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 World of Warcraft 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, 2003
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.
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#5 looked like its was fun
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
“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.”
The first time you would wake the sleeper and because I was in BotS we knew what would happen because a GM told us.
Couple corrections on the BotS Sleeper Awakening. Some members from Tindi ‘ Losi were there to help in Sleeper’s Tomb. Merloc, Gradukk and a few others. Think one was Sevenkey and another was Zewt? The best thing that ever happened to BotS was the server split that the 3 top guild on the Rathe broke up. They were MFH (Many Fine Heros), CIW (Clan Ice Wind), and KEG (Kinghts of Eternal Good). Once those 3 broke up Blood of the Spider followed by Tindi ‘ Losi became the Rathe server’s top 2 guilds sharing server firsts.
That Ventani try by BotS literally took almost 30 tries if I recall, with several where we failed at 1%. The key element we used that escaped the FoH’s and Afterlifes of the world was pulling Ventani to the entrance where there was one large stairstep. We would time his AOE by having melee simply “duck” to avoid the AOE using that step, while range hid around walls – a very legitimate tactic. Bad blood ensued when memberes of other elite guilds claimed BotS exploited because God forbid, someone beat them to content firsts…. Regardless, that was easily my #1 moment in any mmorg.
2 White Wyrms couldn’t kill 2 players, let alone 200 in UO. Every dragon in the game was able to be solo’d by anyone with Magery.
Considering the people having the wedding, were probably all dressed up in wedding attire, were more PvE based (RP) and probably didn’t know wtf to do when something like that (2 White Wyrms is Pre Trammel so they were alot stronger then) this could have happened.
I missed Lord British’ kill by a few days *sigh*.
I bet if the developers made UO all over again, pre trammel days, with todays graphic engines and anti-hack software, UO would (in my opinion) top them all.
Still to this day my favorite MMO of all time, and I’ve played them all.
The information concerning the Sleeper is completely wrong. BoTS may have been the first to take him out ON THAT SERVER. But in fact Legacy of Steel took out the sleeper almost 18 months before that on numerous servers. There were close to 250 people in on that raid, all of which were in Legacy of Steel.
What about the Fallador Massacre? On 6/6/06 in Runescape a player that went the first 99 construction party and found a glitch in the pvp dungeon. Some how he did something, then used the house portal to teleport to Fallador, and it teleported everyone there. That wouldn’t usually be bad but he kept the ability to attack players, but they couldn’t attack them back. So while he went around a Fallador fulled to the brim of people, he wouldn’t just chop them up and take the rewards. The event lasted over and hour and it worked its way out of Fallador and to Edgeville. In all the excitement he forgot to store his items he got. He got perm banned but nobody got their billions and billions of gold in items back.
[...] December I posted an article about the top 5 most memorable events in MMORPG history which received a huge response from the MMO community. Today I decided it revisit this post and [...]
I was there for the sleeper death, Cronious of RZ, MIM.
and was later guilded with Stynkfyst in sotb.
good times.
Ultima Online was quite simply the best MMO I’ve ever played, as well as the best game I’ve ever played. As many before me have already stated, the game was the “wild wild west,” wherein anything went. Nothing will ever compare to that game, and every time I look at screenshots of that game or talk with someone else who played it, it makes me realize how far superior that Ultima Online was to anything and everything else. I spent COUNTLESS hours at the Crossroads killing people, it was quite simply the perfect game. And as others have pointed out, the game was bought out and ruined. RIP UO, RIP.
I have to agree about UO being one of the best ever, that game and Star Wars Galaxies both took a huge amount of my attention, and I loved playing them both. I’ve played EQ, WoW, UO, SWG, AoC, PotCO, AC, Eve, and many others and I have to say UO and SWG were the kings of their respective universes, there is nothing better in either fantasy or science fiction, even though Eve Online has to get huge props for being so awesome, you can’t get a lightsaber and that’s what made SWG so great before they screwed it with the CU and then the NGE and totally ruined that game. UO should have stopped before they put all the different elemental damages on weapons and just stuck with ruin, might, force, power, vanquishing modifiers with some spells like it had to begin with, they tried to copy SWG’s system with that and it doesn’t work too well, and then SWG just threw it ALL out the window and messed the whole game up. RIP to old UO and SWG, I will always have fond memories
have no idea why a couple of those where top 5…gzz..leeroy? whys that a top 5 people do that daily ingames how about the 100k USD spent to buy space station in entropia univers by neverdie or one of the other things that are actualy intresting and foot marks in MMORPG history?
Leeroy Jenkins was scripted. Why is this such a memorable event. Someone should re-write the events so they aren’t so bias.
Dude runescape man, seriously 6/6/6 was epic!! or the dupping hack, that no one prolly remebers as ur all too young lol, but some guy find a way to dup every item and made billions of dollars, runescapes had some pretty epic history there, and warcraft is on the list way to much
I agree with MANY of the posts that UO is quite simply (pretrammel) the best MMORPG ever created. With so many gamers agreeing why do developers continue to make Care Bear games?
I recently logged back into UO Europa shard (on a 14 day trial account) and went to the place where my first guild house had been, along the road from Britain to Cove, It was an Anti-PK guild with 5 members. As I wondered though the Graveyard at Britain and into the mining cave north of Britain, I have to say I got quite emotional to see the game so deserted and re-living so many memories from such a long time ago.
Seeing as such a long period of time has passed and the tendency has been going away from Sandbox FFA full loot virtual worlds, I am beginning to doubt I will ever experience such a thing again. RIP UO.
If I won the euro lottery I know which type of game I would create and let it be F2P.
I was a member of DROW and this is an awesome article
Hi Nadia Ironcross,
Garshon here, a Bard way back in the KIC days
The other guild that was part of the BOTs, KIC and CoD alliance was Council of Darkness. Good times indeed.
I am actually going to start playing EQ again for the Nostalgia, and maybe see where it leads me, but I highly doubt I will be hardcore like I was back in the day
Be safe:)
Everquets was awesome, especially pre pop.
If you want to play classic everquest again check out project1999.org. A free classic server with a server population of almost 1000 at peak times. Currenty with max. lvl 50 its following the original timeline. Plane of sky was recently released, kunark should come soon
I agree with all posts that UO is the best MMORPG game ever. Darkfall is a good try, but I was expecting something more. WoW is also good game, but without full looting is not so fun. I’m missing there some kind of danger feeling ^^.
One negative of full looting games is when you get looted due to some lags or connection problems :/
yea EQ through velious was sick. Best place by far to relive that stuff is on the mac server, where nothing further than POP is enabled. There’s a really cool progression guild there that only uses era appropriate gear and beats each expansion, currently in VP on kunark.
check it out eqvintage.com
To Comment on #5:
I was a member of the Guild BotS. Bots was the abbreviation for “Brotherhood of the Spider”. And not as stated above “Blood of the Spider”.
Feladar
Just a little tidbit of info. Blood of the spider or BotS goes by Brotherhood of the Spider these days and is part of “The Drow Organization”, involved in a variety of MMORPG’s. http://www.Drow.org
Just would like to give a shout out to the writers for reminding us of the good ol’ days
MMORPGS SUUCK!!!! PLAY A BOARD RPG AND TALK WITH REAL FRIENDS IF YOU CAN HAVE SOME!
I think the PKing of players in WOW during an in-game funeral/memorial a few years ago has got to be counted too – perhaps 5a.
Yes, everyone has heard of Leeroy jenkins but #2? eh im sure theres better events that warrant a spot on the top 5
and to others suggesting those that killed weddings/funerals on a MMORPG??
I think Fansy and his epic tales from EQ should deserve recognition > wedding killers
just sayin..
anyway, to stay on topic. these killers are all game legends not MMORPG EVENTS
The EQ killing of the sleeper was legendary.
After the SOE despawn, SOE had to block character creation on the rathe server, because so many players had heard about the first attempt and were creating lvl 1 toons simply to be there and see the 3 uber guilds try again.
From when it happened and through the years I have copied information on the incident from here and there, all available here: http://www.amoroth.dk/fora/index.php?topic=63.0
/Erithiel of Vazaelle
I took part in event 5, though only on the first attempts.
see website, MiM is still alive and kickin at present!!!