned. It was amazing.

    http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59034,00.html

  47. They should of removed the WoW plague, that was weak and played out. That little gnome that saved the bomb effect from on her pet from Baron Geddon and blew up like 100 asshat alliance in the AH was more memorable and funny then that.

    Should of listed when that sorry ass game Shadowbane was hacked and the hackers raised the water level and drowned all the noobs on the noob island. Now that was funny tho they was later caught IRL and arrested apparently haha.

    I would defiantly rank the Lord British one first one tho because it was classic and original.

  48. I’m not sure if its required that it must be in-game events, but MMO history of itself should also include the travesty of Star Wars Galaxies abrupt change of game play style; changing from the popular skill based system to the traditional class system, then further porting the RPG style play to a more FPSRPG style. The majority of the subscriber base left the game. This event is even mentioned in business textbooks as an example of what not to do!

  49. Word of advice to all whom have read this article.

    Keep watching WoW…

    #6 is about to be added to the list…

  50. NEVERWINTER NIGHTS had way more epic moments than all that. Few examples :-

    1) Spread of realms wide vulnarabilities due to spell patch, causing many to run in fear from previously wimpy foes

    2) Discovery and use of inifinity feats by a minority of the community, rendering them superhuman though mortal in guise

    3) Awesome heroes in PVP whose names and reps travelled across servers

    so many it is hard to recount them all..

  51. That is so lame that The Sleeper guy didnt drop any loot.

  52. #3 is bogus the biggest EvE Online heist was the EIB Scam of over 700 Billion ISK worth over $100000.

  53. A few years ago, Star Wars Galaxies players protested against SOE, who forever has been changing the game, by gathering in large groups and using the clapping emote. This resulted in a massive amount of lag, which resulted in SOE banning players from gathering more than 4-5 players in one place.

    Nothing like a police state.

  54. Sorry to say, but some raid of an in-game funeral is hardly very memorable. That happened more than a few times in DAoC… Compared to things like the EVE heist (simply awesome, I think I am downloading the trial when I get home) or killing Lord British, it doesn’t even come close to being on this list.

  55. Al’Kabor never had the population to try to kill the sleeper. Temerity and Dark Conquest could have easily awakened him but it would have been instant carnage.

    It was fun to meet the Sleeper. MMORPGs should have these epic larger-than-life encounters. Everything depends on the quality of the underlying story.
    EverQuest was -so- hard, so satisfying :).

  56. What about the other WoW moment where the Horde decimated that “funeral procession”? Pretty hilarious.

  57. No they don’t have the WoW funeral because that’s been done a million times in earlier mmorpgs. it’s not that epic of an even.

  58. How about the Borg and when they killed Blood, leader of the Blood guild, or when they helped provide another guild with the mats necessary to take over Blood’s mansion?

    How about how blood and KOC committed several federal offensesby threatening people (IRL) across state lines?

    Asheron’s Call was awesome until Turdbin nerfed it.

  59. EVE may have another contender with this recent boot.ini fuck up.

  60. well the sleeper for me will be #1 but i had forgetten that stynkfyst had a hand in it lol. If you never played eq then of course you would not understand the reason this was such a big deal on a pvp server to gather this many people in one area to do anything. we had to post guards at the zone in to keep pushing the PK”S back out of the zone because we did not want them to attemp to crash or bug the critter.

    truly the epic moment.

  61. Lame only one worthy is the 2 wow ones, thats saying alot since i despise wow

  62. @World of Warcraft, Lord Kazzak raiding Stormwind would be pretty awesome. We had one event where a guild pulled Azuregos to Orgrimmar. That was neat.

  63. Asheron’s Call Thistledown server.

    We protected the Shard. nevar forgot. they made a special statue for us didn’t they?

    Less important … Tayway killed the Nexus Crystal on TD, but Tron stole the Nexus Crystal Shadow Armor.

  64. Wow, that EVE one is so freakin’ awesome.

    I am dl’ing the trial when I get home.

  65. Without fansy the famous bard this is the worst list ever.

    He was banned from a no rules server, at level 5.

  66. No Fansy = no real top 5 list!

  67. UO the best ever MMG to date, I have played nearly all the other ones mentioned in the list and nothing compares to that game, :)

  68. Hey Zelph…you forgot KIC..(Knights of the Ironcross) back in the day it was BoTS, KIC…can’t remember the third guild…that used to run around together. Yep 5 years of my life gone …heh.

  69. I was part of the Everquest killing of the sleeper, and it definitely qualifies. While the kill was going on, numerous serverwide channels opened, and people from nearly every Everquest server were monitoring progress, and cheering for us. Most of the other events, while famous after their occurrence, were not as widely watched during the event.

    As for the sleeper kill being carebear–the kill was done on a pvp, attack and kill anyone you want server, but done by guilds who cooperated. It wasn’t a carebear event.

  70. Anyone that mentions WoW in such a list is a newbie.

  71. FANSY IS #1!!

  72. I played uo and every day something amazing happened. uo was the best gaming experience I’ve ever had. The first wedding/funeral raids originated from uo, guilds used to scam other guilds to get access to their castles, it had everything that’s on this list. pity people are too Comfortable with their unique items these days. i’m waiting for darkfallonline.com

  73. lol brings bak good memories in mmorpg history.

    The workers who work for the games should have the games organized before releasing them/ patches.

    so all fingers point at the game /codesingers :p

    i play 70 lock epicxpvperx on killrog eu :D wow pwns ever quest btw

  74. Don’t forget, the Realm online had it’s share of funerals/weddings in it as well. It came out before UO did. Not only that I remember playing that game before trade windows. You had to drop the item/cash on the ground and then pick it up from people.

    Talk about scams!! LOL

    Good list btw, I enjoyed reading all of those events.

  75. great!!^_^

  76. “Anyone that mentions WoW in such a list is a newbie.” Like it or not WoW is one of the biggest succes in MMO history. The Blood plague even went in the papers in denmark. That says something about the size of damage!! The kill of Kerafyrm should be no. 1 though, nohting is ever gonna beat that!

  77. wow ‘events’ pale in comparison to the mmo HISTORY that everquest was and continues to be.

    Here’s another Sleeper first kill vid. Theres nothing close in wow and this kill was years before the wow game, lol!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lccbiyZl38w

  78. The Conquest Sleeper’s Incident (TM) was more memorable than killing Kerafyrm.

  79. I didn’t quite make it into UO Beta, only discovered it after release. It was in a magazine I think, seeing that big pictorial battle with the red dragon, the 2-page spread. So I didn’t get to see Lord British fall, but wanted to join in to say that those days, collectively, were far and away the best experiences I’ve ever had in an MMORPG (as well as in any internet-based social network, or any video game).

    I feel like most of the UO nostalgics are posting from the PK perspective, and I have never been the PK sort, but regardless which side of the Crossroads you were running back to, it was more exhilarating and immersive than anything since. Those days of UO were like the gaming industry’s ‘wild, wild west’ and I wonder if those feelings will (or can) ever be recaptured. I played some of the others, and WOW for about a year, a great game in its own right, but I don’t think anything will be able to really compare.

  80. Uo was the best mmo made, ever. It was simply and utterly amazing. Then ea bought origin systems and slowly ruined the game. It is nothing but a empty husk of what it use to be.

    RIP UO

  81. In Ashrons Call there was an event where the players had to kill a giant crystal to progress the relms storyline. On one server people defended the crystal, sacrificing themselves to it so it could level up.
    In the end a group of players and some in character GM’s had to go in and kill the crystal.
    There is a statue by one of the towns in the game commemorating those players.

  82. What about when Runescape went from 2D to 3D? That was EPIC!!! OMG I will never forget that as long as I live!

  83. How about Lord Kazzak visiting Stormwind?

  84. i Hate WOW but the Comic Book wars on WOW should be up there.when Ctrl Alt Del and penny arcade started the war on Dark Iron forge server . EverQuest Sleeper is way above any WOW moment as for the plague in WOW I’m in Australia and that was on all are news programs on all channels .

  85. The Thistledown server’s aforementioned defense of the herald crystal in Asheron’s Call definitely belongs on this kind of list. Their doomed effort gave the game’s story some real meaning.

    The situation was even resolved within the context of the game. Two players who had been annointed champions of bael’zharon in a previous event were eventually tasked to lead the successful destruction of the crystal. I think they had some GM buffs, but that’s a fair sight better than just de-spawning the thing.

  86. The reason other events were not mentioned is obvious. The author limited it to 5 and did not include player on player.

    Lord British — long term character that was a major for an entire series dead. In just a few moments.

    Though personally #2 the total party wipe I would not have included…. not because it is Wow but I have seen TPWs involving 30 to 50 people in EQ guild raids. I have also seen people kicked out of raids and baned from guilds for less then what “Leroy” did. I know people who refuse to ever group with certain other people again for doing that sort of stunt. Causing a bad pull accidentally is one thing doing it deliberatly is another thing entirely.

    I do not know anything about 3 and 4 that is not in the article.

    But including # 5 well…. I will just say this the raid to start the battle most likely took as much time as the battle. If you do not play EQ you may not realize what goes into a raid of that caliber. Then you are talking about ALL the HiGHEST level PCs on the server participating in the battle once it began.

    I would like to see some Screen Caps from that battle.

  87. Ashrons Call was better then all of these

  88. runescape’s infamus 666 masacure shold be added to this it was spectacular!!!

  89. That’s not the UO Beta… The beta had a completely different set of tiles it used for almost everything in the game.

  90. I remember being online in EQ farming spider silks in the Eastern Plains of Karana with my girlfriend when somebody passing through the zone mentioned in zone chat that The Sleeper was trying to be killed. I sent a tell for the channel name and followed the progess on the cross channel server chat. This was the first attempt. Same circumstances happened for the second attempt only difference was they restricted anyone joining the cross server channel access, even my girlfriend couldn’t join it and I was one of the few on Tunare that had it. My girlfriend acted as relay for the rest of the server. We still talk about that day, the only thing that personally topped it was our ingame wedding ;)

  91. My favorite time was when all of your heads exploded when you decided to go outside one day and the sunlight was too much for your eyes. That was awesome. Jeez people.

  92. Holyhell!!

    Hey Nadia!

    Council of Darkness was the 3rd guild back in the BCK days.

    Mandrix and Calliyana and co.

    Nice to see your still around man drop me a line sometime I’m still around on the rathe.

    Brotherhood of the Spider is still around and back to their original name as well its BotS not BOTS ;)

  93. Drop the two lame WoW ones. Leroy Jenkins was fake, and the other one was stupid. The crashing of the WoW funeral and Fansy should be in their place.

    Btw, the killing of Kerafyrm happened on a free-for-all PVP server, making it more bad ass than it already is. :p

  94. I’ve confined myself to Ragnarok Online so I’ve never seen any of those.

  95. How does a fake / staged event make it to number 2?

  96. The day when someoen went on a massacre in runescape was a great day

  97. […] British will end up getting ganked in Tabula Rasa before the end of 2008, as Lord British was in Ultima Online in […]

  98. Heh I was there for the original Sleeper killing with BotS and if you dont play EQ you dont understand the intensity of that fight.
    When we killed the sleeper we had no idea it was a one time kill per server or that it would go kill everyone in 4 zones I think it was after it left us.
    The hate tells we got for the next 2 days still live in my memories and make me laugh tho. And as someone mentioned we pretty much had almost every first in that game up til the time i retired and moved on:)

  99. the purple potion bomb in UO was also a major piece of history.

    UO was a tile based game. you could place a purple potion on the ground on one tile, take a step and place one in an adjacent tile. throwing a purple potion at hte ground would cause an explosion that would set off all adjacent purple potions, which would then set off any other adjacent potions, etc.

    someone made a line of potions across the major land mass of hte server, then set it off.

    it crashed the server :)

  100. That Corrupted Blood plague seems interesting. I wasnt there but it would have been fun to watch. Most I seen on a big scale has been when the Scourges minions and a military leader came to visit Orgrimmar when I was level 23. That was fun. Went on a killing spree to all major cities and no one could put a dent in him since he seemed to feed off the deaths of all that challenged him.

  101. #5 looked like its was fun

  102. what about the time my gm tamer let loose two white dragons at a 200 + attending wedding on UO… Everyone died, and I was banned for 3 months, of payed time :(

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